ABSTRACT: In some ways, yes. But if this is so, then we would become part of the history of the glorious, though in many ways terrible, history of the Communist Internationals or of socialdemocratic burocratization.

However, our origins also lie inevitably in the great enlightened and liberal ideals. Without forgetting that the new Humanism is nonviolent and ecologist.

But in the meantime money has almost run out for the transnational transparty which is about to be born, for the Radical Party.

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By the January 1993 Congress, scores of parliamentarians and other members must come together to form the executive of the new Radical Party.

(THE PARTY new - N. 7 - May 1992)

The world is full of disorder, destruction and death.

There is no lack of values, ideals and parties. On the contrary, there is an abundance of them. They are the only dense jungle in the world which is expanding rather than dying or being destroyed. Cheap clean consciences, pointless and barren anguish, tragic theologies and ideologies - of "liberation", real-politik, dictatorships and "real democracies"; politics reduced to politicking, men of nonviolence and revolution reduced to sects, conservatives conserving nothing, parasites of tragedies - over which we cry or pretend to cry - slaves of fearful, impotent, suicidal or homicidal powers, such as the so-called "multinationals of military technology, food and agriculture, and drug-trafficking based on prohibitionism", these too incapable of imposing "order", however bad.

This is what we are reduced to, what we have become. Both when we are at the highest levels of power and when we are martyrs or witnesses in the heart of an age in which "fine souls" are disappearing like an unstoppable haemorrhage. Let us repeat once again: the divorce between science and knowledge on one hand and power and politics on the other turns everything, even the "new Humanism" of ecology and environmentalism and the many national green parties, into epiphenomena of crisis, the ingredients of defeat and disaster.

As always impotence and sterility generate violence, more violence, and yet more violence. In other words, disorder, destruction, and death.

The language of concrete political objectives.

What are lacking, on the other hand, are objectives, and bodies which can conceive of them and organize them, politically and practically; achieve them or fail to achieve them. In the Babel of the world, only the language of concrete political objectives can unite, with full respect for the wealth of ethnic, religious, cultural, environmental, political, social, and economic differences, as well as of different interests.

The Radical Party is - alas! - the only attempt to find a coherent and immediate response to the demand to achieve the right to life and the life of rights, laws, individuals, and peoples - and not through their death, through their sacrifice, which is illusory, unseemly and blind, although at times "heroic". We are supported by active minorities of men and women who are radically nonviolent and democratic (who are not the same - let us repeat it once again - as traditional pacifists or the resigned exponents of party-politics); they succeed in giving life and strength - as well as work, money and intelligence - to their convictions, which they turn into political objectives. Just as we are supported by parliamentarians and men of government, enlightened by humility, aware of the inadequacy of national parties (necessary as they are), of the paralysis and the chaos of policies which are above all, if not exclusively, those of their own nations or of the current forms of organization of the UN and its system,

of the pacts, largely military, between the nations and the various regions of the world. People who are united - if they unite, if they are able to remain united, if they are able to procure the means - by the desire to adopt as their first fatherland justice, liberty, democracy, tolerance, and nonviolence. Together with those people who feel or live in this way, we must immediately - before the constituent Session of the Congress in January 1993 - create and achieve co-existence, comprehension, collaboration, and political unity; and always, let us remember, with the help of the most absolute freedom, of the freest consent, of common visions, that is, rather than restrictions.

These are some of the aspects of the "New Party". Of the Transnational Transparty. Of the Radical Party, that is.

Nonviolent action against the criminal Serbian regime.

Thus, in Italy - in accordance with the decisions of our Federal Councils and with the majority of the speeches at the party Congress - two thousand people took part at the same time, and some are still continuing, in a sort of public "fast" in support of the fight against the aggression, the war and the crimes of the regime which is oppressing Serbia and Montenegro, conducting from these two regions a policy which is reminiscent of that of the Nazis, of the Communists, and of Saddam Hussein.

At the same time we managed to persuade 62% of the deputies in the Italian Parliament to undersign a motion on the ex-Yugoslavia - or rather on the reform of the policies of Italy and the European Community. Deputies from almost all the fifteen parties which make up the Parliament, which until then were profoundly divided on this issue.

This "Italian" motion, drawn up at the end of April - sent to the 200 and more parliamentarians of the various countries and of the European Parliament who are members of the Federal Council of the Radical Party, translated into our 13 working languages and also into Esperanto - was almost literally taken up in the motivations, and partially in the decisions, of the United Nations Council of Security resolution which denounced the responsibility of the Serbian regime (not of the Serbian people, who are the first victims of oppression) in actions which are reminiscent of those of the Nazis, the Fascists, and of Stalinist Russia from the thirties onwards.

Thus the battle waged by the Radical Party for a year and a half was rewarded, though the reward came atrociously late.

All this was achieved by no more than six of the Radicals in the Italian Parliament, and no more than 300 members of the Radical Party. A miracle of nonviolence? Or of the capacities acquired over the years in the organization of political and institutional battles? A miracle, that is, of the very few - for now - consciences armed with democracy, tolerance, nonviolence and effective methods?

It should be pointed out that the Conference for Security and Co-operation in Europe chose Mario Raffaelli, an Italian deputy who is a member of the Radical Party, as well as of the Socialist Party, to study and report on Nagorny Karabakh. It is also thanks to the efforts of Raffaelli that the CSCE convened a timely Conference in Rome on this tragic contemporary comedy of errors.

Our aims and battles.

The above is, in reality, just one example of the "scenario" which we want to achieve for our society and for our time, for the supporters of nonviolence and the democratic parliamentarians of every country: almost identical laws and resolutions to be presented and passed at the same time by an increasing number of national parliaments, the European Parliament, and the Assembly and the various organizations of the United Nations.

In order to do this, we need an extremely efficient organization supported by voluntary activists and equipped with computer technology. Once again we are faced with the problem of the life and the development of the Radical Party, which already has such characteristics, and in this respect is (alas!) for the moment alone in the world. We need to be able, culturally and politically, to translate the values which exist in abundance and which are increasingly incapable of coming to life and establishing themselves into "political ventures" (just as we talk of industrial, commercial or financial ventures) equipped with projects, budget and end-of-year accounts, income-seeking methods and controlled expenditure.

For example, it is our aim to abolish the death penalty within the next seven years through the constitution of a "World Parliamentray League". One year ago now, we were able, through this newspaper, to collect the signatures of over 1,000 parliamentarians and men of government from 40 countries asking for the abolition of the death penalty in the ex-Soviet Union.

This achievement does not in itself mean offering a chance for American society to change its mind on this issue (the majority of Americans, according to polls, are in favour of the death panalty). It does, however, mean taking the first step in a great transnational campaign which we have to organize through a legislative project, of international law, following a detailed programme and a strict calendar of political and institutional objectives, both national and international, and Ghandian, nonviolent mass campaigns, with the aim of establishing universal, binding laws by the year 2000.

In order to do this, we need to give strength and political value to the research, the studies and the proposed conventions which opponents of capital punishment have been producing for decades, in the risk, however, of becoming at a historical level little more than a painful comment or a tragic chorus to the spread of the use of the death penalty by single nations as a legitimate and opportune means of defending life and human rights. Everyone knows, especially those who have parliamentary, governmental or research experience in the field of law, how difficult this project is and how much tenacity and intelligence, how much human and financial effort it requires. We place our trust in the intellectual honesty of those who read this newspaper for an answer to the following question: is there any other project, any other instrument, any other institutional and political body which can be an alternative to the Radical Party? And if there is not, is it intellectually and humanly honest to pretend to be agains

t the death penalty and to expect a solution to this problem - which is only one of many pressing problems - from some kind of "progressive" Providence, that is from fate?

Those who read this newspaper know that, as well as the issue of the death penalty, we have identified many other problems: the process of increasing criminality amongst the political leaders and the societies of the world, of increasing chaos and ungovernability, which is related to the prohibition of the agricultural production of "drugs" in the Third World - a prohibitonist policy which is founded on the same fanatical and state-worshipping illusions that have brought about all the totalitarian and violent brands of Fascism that have made this century even more barbaric than those that preceded it. Here, too, we have provided information, knowledge and concrete political and organizational initiatives.

Another example: democratic federalism, based above all on the unalienable rights of the individual (and not of peoples, races, or tribes), as an urgent response to the tragic collapse of the great totalitarian "federations" or "unions", and the consequent return to barbaric racist attitudes and to the worship of the national state; the overturning of the historical tradition of non-interference in the policies of individual states, a tradition established by the "democratic" countries which has always turned out to mean support for those dictatorships and empires, whether right- or left-wing, that have not only been guilty of oppression, but of fully-fledged war against their own peoples. In the past such support was given to Nazism, Fascism, Communism and Third World dictatorships, now it is given to the Peking regime, which has wiped out the life of rights and the right to life of over one billion people, which practises genocide not only in Tibet, but also in regions and populations whose existence we en

d up forgotting about. Or, for example, to the bloody and murderous dictatorships of the Middle East. Or, finally, the support offered for many years to the Saddam of Belgrade and his generals and demagogues.

We want to safeguard international communication from the attacks of any hegemonic languages or peoples, guaranteeing through an international language all the cultural and linguistic identities of every ethnic group around the world. For this reason we want to work towards ensuring that the European Parliament considers, from a cultural as well as a political point of view, the problem of language and communication: Esperanto, in this respect, undoubtedly deserves at least to be tried out.

Another issue which has not been dealt with, and which has to be dealt with - the demographic policies of the Catholic Church and of China, apparently very different, but in reality equally destructive and intolerant. Such policies, moreover, are one of the causes of the failure of the Rio de Janeiro Conference on ecological questions and the salvation of the planet.

We hoped to be able to entrust ecologist initiative to the "Green" parties. Unfortunately, they too live in the "national" shadow of the catastrophes which they denounce and encounter; almost the sub-product of a worldwide anguish, almost the paradoxical expression of "resting on political laurels" rather than a political, cultural, and institutional anticipation of the possibility of the ecological government of the planet and of our own "little" national territories.

Only thirty or so people in the world dedicate their lives to the Radical Party.

The Secretary of the Party, Sergio Stanzani, the President, Emma Bonino, the Treasurer, Paolo Vigevano, and no more than thirty other people have been working for years, and are working increasingly hard after the undoubted success of the campaign for the "New Party", to allow us to reach the goal represented by the second session of our Congress, which should give rise to the re-foundation of the Radical Party. It is worth repeating and underlining this once again: there are only thirty or so people, thirty or so people in the whole world, who are alone in dedecating their lives to this priority.

There are then just over 2,000 Italian citizens and around twenty Italian parliamentarians who provide, through their membership, a human and financial contribution which now forms 90% of the resources devoted by the Party to this "project". For those of us who are Italian, this awareness is also a reason for sadness and almost for shame: even the opponents of Fascism and Nazism active during the twenty years of dictatorship were more numerous. But only the men and women of this country can know that the Radical Party constitutes a real insurance policy for their own lives and those of others, for liberty, democracy and nonviolence, and - in this knowledge - through their sloth, their cynicism and their resignation they condemn this hope to death, a hope which for them should be supported by the many experiences of the concrete history they have seen and continue to see.

There are, finally, the 200 and more parliamentarians, mainly from the countries which are emerging from the tragedies of dictatorship and often seem to be about to fall into the tragedy of chaos, poverty, hatred betwen factions and tribal wars, fought perhaps in the name of a "self-determination of peoples" which ignores people's rights to well-being or, more simply, to life. With the help only of six issues of the newspaper, over 3,000 people from these countries have joined the Party so far this year, over three times more than last year's total.

There are, therefore, a total of more than 5,000 people, who come from areas of the world which are apparently very different, 5,000 people in the world, who give the thirty people mentioned above the practical and moral strength to attempt to go ahead with their efforts. Apart from in the Western countries - largely in Italy, therefore - the financial contribution from these members is little more than symbolic. But for us the value of every single new member is necessary and decisive for the successful outcome of our common project, and will be increasingly so during the difficult months ahead of us. We now hope that the scores of parliamentarians who have joined in the last year, especially in the countries of Eastern and Central Europe, who are now involved in the creation of the new statute, and in the campaign for new members among their colleagues, will begin immediately, before the second session of Congress, to form part of the leadership of the Party, so that at the beginning of 1993 we can hand ov

er to them the responsibility for the direction and the work which have so far been undertaken by those who express their views in this newspaper and who hold the responsibilities laid down by the statute of the Party.

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Only 5,000 members in the world

The following is a list of the fifteen countries with the highest number of Radical Party members on 1 June 1992. The number of Italian members on the same date was 2,098.

Russia 1,359

Ukraine 503

Croatia 276

Burkina Faso 261

Azerbaijan 170

Romania 120

Czechoslovakia 79

Kazakistan 79

Byelorussia 50

Bulgaria 50

Hungary 45

Georgia 40

Uzbekistan 39

Kirghiz 34

Latvia 34