The Ventotene Manifesto
by Altiero Spinelli and Ernesto Rossi
(translated into English by E. Urgesi; cf. http://www.altierospinelli.org/manifesto/en/manifesto1944en_it.html)
I
– THE CRISIS OF MODERN CIVILISATION
Modern
civilisation has based its specific foundation on the principle of
liberty which states that man is not a mere instrument to be used by
others but rather a main autonomous living being. Looking back at
this definition all those aspects of social life that were not
respectful of this principle have been placed on trial, in a great
historical process.
1)
All nations have been recognised the equal right to organise
themselves into independent States. All peoples, defined by ethnic,
geographic, linguistic and historical characteristics, were to find,
within the State organisation created according to their own
particular concept of political life, that instrument best suited to
their own needs, without any outside intervention. The ideology of
national independence was a powerful stimulus to progress. It helped
overcome narrow-minded parochialism and generated a deeper sense of
solidarity against foreign oppression. It eliminated many of the
obstacles that hindered the circulation of people and merchandise
and, within the territory of each new State, it extended the
institutions and systems of more advanced societies to less developed
populations. Unluckily, however, the seeds of capitalist imperialism
have expanded to the point of forming totalitarian States and to the
unleashing of world wars and our generation has been witness.
Now
the nation is no longer regarded as the historical product of
communities of men that, as the result of a lengthy process, have
increased similarities of customs and aspirations and consider their
State as the most effective organisation of collective life within
the framework of the whole human society. It has, on the contrary,
become a divine entity, an organism that has to consider only its own
existence, its own development, without the least regard for the
damage this might cause to others.
The
absolute sovereignty of national States has given each of them the
desire to dominate, since each one feels threatened by the strength
of the others, and considers, as its living space, an increasingly
vast territory wherein it will have the right to free movement and
can rely on itself without any other help. This desire to dominate
cannot be placated except by the predominance of the strongest State
over all the others.
As
a consequence of all this, the State is no longer the guardian of
civil liberty but it has been transformed into the master of vassals
bound to servitude, and it holds within its power all the faculties
needed to achieve the maximum war-efficiency. Even during peacetime,
considered to be a pause during which to prepare for subsequent,
inevitable wars, by now the military class predominates over civilian
society in many countries, by making more and more difficult the good
working of free political systems. Expressions of civil policy,
therefore, such as schools, research, productivity. administrations,
act with difficulty and are mainly directed towards increasing
military strength. Women are considered merely as producers of
soldiers and are awarded prizes in much the same way as prolific
cattle. Since the very earliest age, children have been taught to
handle weapons and to hate foreigners. Individual liberty is almost
annihilated since everyone is part of the military establishment and
constantly subject to be called in on the armed forces. Repeated wars
force men to abandon families, jobs, property, often demanding the
ultimate sacrifice for reasons of which no one can really understand
the value. It takes just a few days to destroy the results of decades
of common effort made in order to increase the general well being.
Totalitarian
States are those that have most coherently achieved the unification
of all forces, by effecting the greatest concentration and the
highest degree of autarky. These organisations have proved to be the
ones most suited to the current international environment. Should one
nation move a step towards more accentuated totalitarianism, it would
immediately be followed by the others, drawn through the very same
furrow by their will to survive.
2)
The equal right of all citizens to participate in the process of
establishing the State's will has been recognised. This should have
been the synthesis of the freely expressed, changeable economic and
ideological needs of all the social groups. Such a political
organisation has allowed the correction or at least the minimising of
many of the most jarring injustices inherited from previous regime.
But freedom of the press, of assembly, and the increasing extension
of suffrage, made the defence of old privileges more and more
difficult, while maintaining a representative system of government.
The
poor slowly learned how to use these instruments to fight for the
rights acquired by the privileged classes. Taxes on unearned income
and inheritances, increasing duties to be paid on larger incomes, tax
exemptions for low incomes and indispensable goods; free public
schooling; increased social security spending; land reforms; control
of factories and manufacturing plants – all of them were now
threatening the privileged classes in their well -fortified citadels.
Even
the privileged classes who had consented to the equality of political
rights, could not accept the fact that the under-privileged took
advantage of it in order to achieve a concrete economic and social
equality that would have given meaningful significance to the real
liberty. At the end of the First World War, the threat became too
serious; it was only natural that these classes warmly welcomed and
supported the birth of dictatorships that took legal instruments away
from their adversaries.
On
other hand, the birth of immense industrial and banking groups, and
of trade unions including whole armies of workers , groups and unions
pressing the government in order to obtain policies clearly
favourable to their particular interests, threatened to dissolve the
State into so many economic baronies, bitterly fighting against each
other: Liberal, democratic systems became the tools these groups used
to exploit all of society even more, and consequently lost their
prestige. In this way they were more and more convinced that only a
totalitarian State, in which individual liberties were also
abolished, could somehow resolve the conflicts of interest that
existing political institutions were unable to control.
As
a matter of fact, the totalitarian regimes consolidated, generally
speaking, the various social categories at those levels they had
gradually reached by using police control of every aspect of
citizen's life, and by violently getting rid of all dissenting
voices, these regimes have barred every legal possibility of further
correction of the present situation. This ensured, then, the
existence of a thoroughly parasitic class of absentee land owners and
enjoyers of an income who contributed to social productivity only by
cutting the coupons off their stocks; the monopoly holders and the
chain stores that exploit the consumers and make the sums set apart
by small investors to vanish; the plutocrats hidden behind the
scenes, pulling the politicians' strings and running the State
machinery for their own exclusive advantage, pretending to be
interested in higher national interests. The colossal fortunes of a
very few have been preserved, and the misery of the masses as well,
excluded from enjoyment of the fruits of modern culture. They have
substantially preserved an economic regime in which material
resources and labour, which ought to be applied to the satisfaction
of fundamental needs for the development of vital human energies, are
instead addressed to the satisfaction of the most futile wishes of
those capable of paying the highest prices; an economic regime in
which, through the right of inheritance, the power of money is
perpetuated in the same class, and is transformed into a privilege
without any correspondence to the social value of the services
rendered. The field of proletarian possibilities is so small that in
order to make a living, workers are often forced to accept
exploitation by anyone who offers a job.
In
order to keep the working classes immobilised and subjugated, the
trade unions have been transformed, from the free organisations of
struggle they were, directed by individuals who enjoyed the trust of
their associates, into organs for police surveillance run by
employees chosen by the ruling class and responsible only to them. If
improvements are made in this economic regime, they are simply and
only dictated by the military needs, that together with the
reactionary ambitions of privileged classes have given rise to and
strengthen totalitarian States.
3)
The permanent value of the spirit of criticism has been asserted
against authoritarian dogmatism. Everything that was affirmed had to
be truthful and verifiable, or disappear. The greatest achievements
of our society in every field are due to the methodicalness of this
open-minded attitude. But this spiritual liberty did not survive the
crises created by the totalitarian States. New dogmas to be accepted
like articles of faith, or hypocritically, are taking over all fields
of knowledge.
Though
no one knows what a race is, and the most elementary notions of
history emphasise the absurdity of the statement, physiologists are
required to believe, demonstrate and convince that people belong to a
chosen race, simply because this myth is needed by imperialism to
excite the masses to hate and pride. The most evident concepts of
economic science must be considered as anathema if the autarchic
policy, trade balances and other old chestnuts of mercantilism can be
presented as extraordinary discoveries of our times. Because of the
economic interdependence of all parts of the world, the vital space
needed by many population that wants to maintain a living standard
consonant with modern civilisation, can only be the entire globe. But
the pseudo-science of geopolitics has been created, and its aim is to
demonstrate the validity of the theory of living spaces, in order to
legitimate theoretical cover to the imperialist desire to overpower.
History
is falsified in its essential data, in the interests of the ruling
classes. Libraries and bookshops are cleared away of all works that
are nor considered to be orthodox. The shadows of obscurantism over
again threaten to suffocate the human spirit. The social ethic of
liberty and equality is undermined. Men are no longer considered free
citizens who can use the State in order to reach collective purposes.
They are, instead, servants of the State, which decides their goals
and the will of those who hold the power is masked behind the will of
the State. Men are no longer subjects of law; they are arranged
hierarchically and expected to obey all their superiors, whose
leaders is a suitable deified Leader, without discussion. The regime,
built on castes, springs up again irresistible, out of its own ashes.
This
reactionary, totalitarian civilisation, after triumphing in a series
of countries, finally found, in Nazi Germany, the power that was
thought to be capable of drawing the final consequences. After
meticulous preparation, boldly and unscrupulously taking advantage
from the rivalries, egoism, stupidity of others, carrying other
European vassal States – among which primarily Italy and becoming
allied with Japan that is aiming at the very same goals in Asia,
Germany has launched itself in a campaign of overpowering. Its
victory would mean the final consolidation of totalitarianism in the
world. All its characteristics would be exasperated to the greatest
degree, and progressive forces would be condemned for many years to
the role of simple negative opposition.
The
traditional arrogance and intolerance of the German military classes
can give us an idea of what their dominance would have been like,
after a victorious war. In order to command, the victorious Germans
might even concede five years of generosity towards other European
peoples, formally respecting their territories and their political
institutions, satisfying at the same time the false sentiment of
patriotism of those who consider the colours of the boundary fence,
and the nationality of the prominent politicians as being more
important than the ratio of power and the effective content of the
State institutions. However camouflaged, the reality is always the
same: a new division of humanity into Spartans and Helots.
Even
a compromise solution between the two struggling sides would be one
more step ahead for totalitarianism; in fact all together countries
which were able to elude Germany's grasp would be forced to adopt the
same forms of political organisation, in order to be adequately
prepared for the war to come.
But
if Hitler's Germany did succeed in felling the minor States one by
one, this action has forced increasingly powerful forces to join
battle. The courageous fighting spirit of Great Britain, even in that
most critical moment when it was the only one to face the enemy
caused the Germans to collide against the valiant resistance of the
Russian Army, and gave America the time it needed to mobilise its
infinite productive resources. And this struggle against German
imperialism is closely linked to the Chinese people's against
Japanese imperialism.
Large
masses of men and wealth are already drawn up against totalitarian
powers whose strength has already reached its peak and can only
gradually consume itself. The opposing forces, on the contrary, have
already overcome their worst moment and are now on the way up.
Day
after day the war of the Allies awakens the desire for liberation
more forcefully, even in those countries which had submitted to
violence and had lost their way owing to the blow they received. And
it has even re-awakened this desire in the very Axis populations who
realise they have been dragged into a desperate situation, simply to
satisfy their rulers' lust for power.
The
slow process, due to which infinite masses of men passively let
themselves be shaped by the new regime, adjusted to it and even
contributed to its consolidation, has come to a halt. And the
opposite process has begun. Within this huge wave, slowly gathering
momentum there are included all the progressive forces, the most
enlightened groups of the working classes that have not let
themselves be swayed, either by the terror or by flattery, from their
ambition to achieve a better quality of living; the most conscious
elements of the intellectual classes, offended by the forced
degradation of human intelligence; businessmen and investors who,
being able to undertake new initiatives, want to free themselves of
the trappings of bureaucracy and national autarchy, that encumber all
their movements; and all the others who, thanks to an innate sense of
dignity, will not be bent by the humiliation of servitude.
Today,
the salvation of our civilisation is entrusted to these forces.
II
– POST-WAR DUTIES – EUROPEAN UNITY
Germany's
defeat would not automatically lead to the reformation of Europe
according to our ideal of civilisation.
In
the brief, intense period of general crises (during which the States
will lie broken, during which the popular masses are anxiously
awaiting for a new message and will, meanwhile, like molten matter,
burn, being easily poured into new moulds, capable of welcoming the
guidance of serious internationalists) the classes which were the
most privileged under the old national systems will attempt,
underhanded or violently, to moderate the feelings, the
internationalist passions and they will ostentatiously begin the
reconstruct the old, State institutions. And the English leaders,
perhaps in agreement with the Americans, may try to push things in
this direction, in order to restore the policy of the balance of
power, in the apparent and immediate interests of their empires.
The
conservative forces, that is: the directors of the basic institutions
of the national States; the top-ranking officers in the armed forces
up to, where possible, monarchies; the groups of monopolistic
capitalism that have bound their profits to the fortunes of the
States; the big landowners and the ecclesiastical hierarchy, who can
expect their parasitical income only in a stable, conservative
society; and following these, the interminable band of people who
depend on them or who are simply misled by their traditional power.
All these reactionary forces already feel the structure is creaking,
and are trying to save their skins. A collapse would deprive them all
of a sudden of all the guarantees they have enjoyed up to now, and
would expose them to the attack of the progressive forces.
The
revolutionary situation: old and new trends
The
fall of the totalitarian regimes will have the sentimental meaning,
for entire populations, as the coming of "freedom"; all
restrictions will disappear and, automatically, complete freedom of
speech and of assembly will reign supreme. It will be the triumph of
democratic tendencies. These tendencies have countless shades and
nuances, stretching from very conservative liberalism to socialism
and anarchy. They believe in the "spontaneous generation"
of events and institutions and in the absolute goodness of impulses
from the lower classes. They do not want to force the hand of
"history", or "the people", or "the
proletariat", or what ever other name they give their God. They
hope for the end of dictatorships, imagining this as the restoration
to the people of their inalienable rights to self-determination.
Their crowing dream is a constitutional assembly, elected by the
broadest suffrage and with the most scrupulous respect of the rights
of the electors, who must decide upon the constitution they want. If
the population is immature, the constitution will not be a good one;
but it can be corrected only through constant efforts of persuasion.
The
democratic factions do not deny violence on principle, but they wish
to use it only when the majority is convinced it is indispensable,
that is, when it is little more than an almost superfluous "dot"
over an "i". They are, then, useful leaders only in times
of ordinary administration, during which almost all population is
(generally) convinced of the validity of the basic institutions that
they are to be modified, only in relatively secondary aspects. During
revolutionary times, when the institutions must not simply be
administrated, but rather created, democratic procedures fail
clamorously. The pitiful impotence of democratic faction during the
Russian, German, Spanish revolutions are the three most recent
examples. In these situations, once the old state apparatus had
fallen, along with its laws and its administration, there is an
immediate flourishing of assemblies and popular delegations in which
all the progressive socialist forces converge and agitate, either
pretending to be respectful of former legality, or scorning it. The
population does have some fundamental needs to satisfy, but it does
not know exactly what it wants or how to act. A thousand bells ring
in its ears. With its millions of minds, it cannot orientate itself,
and it breaks up in a number of tendencies, currents and factions,
struggling with one other.
In
the very moment in which the greatest decisiveness and boldness is
needed, the democrats lose their way, not having the backing of
spontaneous popular approval, but rather a gloomy tumult of passions.
They think it is their duty to realise a consensus and they present
themselves as exhortatory preachers, where instead there is a need
for leaders able to know what they want they are going. They miss
chances that would be favourable to consolidating a new regime and
even try to make certain bodies that need a longer preparation and
they would in any case be more suitable of relative tranquillity to
work immediately. They give their adversaries arms which are use then
to overthrow them. They represent, in their thousand tendencies, not
only the will for renewal, but the confused whims and desires found
in every mind that, becoming paralysed, they actually prepare the
terrain for the growth of the reaction. Democratic political methods
are a dead weight during revolutionary crises.
As
the democrats wear down their initial popularity as assertors of
liberty by their endless polemics, and in the absence of any serious
political and social revolution, the pre-totalitarian political
institutions will inevitably be reconstituted, and the struggle would
again develop following along the lines of the old class opposition.
The
principle according to which the class struggle is the condition to
which all political problems are reconducted, has become the
fundamental line especially among factory workers, and has given
consistency to their politics as long as fundamental institutions
were not questioned. But it becomes an instrument to isolate the
proletariat, when the need to transform the entire social
organisation is imposed. The workers, educated in the class system,
cannot see beyond the claims of their particular class, or even
category, without worrying about how to connect these with the
interests of other social strata. Or they aspire to a unilateral
dictatorship of the proletariat in order to achieve the utopian
collectivisation of all the material means of production, indicated
by centuries of propaganda as the panacea for all evils. This policy
attracts no other strata, but the workers, who thus deprive the other
progressive forces of their support, or it leaves them at the mercy
of the cleverly organised reaction so as to break up the worker's
movement.
Among
the various proletarian tendencies, followers of the classist
politics and collectivist ideal, the communists early recognized the
difficulty of obtaining a sufficient following to assure victory.
They therefore organized themselves ,– differently from the other
popular parties – into a rigidly disciplined movement. It has
exploited the Russian myth in order to organise the workers, but it
does not accept their word as law and it does use the workers in the
most disparate manoeuvres.
This
attitude makes the Communists, during revolutionary crises, more
efficient than the democrats. But their maintaining the workers
separate as much as they can from the other revolutionary forces –
by preaching to them that their "real" revolution is yet to
come – turns them into a sectarian element which, in decisive
moments, weakens the sum of the progressive forces. Besides this,
their absolute dependence upon the Russian State, which has
repeatedly used them in pursuing its national policies, prevents this
Party from undertaking political activity with continuity. They
always need to hide behind a Karoly, a Blum, a Negrin, and then to go
along towards ruination with the democratic puppets that had been
used. Power is attained and is maintained, not simply through cunning
,but with the capacity of responding to the needs of modern society
in an organic and vital manner.
Should
the struggle remain limited within the traditional national
boundaries, it would be very difficult to avoid the old
uncertainties. The national States, in fact, have so deeply planned
their respective economies, that the main question would soon be
which economic group, that is, which class, should to handle the
controls of the plan. The progressive front would be quickly
shattered in the brawl between economic classes and categories. The
most probable result is that the reactionaries would benefit more
than anyone else.
A
real revolutionary movement must rise from among those who were able
to criticise the old, political statements; it must know how to
collaborate with democratic and with communist forces as well as with
all those who work for the break-up of totalitarianism, without
becoming ensnared by the political practices of any of these.
The
reactionary forces have capable men and officers who have been
trained to command and who will fight ruthlessly to preserve their
supremacy. When circumstances are very hard, deceitfully they will
show themselves as the lovers of liberty, of peace, of general
well-being, of the poorer classes.
Already
in the past we have seen how they made use of popular movements, and
they paralysed, deflected and transformed them into exactly the
opposite of what they were. No doubt they will be the most dangerous
forced to be faced.
The
point they will seek to exploit is the restoration of the national
State. Thus they will be able to grasp the most widespread of popular
feelings, most deeply offended by recent events, most easily handled
to reactionary purposes: the patriotic sentiment. In this way they
can also hope to confuse their adversaries' ideas more easily, since
for the popular masses, the only political experience acquired up to
this time has been within the national context, it is therefore
fairly easy to direct them and their more shortsighted leaders
towards the reconstruction of the States "felled" by the
tempest.
If
this purpose were to be reached, the reaction would have won. In
appearance, these States might well be broadly democratic and
socialist; it would only be a question of time before power returned
into the hands of the reactionaries. National jealousies would again
develop, and each State would again express its satisfaction only in
its armed strength. In a more or less brief space of time their most
important duty would be to convert populations into armies. Generals
would again command, the monopoly holders would again draw profits
from autarkies, the bureaucracy would continue to swell, the priests
would keep the masses docile. All the initial conquests would shrivel
into nothing, in comparison to the necessity of preparing for war
once more.
The
question which must be resolved first failing which progress is but
mere appearance, is definitive abolition of division of Europe into
national, sovereign States. The collapse of the majority of the
States on the continent under German steam-roller has already placed
the destinies of the European populations on common ground: either
all together they will submit to Hitler's dominion, or after his
fall, all together they will enter a revolutionary crisis, and they
will not find themselves adamantly distinct in solid, States
structures. The general spirit today is already far more disposed
than it was in the past towards a federal reorganisation of Europe.
The hard experience of the last decades has opened the eyes even of
those who refused to see, and has matured many circumstances
favourable to our ideal. [Italics added]
All
reasonable men recognise that is impossible to maintain a balance of
power among European States with militarist Germany enjoying equal
conditions, nor can Germany be broken up into pieces or once it is
conquered. We have seen a demonstration that no country within Europe
can stay on the sidelines while the others battle: Declaration of
neutrality and non-aggression pacts come to nought. The uselessness,
even harmfulness, of organisations like the League of Nations has
been demonstrated: they pretended to guarantee an international law
without a military force capable of imposing its decision, by
respecting the absolute sovereignty of the member States. The
principle of non-intervention turned out to be absurd. According to
it each population should be left free to choose the despotic
government it though best, as if the constitution of each of the
single States were not a question of vital interest for all the other
European nations. The multiple problems which poison international
life on the continent have proved to be insoluble: tracing boundaries
through areas inhabited by mixed populations, defence of alien
minorities, seaports for landlocked countries, the Balkan Question,
the Irish problem, and so on. All these matters would find easy
solutions in the European Federation, just as corresponding problems,
suffered by the small States which became part of a vaster national
unity, lost their harshness as they were transformed into problems
regarding relationship between various provinces.
On
the other hand, the end of the sense of security, inspired by an
unassailable Great Britain which advised "splendid isolation"
to the British; the French dissolution army and the disintegration of
the Republic at the first serious collision with the Germany forces (
a result which, and we hope so, might have lessened the chauvinistic
attitude of absolute Gallic superiority); and particularly the risk
of total enslavement are all circumstances that are favouring the
constitution of a federal regime, which will place an end to the
current anarchy. And the fact that England has accepted the principle
of Indian Independence; and that France has potentially lost its
entire empire in recognising its defeat, make it easier to find a
basis of agreement for a European arrangement of colonial
possessions.
To
all of this must be added the disappearance of some of the most
important dynasties, and the fragility of the bases which sustain the
ones that survive. It must be taken into account that these
dynasties, by considering the various countries as their own
traditional perquisites, together with the powerful interests backing
them, represented a serious obstacle to the rational organisation of
the United States of Europe, which can only be based on the
republican constitution of the federates countries. And, once the
horizon of the Old Continent is passed beyond, and all the people who
make up humanity join together for a common plane, it will have to be
recognised that the European Federation is the only conceivable
guarantee that relationships with American and Asiatic peoples can
exist on the basis of peaceful co-operation, while awaiting a more
distant future, when the political unity of the entire globe becomes
a possibility.
The
dividing line between progressive and reactionary parties no longer
follows the formal line of greater or lesser democracy, or of more or
less socialism to be instituted; rather the division falls along the
line, very new and substantial, that separates the party members into
two groups. The first is made up of those who conceive the essential
purpose and goal of struggle as the ancient one, that is, the
conquest of national political power – and who, although
involuntarily, play into the hands of reactionary forces, letting the
incandescent lava of popular passions set in the old moulds, and thus
allowing old absurdities to arise once again. The second are those
who see the creation of a solid international State as the main
purpose; they will direct popular forces toward this goal, and,
having won national power, will use it first and foremost as an
instrument for achieving international unity.
Through
propaganda and action, seeking to establish in every possible way
agreements and links among the single movements which are certainly
being formed in the various countries, the foundation must be built
now for a movement that knows how to mobilise all forces for the
birth of the new organism which will be the grandest creation, and
the newest, that has occurred in Europe for centuries; and the
constitution of a steady federal State, that will have an European
armed service instead of national armies at its disposal; that will
break decisively economic autarchies, the backbone of totalitarian
regimes; that will have sufficient means to see that its
deliberations for the maintenance of common order are executed in the
single federal States, while each State will retain the autonomy it
needs for a plastic articulation and development of a political life
according to the particular characteristics of the various people.
If
a sufficient number of men in the most important European countries
understands this, then the victory will shortly be at hand, as both
the situation and the spirit will be favourable to their project.
They will have before them parties and factions that have already
been disqualified by the disastrous experience of the last twenty
years. It will be the moment of new action and it will also be the
moment for new men: the MOMENT FOR A FREE AND UNITED EUROPE.
III
– POST-WAR DUTIES – THE REFORM OF SOCIETY
A
free and united Europe is the necessary premise to the strengthening
of modern civilisation, that has been temporarily halted the
totalitarian era. By the end of this era immediately the historical
process of the struggle against social inequalities and privileges
will revive in full. All the old conservative structures which have
hindered this process will either have collapsed or will be in a
state of collapse. This crisis must be exploited, with decision and
courage.
In
order to respond to our needs, the European revolution must be
socialist, that is its goal must be the emancipation of the working
classes and the realisation of more humane living conditions for
them. The orientation to be chosen for the steps to take can not,
however, depend solely on the purely doctrinaire principle which
states that private ownership of the material means of production
must, as a general rule, be abolished, and only temporarily tolerated
when there is no other choice to be made. The general state control
of the economy was the first, utopian, form in which the working
classes imagined their liberation from the yoke of capitalism. Once
it is achieved, however, it does not produce the hoped results: on
the contrary, a regime comes into existence in which the entire
population is subject to a restricted class of bureaucrats who run
the economy.
The
truly fundamental principle of socialism, in which the general
collectivisation was nothing more than a hurried and erroneous
deduction, is the principle which states that the economic forces
must not dominate man, but rather – like the forces of Nature –
they must be subject to man, guided and controlled by him in the most
rational way, so that the broadest strata of the population will not
become their victims.
The
gigantic forces of progress that spring from individual interests,
must not be slaked by the grey dullness of routine. Otherwise, the
same insoluble problem will arise: how to stimulate the spirit of
initiative using salary levels and other provision of the same kind.
The forces of progress must be extolled and extended, and find
increasing ranges for development and utilisation; at the same time,
the barriers guiding these forces towards objectives of the greatest
advantage for all society, must be strengthened and perfected.
Private
property must be abolished, limited, corrected, extended: according
to the different situations and not according to principle. This
guideline is easily inserted into the process of forming a European
economic life freed from nightmares of militarism or national
bureaucratism. The rational solution must replace the irrational one
even in the consciousness of the working class. In order to describe
the content of this guideline, in greater detail, while pointing out
that the convenience of each point in the program, and the way it is
to be effected, must always be judged in relation to the
indispensable premise: European unity, we would like to emphasise the
following aspects:
a)
Those enterprises which conduct a necessarily monopolistic activity,
and that can therefore exploit the mass of consumers, must no longer
be left in the hands of private ownership; electricity industries,
for example, or those ones which must survive for the common good but
that need customs protection, subsidies, preferential orders, etc.
(the most visible example of this kind up to now in Italy is the
steel industry); those enterprises which owing to the size of the
capital investment and the number of workers employed, or the
importance of the sector involved, can blackmail various State
organs, imposing upon them their policies that would be advantageous
to themselves (for example, mining industries, banking institutes,
arms manufacturers). In this field, nationalisation must undoubtedly
take place on a vast scale, bearing in no regard acquired rights.
b)
The characteristics private property and the right of succession had
in the past permitted the accumulation in the rich hands of a few,
privileged members of society. In a revolutionary crisis it would be
properly distributed in an egalitarian manner, in order to eliminate
the parasitic classes and to give the workers the means of production
that they need, so as to improve their economic conditions and let
them reach greater independence. We can this way think of an agrarian
reform by distributing the lands directly to farmers, the number of
land-owners is going to increase enormously and an industrial reform
which would extend workers' ownership in non-nationalised sectors,
through co-operative management, employee profit-sharing. etc.
c)
Young people are to be assisted with all the necessary provisions in
order to reduce the gap between the starting positions in the long
struggle ahead of them. In particular, State schools ought to offer
the effective possibility of continuing their studies up to the
highest level to the best students not only to the wealthy ones; and
in each branch of study, trade schools, semi-professional schools as
well as in the liberal arts and sciences, it should prepare a number
of students corresponding to the market demand, so that the average
salaries are about the same for all the professional categories, even
though within each category there may be differences, depending upon
individual capacities.
d)
The almost unlimited potentiality of mass production of essential
goods thanks to modern technology, will allow everyone to be
guaranteed, at relatively low social cost, food, lodging, clothing
and that minimum of comfort needed to preserve a sense of human
dignity. Human solidarity towards those who succumb in the economic
battle ought not, therefore, be shown with the same humiliating forms
of charity that produce the very same evils they vainly attempt to
remedy: rather it ought to take a series of measures which
unconditionally guarantee a decent standard of living for everyone,
without lessening the stimulus to work and to save. In this
situation, no one would any longer be forced by misery to accept
unfair work contracts.
e)
Working-class liberty can only be conquered after the conditions
described have been fulfilled. These classes must not be left to the
mercy of the economic policies of monopolistic trade unions that
simply translate the same overpowering methods of big capital into
the working world. The workers must once again be free to choose
their own emissaries where, in collective bargaining sessions, are
defining the conditions under which they will agree to work, and the
State must give theme the legal means to guarantee the observation of
the terms agreed to. All monopolistic tendencies can be efficaciously
faced once these social transformations have been achieved.
These
are the changes needed to create a broad group of citizens interested
in the new order and willing to struggle for its preservation, and to
give the political life the solid stamp of liberty based on a strong
sense of social solidarity. Based on these principles political
liberties can truly have not only a formal meaning, but a real
meaning for everybody, since that mass of citizens will be
independent, and will be sufficiently informed as to be able to exert
continuous and efficacious control over the governing class.
It
would be superfluous to dwell at length on the constitutional
institutions; in fact not being able to foresee the conditions in
which they will be drawn up and will have to regulate, we could do
more than repeat what has already been said – the need for
representative bodies, the formation of the law, the independence of
the magistracy that will be substitute the present one in order to
apply impartially the laws handed down by higher authorities and the
freedom of the press and of assembly so that public opinion can be
enlightened and all citizens can effectively participate in the life
of the State. Only two questions demand further and deeper definition
because of their particular importance for our country in this
moment: the relationship between Church and State; the quality of
political representation.
a)
The Treaty, which concluded the Vatican's alliance with the Fascism
in Italy must absolutely be abolished in order to assert the purely
lay character of the State and determine the unequivocal supremacy of
the State in civil matters. All religious faiths are to be equally
respected, but the State must no longer strike the balance of
religions.
b)
The house of cards that Fascism built with its corporativism will
collapse together with the other aspects of the totalitarian State.
There are those who hold that material for the new constitutional
order can be salvaged from this wreck. We do not agree this. In
totalitarian States, the corporative chambers are the crowning hoax
of police control over the workers. Even if the corporative chambers
were a sincere expression of the will of the various categories of
producers, the representative bodies of the various professional
categories could never be qualified to handle questions of general
policy. In more specifically economic matters, they would become
organs for the accumulation of power and privilege among the
categories having stronger union representation. The unions will have
broad collaboration functions with State organs which are appointed
to resolve those problems directly related to these categories, but
it is absolutely excluded that they will be given any legislative
power, since this would create a kind of feudal anarchy in the
economic life of the country, leading to a renewed political
despotism. Many of those who ingenuously were attracted by the myth
of corporativism, can and must be attracted by the task of renewing
structures. But they must realise the absurdity of the solution they
might vaguely desire. Corporativism can only be concretely expressed
in the form given by totalitarian States: that is to regiment the
workers beneath leaders who might controlled every movement in the
interests of the ruling class.
The
revolutionary party cannot be amateurishly organised at the fixed
moment. It must form at least its central political philosophy since
now, its leaders and directors, the primary actions it will undergo.
It must not represent a heterogeneous mass of tendencies, united
merely negatively and temporarily, that is, united by their
anti-Fascist past and the active expectation of the fall if the
totalitarian regime, regime all ready to go their separate ways once
this goal has been reached. The revolutionary party knows that only
at this point its real work will begin. It must therefore be made up
of men who are in agreement on the basic future problems.
Its
methodical propaganda must penetrate everywhere there are people
oppressed by the present regime; it must use as its starting point
the problem which is the source of greatest suffering to individuals
and classes and show how it is related to connected with other
problems, and what the real solution might be. But from this
gradually increasing circle of sympathisers, only those who have
identified and accepted the European revolution as the principle
purpose in their lives are to be recruited into the movement. Day by
day, with discipline, the work must go on; its continuous and
efficacious safety must be provided secretly, even in those most
dangerously illegal situations. Thus the more solid network of
workers will be set up to give consistency to the more fragile sphere
of sympathisers.
While
overlooking no occasion any sector in which to spread its cause, it
must turn first and foremost to those environments which are the most
important ones as centres for the circulation of ideas and the
recruiting of unbending determined men; primarily towards the two
social groups which are the most sensitive to the current situation
and decisive for tomorrow's circumstances, that is, the working class
the intellectuals. The former is the one that least submitted to the
totalitarian rod and that will most readily reorganise its ranks. The
intellectuals, particularly the younger among them, are those who
feel most spiritually suffocated and repulsed with the current
despotism. Other classes will gradually be drawn into the movement.
Any
movement which fails its duty to ally these forces, is condemned to
sterility. In fact a movement made up only of intellectuals will not
have the strength it needs to overwhelm reactionary resistance, it
will distrust and be distrusted by the working class; and even though
it is animated by democratic sentiments, it will be prone to losing
its hold while facing the difficulties, in the mobilisation of all
other classes against the workers, and the result will be the
threatened restoration of Fascism. If, instead, the movement is
backed only by the proletariat, it will be deprived of the clarity of
thought which only the intellectual can give, and which is needed in
order to define new paths and new duties; it will remain a prisoner
of the former classism, it will consider everyone as a potential
enemy, and will slither towards the doctrinaire Communist solution.
During
the revolutionary crisis, it is up to this movement to organise and
guide progressive forces using all the popular organs which grow
spontaneously, ardent crucibles in which the revolutionary masses are
melted, not for the drawing up of plebiscites, but rather waiting to
be guided. It derives the vision and security of what must be done
not from a previous consecration of what is not yet be the popular
will, but from the consciousness of representing the deepest
necessities of modern society. In this way it issues the initial
regulations of the new order, the first social discipline directed to
the unformed masses. This dictatorship by the revolutionary party
will form the new State, and new genuine democracy will grow around
this State.
There
are no grounds for fearing that a similar revolutionary regime will
develop into renewed despotism. This may develop if a servile society
has been forming. But if the revolutionary party continues with
determination from its very first action to create the conditions
necessary for individual freedom, conditions under which all citizens
can really participate in the life of the State, it will evolve
towards increasing comprehension of the new order, even though moving
through possible secondary political crises, and acceptance of it by
all the population. It will be growing, therefore, towards an
increasing possibility of functioning, and of free political
institutions.
The
moment has arrived to know how to discard old onerous burdens, how to
be ready for the new changements that is coming and that will be so
different from what we expected; to put aside the inept among the
old, and create new energies among the young. Today those who have
perceived the reasons for the present crisis in European civilisation
are seeking each other, and are trying to plan future. In fact they
are gathering the inheritance left by all those movements which
worked to raise and enlighten humanity, and which failed because of
their incapability to understand the purpose to be achieved or the
ways how to achieve it.
The
road to follow is neither easy nor safe. But it must be pursued and
it will be.
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| Altiero Spinelli |
