Italian Intellectuals And International Politics, 1945–1992 3030249379, 9783030249373

Table of contents :
Contents......Page 6
Notes on Contributors......Page 9
1.1 Research Subject and Methodologies......Page 13
1.2 The Importance of the Italian Case......Page 15
1.3 Intellectuals and the Political Cultures of Republican Italy in the Context of the Cold War......Page 18
1.4 The Role of Italian Intellectuals in International Politics: Possible Interpretations......Page 29
Bibliography......Page 35
Part I: Liberal Democrat Political Culture......Page 40
2.1 Introduction......Page 41
2.2 Guests in the Country of “False Facades”......Page 44
2.3 The Chinese Screen: Political Strategies at Home Beyond the Cold War......Page 50
2.4 Old Cultural Stereotypes......Page 53
Bibliography......Page 58
3.1 Legacies of Giustizia e Libertà in the Cold War......Page 61
3.2 After Stalin......Page 66
3.3 The “Secret Speech” and Western Intellectuals......Page 68
3.4 The Insurrection of Budapest and Its Consequences......Page 72
3.5 Post-1989 Echoes......Page 75
Bibliography......Page 76
4.1 A Modern and Pragmatic Laboratory......Page 79
4.2 A Militant Democratic Journal......Page 83
4.3 Toward the Crisis......Page 87
4.4 Conclusion......Page 95
Bibliography......Page 97
5.1 Looking for the Right Man to Face a Changing World......Page 101
5.2 Carli and European Monetary Union......Page 105
5.3 A Prophecy Which Comes True......Page 111
Bibliography......Page 115
Part II: Catholic Political Culture......Page 118
Chapter 6: Italian Catholic Intellectuals and Indigenous Latin Americans: Transnational Networks and Violence at the End of the Cold War......Page 119
6.1 The Crossroads of 1992......Page 120
6.2 Toward 1992......Page 123
6.3 Revolution on the Horizon?......Page 128
Bibliography......Page 135
7.1 A Critical Approach to Détente......Page 139
7.2 Détente as an Expression of Reverse Colonialism (1967–1969)......Page 144
7.3 Détente as the Death of the Sacred in Europe: On the Responsibility of the United States (1970–1973)......Page 146
7.4 Détente as “Moral Finlandization”: On the Responsibility of the Soviet Union (1974–1978)......Page 152
7.5 A Cold War Intellectual......Page 155
Bibliography......Page 158
8.1 Italy and Europe: The Turning Point of the 1960s......Page 160
8.2 Reformer, Professor, Christian Realist: The Cultural and Intellectual Matrixes of Andreatta’s International Politics......Page 163
8.3 Andreatta’s Europe: External Constraint to Reform Italian Politics, Architecture with Flexible Geometry, Global Actor of Collective Security......Page 169
Bibliography......Page 178
Part III: Socialists and Communists......Page 182
9.1 Introduction......Page 183
9.2 The Italian Left After the Second World War......Page 184
9.3 The Problem of Anti-Semitism in the Italian Left’s Political Culture......Page 187
9.4 International Politics: From the Birth of Israel to the Suez War......Page 191
9.5 Conclusions......Page 200
Bibliography......Page 201
10.1 Introduction......Page 205
10.2 Communist Cultural Policy and Rossana Rossanda at the Beginning of the 1960s......Page 207
10.3 The Journey and Its Impact on the PCI’s Look on Spain......Page 209
10.4 Spain in Rossana Rossanda’s Memory......Page 212
10.5 A Diagnosis and Some Final Considerations......Page 217
Bibliography......Page 219
Chapter 11: The Debate on Post-colonial Africa in the Pages of Mondoperaio: The Reflection of Socialists on Decolonization (1955–1987)......Page 223
Bibliography......Page 236
12.1 Trade Union CGIL and Its International Relations......Page 240
12.2 Solidarity’s Victory......Page 245
12.3 The Coup d’état......Page 251
Bibliography......Page 256
Chapter 13: PCI Intellectuals and the Image of “Reagan’s America”......Page 260
13.1 Leonardo Paggi: America, from Laboratory to Exception......Page 262
13.2 PCI’s Economists and the Reagan Presidency......Page 267
13.3 Reaganism as Fortuity or Causality?......Page 272
13.4 The American Mirror: Italian Communists Beyond Marxism......Page 274
Bibliography......Page 277
Index......Page 279

Citation preview

ITALIAN AND ITALIAN AMERICAN STUDIES

Italian Intellectuals and International Politics, 1945–1992 Edited by Alessandra Tarquini Andrea Guiso

Italian and Italian American Studies Series Editor Stanislao G. Pugliese Hofstra University Hempstead, NY, USA

This series brings the latest scholarship in Italian and Italian American ­history, literature, cinema, and cultural studies to a large audience of ­specialists, general readers, and students. Featuring works on modern Italy (Renaissance to the present) and Italian American culture and society by established scholars as well as new voices, it has been a longstanding force in shaping the evolving fields of Italian and Italian American Studies by re-emphasizing their connection to one another. Editorial Board: Rebecca West, University of Chicago Josephine Gattuso Hendin, New York University Fred Gardaphé, Queens College, CUNY Phillip V. Cannistraro†, Queens College and the Graduate School, CUNY Alessandro Portelli, Università di Roma “La Sapienza” William J. Connell, Seton Hall University More information about this series at http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14835

Alessandra Tarquini  •  Andrea Guiso Editors

Italian Intellectuals and International Politics, 1945–1992

Editors Alessandra Tarquini Sapienza University of Rome Rome, Italy

Andrea Guiso Sapienza University of Rome Rome, Italy

Italian and Italian American Studies ISBN 978-3-030-24937-3    ISBN 978-3-030-24938-0 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-24938-0 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the ­publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and ­institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: Vialeta Novik / iStock / Getty Images Plus This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Contents

1 Introduction: Italian Intellectuals and International Politics  1 Andrea Guiso and Alessandra Tarquini Part I Liberal Democrat Political Culture  29 2 The “Blood of Others”: Mao’s China in the Discourse of Democratic Intellectuals During the 1950s 31 Luca Polese Remaggi 3 Telling the Truth: From Socialist Toward Democratic Antifascism and Anti-­totalitarianism in the 1950s 51 Marco Bresciani 4  Il Mulino and the East-West Ideological Confrontation: From Destalinization to 1968  69 Donatello Aramini and Laura Ciglioni 5 Guido Carli: A Liberal Technician and the Making of Europe 91 Daniele Caviglia

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Part II Catholic Political Culture 109 6 Italian Catholic Intellectuals and Indigenous Latin Americans: Transnational Networks and Violence at the End of the Cold War111 Massimo De Giuseppe 7 Catholic Culture Put to the Test of Détente: The Case of Augusto Del Noce131 Giovanni Mario Ceci 8 The International Politics of a Christian Realist: Beniamino Andreatta and Europe153 Andrea Guiso Part III Socialists and Communists 175 9 Anti-Semitism and the Arab-Israeli Question: The Italian Left in the First Ten Years of the Republic177 Alessandra Tarquini 10 An Italian Communist in the Spain of the 1960s: The Worthless Journey of Rossana Rossanda199 Paola Lo Cascio 11 The Debate on Post-colonial Africa in the Pages of Mondoperaio: The Reflection of Socialists on Decolonization (1955–1987)217 Gianluca Scroccu 12 Solidarity and Italian Labor Movement Culture: CGIL Intellectuals and Revision of the CGIL’s International Relations (1980–1982)235 Enrico Serventi Longhi

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13 PCI Intellectuals and the Image of “Reagan’s America”255 Gregorio Sorgonà Index275

Notes on Contributors

Donatello Aramini, PhD,  is Contract Professor of History of Contempo­ rary Italy at Università degli Studi Roma Tre. His studies focus on history of historiography, nationalism and the relationship between politics and culture in Italian history. He is the author of George L. Mosse, l’Italia e gli storici (Milan, 2010). Marco Bresciani  is Associate Professor of Contemporary History in the Dipartimento di Scienze Sociali e Politiche, Università di Firenze, Florence, Italy. He was a fellow at the Scuola Normale Superiore, Remarque Institute (New York University), Centre de recherche politiques Raymond Aron E’cole des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS) and University of Zagreb. He published extensively on fascism and socialism, antifascism and antitotalitarianism. He is the author of Quale antifascismo? Storia di Giustizia e Libertà (Rome, Carocci, 2017). Daniele  Caviglia is Associate Professor of History of International Relations at the Università degli Studi di Enna “Kore.” He has recently written the volume La diplomazia della lira. L’Italia e la crisi del sistema di Bretton Woods (1958–1973) (2013) and edited Détente in Cold War Europe. Politics and Diplomacy in the Mediterranean and the Middle East (with Elena Calandri and Antonio Varsori, 2013). Giovanni Mario Ceci, PhD,  teaches History of Contemporary Europe at Università degli Studi Roma Tre and “Terrorism: An Introduction” at IES (Rome). His studies mainly focus on fascism, terrorism and Italian politics and culture during the Cold War. He is the author of several articles and ix

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books, including Renzo De Felice storico della politica (Rubbettino, 2008), Moro e il PCI.  La strategia dell’attenzione e il dibattito politico italiano, 1967–1969 (Carocci, 2013) and Il terrorismo italiano. Storia di un dibattito (Carocci, 2013—the book has been awarded the Contemporary History National Prize Luigi De Rosa, 2014). Laura  Ciglioni, PhD,  teaches “Cold War Europe: A History” at IES, Rome. Her research interests and publications focus on nuclear issues and Western public opinion during the Cold War, cultural representations of Italy in American culture and Italian politics after the Second World War. She is working on a book dealing with representations of the atom and public attitudes toward nuclear issues in Italy, France and the United States during the 1960s. Massimo De Giuseppe  is Associate Professor of Contemporary History at the Department of Humanities, Università IULM, Milan, Italy. Among his books are Giorgio La Pira. Un sindaco e le vie della pace (Milan, 2001), Messico 1900–1930. Stato, Chiesa, popoli indigeni (Brescia, 2007), winner of the 2008 Pirovano prize of the Rome Luigi Sturzo Institute, La rivoluzione messicana (Bologna, 2013); with Isabel Campos, he edited La cruz de maiz. Política, religión y identidad en México entre crisis de la colonia y crisis de la modernidad (México, 2011). His last book is L’altra America. I cattolici italiani e l’America latina. Da Medellin a Francesco (Brescia, 2017). Andrea  Guiso is Associate Professor of Contemporary History at Università di Roma “La Sapienza”, Rome, Italy, where he teaches “Political, Social and Cultural History of Contemporary Age.” His publications include La Guerra di Atena. Il “luogo” della Grande Guerra nell’evoluzione delle forme liberali di governo: Regno Unito, Francia, Italia (Mondadori Education-Le Monnier, 2017), Declino e trasformazione dello Stato banchiere: mutamenti della costituzione materiale nella crisi della prima repubblica (“Ventunesimo secolo”, 2016); La colomba e la spada. “Lotta per la pace” e antiamericanismo nella politica del PCI, 1949–1954 (Rubbettino, 2006). Paola Lo Cascio  holds a PhD in Contemporary History and is an adjunct professor at the University of Barcelona. Her main research interests include Spanish political history of the twentieth century. Her main publications are Nacionalisme i Autogovern (Afers, Catarroja, 2008), Economía franquista y corrupción (with A. Mayayo and J.M. Rúa, Flor del Viento, Barcelona, 2010) and La guerra civile spagnola. Una storia del Novecento (Carocci, Rome, 2013).

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Luca Polese Remaggi  is an associate professor at the Università di Salerno, Fisciano, Italy. He is author of three books concerning the Italian democratic Left: “Il Ponte” di Calamandrei (1945–1956), Firenze, Olschki, 2001, La nazione perduta. Ferruccio Parri nel Novecento italiano, Bologna, Il Mulino, 2004, and La democrazia divisa. La sinistra democratica dal dopoguerra alle origini del centro-sinistra, Milano, Unicopli, 2011. In more recent years, he wrote articles concerning the history of Italian Liberalism and forced labor as an international issue during the early Cold War years. Gianluca Scroccu  is Senior Assistant Professor (fixed-­term) of Contem­ porary History at the Department of History, Cultural and Territorial Heritage—the University of Cagliari. His main research interests include Italian political history of the twentieth century and the relationship between civil religion and political religion in the American presidents from Wilson to Obama. His main publications include La sinistra credibile. Antonio Giolitti tra socialismo, riformismo ed europeismo (1964–2010) (Carocci, Rome, 2016) and Il partito al bivio. Il Psi dall’opposizione al governo (1953–1963) (Carocci, Rome, 2011). Enrico Serventi Longhi  is Research Fellow in Contemporary History at the Department of Social and Economic Sciences—Università di Roma “La Sapienza”, Rome, Italy. He is author of a biography on an Italian revolutionary syndicalist (Alceste De Ambris) and of several articles in historical journals on the relationship between political movements, trade unions and the articulation of institutional power from liberal Italy to the fascist regime. He has edited two volumes on cultural and institutional aspects of the First World War. In the last two years, he has broadened his interests, following the evolution of trade union culture after the Second World War, with particular attention to its transnational dimension. Gregorio Sorgonà  holds a PhD in Contemporary History and is Secretary of Fondazione Gramsci, Rome, Italy. His main research interests include Italian political history of the twentieth century. His main publications include La scoperta della destra. Il Movimento sociale italiano e gli Stati Uniti d’America (Viella, Rome, 2019) and Il presente come storia, XIX Annale della Fondazione Gramsci (Carocci, Rome, 2016).

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Alessandra Tarquini  is Professor of Contemporary History at Sapienza University of Rome. She has published many essays concerning Italian intellectuals. She is the author of Il Gentile dei fascisti. Gentiliani e ­antigentiliani nel regime fascista (Bologna, Il Mulino, 2009) and Storia della cultura fascista (Bologna, Il Mulino, 2011 and 2016), and she is working at a new research on the Italian Left and the Jewish question.

CHAPTER 1

Introduction: Italian Intellectuals and International Politics Andrea Guiso and Alessandra Tarquini

1.1   Research Subject and Methodologies This book brings together contributions from historians coming from different cultural and methodological backgrounds, gathered around a common idea: understanding how Italian intellectuals interpreted, discussed and influenced international politics between the end of the Second World War and the signing of the Maastricht Treaty, the most politically demanding act of a united Europe after the collapse of the Soviet system. The period between the end of the Second World War and the signing of the Maastricht Treaty is a historical period full of change, marked by the inclusion of Italy in the open and multilateral context of the alliance between Europe and the United States, the alliance destined to become a structural component of Italian democracy and its political and institutional dynamics for almost 50 years.1 This volume answers the following questions: in the years dealt with, years during which the world was going through a major transformation, what was the contribution of Italian intellectuals to 1

 G. Formigoni, Storia d’Italia nella guerra fredda.

A. Guiso (*) • A. Tarquini (*) Sapienza University of Rome, Rome, Italy © The Author(s) 2019 A. Tarquini, A. Guiso (eds.), Italian Intellectuals and International Politics, 1945–1992, Italian and Italian American Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-24938-0_1

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the main issues of international politics? Did the bipolar logic imposed by the Cold War, and the idea of belonging or being close to a party, have a significant influence on the intellectuals’ way of thinking or was, for the examined period of time, their vision autonomous from politics? The presence of loyalty ties with political parties has deeply affected the life of the country, generating a permanent conflict of ideas, feelings and passions about the role of Italy in the global scenario, but also and above all about the major issues of international politics, after the severe trauma of a military defeat, the bloody epilogue of the civil war and the start of a constituent phase on which the shadow of the Cold War would soon be cast.2 Intellectuals were important protagonists in that conflict in the history of the so-called First Republic and had roles that reflected their different positions in the national alignments and their different levels of involvement in the forms of civil commitment and political militancy of the time. The most innovative element of this volume is the attempt to highlight, through some case studies, a theme—that of the relationship between intellectuals and foreign policy—long ignored by international studies as an autonomous subject for reflection.3 This situation has likewise not been helped by the renewed interest of specialists—especially Cold War scholars—for the cultural aspects of diplomacy or international policy making.4 Even in this limited field of study, the role of intellectuals has mostly been treated as a side effect of the broader context of the Total Cold War and of the birth of transnational intellectual networks operating in a more or less direct link with national government institutions.5 Although a considerable amount of work has been produced on the leading figures of the world of culture and international political debate,6 on the whole this  R. Bodei, L’ethos dell’Italia repubblicana.  The theme of international politics is not considered in any way in the nevertheless brilliant essay on the intellectuals in republican Italy written by Pierluigi Battista, in Giovanni Sabbatucci, Vittorio Vidotto, ed., Storia d’Italia, vol. 6, L’Italia contemporanea, 439–539. This consideration also regards the dense essay by Luisa Mangoni, “Civiltà della crisi”. We can find several short and abrupt mentions of the relationship between the culture and international context in Bruno Bongiovanni, “Gli intellettuali e i miti del dopoguerra”. 4  Hixson, Parting the Curtain. Mitter and Major, ed., Across the Blocs. Sounders, Who Paid the Piper? Caute, The Dancer Defects. Gienow-Hetch, Culture and the Cold War in Europe. 5  Osgood, The Total Cold War. Reports among the first attempts to reconstruct the role of intellectuals in relation to international politics in  Italy and Europe cf. Bonanni, ed., La politica estera della Repubblica italiana, vol. 1; Bonfreschi and Maccaferri, Intellettuali europei e politica estera. 6  See Judt, Past Imperfect. See also Bonfreschi, Raymond Aron e il gollismo. 2 3

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effort has been directed more toward the individuals or certain political cultures than toward intellectuals as a social group. The visions of the world that they produced, the roles they had, their ability to influence public opinion and their ability to shape collective speech, in agreement or in disagreement with politics and with those in power,7 have been underestimated. The authors of the chapters collected here, aware of the fact that problems of this magnitude cannot be solved in the context of a single piece of research, however wide-ranging and extensive, are still convinced that the investigation that the reader will have the patience to follow through the chapters of this book is beneficial. This conviction is based on a methodological and historiographical consideration, which concerns the importance of the Italian case for a more general reflection on the political role of intellectuals.

1.2   The Importance of the Italian Case Italy is a clear example of the crucial function that intellectuals, and in particular intellectuals working in the field of humanities, have held in public discourse since the beginning of the twentieth century. Since then, the purpose of the ruling class to build a modern nation, the so-called “nationalization of the masses” (one of George Mosse’s concepts that has now entered the vocabulary of social scientists), had been based on the celebration of myths, rituals and symbols capable of manifesting the reasons for a new relationship and had become an expression of a nationalism that combined the idea of ​country with the principle of freedom. This idea takes its origins during the Enlightenment and the French Revolution and represents pride in belonging to a great nation, the certainty that legitimacy of the self-determination of peoples is based on popular sovereignty. And indeed, in Italy as well, among intellectuals engaged in the reflection on national identity, an idea of ​nation had prevailed, as a consequence of the intellectual and moral emancipation of citizens fighting for freedom.8 7  For a clearer idea of these problems, see Charle, Gli intellettuali nell’Ottocento. On Italian case see Attal, Histoire des intellectuels italiens au 20eme siecle. 8  Mosse, La nazionalizzazione delle masse. On Italian nationalism for that concerned here cf. some very different interpretations: Gaeta, Il nazionalismo italiano. Lill, Valsecchi, ed., Il nazionalismo italiano in Italia e in Germania. Perfetti, Studi sul nazionalismo italiano. Tobia, Una patria per gli italiani. Gentile, La Grande Italia, 24.

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In the early years of the twentieth century, this project was criticized by new political subjects, artistic avant-gardes and numerous intellectuals who joined the traditional opponents of the liberal elite because they considered it an illegitimate and corrupt power system.9 Politicians and intellectuals believed that the Italian ruling class was not capable of managing the new issues posed by industrialization and mass society and were convinced that it was necessary to give life to a radical transformation of the country in order to develop its national consciousness and a new role in the world. For this reason, they presented themselves to public opinion as the true representatives of the nation, the only guardians of the national myth, and from then on participated with enthusiasm in a discussion concerning foreign policy, the present and the future of the country. A sense of angry indignation spread among them along with harsh criticism of a policy judged incapable of keeping faith with the hopes and ideals of Risorgimento patriotism, increasingly withdrawn into a patronizing management of power, devoid of the impulses and ambitions of a strong and respected country. From this point of view, the 1911 Italo-Turkish War spread “a flare of enthusiasm and nationalist rhetoric that was added to the rhetoric of the fiftieth anniversary [of the Italian Republic], but what proved to be even more effective was popularization of the myth of a Great Italy through journalism, literature, academic culture, and theatrical performances”.10 In those months, artists, scholars, men and women of culture, from literature to philosophy, from cinema to historiography, were willing to show their presence by introducing themes that would define the debate of the decade from 1912 to 1922; and for the first time they presented themselves to Italian society “in the dual function of suppliers of ideas and propagandists of the same” taking on a new role.11 They were not alone: far from the tones and literary representations of the country, even jurists, social scientists and politicians, economists—intellectuals in the broadest sense of the term—were cultivating the idea of a profound osmosis between culture and politics.

 Gentile, La Grande Italia, 64–70.  Ivi, 73 11  Mangoni, Lo Stato unitario liberale, 511. D’Orsi, I chierici alla guerra. Nardi, Gentili, La grande illusione. Schiavulli La guerra lirica. Calì, Corni, Ferrandi, eds., Gli intellettuali e la Grande guerra. Isnenghi, Il mito della Grande Guerra. 9

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It is clear, however, that the substantial change in the relations between the two spheres occurred during fascism. By subordinating culture to politics, the Mussolini regime also helped define a specific function of intellectuals in the era of the primacy of politics. From 1922 to 1945, men of culture and science took on an organic role in politics, both as officials and professionals of propaganda and indoctrination in organizational structures and in the media system of the totalitarian state, and as theorists and planners of the new political regime and its lines of institutional, administrative, economic and social development. The fascists celebrated the primacy of politics over all the other manifestations of modern life and considered culture an instrument for creating the new civilization which was born with the seizure of power in October 1922. We can observe that in the first lines of the volume La cultura fascista (The fascist culture), published in 1936 by the National Fascist Party for courses of political preparation for young people. What we read in that volume is that “a culture is a conception of life”, “a manifestation of social, spiritual and historical action” and not an “individual way of being”, “an embellishment of the intellect or a private contemplation”. Culture, in essence, is an activity that “forms a people”.12 The majority of intellectuals, artists and technicians worked in accordance with these assumptions and contributed to the construction of the totalitarian regime that guaranteed them an unprecedented space and role.13 Republican Italy inherited this tradition by revamping some aspects and adapting them to a deeply transformed context. In fact, the leading mass parties—the Christian democrats, the Communist Party and the Socialist Party, but also the smaller formations—even though their political and cultural identities were quite different, all demonstrated significant attention to intellectuals from the early years of reconstruction. And in turn intellectuals contributed to the symbolic construction of the new world that emerged after the war. Clearly, in a republican and democratic country, men of culture do not have the same kind of relationship with politics and with institutions as in a totalitarian regime, in which political dissent is persecuted and the actual confrontation between the opposing politics and visions are not possible. By forbidding pluralism and building a single-­ party dictatorship, Mussolini’s regime allowed the confrontation between intellectuals only within the institutions and mostly on such topics as  Pnf, La cultura fascista, 4.  Tarquini, Storia della cultura fascista.

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­ olitics, myths and the ideology of fascism. Nevertheless, during the years p of the Cold War, an era of definitive and absolute  choices, intellectuals lived literally immersed in politics, in an all-encompassing relationship with the parties, and with the deployment to which they claimed to belong, showing they still believed in the centrality of the relationship between politics and culture. Many of them signed up to the parties, some of them actually became party officials, others held important roles in national and international institutions and organizations, and others still discussed as ‘independents’ with both the government and the opposition forces, called on to express the political culture or cultures that would become the basis of the new idea of a nation and its projection into the world.

1.3   Intellectuals and the Political Cultures of Republican Italy in the Context of the Cold War In the aftermath of fascism, the democratic parties, which did not declare themselves nationalist and on the contrary considered nationalism the main matrix of the totalitarian regimes of the 1920s and 1930s, ended up appropriating the evocative power of the nation since they were aware of its utility as a powerful identity resource.14 The participation of the parties in the Resistance had been an opportunity to restore, with many elements of ambiguity and instrumentality, images and symbols of the battle for national unification, for which the left parties presented themselves as the true heirs of the Risorgimento tradition and capable of freeing the country from the fascist enemy and its National Socialist ally. Democrazia Cristiana (DC—Christian Democracy) presented itself to militants, voters and the entire public opinion as a national party, able to address all Italians in the name of an inter-class catholic culture that embraced wide and diverse sectors of society. In fact, Italian intellectuals who saw the world through the lens of the Cold War did not fully share that common feeling that builds the cultural and civil fabric of a nation. From this point of view, the nationalization of the masses operated by liberal Italy and constrained by the structures of the totalitarian state came across more than one obstacle in republican history since what divided the most authoritative exponents of Italian culture was certainly stronger and more significant than what united them. The  Gentile, La Grande Italia.

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primacy of politics, inherited from fascism, prevailed over the strength of national institutions, which remained hostage to party divisions.15 As we will see on the following pages, the protagonists of this book were representatives of the three great post-war political cultures—catholic, marxist and liberal-democratic. Bearers of incompatible and antagonistic visions of the world, the representatives of the three cultures had very different approaches to the most important topics regarding international politics. Certainly, during the period considered in the volume, the meaning of being left or being liberal has changed significantly. And after all there is no univocal correspondence between an ideology and the subjects that express it: ideology is a complex of visions, myths and values, capable of directing political action and expressing a conception of the world, and not a coherent and systematic philosophy that provides for a certain behavior.16 Every political movement always presents a degree of discordance or inconsistency between the goals set and the concrete way of operating in a given reality.17 Nevertheless, it is possible to identify some common characteristics within each political and cultural group and for that reason this volume is divided into three distinct parts. We begin with the catholic culture, which was of great importance due to the role played by the DC as a ruling party from 1945 until 1992. The DC was responsible for Italy’s accession to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the European Community in general and was the main supporter of the proWestern direction in politics. The formation of a catholic-inspired ruling class was the result of a process of complex cultural stratification, the roots of which, however, were not connected exclusively to the broad presence of the Church in Italian history. The identity of the DC, in fact, takes its origins in the experience of the Partito popolare italiano (PPI— Italian Popular Party) after the First World War, as well as in Luigi Sturzo’s attempt to include catholics in the secular state through the actions and program of a party of a “non-­denominational” nature. The lukewarm involvement of the Holy See in Sturzo’s project and the advent of fascism in power had sanctioned the temporary defeat of this  Tarquini, ed., Il primato della politica nell’Italia del Novecento.  K. Mannheim, Ideologia e Utopia. 17  For a review of studies Knight, Transformations of the Concept of Ideology in the Twentieth Century, 619–626. Cf. the classic Bell, The end of Ideology. 395. Thompson, Ideology and Modern Culture. Freeden, Ideologies and Political Theory. Balkin, Cultural software. Heywood, Political ideologies. Eagleton, Ideology. An introduction. 15 16

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perspective, destined to re-emerge forcefully at the end of the Second World War under the guidance of Alcide De Gasperi. It was, however, within the framework of the fascist regime that the meeting between catholics and the State, supported by the centralizing action and reorganization of the catholic movement initiated in those years by Pius XI, was able to mature further, albeit in ambivalent and contradictory terms, given the coexistence in the catholic world of more conservative and more daring ideological-cultural contaminations. In this climate, thanks also to the mediation of Msgr. Montini, who later became Pope taking the name of Paul VI, a new generation of future catholic leaders was formed from the late 1930s. Those leaders were coming from the lowerand upper-middle-­class intellectual bourgeoisie and were deeply linked to the ecclesiastical institution as an identity body rooted in time and history, and at the same time culturally sensitive to the transformations of the modern world, to the growing importance of macroeconomic factors and to the role of the party and of public power in the governance of a modern mass society.18 They represented a second generation, destined to have little political weight in the aftermath of the war, but enormous influence in the cultural debate and in the elaboration of the ideal and “programmatic” qualities of the new republican constitution.19 The problem of the international positioning of the country in the aftermath of the conflict and in the context of the rapid deterioration of relations between the powers of the anti-Nazi coalition emphasized this diversity and heterogeneity of ideas within the catholic world. The birth of a single-colored Christian democratic government in May 1947 and the simultaneous repositioning of Italian foreign policy and the Holy See in the framework of closer political and economic ties with the United States marked the first serious moment of tension in relations between different components of the Christian democratic world. And in particular between De Gasperi’s centrist leadership and the catholic-democratic power animated by Giuseppe Dossetti and the magazine Cronache sociali, a power that was fundamentally opposed to the breakdown of dialogue with marxist-­inspired parties and a foreign policy of the country considered too

18  Giovagnoli, La cultura democristiana. Traniello, Città dell’uomo. Moro, La formazione della classe politica cattolica. Formigoni, L’Italia dei cattolici. 19  Pombeni, La costituente. Id., La nascita del gruppo dirigente dossettiano.

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crushed by the US strategy of containment.20 Nevertheless, the Cold War would turn out to be the true bonding force of the political unity of catholics, a fundamental presupposition and condition of the Christian democratic party in the Italian political system and of the reintegration of the country in an open, multilateral and cooperative international relations context. That unity was meant, and not by chance, to fade away precisely in the moment when the tension in the political and ideological conflict between the West and the communist world was declining.21 The chapters by Andrea Guiso, Giovanni Mario Ceci and Massimo De Giuseppe go through these different phases, showing the variety of themes, the protagonists, the interests, the specifics of a catholic world that embraces culturally heterogeneous international options: from Atlanticism to pacifism, from the vatican Ostpolitik to third worldism up to the “neo-Atlanticist” suggestions of Italy as a “bridge” between Europe and Africa or the Middle East. As we learn from Ceci’s chapter, there were those who rethought modernity in a critical and radical way, like the philosopher Del Noce, who linked his own reflection against Western modernity to the evolution of détente. Convinced that the modern world had brought about an eclipse of traditional values that would lead to absolute immanentism and relativism, he saw the signs of that eclipse in the birth of the new international equilibrium. Del Noce anticipated a way of reading international politics that would become very popular in the coming years. In his chapter Massimo De Giuseppe contradicts the idea of a catholic culture always ready to support American power and the Western world and highlights the role of catholics as protagonists of a profound cultural renewal of the relations between the South and North of the world, accrued on the basis of the theological innovations promoted by the Second Vatican Council. The case of Beniamino Andreatta, an exponent of the Christian democratic left, described in Guiso’s chapter, tells the story of a strong and non-negotiable cultural and political link between Atlanticism and Europeanism. But at the same time, that case demonstrates the evolution of a relationship between Italy and Europe, destined to take on the form of a vincolo esterno (external constraint) for the State reform based on the “orthopedic” use of European legislation to induce the political class to face up to the problems of administrative efficiency, 20  Craveri, De Gasperi. Formigoni, Dc e alleanza atlantica. Del Pero, L’alleato scomodo. Acanfora, Miti e ideologia nella politica estera della DC. 21  Giovagnoli, La repubblica degli italiani.

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the public morality of the parties and the governability of the Italian State. The passage from this position to the claim of a role of supplenza politica (political substitution) by technostructures and competent intellectuals operating up the chain connecting national government and European institutions  would be very short. The figure of the secular and liberal banker Guido Carli, described by Caviglia in his chapter, also appears emblematic in that sense, since it is symptomatic of the presence of a transversal government culture that inferred political change as a consequence of a managerial revolution from above. It would be destined to become a hegemon in the framework of a long process of loss of proactive coherence and legitimacy of national politics against the background of the crisis of monetary stability, the processes of financial globalization and the consequent fall of sovereignty of the national state. The conversation was quite different for the numerous exponents of the great socialist family of marxist matrix—socialists, social democrats, communists. This group had enormous consensus and in 1975 represented half of the electoral body in Italy. From this point of view, Italy has a different history from that of other European countries: unlike what happened in the rest of Europe, from 1945 the Italian left was represented by the Partito socialista italiano (PSI—Italian Socialist Party) and the Partito comunista italiano (PCI—Italian Communist Party), allies in a position of clear supremacy compared to the social democrats, who for the next four decades would remain a small party, ready to support the governments led by the  Christian  democrats. It was a choice that had impressive consequences “in the historical definition of the relationship between politics, ideology and culture of Italian socialism”.22 The PSI was in dialogue with the left wing of European socialist parties and not with Labor, was not a member of the Socialist International, was reborn as an organization of social-democratic parties in 1951, and took up a neutralist position in the international  arena.23 According to many historians, this neutralism resulted in an ambiguous policy, given the alliance with the Communist  Pinto, Il riformismo possibile, 62.  On the foreign policy of the PSI: Nuti, Gli Stati Uniti e l’apertura a sinistra; Benzoni, I socialisti e la politica estera, 927–949. Nenni, I nodi della politica estera italiana. Ardia, Il partito socialista e il patto atlantico. Di Nolfo, Il socialismo italiano tra i due blocchi, 47–66; Scirocco, “Politique d’abord”. For the clash between PSI and the International Socialist between 1948 and 1949, cf. Pesetti, L’internazionale socialista dal 1951 al 1983, 14–20. 22 23

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Party which, after the creation of Cominform, started acting more and more clearly in strict adherence to Soviet directives.24 In fact, this neutralist choice turned into pro-Soviet pacifism because the socialists believed that “the equidistance from both Moscow, capital of the socialist revolution, and Washington, capital of imperialism”25 was not possible. The PSI, linked to the PCI, was under the influence of the Soviet Union and until the late 1960s the PSI expressed a political culture that, although not Stalinist, was decidedly pro-Soviet, derived from Marxism-Leninism, and struggled to propose an independent reflection. The PCI was not split up into currents comparable to that of the socialists. Its secretary, Palmiro Togliatti, had been working hard to re-establish the party, transforming the small revolutionary formation of the 1920s into a mass party, which had its reference point in marxism-leninism, and was engaged in spreading a new culture. For this reason, after the war, the PCI was full of initiatives and publications addressed to militants but also to a wider public.26 After an initial and tactical adhesion to a multilateral approach to international problems, which envisaged the alliance between the victorious powers of the Second World War, the PCI became a supporter of a foreign policy faithful to that of the Soviets, which in fact was brought into question only at the end of the 1960s.27 This is demonstrated in the chapter by Paola Lo Cascio who describes a party linked to bipolar logic, a party that supported the interpretation of the past, anchored in the anti-fascist struggle, an important element of the communists’ identity. The young Rossana Rossanda, who in 1969 was one  Di Nolfo, Il socialismo italiano tra i due blocchi, 56.  Scirocco, “Politique d’abord”, 21. 26  Cf. Vittoria, Togliatti e gli intellettuali, 24–66. 27  Pons, L’Unione Sovietica nella politica estera di Togliatti, 435–456. Pons, La politica estera dell’Urss, 1123–1147; Pons, L’impossibile egemonia. Zaslavsky, Lo stalinismo e la Sinistra Italiana. Aga Rossi, Zaslavski, Togliatti e Stalin. Guiso, La colomba e la spada.. In our opinion, it is hard to agree with the approach of Bruno Bongiovanni, who defines the PCI as “a social democracy dedicated to forming a republic and not a revolution”, pro-Soviet and Stalinist enough to “maintain the assets that have been built up thanks to the rescue of Stalingrad”. This approach downsizes significantly the importance of the political ideological factor as well as the primacy of international politics in the culture of international and Italian communism. Cf. Bruno Bongiovanni, “Gli intellettuali e i miti del dopoguerra”. For the critique of the analogy between communist and social-democratic cultures cf. Guiso, “Il PCI e la sua storia: come cambiano i paradigmi”. On the culture of international communism during the years of the Cold War, see Silvio Pons, La rivoluzione globale. 24 25

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of the founders of the dissident communist group of Manifesto and for this reason was removed by the PCI, was sent by Togliatti to Spain in 1962 to make contact with a number of intellectuals and give life to a unified solidarity initiative against Francoism. It is an emblematic story: for the left of the whole world, Spain had been the first major testing ground of the anti-­fascist struggle that had not only lost the civil war but also had not succeeded in wiping out Francoism even after the Second World War. On the contrary, the new balances of the Cold War had guaranteed its consolidation, by raising a series of questions about the dictatorships of the 1930s, their characteristics and their modernity. Not always were communist intellectuals up to the challenge presented to them by the great events of international politics. Gregorio Sorgonà reconstructs the impact of Ronald Reagan’s presidency on communist culture focusing in particular on politics, society and the US economy of three prominent intellectuals in the communist culture of the 1980s. As we can see from his analysis, the image of Reagan’s America offered by these scholars clearly shows how the communist culture portrays American modernity, why it does not capture the birth of the new right, which aspects of that phenomenon are being considered and which ones are completely ignored, as well as the evolution of the relationship with marxism, the ideological basis of the PCI. In fact, the reflection on the ideological assumptions was decidedly neglected in many reflections of Italian communists, as also shown by Enrico Serventi Longhi in his chapter on the Confederazione Generale Italiana del Lavoro (CGIL—Italian General Confederation of Labor), the main Italian trade union of socialist and communist matrix. The world of work proved to be particularly attentive to the events that since the end of the 1970s had led Solidarnosc to acquire strength and capacity for the intervention in communist Poland. According to the Italian trade unionists of the CGIL, the Polish example showed how the national, religious and democratic conscience could overcome class-consciousness in the traditional sense. However, the events linked to the collapse of popular democracies did not produce a new sense of belonging in the workers’ base and sharpened a profound disorientation that contributed to the crisis of identity and legitimacy of the trade union in the second half of the 1980s. The history of the PSI differed from that of the communists only starting in the beginning of the 1970s, as shown in the chapters by Alessandra Tarquini and Gianluca Scroccu. Alessandra Tarquini has reconstructed the way in which the main exponents of the Italian left confronted the problem of anti-Semitism and the Arab-Israeli question from 1948 to 1956.

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Socialists and communists, unwilling to present themselves to the public and the world as the protagonists of the rebirth of democracy, did not address either the persecution of the Jews of the 1930s and 1940s or the anti-­Semitic demonstrations in the USSR of the 1950s. The difficulty they had in analyzing anti-Semitism was expressed in the same years in which left-­wing intellectuals and politicians spoke about the Arab-Israeli conflict. And if in 1948 they had been the main supporters of Israel, in 1956, during the Suez war, they supported Colonel Nasser in criticizing the politics of Israel, which then was considered a country friendly to the United States, and therefore enslaved to imperialism. At the end of the next decade, the path of the Italian left split into two different reflections, two reflections that alienated both socialists and communists, as also underlined by Scroccu in his work on postcolonial Africa in the political culture of Italian socialism. In his chapter, Scroccu identifies two different periods: the first one, from 1955 to 1973, during which prevails a strict anti-Western and anti-­ imperialist  marxist approach to the geopolitical and social  transformations of Africa; the second one, developed after the mid-1970s, was the result of the reflection around inequalities between the North and the South of the world. From then on, a reflection on postcolonialism similar to that of the political culture of European social democracy has become common among  Italian socialists. That reflection consisted in the intuition that the North-South axis had definitively supplanted the East-West one and that the battles for affirmation of the principles of socialism, and human rights, was definitely supposed to move in that direction. It was, in fact, an approach to the liberal-democratic culture that in Italy had found many obstacles. Crushed by the large mass parties, stuck between the great historiographic interpretations proposed by the communists and the socialists, the intellectuals of the Italian liberal-democratic left did not join a single political group or movement: divided between the Socialist Party, the Radical Party, the Republican Party and the Social Democratic Party, between 1945 and the Maastricht Treaty, they were among the most attentive observers of international politics, as shown by the chapters by Marco Bresciani, Laura Ciglioni and Donatello Aramini, and Luca Polese Remaggi. In his chapter, Marco Bresciani has reconstructed the reaction of several well-known intellectuals and politicians who had taken part in the

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anti-fascist Giustizia e Libertà (Justice and Freedom) movement on the Hungarian uprising of 1956. He shows how the debate around  the transformations of the post-Stalinist Soviet world as well as the expectations of the Hungarian revolution allowed for a renewal of the reflection on the relationship between socialism and communism, and more generally on the relationship between democracy and totalitarian regimes: a theme that in the early 1950s constituted a factor of division between the democratic left and communists. During 1956, the protagonists of Bresciani’s work  pointed out the uncertainties, silences, removals and omissions of the marxists and demonstrated the central and neverresolved nature of the relationship between ethics and politics. In reality, this non-­communist left represented a decidedly varied and complex world. A few years before the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1951, a group of young graduates from the University of Bologna gave life to the magazine Il Mulino. Liberals but not in favor of laissez-faire, catholics but not fundamentalists, socialists but not communists, in short reformists and democrats, the collaborators of the magazine were certainly driven more by the social sciences than by the traditional humanistic culture. According to them, the intellectual played a key role, a role of a technical advisor whose function was to contribute to the continuous extension of the boundaries of the welfare society, and of a transmission belt between elites and society. This figure was meant to be open to new social sciences and to produce the orientations and ideas that would direct the politics. Pragmatism was at the center of their cultural analysis, even in matters of foreign policy. That is why the Mulino intellectuals proposed a vision that united the ideal of democracy and a realist approach to international politics, an approach based on the traditional logic of power. In this sense, the Bolognese magazine—as Aramini and Ciglioni point out in their essay—can be considered an expression of that season of reformism, and of trust in the social sciences as instruments of intervention and transformation of society, reached its peak in the 1960s.28 The United States, with its power of attraction and influence, undoubtedly had a fundamental role in that process. In a long-­ term perspective though—as Mario Del Pero has shown about Roosevelt’s New Deal, whose lesson and reworking was a crucial moment of that cultural season—that process was also “the result of exchange, interaction

 See Latham, Modernization as Ideology. Gilman, Mandarins of the Future.

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and transnational, or at least transatlantic, hybridization”, in which the United States were “often receiving subjects”.29 The reflection on the balance of the Cold War was not without ambiguity, as Luca Polese Remaggi points out in his chapter on communist China and on the journeys that politicians and scholars of the Action  Party’s (Partito d’Azione) area made in the 1950s. In their attempt to regenerate the idea of political and social revolution, men of proven democratic faith who had condemned totalitarian regimes, witnesses to the fascist violence of which they had been fierce opponents, saw in Mao’s China the possibility of experimenting with a new way of doing politics. For this reason, distinguished jurists, men of government, philosophers and scholars, mostly heirs of the liberal and democratic socialist tradition, considered the large-scale violence that the Chinese communist regime perpetrated in order to build a new type of society, necessary and legitimate. Clearly, as Polese points out, Italians were not the only ones: in the context of the Cold War, throughout Europe, non-communist left-wing intellectuals showed a certain propensity to grant revolutionary power the right to suspend the establishment of civil liberties and policies, that is, the whole system of guarantees of the rule of law, in view of the enormous task of promoting the liberation of huge human masses from poverty and exploitation. Clearly, such inclination was unthinkable in Western Europe and, ultimately, even the events that took place beyond the iron curtain, in the European countries included in the Soviet bloc, were looked upon with disregard. In the mindset of intellectuals from the universe of former Action Party, however, revolutionary experimentalism, with its load of old socialist and nationalist mythologies, was taking place in the distant countries, such as China, and they did not think much about what was actually happening in Beijing after the establishment of the popular Republic in October 1949. This story raises more than one question about the relationship between democracy and totalitarian regimes, on the meaning of Western democracy, on the kind of evolution that the end of the Cold War would bring about. The absence from these pages of exponents or figures belonging to the field of the right does not imply any value judgment. The choice of the curators was that of giving priority to the relationship between the intellectuals and cultures that have most influenced the international positioning

 Del Pero, L’alleato scomodo.

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of the country and its foreign policy.30 The pro-Atlantic choice, with its essential anti-communist connotation, had certainly been for the  neo-­ fascist Movimento sociale italiano (MSI—Italian Social Movement) an act of considerable symbolic and political value, aimed at removing the ­anti-­fascist legitimization.  Neo-fascists  in fact  hope that their adamant pro-­Atlantic commitment would serve to get close the government majority area. And yet, the prospect of full constitutionalization of the MSI sealed by the choice of a pro-Western field has caused concern in the ruling and opposition parties, unwilling, for various reasons, to call into question the discriminating ethics of anti-fascism, but also encountered strong resistance within the neo-fascist party. The resistance  inside MSI was posed by both the leftist “social-national” components of “immense and red” fascism, culturally hostile to the rationalist and mechanistic civilization from across the ocean, and from the spiritualist and anti-modern groups  that embraced  the ideas of the traditionalist philosopher (with anti-Semitic hues) Julius Evola.31 Both of these components were very influential among the young neo-fascists and firm, despite their substantial public irrelevance, in their rejection of the logic of blockades. However, the international political system of the Cold War did not represent a static universe. Since the mid-1950s, the relationship between the center and the periphery of the global conflict had tended to be decidedly more complicated. In fact, the relative decline of the Cold War in Europe corresponded to a more intense and prolonged phase of tensions in geographic areas which previously were mostly unaffected by the bipolar conflict. Influential powers and actors at the local and regional levels, who would see a growing possibility to gain weight in the global political balance and in the dynamics of relations between the two superpowers, would end up taking advantage of the situation. At the end of the 1960s, these events ended up intertwined with the double crisis of the Soviet model and of American hegemony and got engaged in the contextual revolution of moral languages, forms of communication and diffusion of thought, of the representativeness of international government. Once again the international political system, in its incessant evolution, would 30  Which does not mean not recognizing, even to these forces, having contributed to promoting orientations and visions of international politics. Cf. Sorgonà, La scoperta della destra; Ungari, Monzali, I monarchici e la politica estera italiana nel secondo dopoguerra. 31  Parlato, Fascisti senza Mussolini. Id., Il fascismo di sinistra.

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change Italy and its way of representing itself in the context of the global Cold War and would pull it into the center of a dynamic yet unstable dimension of international relations, marked by new critical fault lines of various entity and nature: ethical, social, religious, cultural, political, economic and scientific-technological. The political cultures and ideas of the intellectuals would end up changing, together with the national and global scenarios that they themselves tried to interpret and explain, moving away—without ever completely denying them—from preconceived visions and international ties of political and ideological order that had characterized the “battle of ideas” in the early years of the country’s reconstruction.

1.4   The Role of Italian Intellectuals in International Politics: Possible Interpretations In conclusion to this introduction, we would like to emphasize several possible interpretations of the relationship between Italian intellectuals and international politics. When working on our research, we asked ourselves several  questions: how did intellectuals contribute to the elaboration of the Republic’s international politics? Did the bipolar logic, imposed by the Cold War, and the idea of belonging or being close to a party, have a significant influence on the intellectuals’ way of thinking or was their vision autonomous from politics? Has this autonomy had an effect on the public debate? Although the answers to these questions will no doubt be different for each of the case studies—as the figures and problems discussed in the various essays represent very different experiences—we still think it is possible to point out some common qualities. One theme that reappears throughout the various essays is the ardent engagement of Italian intellectuals in the most important topics of international politics. From 1945 to 1992, Italian intellectuals felt it was their duty to contribute to and guide the public debate on important topics introduced by the Cold War, questions raised by de-colonization, as well as the problem of European integration and the relationship between the Old Continent and the United States. These intellectuals, bearers of a tradition rooted in the Italian Unification experience, sought to contribute to the world’s transformation, not limiting their contribution to internal political matters. Even those intellectuals who were not directly or professionally involved in politics on an institutional or party level were

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aware of the connection between national issues and international problems and the importance of the upcoming changes and actively participated in the discussion by writing in party publications and other important magazines and print media of the time.32 Another important theme that comes to the fore in this collection of essays is the primary importance that ideology comes to have in the intellectual debate of the first years of the post-war period. Beginning with the end of the eighteenth century, the moment when the first reflections on the term ideology appeared, and up until very recently, multiple interpretations of the concept have been introduced, and the debate is far from being over. Without going into a detailed discussion of this key concept of the history of political thought, we would like to point out that the interpretation provided by Karl Mannheim, the founder of the sociology of knowledge, is particularly relevant for our studies. In 1929, Mannheim defined ideology as a system of visions, values and ideas that is capable of guiding political action and at the same time of expressing a conception of the world.33 In accordance with the tradition of marxist thought that he came from, the sociologist believed that an ideology expressed a vision of reality typical of a certain social group. However, unlike the marxists, Karl Mannheim emphasized the cognitive aspects of cultures and as a result considered the various points of view expressed within political ideologies as true, even when biased and contradictory. In fact, according to him, those points of view gained their truth precisely because they were expressions of a particular aspect of society and of the history of their time. Based on Mannheim’s conception, in ideologies we are able to define a way of being of the dominant classes, rather than an instrument for domination or a form justifying one’s power, and reflect on the social determinants that affect the visions of the world of each group. Indeed, Mannheim was also one of the first to highlight “a particular conception of the relations between theory and practice”.34 Ideologies, as we can see, are not false or true; they are not political doctrines or prescriptive philosophies. An ideology is a set of values, ideals and visions that expresses and affects a political action, a phenomenon that 32  For a similar approach to the topic of relations between intellectuals and international politics, see Hall, Dilemmas of Decline. 33  Mannheim, Ideologia e Utopia. 34  Ivi, 131. Among other bibliography cfr. Bailey, Critical Theory and the Sociology of Knowledge. Chianta, Ricostruire la società.

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no doubt took place in Italy in 1945. As such, talking about the primacy of ideology does not represent a normative judgment of any sort. Such a reflection is not aimed at distinguishing between ideological and pragmatic intellectuals. Furthermore, reading politics through the lens of ideology in no way implicates a lack of awareness of the most important dynamics that define international politics during the decades that are being analyzed in this volume. For example, in their chapter, Ciglioni and Aramini analyze how the collaborators of Il Mulino—descendants of enlightenment culture, believers in the power of the social sciences to bring about social transformation—imagined themselves as having a collective role and committed themselves to progress and the improvement of the world; likewise, the liberal socialists, studied by Marco Bresciani in his chapter, emphasized the strong moral and ethical issue of their battle; and the catholic philosopher Augusto Del Noce considered the East-West détente to be part of a more general reflection on the process of secularization and impoverishment of Christian values in Europe. The protagonists of Italian culture that we examine here read international politics through the lens of certain values and ideas. From that point of view, even those more moderate and attentive to the needs of realism, even the ones who were least of all inclined to create alternative scenarios to the market economy and liberal democracy, expressed a vision of the world that was well defined and presented a system of ideals that could not be negotiated, a system we could define as ideological.35 Besides, it would be hard to make a clear distinction between the concrete needs of politics and the ideas of the intellectuals. An important Italian historian, Federico Chabod, made this observation many years ago in the Introduction to his Storia della politica estera italiana dal 1870 al 1896 (Italian Foreign Policy: The Statecraft of the Founders, 1870–1896). In this work from 1951, Chabod questioned the existence of so-called “permanent interests” in politics, that “sort of hidden divinity floating high above everything that constitutes the actual life of a people (political struggle, ideals and ideologies, passions in conflict) and forming both the precondition and the goal of foreign policy: a polar star on which to fix one’s gaze in the course of a 35  Another topic that we cannot address here is the impact of intellectuals and philosophers, such as Morgenthau, Niebuhr, Aron, De Jouvenel, Freund, Carr, representing in several different forms realism in politics. Their works were not taken into consideration in the public debate until the 1980s and later. On this topic, see Campi, De Luca, eds., Il realismo politico. See also Brighi and Rosenboim, “Realismo e geopolitica in Italia durante la guerra fredda: tramonto o rinascita?”.

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perilous voyage, disregarding everything else”.36 He was convinced that the entire history of a nation—at least since the times of the French Revolution—with its aspirations and political ideologies, with its economic and social conditions, with its material possibilities and internal contrasts of affections and tendencies, impacted its decisions of an international nature. This is why he claimed that he does not recognize the abstract schemes of international or national politics or the primacy of one over the other, since both of them are closely interconnected. Finally, a third theme that connects all of the chapters in this volume is related to historical periodization. Considering the breakdown of the agreements of Bretton Woods as a fundamental turning point in international relations, the chapters observe how Italian intellectuals developed a new, more informed approach to interpreting the bipolarity of international politics beginning from the second half of the 1960s. This approach saw a downplaying of the importance of the Cold War on the part of liberal socialists and many Catholics, whose reflections on the role of the United States were decidedly ambiguous. Without questioning Cold War affiliations and positions, these intellectuals, who openly belonged to the larger families of political Catholicism and liberal democracy, proposed Europe as an alternative model and experience to capitalism and the American society in general. Its capacity to guarantee Welfare State policies; its attention toward forms of income redistribution, its traditional commitment to economic policies; its identity as a culture that is vigilant in regard to the rights of the weak—all of these characteristics led many intellectuals to see Europe as the symbol of a supranational conception of politics, an identity and a means of differentiating oneself from American imperialism, from the nationalism of an ally that is imposing its role on the world. With the end of the 1960s and the Breton Woods system, many intellectuals grew more aware of Europe’s divergent path, of its move toward a political and social model that was antithetical to that of the United States. During the Nixon and Reagan eras (even though there were some significant differences in their approaches), the United States tended to promote the primacy of the American interests, equating it, as usual, to the protection of Western values within the context of international bipolarity. The reaction of an increasingly influential group of intellectual elites to this new project of American hegemony emphasized the idea of develop Chabod, Storia della politica estera italiana, 11.

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ing a supranational and multilateral European social system based on fairness and mutual support, which, however, would also simultaneously take advantage of the opportunities offered by a dynamic context of globalized economy and by the politics of monetarist nature introduced by the United States and the United Kingdom at the end of the 1960s. As some of the chapters in this volume demonstrate, it is in this precise context that the deep transformation of the “social function” of intellighentsja came about, from the progressive decline of the philosophical-enlightenment savant to the emergence of a new figure: the Intellectual-Mandarin.37 This figure was no longer meant to protect great ideals or create a general vision of the world. Instead, his new function was to successfully apply the “technique of governance”, aimed at depoliticizing the public space and overcoming national interests in favor of a planned set of common goals.38 This dynamic has a clearly paradoxical nature though. The technocratic culture of intellectuals-mandarins, unwilling to adopt a pragmatic approach to the ongoing changes in political and social spheres, ended up supporting the faith in ideology as a collective force of the transformation of the reality. The myth of Europe as a “civil power” and a “third path” between American capitalism and socialism posited a vision of international relations based on the primacy of the economy and the law. This vision was not less utopian and definitive than the opposite hyper-political and globalist positions of American and Soviet origins.39 The idea, developed by Andreatta and Carli, the Secretaries of the Treasury, of using Europe as an instrument to compel political class to make institutional reforms at the end was supposed to reveal the intellectualistic and Jacobean attitude of the technicians. That idea was a clear expression of the open and radical intolerance toward the “actual” political reality as well as of a physiological resistance toward the idea of change on behalf of its main protagonists, political parties.40 37  See Jennings, ed., Intellectuals in Twentieth-Century France. Posner, Public Intellectuals. Sowell, Intellectuals and society. 38  The connection between Europeanism and the development of technical competencies regarding the international politics in the context of political parties can be proved by the emergence of some important think tanks, such as Istituto Affari Internazionali (IAI), connected to the figure of Altiero Spinelli and Cespe, initiated by Enrico Berlinguer, in the 1960s and 1970s. On the foundation of the IAI, see Graglia, “Altiero Spinelli e la genesi dello IAI”, 245–77. 39  On the opposite rhetorics of the American dream and Soviet myth in post-war Italy, see D’Attorre, ed., Nemici per la pelle. 40  On Europe as a civil power, see Telò, L’Europa potenza civile. For a reflection from the inside of the PCI on Europe as a middle way between the two opposed powers of the Cold

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The 1970s would become an important turning point for socialists and communists as well: the rise of new issues, in Asia, in Africa and in Latin America, changed their relationship with the USSR, a relationship that had already been questioned by the socialists in the late 1950s and opposed by the communists at the end of the 1960s. Although the socialists and communists were no longer stalinist and, as a result, were no longer bound by a logic of affiliation, even during the 1970s, they persisted in their severe criticism of liberal democracy, which they considered a sort of a transition toward a middle way between communism and Americanism. This is when the traditional and severe anti-Europeanism of PCI and PSI lost its radical nature and their position in the decades to follow started to move toward that of the catholics and liberal democrats. Even for the left, the idea of Europe became a possibility, an alternative to the American model, a space that was autonomous from both the United States and the USSR and equidistant from both blocs, a place where it would be possible to create a new world, an alternative to what already existed in the West. In the 1970s, when the myth of the USSR and of the inspirational force of the October Revolution started to fade, socialists and communists were trying to gain political weight on an international level by positing Europe in an anti-American stance. As Sorgonà observes, anti-Americanism has forever remained the North Star of the communists: however, Europe has assumed an auroral and palingenetic meaning, representing an alternative to the decaying reality of socialism. Italian intellectuals end up taking their distance from the Western model, by criticizing the ideas of Occidentalism stands on, as well as the politics of traditional power, in this case with an accentuated attitude of pacifism, anti-Americanism41 and solidarity toward the Third World. From that point of view, it would not be unfounded to conclude that Italian intellectuals have maintained a sort of ambiguity: they contributed to the construction of a country and its approach to international politics, they held important roles, they served the interests of politics, they used their energy to produce a vision of the world following the path begun in 1861 which saw their names inscribed into the history of the nation. At the same War, see Leonardi, L’Europa e il movimento socialista.. On the intellectual conditions of the Common Currency, see Dyson, Maes, ed., Architects of the Euro. See also Schulz-Forberg, Stråth, The Political History of European Integration. 41  See Judt and Lacorne, ed., With Us or Against Us. For a historical perspective, see also Lomellini, Varsori, eds., Dal Sessantotto al crollo del Muro;  Craveri, Quagliariello, ed., L’antiamericanismo in Italia e in Europa.

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time, the intellectuals were the main critics of liberal and Western democracy, even though they were part of it, and by doing this they contributed to an increasing withdrawal of the educated classes from the politics of Western governments, the consequences of which we are still feeling today.

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Spinelli e i movimenti per l’unità europea, ed., Daniela Preda. Padova: CEDAM, 2010. Guiso, Andrea. “Il PCI e la sua storia: come cambiano i paradigmi”, in I partiti politici nell’Italia repubblicana, Gerardo Nicolosi, ed., Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino, 2006. Guiso, Andrea. La colomba e la spada. “Lotta per la pace” e antiamericanismo nella politica del Partito Comunista Italiano (1949–1954). Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino, 2007. Hall, Ian. Dilemmas of Decline. British Intellectuals and World Politics, 1945–1975. University of California Press, 2012. Heywood, A. Political ideologies. An introduction. London: Basingstoke, 1992. Hixson, Walter L. Parting the Curtain. Propaganda, Culture, and the Cold War. 1941–1965. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1997. Isnenghi, Mario. Il mito della Grande Guerra. Bologna: il Mulino, 1997 (first edition Bari: Laterza, 1969). Jennings Jeremy, ed. Intellectuals in Twentieth-Century France. Mandarins and Samurais, New York: Palgrave Macmillan 1993. Judt, Tony. Past Imperfect. French Intellectuals: 1944–1956. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992. Judt, Tony, Denis Lacorne, eds. With Us or Against Us. Studies in Global Anti-­ Americanism, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005. Knight, K. Transformations of the Concept of Ideology in the Twentieth Century, in “American Political Science Review”, 2006, 100, 4. Latham, Michael E. Modernization as Ideology. American Social Science and Nation Building in the Kennedy Era. Chapel Hill and London: University of North Caroline Press, 2000. Leonardi, Silvio. L’Europa e il movimento socialista. Considerazioni sui processi comunitari Cee e Comecon, Milano: Adelphi, 1977. Lill Rudolf, and Valsecchi, Franco, eds. Il nazionalismo italiano in Italia e in Germania, fino alla prima guerra mondiale. Bologna: Il Mulino, 1983. Lomellini, Valentine, Varsori, Antonio, eds. Dal Sessantotto al crollo del Muro: i movimenti di protesta in Europa a cavallo tra i due blocchi. Milano: Franco Angeli, 2013. Mangoni Luisa. Lo Stato unitario liberale, in Letteratura italiana, I, Il letterato e le istituzioni. Turin: Einaudi, 1982. Mangoni, Luisa. “Civiltà della crisi”, in Storia dell’Italia repubblicana, vol. 1, La costruzione della democrazia, Francesco Barbagallo, ed., Turin: Einaudi, 1994. Mannheim, Karl. Ideologia e Utopia. Bologna: Il Mulino, 1957. Mitter, Rana, and Patrick Major, eds. Across the Blocs. Cold War Cultural and Social History. London, Portland, OR: Frank Cass 2004. Moro, Renato. La formazione della classe dirigente cattolica (1929–1937). Bologna: Il Mulino, 1979.

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PART I

Liberal Democrat Political Culture

CHAPTER 2

The “Blood of Others”: Mao’s China in the Discourse of Democratic Intellectuals During the 1950s Luca Polese Remaggi

2.1   Introduction In the early years of the Cold War, some Italian jurists, political leaders, philosophers and writers—most of them belonging to the tradition of liberalism and democratic and anti-Stalinist socialism—shared peculiar ideas about the Chinese revolutionary regime, established in October 1949. In the following years, they visited Beijing, bringing home very positive impressions. Indeed, their writings and letters reflect an imaginary China, progressive on the social ground and peaceful at the international level.1 That means that the absolute power of the party’s bureaucracy, the exploitation of the countryside, the militarization of culture, the system of political repression including the organization of concentration camps were not discussed at all. The need to believe that China was experiencing 1  For the fascination with communism in the twentieth century, see Caute, Fellow Travellers. See also Hollander, Political Pilgrims, and Furet, Le Passé d’une illusion.

L. Polese Remaggi (*) Dipartimento di Studi Umanistici (DIPSUM), Università di Salerno, Fisciano, Italy © The Author(s) 2019 A. Tarquini, A. Guiso (eds.), Italian Intellectuals and International Politics, 1945–1992, Italian and Italian American Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-24938-0_2

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a democratic revolution obscured the perception that Chinese communists were adopting the Stalinist idea of a revolution from “above”, that is to say a rapid economic and social change mixed with State terrorism.2 Such forgetfulness is really striking since most of the visitors were not communists. Quite the opposite, a few years earlier, some of them had criticized the brutal process of “Sovietization” of Eastern Europe. Moreover, as Italian antifascists, they had experienced how totalitarianism attempted to reshape society by using means of repression, as well as means of mobilization. Therefore, their intellectual and political history must be recalled in order to make sense of their Chinese ideological passion. During the period of Antifascist Resistance, they had joined the Partito d’azione or other democratic left-wing movements and parties. Only a small minority belonged to the Italian Communist Party. Altogether, they shared the idea that a democratic revolution (combining liberalism and socialism) was needed if one wished to get rid of the social as well as the institutional heritage of fascism. Unfortunately, the “party of intellectuals” did not manage to collect social consensus in post-war years and it disappeared. When the Cold War began, most of the azionisti had already joined other parties, mainly the Socialist and the Republican ones.3 Later on, in a time of peaceful coexistence and decolonization, the idea of a democratic revolution returned to their mind as a political suggestion. Those major changes in international politics seemed to confirm their confused search for a “third way”. It seemed to them that British Labour (in particular its left wing) and Scandinavian socialism could somehow go together with Tito’s and Mao’s revolutions.4 The purpose of dismissing the “black and white” totalitarian pattern coincided with the construction of a discourse grounded on the dialogue among the peoples of the world beyond the iron curtain.5 Such a discourse was meant to have immediate political effects, that is, to provide intellectual weapons to those groups acting in Italy on the political and institutional as well as economic level in order to improve the relationships with those countries toward which the United States had shown deep hostility. China was definitely one of those countries because although it was true that Italy, being part of the Atlantic community, could not recognize  See now Bianco, La récidive.  De Luna, Storia del partito. 4  Colozza, Partigiani. 5  Gleason, Totalitarianism, p. 143 ff. 2 3

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Beijing on a diplomatic level, there were many groups in Rome operating in the fields of business, commerce and cultural relations who wished to open a door to China. As we shall see, the real target of our intellectuals was politics at home or, to be more precise, a possible reconfiguration of the Italian political system. Political stabilization had occurred in post-war Italy with the formation of a centrist coalition around the Christian Democratic Party.6 Those parties filled an “area of legitimacy”, meaning that, within the framework of the Cold War, they were the only ones allowed to rule. The others (neo-fascists and royalists on the right wing, communists and socialists on the left wing) found themselves confined to an “area of representation”. As a whole, the system began to function on a twofold principle of legitimacy, meaning that those in charge of the government had to be either antifascist or anticommunist.7 The international discourse based on the perspective of peaceful coexistence together with the intensification of the process of decolonization, represented a good chance for the Italian Socialist Party to change its position within the Italian political system. The socialists moved away from their close ties with communists in the direction of a reformist profile. Needless to say, the crisis of Italian communism in 1956 accelerated that transition. It is no wonder that the socialists revealed themselves to be the main political actor in Italy interested in Chinese issues. A more open international politics was seen as a starting point for the acceleration of political change in Rome. In general, one might say that the origins of the center-left coalition in Italy were connected with the evolution of Italian foreign policy. From this point of view, China can be seen as just another brick in the wall of the Italian revision of Atlantism in the second half of the 1950s: it included a more autonomous approach to the Middle East and to the Third World in general. “Neoatlantism” became a real political strategy in 1958 when the Christian Democrat Amintore Fanfani came into power. The scarce reflection upon the destruction of civil rights in China must be grasped also in cultural terms. One should consider that most of the visitors had harshly criticized Alcide De Gasperi’s government—certainly, a democratic one—for limiting civil rights as part of its politics of the Cold War. Why then was China different to them? Were perhaps civil rights 6 7

 Scoppola, La Repubblica.  Sabbatucci, Il trasformismo.

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essential only in the Western world? In general, one might assume that Italian intellectuals exempted revolutionary elites in the Third World from “rule of law” insofar as a massive concentration of political power was needed in order to fight social backwardness as well as the heritage of colonialism. Leopoldo Piccardi, a State official and quite a famous jurist, made this point in a book titled A Travel to China. He asked himself: What basis could a Parliamentary system find inside an huge country still strangled by a quasi-feudal regime, without breaking in advance the pre-­ existent power-relations in the only way that such painful operations can be accomplished, that is to say with violence?8

In post-war years, praise of revolutionary violence was widespread in Western Europe. In 1947, the French philosopher Maurice Merleau Ponty argued in Humanisme et Terreur that political violence should not be considered as one. According to him, one should always distinguish reactionary violence, which was always bad, from revolutionary violence, which instead represented a progressive factor in history.9 Bearing in mind such intellectual manipulations, Albert Camus wrote that “false ideas always ended up with blood, but it is always the blood of others”.10 Le Sang des autres is the title of a novel that Simone de Beauvoir published in 1945 in which she depicted the conditions of living in Paris under Nazi rule. As we shall see, when she visited revolutionary China in 1955, the French novelist did not show the same sensitivity toward the impact the brutal facts might have on individuals and common people.

2.2   Guests in the Country of “False Facades” Italian delegations have traveled from Rome to Beijing since the days of the Korean War. Antonio Banfi, a rationalist philosopher, experienced the communist “techniques of hospitality”, whose efficiency in his case was implemented by a strong will to believe. Once the war was over, a delegation headed by Francesco Flora, a literary critic close to Benedetto Croce, flew to Beijing. Later, at the time of Bandung intellectual pilgrimages intensified from Italy in accordance with a worldwide movement that  Piccardi, Viaggio, p. 235.  Merleau Ponty, Humanisme. 10  This sentence is placed as the epigraph in Judt, Un passé imparfait. 8 9

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enthusiastically responded to the invitation to foreigners that Zhou Enlai extended during the famous conference held in Indonesia in April 1955. A delegation, headed by the leader of the Italian Socialist Party, Pietro Nenni, met Zhou and Mao himself during a visit to Beijing in autumn 1955. The Italian Center for the Development of Economic and Cultural Relations with China, founded in 1953, chose some eminent people in their own field such as Piero Calamandrei, Norberto Bobbio, Cesare Musatti, Franco Antonicelli, Antonello Trombadori, Ernesto Treccani, Carlo Cassola and Franco Fortini. They were not just jurists, political thinkers, psychoanalysts, literary critics, painters and writers. These people were also public figures who had a significant role in the debate on democracy in Italy, as well as in the elaboration of antifascist memories. One year later, in 1956, a new delegation traveled to China. It was headed by Ferruccio Parri, the famous leader of the Italian Resistance and Prime Minister in 1945. The above-mentioned Piccardi also participated. Other intellectuals and journalists traveled to China in the late 1950s. Among them were Enrico Emanuelli, a journalist and writer who, in 1957, published La Cina è vicina, and Carlo Lizzani, a well-known director, who realized a documentary, La muraglia cinese, in 1958. Carlo Levi’s reportages during the Great Leap Forward can be seen as the point of arrival of our investigation.11 The understanding of these intellectual pilgrimages requires a brief introduction to the so-called Chinese “popular diplomacy”.12 Between the successful strategy that Zhou Enlai pursued at the Geneva conference in June 1954 and the Bandung conference in April 1955, an imposing “popular diplomacy” took shape in Beijing, reproducing the Soviet pattern of the 1930s.13 The government invited delegations of writers, journalists, unions representatives, businessmen and clergymen, youth and women’s organizations, sport and professional associations from all over the world. In so doing, the Chinese communists intended to start economic and cultural relationships as temporary substitutes for formal diplomatic relationships hindered by the United States’ decision to isolate Beijing.14 The

 Samarani, Roma e Pechino, pp. 93–117.  Brady, Making the Foreign. 13  On the interaction between foreign policy and internal revolutionary process, see Chen, Mao’s China, p. 49 ff. 14  Zhang, Economic Cold War. 11 12

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Chinese “popular diplomacy” met the business communities’ expectations for an “open door” to China’s potentially huge market. The informal diplomacy also met the revolutionary hopes of European intellectuals. Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir reached Beijing in autumn 1955. Their enthusiasm about revolutionary China culminated in the article that Sartre wrote on “France Observateur”, La Chine que j’ai vue.15 De Beauvoir magnified the outcomes of Mao’s revolution in a large volume, La longue marche, without worrying too much about the reliability of her impressions. Quite the opposite, she harshly criticized some French journalists (Robert Guillen and others), who, according to her, were dishonestly damaging the reputation of Chinese communism.16 Nevertheless, some of her private letters to Nelson Algren show that in reality visiting China must have been a bad experience for the French couple. A feeling of isolation prevailed. They were aware that translators, tourist guides and other figures moving around them were instructed to check on their movements, their discourses and above all their contacts with ordinary people.17 Strangely enough, they accepted such limitations without feeling deception. The fact is that a political exchange was going on between Mao’s revolutionary regime and Western intellectuals. In other terms, the Chinese government managed to see that the two well-­ known French intellectuals certified the progressive nature of the regime at the time when others were documenting its regressive nature. In particular, the Commission International Contre le Régime Concentrationnaire (CICRC), headed by David Rousset, was gathering evidence to show the existence of a Chinese Gulag.18 In turn, in Beijing, Sartre and de Beauvoir started their long careers as global representatives of tiersmondisme.19 Needless to say, a more balanced opinion of Mao’s China was not part of the construction of this brand new political identity. Italian visitors were part of this exchange with Chinese authorities. Banfi traveled at the time when the Korean War raged. He could hardly have avoided the rigid planning that local authorities had set up. Nonetheless, his writings reveal an astonishing “will to believe” in the public officials who were instructed to show him the early outcomes of the  Cohen Solal, Sartre 1905–1980, p. 654 ff.  de Beauvoir, La Long Marche. 17  Bair, Simone de Beauvoir, p. 455 ff. 18  Polese Remaggi, “Guerra fredda culturale”, pp. 139–173. 19  Winock, Le Siècle des intellectuels and Ory and Sirinelli, Les Intellectuels en France. 15 16

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revolution. When he returned to Italy, he wrote a passionate article in the communist journal La Rinascita on 6 July 1952. He argued that the “three and five antis” campaigns were producing “an extremely lively and concrete discussion in public, while criticism and self-criticism penetrate deeply in the habits and customs, building collective and positive ethics”.20 Reality was different. These campaigns aimed initially at replacing public officials by using hammering propaganda against inefficiency, corruption and waste. The masses were mobilized while party squads were in charge of arresting people, as well as organizing gatherings and public denunciations. State officials—Mao said at a certain stage—had been corrupted by bourgeois elements and businessmen, who therefore found themselves charged with contract fraud, tax evasion and other crimes. This campaign was launched in January 1952. Merchants, businessmen and bankers had to face their accusers in a crescendo of violence, arbitrary denunciations and false accusations, which produced sufferings, humiliation and suicides.21 Visitors were not always naive. Norberto Bobbio, who was a member of the delegation that reached Beijing in September 1955, did not show the same enthusiasm about Chinese communism. Bobbio had just published Politics and Culture, a book in which he criticized the communist idea of democracy.22 Many years later, in his autobiography, he recalled his visit to China, arguing that “none of us was naive”. According to him, many travelers attempted to inquire into the issues of democracy and civil rights, getting no convincing answer from their guests. Bobbio recalled his unpleasant sensation of having visited a country of “false facades”.23 In 1954, a British Labour delegation had a similar experience. Aneurin Bevan questioned Chinese officials about censorship, jails and popular education. He only received hasty and formal answers.24 Bobbio wrote his memoirs during the 1990s, that is to say, a long time after he had visited China. Reading his archive papers, one has the impression that his thoughts and feelings must have been different at the time when he was in Beijing, probably much more enthusiastic than his autobiography suggests. In a paper, written right after his return to Italy, he judged his recent experience in very positive terms. He stressed that  Banfi, Europa e Cina, p. 131.  Dikötter, The Tragedy of Liberation. 22  Bobbio, Politica e cultura. 23  Bobbio, Autobiografia. 24  Buchanan, East Wind. 20 21

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Chinese youth was clever and willing to learn from Western professors. The demonstrations of hospitality were spontaneous and the visitors were free to move. Bobbio also argued that local authorities were honest since they did not deny that the transition to socialism was a difficult task. According to the Italian thinker, the way Chinese people look— “productive and confident people”, a “silent and calm crowd”—depended very much on the transformations brought about by the revolution, that is to say by those “institutions that have slowly but resolutely risen during the transition from the old to the new society”.25 In particular, Bobbio was very impressed by the agrarian reform accomplished by the regime. Like many other Westerners, he believed that Chinese communists aimed at destroying feudalism as the first step in the emancipation of peasants. In reality, the regime meant to destroy the ancient ties that kept peasant communities together which indeed were the major obstacles that a communist State could meet in the reorganization of the countryside according to its ideological assumptions. Bobbio and his colleagues visited China when the process of political radicalization had already started—from the mutual aid team to the cooperatives—while the State monopoly of grain trade was leading to collectivization.26 Western travelers did not suspect that the mass arrests that followed the public accusation of the Marxist intellectual Hu Feng could have a relationship with the offensive against the peasants. In fact, that offensive required that any possible critique addressed at the government would be reduced to silence.27 Lack of information was not the case. Ongoing inquiries into repressive practices and the expansion of the concentration-camp system could have helped Western travelers draw more precise conclusions. The documentation gathered by the Association for the Freedom of Culture and the CICRC was impressive, but the concern to become a pawn in the US administration’s game prevailed. That concern prevented progressive Italian intellectuals from asking embarrassing questions to those Chinese public officers they met. The neorealist writer Carlo Cassola mentioned the Hu Feng case in a letter addressed to Franco Fortini, a Marxist intellectual and a poet, with whom he had visited China. On 14 February 1956, Cassola, who was writing his Viaggio in Cina, argued: “I am persuaded too that it is a  Bobbio, Il viaggio in Cina.  On these years, see Teiwes, Establishment and Consolidation, pp. 51–143. 27  Domenach, Chine, p. 117. 25

26

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­ ubious case”, apparently sharing the impression that Fortini had also d had. Nevertheless, Cassola decided not to write about the repression of intellectuals in China. He confessed that “the Hu Feng case remained in my pen”, meaning that the evidence he had been able to collect was not enough.28 In Asia maggiore, Fortini advocated the right of left-wing intellectuals to criticize communist power, but in the end, there was no reason to question the good will of the regime.29 In conclusion, one can argue that painful doubts about the repressive practices of the Chinese regime could not moderate the enthusiasm of Italian intellectuals. Cassola wrote in his book that the new Chinese society showed a “great moral neatness”.30 This coexistence of private doubts and public praise shows how intellectuals deal sometimes with tyrannies. According to the anti-totalitarian intellectual Nicola Chiaromonte, the key expression to grasp such an ambiguous behavior was “bad faith”. He criticized Piero Calamandrei, who published a photo of himself in front of a Chinese factory, while he was bringing greetings from the Italian working class to the Chinese people. According to Chiaromonte, the man in that context was totally “insincere”,31 confirming that the post-war years were a “time of bad faith”. Paradoxically, “bad faith” was mixed very often with an extreme fideism. In Asia maggiore, Fortini argued that public confessions in revolutionary China represented an “immediate moral revolution” together with re-educative practices. Those practices were not aimed at destroying the identity of the people. Quite the opposite, they were needed to reconstruct an idea of humanity outside “the bourgeois and property-owner” mentality. Fortini dreamt about a post-capitalistic anthropology, while millions of Chinese were experiencing the real meaning of the communist “immediate moral revolution”. In the early 1950s, a system of labor camps was in the process of construction. Scattered over a huge space, the camps became synonymous with harsh living conditions: overcrowding, tough discipline, brainwashing, starvation and torture. As I said before, neither Fortini nor other travelers took into account the inquiries into repression and forced labor in China made by the Commission International Contre le Régime Concentrationnaire. Needless to say, our visitors regarded these  Letter from Cassola to Fortini.  Fortini, Asia maggiore. 30  Cassola, Viaggio in Cina, p. 23. 31  Chiaromonte, Viaggi in Cina, pp. 347–352. 28 29

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kinds of initiative (as well as others promoted by groups and journals close to the Association for the Cultural Freedom) as tools belonging to the Cold War apparatus led by the CIA.32

2.3   The Chinese Screen: Political Strategies at Home Beyond the Cold War Visitors expected that more open relationships with China could have an influence on the Italian political system. According to them, the Cold War as a political strategy had two sides: on the international side, it hardened ideological divisions between those global forces that fought together against Hitler’s and Japanese’s militarism; on the internal side, the Cold War hindered the social as well as the institutional change that the Constituent Assembly had designed right after World War II, as the Republican Constitution of 1948 clearly showed. Italy had been a “frontier” of the Cold War: the elections of 18 April 1948 were held in a climate of a quasi-civil war between the Centrist coalition and the Popular Front. As a consequence, antifascism as a political discourse found itself for long years at the crossroads of the rejection of the anticommunists and the manipulation of the communists. In this context, our visitors perceived themselves as guardians of the Resistance’s memories, willing to rescue antifascism as a common ground to reinforce either democracy at home or the dialogue between different peoples worldwide. The Chinese national and social revolution gave a contribution to revive such a discourse. The aim was that of changing Italian attitude toward Mao’s regime. The Italian government, headed by Alcide De Gasperi, followed Washington from the first moments. Rome did not recognize Beijing, also subscribing the special embargo that is known as the China differential. Italian diplomacy was also aware that any attempt to dialog with Beijing could have bothered Taiwan, whose representatives occupied the Chinese seat at the United Nations Security Council. From that position, they could have easily hindered the Italian admission.33 Nevertheless, after Stalin’s death, the conclusion of the Korean conflict brought about deep transformations in the international scenario. European allies of the United States started their action to establish 32  On this intellectual network, see Coleman, The Liberal Conspiracy and Gremion, Intelligence de l’anticommunisme. 33  Meneguzzi Rostagni and Samarani (eds.), La Cina di Mao, pp. 17–54.

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e­ conomic relationship with Beijing. The abrogation of the China differential in 1957 is the point of arrival of such a pressing. Pietro Nenni, the leader of the Socialist Party, had been attempting to establish informal relationship with Beijing since 1955. In the early days of April, during the Socialist Congress held in Turin, he criticized the persisting climate of the Cold War and its disturbing diktats. Interviewed by “Paese Sera”, a left-wing newspaper, he reflected upon the relationship with China, stressing that: It is absurd that a country as ours, which does not have a colonial history in Asia to be forgiven and whose industry is suffocated and paralyzed by a restricted internal market as well as by the inadequacy and difficulty of the international commerce, has not yet normalized diplomatic as well as economic relations with China, that is to say a huge country which was recently born to a new life and is in the middle of the process of industrialization.34

Nenni counted on the collaboration of Dino Gentili, who revealed himself to be a real “architect” in the building process of economic relationships with China. Through his company, COMET, Gentili organized a delegation of Italian businessmen and managers that visited Beijing in the summer of 1955. In September, Nenni discussed economic issues directly with Mao and Zhou Enlai. The Italian leader acted jointly with Giovanni Gronchi, one of the progressive leaders of the Christian Democratic Party, who was elected President of the Republic in April 1955. One should not forget that the Liberal Gaetano Martino, minister of foreign affairs, was inclined toward a revision of Italian policy toward Beijing. However, attached to the idea of an Atlantic community, he was indeed worried about the Italian trade balance. With the exception of Martino, the political leaders I have mentioned were also working for a reconfiguration of the political order in Italy in a more open fashion. Generally speaking, one can argue that the origins of the center-left coalition in Italy are intertwined with the transformations of Italian foreign policy. China was just another brick in the wall in the Italian revision of Atlantism that included a more autonomous approach to the Middle East and those countries belonging to the Third World. Enrico Mattei was the key figure: as president of ENI, he signed agreements with Libya’s and 34  Quoted in Panzieri, L’alternativa socialista, p.  165. See also Nenni, Tempo di guerra fredda, pp. 684–711.

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Iran’s oil companies in 1957; as a consequence, he provoked harsh reactions in Washington. He visited Moscow and Beijing in 1958. Visitors gave their contribution to the revision of Italian foreign policy toward China. Their purpose was to convince public opinion to get away from the Cold War’s political and cultural restrictions. Their prestige as guardians of the Antifascist Resistance allowed them to criticize the equivalence between fascism and communism, which was the core of the dominant theory of totalitarianism. From this point of view, China played an important role. According to them, Chinese communism was just the political form of a social as well as of a national insurgency that recalled the progressive ideas of Giuseppe Mazzini, as Piero Calamandrei argued. In April 1955, Il Ponte, the journal that he had founded in Florence in 1945, published a large supplement with the title La Cina di oggi. The supplement included contributions by those intellectuals who visited Beijing from 1954 to 1956. As a whole, the supplement describes the positive transformations of Chinese social life after 1949, the efficiency of the one-­ party state, dealing with the heritage of the past (corruption, backwardness and exploitation), and the vast cultural and scientific achievements, which were unthinkable in traditional China. In short, those enthusiastic Italian writers depicted a great war of liberation (from poverty, feudalism and foreign domination) that had shaken Asia. Needless to say, according to them, such a great event could not be reduced to the rigid distinction between the Western liberal-democratic regimes and the Eastern communist ones, grounded on revolutionary-totalitarian patterns.35 As far as China was concerned, that primarily meant that confining Chinese communists to the role of local Stalinists was incorrect. Chinese communism was instead a force operating a gradual transformation of society without violence. The method of persuasion prevailed, according to our visitors, who were convinced that Stalin’s brutal practices could find no place in Mao’s China. Parri argued that things were evolving “through absorbable innovations, without abrupt economic and social kickbacks”.36 In an article published in the journal Comunità, Musatti, a well-known psycho-analyst, also stressed that social and economic reforms 35  One can easily recognize the echo of French debates in 1948, when Raymond Aron argued that democracy and revolution could not go together, whereas the Rassemblement Démocratique Révolutionnaire, founded by Sartre and others, was in search of a third way between American Capitalism and Soviet bureaucratic socialism. See Winock, Sartre et Aron. 36  Parri, “Misure della nuova Cina”, p. 203.

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were introduced gradually in China.37 On the other hand, he was reassured that the methodology of persuasion did not affect the regime’s determination to build a socialist society. That is probably the reason why Franco Antonicelli—essayist, poet and antifascist with a liberal background—was convinced that the “wisest reform” is revolution itself.38 The time for free discussion (and for civil liberties in general) would come later when the enemies of social progress had disappeared. As a matter of fact, things went a different way. The Chinese regime had many analogies with the Soviet model, a quite obvious fact if one considers that a Sino-Soviet alliance was signed in February 1950 and renewed in 1954.39 Our visitors regarded such a military and economic alliance as something that played no substantial role in the making of the Chinese regime. They did not suspect that a “revolution from above” was the track that Chinese communists were following to modernize their country at any cost. Rather, the stress on political persuasion and gradual reforms reflected our visitors’ need to revive the legend of a democratic revolution as different from Stalinist revolutions from above. Violence could not always be denied. In that case, it was found perfectly normal that a progressive regime used brutal methods during the process of its consolidation. For example, the news of millions of deaths in the early years of the regime did not shock Calamandrei. He asked his son Franco, who worked in Beijing as a journalist for the communist newspaper L’Unità, whether this news was reliable or not. Calamandrei was convinced that even if that news had been reliable, it would never affect the democratic vocation of the new regime.40 His only concern was that the news, whether true or not, could damage the image of Chinese communism.

2.4   Old Cultural Stereotypes The fascination for Chinese communism revealed a rejection of liberaldemocracy meant as a set of procedures that includes civil rights, free elections, social pluralism and the role of Parliament as the c­ ornerstone of  Musatti, Cina 1955, pp. 10–31.  Antonicelli, Immagini del nuovo anno, p. 189. 39  Westad (ed.), Brothers in Arms. 40  Calamandrei, Una famiglia in guerra, p.  145. On this episode, Galli della Loggia, Credere, tradire, vivere, p. 103. 37 38

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a representative regime. According to our visitors, modern democracy required a “moral revolution” to contrast Western individualism as well as to build a more cohesive society. A sort of De profundis of Western civilization, enriched by Spenglerian accents, emerged in Calamandrei’s praise of the Chinese regime. According to him, the Chinese: […] are people that work not to accumulate private wealth, but to cooperate in a great shared endeavor. This revealed to everyone the secret words to shatter the enclosure of solitude within which Western man is waiting for his death to come, prisoner as he is of his own selfishness, and consumed by the anguish that he cannot take his treasures to his own grave.41

According to Antonicelli, the faces of the Chinese people emanated a sense of joy, which reflected their participation in a common project. He confessed that the huge masses crowding Tiananmen Square during the celebrations for the sixth anniversary of the People’s Republic of China thrilled him deeply. He described the event as “the greatest demonstration in the world”. He argued that: I will never see anything like that. But what is it that thrills us? […] The military parade, as I said, was very short (and the airplanes were just a few); there followed a show of joy, lightness, celebration and spontaneity, almost aiming at dispersing any concern of threat, war or hostility. Can one impose these things? Joy, lightness and gladness?42

Of course, Antonicelli believed that no one could impose gladness on the Chinese people who, in his view, participated spontaneously at the mass gatherings organized by the regime. In reality, it is known that Totalitarian regimes intertwined enthusiasm and organization in their approach with the masses, as Élie Halévy argued in the late 1930s.43 Still, the naiveté about the Chinese people’s gladness emerged very often in the writings and in the letters of Italian intellectuals traveling to China. Fortini stated that he had always despised mass gatherings, meaning that they reminded him of his own experience under the Italian fascist regime. But this time was different, because he perceived “the certainty of the truth

 Calamandrei, Guardare oltre la Grande Muraglia, pp. 61–72.  Antonicelli, Immagini del nuovo anno, p. 68. 43  Halévy, L’ère des tyrannies. 41 42

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contained in the Chinese revolution, its absolute reason”.44 In general, the experience that most of these writers had during the 1930s as opponents of Mussolini’s regime did not help them to understand the mobilization of the masses in revolutionary China. Beijing’s Tiananmen Square in 1955 was perceived as a totally different place from Venezia square in Rome during the 1930s. The latter had been the place of Mussolini’s criminal histrionics as well as of the Italian masses’ fanaticism; the former instead was the place of a spontaneous merging of a reborn people with their wise leaders. According to Bobbio, fascism and communism shared more than one analogy, starting from the one-party state. Nevertheless, as he wrote to Fortini, he considered communism less hateful than fascism. Writing on 14 January, he defined fascism as a “bourgeois dictatorship” and argued that: […] Until today, bourgeois dictatorships and proletarian ones have been so similar as far as the political forms (one-party system, no separation of powers, orthodoxy, abrogation of freedom of press, one list elections and so on.) that it is difficult, very difficult to understand how the relationship between the State and the individuals could be different. Nevertheless, there are differences (and very large ones) as far as their substantial aspects. I could never confuse the first with the second on the historical ground: the first defend values that I reject (all of them); the second defend values that I accept (almost all of them). This is the reason why I can’t tolerate the first, whereas I tolerate the second […]”.45

In other terms, according to the philosopher, dictatorships aiming at a hierarchic reorganization of society were fundamentally different from those aiming at a more equalitarian reorganization, meaning that the shared destruction of civil liberties was of secondary importance. Reality was far more complicated than this. Communist regimes in fact relied upon a contradiction between the official propaganda based on equalitarianism and the actual configuration of society as a hierarchical system of castes. Bobbio ignored that inequality as the hallmark of communist societies (together with deprivation of liberties) was a recurrent topic in a vast literature associated with the political campaigns against forced labor

 Fortini, Asia maggiore, pp. 67–68.  Letter from Bobbio to Fortini.

44 45

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started in the late 1940s.46 Bobbio also overlooked that insofar as it threatens or destroys property rights, total power in general ends up with plunging the economy into stagnation. Bobbio wrote his reflections when Karl Wittfogel was working on the historical relationship between total power, destruction of the autonomy of society and stagnation of the economy. The history of China was his case study.47 An old category—Asian despotism—could have provided useful suggestions, if Bobbio, whose philosophical inspiration was liberal-socialism, had only considered that a radical destruction of property rights and markets could hardly pave the way to human emancipation. As a whole, our visitors cultivated statist thoughts, which certainly can find their place within a democratic-revolutionary ideology, it being understood that they could not belong to the liberal-democratic tradition. They appreciated the efforts that the Chinese government made to put into practice the social transformations prescribed by the Common Program of 1949 and later by the Constitution of 1954. Scarce attention to civil rights did not seem to worry them very much. For example, Calamandrei argued that the “forms of democratic liberalism” and the “very often celebrated virtue of private property” were obstacles in the fight against backwardness. Assessing the outcomes of the regime, he added: The only possible way to achieve them in those historical conditions was socialist planning adapted in a programmatic Constitution, which necessarily restrained the scope of political rights within the framework of a Socialist construction. Freedom to carry out the Constitution, not to dismantle it […]. We should ask ourselves if popular China could have done with the methods of parliamentary democracy what it has actually done and will do. And we cannot help recognizing with emotion a richness of moral life within those barriers built to limit political freedom, a human liberation of the people, that in vain one searches behind the ritual phrase of political freedom written in our Constitutions.48

These words show a persistent disappointment with Italian matters, meaning that the gap between the spirit of the Constitution of 1948 and the real political situation was perceived as larger and larger. Despite the constitutional norms, Calamandrei lamented that social and territorial  Dallin, The Real Soviet Russia.  Wittfogel, Oriental Despotism. 48  Calamandrei, Guardare oltre la Grande Muraglia. 46 47

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inequalities as well as the persistence of authoritarianism were still the main hallmarks of the Italian Republic. Calamandrei’s words also show a relativist position about the necessary means to achieve certain ends. In fact, the reference that he made to civil rights is absolutely secondary in the sense that, in his view, the possibility of exerting those rights depended very much on their compatibility with the line of social progress, previously designed by the progressive elites in power. He had an extreme faith in absolute political power, when concentrated in the right hands. Such ideas are very distant from the tradition of liberalism, at least if one considers that modern constitutionalism essentially represents a discourse about the techniques that are necessary to divide and limit political power, not to concentrate it. The radicalization of the regime in 1958, the failure of the Communes as a productive and social experiment and, above all, the great famine of 1959–1961 put an end to the Chinese hopes of Italian intellectuals.49 The end of hopes occurred stealthily without serious reconsideration. For a while, Mao’s experiments even continued to be magnified. Ugo Spirito, a former fascist intellectual, probably thought that the Communes could embody his ancient dream of the “owning corporation”.50 Apparently, the Chinese “screen” did not revive only the old antifascist ideas, but also a fascist background that in post-war years had been transferred to the left. Curzio Malaparte, the famous Tuscan writer, also visited Beijing, finally finding the embodiment of his utopian thoughts.51 The end of this story can be placed in the reportages that Carlo Levi, the author of Cristo si è fermato a Eboli, wrote about China at the time of the Great Leap Forward.52 Later, the Chinese revolution became the political passion of the extreme left, within which some small Maoist minorities operated for a long time, even though this new radicalism left no significant heritage. As I have shown, a more significant chapter of Italian intellectual history was written during the 1950s when an imaginary China played an important role at the crossroads between the evolution of Italian foreign policy and the transformation of the political system. To cross the ideological frontiers of the Cold War was indeed a laudable purpose, even though such an initiative included a deep oblivion about China as it actually was.  On the Chinese famine, Dikötter, Mao’s Great Famine.  Spirito, Comunismo russo, pp. 76–77. 51  Malaparte, Io, in Russia e in Cina. 52  Levi, Buongiorno, Oriente. 49 50

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Dikötter, Frank, Mao’s Great Famine. The History of China’s Most Devastating Catastrophe, 1958–1962, London-Berlin-New York-Sidney: Bloomsbury (2011). Dikötter, Frank, The Tragedy of Liberation. A History of the Chinese Revolution 1945–1957, London-Berlin-New York-Sidney: Bloomsbury (2013). Domenach, Jean-Luc, Chine: l’archipel oublié, Paris: Fayard (1992). Ferruccio Parri, “Misure della nuova Cina”, in Il Ponte 12, No. 4 (1956) “Cina d’oggi”. Fortini, Franco, Asia maggiore. Viaggio nella Cina, Turin: Einaudi (1956). Furet, François, Le Passé d’une illusion. Essai sur l’idée communiste au XXe siècle, Paris: Editions Robert Laffont/Calmann-Lévy (1995). Galli della Loggia, Ernesto, Credere, tradire, vivere. Un viaggio negli anni della Repubblica, Bologna: Il Mulino (2016). Gleason, Abbott, Totalitarianism. The Inner history of the Cold War, New  York Oxford: Oxford University (1995). Gremion, Pierre, Intelligence de l’anticommunisme. Le Congrès pour la liberté de la culture à Paris 1950–1975, Paris: Fayard (1995). Halévy, Élie, L’ère des tyrannies, Paris: Gallimard (1938). Hollander, Paul, Political Pilgrims. Western Intellectuals in Search of the Good Society, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press (1981). Judt, Toni, Un passé imparfait. Les Intellectuels en France 1944–1956, Paris: Fayard (1992). Levi, Carlo, Buongiorno, Oriente. Reportages dall’India e dalla Cina, Rome: Donzelli (2014). Malaparte, Curzio, Io, in Russia e in Cina, Florence: Vallecchi (1958). Meneguzzi Rostagni, Carla, Diplomazia a più voci. La questione cinese nella politica estera italiana (1949–1971), in Carla Meneguzzi Rostagni e Guido Samarani (eds.), La Cina di Mao, l’Italia e l’Europa negli anni della Guerra fredda, Bologna: Il Mulino (2014), 17–54. Merleau Ponty, Maurice, Humanisme et Terreur. Essai sur le problème communiste, Paris: Gallimard (1980). Musatti, Cesare, Cina 1955, Comunità 35, vol. 9 (1955), 10–31. Nenni, Pietro, Tempo di guerra fredda. Diari 1943–1956, Milan: Sugarco (1981). Ory, Pascal and Sirinelli, Jean-François Les Intellectuels en France. De l’affaire Dreyfus à nos jours, Paris: Perrin (2002). Panzieri, Raniero, L’alternativa socialista. Scritti scelti 1944–1956, Turin: Einaudi (1982). Piccardi, Leopoldo Viaggio in Cina, Florence: Parenti (1960). Polese Remaggi, Luca, “Guerra fredda culturale. David Rousset, la Cicrc e l’inchiesta sul lavoro forzato nella Cina di Mao”, Ventunesimo secolo 36, 2015: 139–173.

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Sabbatucci, Giovanni, Il trasformismo come sistema. Saggio sulla storia politica dell’Italia unita, Bari: Laterza (2003). Samarani, Guido, Roma e Pechino negli altri della guerra fredda: il ruolo del centro studi per le relazioni economiche e culturali con la Cina, in Carla Meneguzzi Rostagni e Guido Samarani (eds.), La Cina di Mao, l’Italia e l’Europa negli anni della Guerra fredda, Bologna: Il Mulino (2014), 93–117. Scoppola, Pietro, La Repubblica dei partiti. Evoluzione e crisi di un sistema politico (1945–1996), Bologna: Il Mulino (1997). Spirito, Ugo, Comunismo russo e comunismo cinese, Florence: Sansoni (1962). Teiwes, Frederick C., Establishment and Consolidation of the New Regime in D. Twichett and J. K. Fairbank (eds.), Cambridge History of China, vol. XIV, The People’s Republic, part I, The Emergence of Revolutionary China 1949–1965, London-New York: Cambridge University Press (1987), 51–143. Westad, Odd Arne (ed.), Brothers in Arms: The Rise and Fall of the Sino-Soviet Alliance, 1945–1963, Stanford and Washington: Stanford University Press (1998). Winock, Michel, Le Siècle des intellectuels, Paris: Editions du Seuil (1999). Winock, Michel, Sartre et Aron. Deux intellectuels dans le siècle, Paris: Fayard (1995). Wittfogel, Karl A., Oriental Despotism. A Comparative Study of Total Power, New Haven: Yale University Press (1957). Zhang, Shu Guang, Economic Cold War. America’s embargo against China and the Sino-Soviet Alliance 1949–1963, Stanford: Stanford University Press (2001).

CHAPTER 3

Telling the Truth: From Socialist Toward Democratic Antifascism and Anti-­totalitarianism in the 1950s Marco Bresciani

3.1   Legacies of Giustizia e Libertà in the Cold War Italian politics and culture of the early 1950s constituted a magnetic field for multiple, bipolar forces, fueling contradictory, ambivalent, and paradoxical situations within the context of Western Europe. First, Italy, which had fought the Second World War in subordinated alliance with Germany and had been catastrophically defeated, represented one of the most heated borders of the Cold War after 1945 and accordingly became one of the main political and ideological battlegrounds in the new international context. The severe loss of national sovereignty, dramatically precipitated by the alliance of Mussolini with Hitler from the late 1930s to the mid-­ 1940s, was stabilized in different terms by the alliance with the United States and by Italy belonging to the Atlantic front in the post-war period. Second, in the country where fascism had been born and had risen to power for the first time, and had dominated for more than 20 years, anti-

M. Bresciani (*) Dipartimento di Scienze Sociali e Politiche, Università di Firenze, Florence, Italy © The Author(s) 2019 A. Tarquini, A. Guiso (eds.), Italian Intellectuals and International Politics, 1945–1992, Italian and Italian American Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-24938-0_3

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fascism still represented a major source of democratic legitimacy for the recently established Republican institutions (proclaimed in 1946), and especially for the socialist and communist forces. Third, in the country that was marked by the largest Communist Party in the Western world, anticommunism provided a different source of legitimacy, sometimes complementary, sometimes opposite to antifascism, and especially suitable for the Christian Democratic forces, which had led the government since 1948. As a consequence of its border position in the Cold War, Italy was particularly vulnerable to international tensions, crises, and conflicts between “East” and “West”, which deeply affected political and cultural debates. The question of communism in many ways dominated intellectual conversations, as well as political struggles and social conflicts, in the early post-­ war times. In this regard, in Italy, as elsewhere, 1956 represented a turning point. The “secret speech” of Khrushchev at the 20th Congress of the Soviet Communist Party, the uprisings of Poznan and Warsaw, the revolution of Budapest and of the whole of Hungary against Soviet rule marked an important shift in relations within the communist world, as well as between Eastern and Western Europe. Notably in Italy, that year marked a caesura for those communist members, especially intellectuals, who experienced from within the “trauma” of the secret speech of Khrushchev and decided to leave the Party, in the aftermath of the invasion of Hungary by the Warsaw Pact and of the subsequent repression of the Hungarian revolution. The attention for the impact of 1956 on the communist intellectuals has so far prevailed both in Italian and in international historiography. Accordingly, the interpretation of 1956, in the intellectual history of the twentieth century, has been especially inspired by communist or by ex-­ communist (then anticommunist) perspectives: the former advocated the idea of a radical turning point that had reformed Stalin’s regime, with the latter supposed to have discovered the “real” nature of the Soviet Union. Nevertheless, an interpretation that is exclusively based on the opposition between communism and anticommunism and is still shaped by the legacies of the Cold War is today partial and unilateral.1

1  For two opposite positions, see Furet, Il passato di un’illusione, 501 and Hobsbawm, 225. A different version of this chapter has been published as Bresciani, “Il 1956, l’antitotalitarismo e la tradizione antifascista tra Est e Ovest”, 241–259.

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This chapter, aiming at understanding the impact of the international policy of the 1950s on Italian culture and the creative reactions of a group of non-communist intellectuals from the Left, will try to address some crucial issues: Was it possible to be at the same time antifascist and anticommunist? In which forms and to what extent did the reflection on totalitarianism shape the reflection on fascism and communism? Last, but not the least, what were the political implications of anti-totalitarianism in the Italian and European context of the 1950s? In order to address these questions, this chapter will focus on the trajectories and positions of some former representatives of the antifascist revolutionary group of Giustizia e Libertà (GL), who had never been communist (with the notable exception of Leo Valiani, until 1939). Besides Valiani, this chapter will also deal with Franco Venturi, Aldo Garosci, and Nicola Chiaromonte. This intellectual environment was composed of a network of personal relationships dating back to the 1930s and strengthened by the experience of exile in Paris. Most of them, with the notable exception of Chiaromonte, took part in the Italian Resistance, with the Partito d’Azione (Pd’A) during the civil war of 1943–1945. All of them were inspired by deep mistrust in the means of modern organized politics, and especially in the political parties competing under the newly founded democratic Republic in post-1945 Italy. They were all persuaded that the legacies of the fascist experience still shaped the post-war political and institutional structures in many ways.2 Nevertheless, throughout the 1950s, they had some political experiences in Unità Popolare and in the Partito radicale. Both of them were peculiar forms of political association and were entitled to claim some ideal continuities with GL and the Pd’A. They directly questioned the political and ideological foundations of the major parties of the Left, Socialist and Communist, which were organically allied until 1956. Aldo Garosci took part in Unità Popolare, founded in 1953, while Valiani and Venturi actively followed its development, but never became members. This group, which was never successful at the political polls, aimed at combining liberalism and socialism, according to the legacy of GL and Pd’A. Nevertheless, its anti-totalitarian stance was exclusively directed against fascism and against other regimes that were understood and denounced as “fascist”, thus 2  For biographical information, see Ricciardi, Leo Valiani; Viarengo, Franco Venturi; Pipitone, Alla ricerca della libertà; Panizza, Nicola Chiaromonte. For the broader background, see Bresciani, Quale antifascismo?.

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excluding the Soviet Union or communist China. Valiani and Chiaromonte were involved in the constitution of the Partito Radicale in the mid-­ 1950s, aiming at asserting a secular form of State and to further civic rights.3 However, their politically organized experiences were less important than their contributions to the more general intellectual and public conversation. Therefore, it is necessary to shortly step back to their previous biographies, and especially to their membership of GL, when the issues of socialism, communism, and of revolution had shaped the agenda of their political and intellectual reflection and discussion. In the 1930s, Garosci and Venturi had approached Carlo Rosselli’s political perspective based on “liberal socialism”, but then they had followed different paths. The search for a new, hybrid form of socialism, carried out by Garosci, had been inspired by his personal experience of the Spanish civil war, when he had seen the Stalinist repressive methods in action. The crisis of the French Third Republic, the global expansion of fascism, and the outbreak of the Stalinist Great Terror had converted Garosci to liberal socialist positions, more and more critical of revolutionary action and conscious of its totalitarian potential. Venturi had started his own search for a new socialism (sometimes defined as communism) through the rethinking of the Enlightenment based on the concepts of “reason”, “energy”, and “enthusiasm”. After being fascinated by the Soviet experiment during his stay in Leningrad in early 1937, he had understood the tyrannical nature of the Stalinist system, without renouncing advocation of a different perspective of revolution. During the Second World War, he elaborated a concept of anti-totalitarian socialism, willing to adopt the Leninist model, in order to re-assert the principles of freedom and justice.4 In comparison with the experiences of Garosci and Venturi, the relations of Valiani and Chiaromonte with GL were more erratic (and at the same time in opposition with each other). Chiaromonte distinguished himself for a radically critical understanding of politics, which converged with that of Andrea Caffi, a European intellectual, who was born of an Italian family in the Russian empire and who had lived in exile in France for a long time.5 Not incidentally, in 1936, alongside Caffi, Chiaromonte 3  For these two political experiences and their relations to the legacy of GL and Pd’A, see Savino, La diaspora azionista, 301–316 and Colozza, Partigiani in borghese. 4  See Tortarolo, “L’esilio della libertà: Franco Venturi”, 89–114, and Graziosi, “Nazione, socialismo e cosmopolitismo”, 131–165. 5  See Caffi, Chiaromonte, “Cosa sperare?”, and Bresciani, “Socialism, Anti-Fascism and Anti-Totalitarianism,” 984–1003. For the biography of Caffi, see Bresciani, La rivoluzione perduta.

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had broken with the political perspective of Rosselli, as a consequence of multiple and deep divergences on the “Risorgimento”, on the meaning of the antifascist revolution, on the judgment of the Russian Revolutions and the Soviet Union. After his participation in the air brigade ruled by the pro-communist André Malraux during the early months of the Spanish civil war, he had come to terms with revolutionary politics and had re-­ thought the history of international socialism in the light of the problem of totalitarianism. Meanwhile, in the late 1930s, Garosci and Venturi had tightened their friendship with Valiani, who was still a communist at the time, but who had approached the heterodox Marxist environment of “Que Faire?”. Valiani, who had left the Italian Communist Party after the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact had been signed in August 1939, had kept on studying the history of international socialism and communism, tackling its structural contradictions between libertarian and totalitarian trends. He targeted a new revolutionary perspective, intertwining different international experiences (with special regard to the Soviets and the councils of 1919–1920), without accepting the identification of socialism with the Stalinist regime. Within the new post-1945 context, the common experience in GL, in spite of their different subsequent trajectories, contributed to pushing Venturi, Valiani, Garosci, and Chiaromonte toward positions that were irreducible to the geopolitical and ideological topography of the conflict between East and West, between capitalism and communism. The antifascist revolutionary legacy of GL went on being elaborated (in different ways) in order to try to conciliate the search for a new form of socialism and the analysis of totalitarianism. Important hints in that sense came from the French historian Elie Halévy (a friend of Carlo Rosselli) and from the anti-Stalinist literature of Yvon, Victor Serge, Ante Ciliga, and Georges Friedman. The positions of the former members of GL and of the Pd’A have often been described in terms of “third way” or “third force” in order to emphasize their distance from the binary logic of the Cold War. To be sure, though, they never accepted political equidistance between the Atlantic and the Soviet blocs. At the same time, against the politics of conflict between East and West, they opposed the need for a common intellectual European space understood as a precondition for a critical attitude and for a renewal of politics itself. Their reflections on socialism, communism, and revolution were deeply tied to the transformations of

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the Soviet Union. In order to understand the sense, the roots, and the implications of their reflections on 1956, it is thus necessary to go back to the impact of Stalin’s death in 1953.

3.2   After Stalin Just before Stalin’s death, international communism—a state power embodied by the Soviet Union, but extended to the entire Eurasian space, and a global political and social movement—seemed to be at the apex of its own power and prestige. As a winner of the Second World War, the Soviet Union, in spite of its split with Yugoslavia in 1948, seemed still to represent the undisputed model of socialism and communism. At the same time, it seemed to stand its ground against the American superpower and its allies in Western Europe, also thanks to nuclear weapons, without giving up efforts for conquering new spaces of influence and expansion. Nevertheless, the sudden death of Stalin, on 5 March 1953, opened up a completely new scenario, exacerbating the factors of latent or already current crisis of the Soviet imperial system and its political-ideological legitimacy.6 The protagonists of this chapter passionately followed the development of the events in post-Stalinist Eastern Europe and Soviet Union. The agenda of problems and perspectives was summarily outlined by Venturi in an article published in Il Ponte (the journal edited by the former group of the Pd’A in Florence) in April 1953. The historian was quite critical of the works claiming continuities between the late Tsarist monarchy and the Stalinist regime, but he was aware that deep reforms were urgently needed in the Soviet Union.7 Venturi published his work Populismo russo in 1952, just a few months before Stalin’s death, but he had conceived and written it in the previous context of the triumphant Stalinism. According to his Foreword, Venturi’s book dealt with the common background of the forces that had led to the “revolution of 1917”: he thought that it was necessary to look at that background in order to understand “the latest developments of Russian socialism”.8 Obviously, the “latest developments”, at the moment when he signed the Foreword, coincided with the last days of Stalin’s regime.  See Pons, La rivoluzione globale, 264–268.  Venturi, “Domande e speranze”, 452, 453. 8  Venturi, Il populismo russo, XV–XVI. 6 7

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Nevertheless, from the very day after Stalin’s death, in a letter to Valiani, Venturi reminded him of the “compelling modernity” of the “eternal populism”, now understood in a sense which was if not anti-Stalinist yet, surely already post-Stalinist. As a matter of fact, Venturi hoped that the end of Stalin’s dictatorship might create conditions in which “to do something” in the USSR.9 He increasingly focused on a new, fundamental distinction. Much more than he suggested in Populismo russo, Venturi emphasized the “importance of clearly detaching the problem of the formation of the intelligencija and the problem of the formation of the revolutionary movement, obviously envisaging the relations between these two facts and the importance of the reciprocate relation with one another”.10 Whereas until then he had especially paid attention to the formation of the revolutionary movement (under the suggestion of the experiences of the antifascist conspiracy and Resistance), he had now shifted his focus to the formation of the intelligencija.11 In this regard, the nineteenth-­ century Russian intellectual tradition provided post-Stalinist Soviet Union (and post-fascist European society) with a model of agency that promised slow but deep transformations. Differently from Venturi, Valiani, who had been a communist, had started a path of rethinking of his political activism during the Second World War, even though his perspective of “democratic revolution” was not exempt of persistent, but contradictory links with the anti-Stalinist dissent. He thus saw in the process of destalinization the posthumous victory of the anti-Stalinist opposition over “the Stalinist iron age”. However, according to him, Stalin had conquered power “by barbarian methods”, “ruthlessness”, and “even savagery”, even though his power was grounded “on the basically modern intuition of the primacy of the concrete, economic, and administrative problems and of the collective sacrifices that their solution requires”, rather than on the extremist search for abstract ideological positions.12 Differently from Venturi and Valiani, Garosci, after his participation in the Italian civil war of 1943–1945, had completely renounced the perspective of revolutionary politics on the basis of his judgment of totalitari Letter of Venturi to Valiani, 6 March 1953, in Valiani, Venturi, Lettere, 111.  Lettera di Venturi a Valiani, 5 July 1953, in Valiani, Venturi, Lettere, 120. 11  See Masoero, “Il partigiano e il cosacco”, 463–494 and Masoero, “Rileggendo Il populismo russo”, 853–868. 12  Valiani, “Stalin e la via italiana”. 9

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anism based on the Soviet experience. More radically than his former fellows in GL, Garosci, who had elaborated a clear-cut vision of totalitarianism after his traumatic experiences in the Spanish civil war, since the late 1930s, denounced the “mythical power” of Stalin. Rather than being a mere byproduct of Soviet propaganda, the creation of that myth, differently from that of Lenin, had been “a bloody thing”, which had gone hand in hand with the almost complete suppression of the revolutionary intelligencija. From Garosci’s point of view, “acts of violence carried out against truth” always implied “the mutilation of the social body”.13 Chiaromonte’s analysis of totalitarianism was similar to that of Garosci, but differently from his former fellow in GL, Chiaromonte was more directly and blatantly involved in the “cultural Cold War” on the Atlantic side in collaboration with the network of the Congress for the Freedom of Culture. His critical reflection on communism and Marxism had progressively turned itself into a complete rejection of socialism, even though his position was far from those of the most intransigent cold warriors such as Arthur Koestler. Chiaromonte published one of his most famous essays, “Il tempo della malafede”, in Il Ponte in 1952. Drawing upon his readings and connections with French intellectuals such as the sociologists Raymond Aron and Jules Monnerot, the writers and philosophers Albert Camus and Georges Caillois, Chiaromonte elaborated a morphological analysis in order to explain the common pattern of the modern “political religions”, such as fascism, Nazism, and communism. The catastrophe of 1914–1918 had provoked the advent of the ideologies aiming to transform the cultural “nihilism” into political radicalism. According to him, these ideologies, appealing to the masses, were made up of “illusion” or “fiction”.14

3.3   The “Secret Speech” and Western Intellectuals As is well known, the “secret speech”, which was presented by Khrushchev at the closed-door session of the 20th Congress of the Soviet Communist Party held on 20 February 1956, emerged almost immediately, but it was spread worldwide only in June. It provoked trauma and bewilderment in the communist world (somewhat similarly to the RibbentropMolotov Pact in 1939). In the non-communist Left, the Congress was  Garosci, “Il Nume senza eredi”.  Chiaromonte, “Il tempo della malafede”, 1237–124.

13 14

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considered as an important moment in the evolution of the post-Stalinist Soviet Union and of communist parties all over the world, but it was not read as such as a revelation of the nature—already well known—of communism. Differently from other commentators, Garosci focused more on the content than on the impact of Khrushchev’s speech in a tense essay titled “Kruscev e il silenzio degli intellettuali” in Tempo presente, the journal founded by Chiaromonte and Ignazio Silone in 1956. Garosci’s target was to check the real novelties of the speech on the basis of the previous information and interpretations of the Soviet experience, to understand the meanings and implications of the “return to Lenin”, and to verify the potentials of renewal of Leninism in the post-Stalinist context.15 First of all, Garosci noticed the correspondence between the self-alleged “revelations” of Khrushchev and the wide literature of the “heretics of communism” (with special regard to Victor Serge, Destin d’une révolution, 1917–1937, and Alfred Rosmer, Moscou au temps de Lenine). The substantial content of the “secret speech” was already known to all the critics of Stalin’s regime.16 In this regard, Khrushchev’s speech—notably, the antithesis between Lenin and Stalin—was inspired by the “arsenal of opposition”.17 Second, Garosci invited rejection of the idea that the “return to Leninism” might somewhat constitute “a return to democracy”. Garosci echoed some important discourse elaborated during the Resistance concerning the past and future of European socialism and its interplay with the Soviet experience. Garosci maintained that Stalin had consumed “the last supplies of utopianism that Lenin still kept” and had imposed “the brutal logic of politics”.18 Immediately after the 20th Congress, when some leaks of Khrushchev’s speech began to circulate, Valiani wrote to Venturi that he considered “the liberal element” of his critical position toward Stalinism more important than the “socialist one”, although he kept on thinking that a “liberal element” inspired even the political thought of Lenin “unconsciously”.19 In Valiani’s political position, the meaning of “liberal” and that of “revolutionary” kept on influencing each other, sometimes  Garosci, “Kruscev e il silenzio degli intellettuali”, 269–278.  Garosci, “Kruscev”, 271. 17  Garosci, “Kruscev”, 273. 18  Garosci, “Kruscev”, 276–277. 19  Letter to Valiani and Venturi, 20 February 1956, in Valiani, Venturi, Lettere, 198–199. 15 16

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overlapping each other. In the liberal journal Il Mondo, Valiani promoted a wide discussion of the “secret speech” and of its implications, starting from Darkness at Noon, the autobiographical work that the Hungarian journalist writer and former communist Arthur Koestler had composed in the French concentration camp of Le Vernet in fall 1939.20 Valiani, who was also detained at Le Vernet, was the first to read the manuscript, which told of the disillusion of communism and conveyed the gloomy sense of the “epoch of totalitarianism”. However, he added that in the previous decades the Hegelian faith in History had often suggested the idea that the “horrors” of Stalin’s dictatorship might lead to socially progressive targets. Quite the contrary, now he reduced judgment of Stalin to a case of conscience, to a moral question, that Khrushchev’s speech had made relevant for everyone.21 Some important differences emerged in the assessments of Garosci and Valiani concerning the “secret speech” and its implications: the former seized the occasion to come to terms with the Western intellectuals’ long-­ lasting and prevailing attitudes of sympathy, indulgence, and participation in the Soviet experiment; the latter tried to distinguish the moral judgment of the crimes of Stalin and the political justification of the Soviet policies, based on faith in action. In this regard, Venturi seemed to be closer to Valiani than to Garosci. While speaking at a conference in Genoa in July 1956, he invited thus to re-read the Paradosso dello spirito russo by Piero Gobetti, a small book published posthumously in 1926. In fact, in spite of his youthful naivety, Gobetti had explained how “to look at the Russian drama in all its width”, “to go back to the source and try to understand what is happening in that country”. In the early post-war period, the interpretation of the Russian revolutionary experiences was deeply tied to the interest in Russian culture, literature, and society. According to Venturi, even more than Gobetti, Leone Ginzburg, born in Odessa, in the Russian empire in 1909, had tried to connect the Italian and Russian cultures in the interwar period: a member of GL and then of the Pd’A, he had been arrested and killed in prison by the Gestapo in February 1944.22 Four years earlier, Venturi had dedicated Populismo russo to Leone Ginzburg himself, considered as a new and original embodiment 20  Valiani, “Koestler e io nel campo di concentramento”, in Koestler, Schiuma della terra, 249–260. 21  Valiani, “La forza della verità”. 22  Venturi, “Allargare il dibattito”.

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of the “animus of the narodnik” (that is of the conspirator and rebel).23 However, the meaning of the reference to Ginzburg had changed in 1956: he had become the embodiment of the soul of the intelligencija. Not incidentally, in the same years Venturi distanced himself from his own passionate judgment of Leninism which had characterized his writings during the Second World War and had inspired his antifascist activism. His writings on the history of socialism and communism, composed between 1939 and 1943, had presented a significant acknowledgment of Lenin as a partisan of a new and energetic conception of politics.24 In the context of the Soviet debate on the “return to Lenin”, Venturi adopted a different position. Whereas Leninism constituted “the attraction of an original energy and purity”, able to answer “the will of justice” of the young generations, it was no longer able to implement the instance of “the organization of freedom”. Nonetheless, Venturi, careful to detect the post-Stalinist divisions and fights within the Soviet ruling class, argued that the need for a “return to the principles of Lenin” unfolded the crisis of the regime itself. He was convinced that Stalin’s death had put an end to the history of the USSR as part of the history of European socialism and communism and had brought to the surface the longer history of Russia.25 Instead Valiani’s reflection about the structural problems of the Soviet Union kept on being carried out within the history of international socialism and communism. It was his conviction that the USSR’s and Eastern Europe’s contradictory steps were made “on the way to liberalization”. In his opinion, the “return to Lenin” should mean a return to the free pluralism both within the Communist Party and the Soviet system, which had marked the Bolshevik regime since 1920. Meanwhile, Valiani looked favorably at the ideological revision of Italian socialism within a liberal perspective, heir to Carlo Rosselli’s thought.26 His reflection over Khrushchev’s speech and the ensuing developments in Eastern Europe pushed Valiani to overcome the persistent contradictions between the revolutionary perspective and the liberal one. His position, alongside those of Venturi, Garosci, and Chiaromonte, underwent further adjustments through the Hungarian insurrection and the Soviet repression, in the autumn of 1956.  Venturi, Il populismo russo, vol. I, 1163.  See Venturi, Comunismo e socialismo. 25  Venturi, “Allargare il dibattito”. 26  Valiani, “Bilancio provvisorio”. 23 24

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3.4   The Insurrection of Budapest and Its Consequences The dramatic knot of dilemmas and contradictions that had shaped the political development of the post-Stalinist Soviet Union reached the point of no return with the reformist effort of Imre Nagy’s government in Hungary, the ensuing Soviet intervention, the revolt of Budapest, and the armed repression by the Warsaw Pact. Nevertheless, Venturi was convinced that the USSR had shifted from a totalitarian to a post-totalitarian stance, and the first step in the post-totalitarian direction had been made thanks to the revolt in the gulag of Vorkuta, in 1953, just after Stalin’s death. According to Venturi, the revolution of Budapest had had “one of its points of origin, one of its sources” in the “slow movement” of the Soviet intelligencija pleading for a “return to Lenin”. However, the heroism and the radicalism of the Hungarian insurrection—the “culminating moment of the anti-Stalinist revolution”—could be compared only to “the highest peaks of European Resistance”.27 In this perspective, antifascism and anti-Stalinism, Resistance and anti-­ totalitarianism found a moment of convergence, if not of identification. Not incidentally, in the November issue of Resistenza, a periodical published in Turin and stemming from the tradition of GL and Pd’A, Garosci invited the communists, who had played a major role in the antifascist struggle, to take position in favor of the Hungarian uprising. The very same conception of freedom that had supported the antifascist struggle in Italy had now to turn itself against the communist ideology, which had turned out to be inconsistent with the “ideals of faith in justice and freedom”.28 The same issue of Resistenza published a manifesto “Per la libertà dell’Ungheria”, which condemned “the unjustifiable aggression carried out by the USSR against the Hungarian people” and claimed democratic freedom for Eastern Europe.29 Much more than Venturi, Garosci, and Chiaromonte, the Hungarian insurrection and the Soviet repression shocked Valiani, who was born in Fiume in 1909 (when it was still under the sovereignty of the Hungarian kingdom in the Habsburg imperial framework), who spoke Hungarian and knew the culture and history of Hungary deeply. Valiani a­ cknowledged  Venturi, “Sangue per la libertà”.  A.G. [Aldo Garosci], “Libertà”. 29  “Libertà per l’Ungheria”. 27 28

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that the Hungarian revolutions of 1848–1949, of 1919, and of 1956 shared a common truly “popular” form and a similar ruinous outcome.30 The positions of Venturi, Valiani, Garosci, and Chiaromonte were elaborated in direct or indirect connection with those intellectual, transnational networks that had been built in exile in the interwar years (but not only). In particular, the journal Tempo presente belonged to the series of cultural and editorial experiences close to the Congress for the Freedom of Culture, such as Preuves, Encounter, and Kultura, mobilizing intellectuals such as Raymond Aron, Albert Camus, François Bondy, Manès Sperber, Hannah Arendt, Arthur Koestler, Karl Jaspers, and Isaiah Berlin. A significant contribution was also provided by writers and historians coming from Eastern Europe, who especially published in Il Mondo, Tempo presente, and L’Espresso. For instance, Gustaw Herling, a Polish writer exiled in Naples and author of the well-known memoir of his experience in the Soviet gulag (A World Apart published in 1951), had ties with Valiani, Venturi, and especially Chiaromonte, and extensively contributed to Tempo presente. Notably, he rejected with decision the definition of the Hungarian revolution as “reactionary”, claiming instead its “popular, even universal” nature.31 Additionally, François Fejtö, a Hungarian historian exiled in Paris, presented documents and sources in order to better understand what had happened in Eastern Europe, and especially in Hungary. After a short membership of the Communist Party, he had reached a social-democratic position, but kept on following the debates on the Marxist revisionism. Thanks to his collaboration with Valiani and Chiaromonte, he published a significant report on the Hungarian revolution32 in Tempo presente. Between December 1956 and January 1957, Tempo presente conducted a series of interviews concerning the problem of truth, the sense of politics, and the role of intellectuals. The events of 1956 had forced the intellectuals to face the dramatic alternative between “telling the truth” and “subordinating the expression of this truth to this or that criterion of political opportunity”.33 Venturi stressed the intellectual’s independence from parties, the State and the Church as an assumption of a serious search for truth. Referring to the model of the nineteenth-century Russian  Valiani, “La terza rivoluzione ungherese”, 1–6.  Herling, “Due rivoluzioni”, 587–592. 32  Fejtö, “La rivoluzione ungherese”, 345–357. 33  “Tre domande agli intellettuali”, 690. 30 31

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­intelligencija, “in order to act in politics”, Venturi claimed a “minimum spark of revolt”, a “minimum desire for asserting truth and reason”, and a “minimum will to take sides with the oppressed and not with the oppressors”. From this point of view, the “soul of Resistance”, which emerged “in heroic forms” from the Hungarian revolution, laid the foundations for practices based on “the will for truth”.34 In the conclusion of his survey, Chiaromonte acknowledged that the figure of the intellectual had deeply changed, from partisan of reasons for dissent and revolution to supporter of the reasons for conformism and for the state. The divorce between the intellectual activity and the search for truth had been provoked by the advent of modern politics, asking the intellectuals to speak “the language of the cleric certain of his God and of his Church”.35 Venturi looked back to the categories of the Enlightenment such as “revolt”, “enthusiasm”, and “cosmopolitanism” in order to give a future to the relationship between intellectuals and politics, without dismissing his radical critique of the totalitarian projects and experiments such as the Soviet one. Instead Chiaromonte maintained that the modern structure of politics, based on the state sovereignty and bureaucracy, as well as on mass violence, closed any possible independent space for the critical activity of intellectuals. The role of the intellectuals and the sense of politics within the European crisis of the 1930s had been at the core of a polemic within GL between Carlo Rosselli, Venturi, and Garosci on the one hand, and Caffi, Chiaromonte, Mario Levi, and Renzo Giua on the other. This polemic ended up with the definitive break of the latter with GL in 1936. Chiaromonte then kept on confronting himself with Caffi, who elaborated astute analyses of the Second World War, of Soviet communism and of the whole era started by the outbreak of the First World War and shaped by total violence. Nevertheless, at the apex of the Cold War, their friendship froze because of apparent divergences about not only Chiaromonte’s pro-­ Western choice, but also their opposite assessment of socialism, Marxism and the role of the international working-class movement in history.36 Chiaromonte devoted several pages of Tempo presente to unpublished remarks and the letters of Caffi, after he died in 1955, but he avoided bringing to light their deep dissent which had overshadowed their last  Venturi, in “Tre domande agli intellettuali”, 707–708.  Chiaromonte, “Commento all’inchiesta ‘Tre domande agli intellettuali’”, 99–103. 36  Caffi, Chiaromonte, “Cosa sperare?”, 498–554. 34 35

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years of friendship. The contradictory meaning of his posthumous ­“dialogue” with Caffi emerged from his exchange with Hannah Arendt, whom Chiaromonte had met during his American exile in the 1940s. Arendt had followed with great passion the Hungarian revolution and published a significant essay in 1958: Totalitarian Imperialism: Reflections on the Hungarian Revolution.37 In a letter, Chiaromonte wrote her that he had particularly appreciated her attention to the role played by the revolutionary councils in the insurrection of Budapest.38 Some months later, Arendt published the important essay The Human Condition, focusing on the philosophical and political issues of “doing” and “acting”. In his sympathetic review of this work, published in Tempo presente in 1958, Chiaromonte remarked that some of Arendt’s considerations converged “through their own way” with those of Caffi.39 On the one hand, the willingness of Chiaromonte to claim the example of the Hungarian revolutionary councils contributed to enrich his own critique of the political religions, which had been pointed out at the apex of the Cold War, at the moment of his break with Caffi. On the other hand, the notion of sociabilité elaborated by Caffi allowed Chiaromonte to take into account a form of action alternative to mass action, by avoiding any binding reference to the concrete experiences of the working-class movement, as well as to socialism and communism.

3.5   Post-1989 Echoes In the period after the end of the Cold War, marked by the post-­Communist transition in Eastern Europe and by the exhaustion of the long European post-war period, anti-totalitarianism was often perceived, analyzed, or propagandized in terms of opposition or inconsistency with antifascism. As a kind of posthumous re-edition of the Cold War liberalism, anti-­ totalitarianism in the 1990s was mostly understood as a variation of anticommunism, and accordingly conceived of as an exclusive means for coming to terms with the communist and Soviet experiences in the 37  The essay, originally published in the Journal of Politics, then appeared as the epilogue to the second edition of Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, in 1958: it was not included in the Italian translation of 1967. 38  Arendt Papers, 031108, Rome, 11 June 1958, quoted by Carlucci, “Intellettuali nel Novecento”, 15. 39  Chiaromonte, “Libri”, 812–814. The reference is to Arendt, The Human Condition, 218–220.

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twentieth century. To be sure, however, relations between antifascism, ­anti-­totalitarianism, and anticommunism had been much more complex and subtle than had been deemed in the years following the fall of the Berlin Wall. Quite conscious of the political novelties provoked by the events of 1956, Venturi, Valiani, Garosci, and Chiaromonte intended to construct, from different, but convergent points of view, a sense of intellectual continuity. The transformations of the post-Stalinist Soviet world, the discussion about Stalin and Lenin, the expectations and the tragedies of the Hungarian revolution allowed resumption of the discussion about socialism and communism, antifascism, and anti-totalitarianism, in the light of the legacies of GL. These elaborations and itineraries did not transform themselves into newly organized political parties but contributed to re-­ frame the political and intellectual debate in two directions. On the one hand, Venturi, Valiani, Garosci, and Chiaromonte elaborated a hybridization of liberalism and socialism, starting from the experiences of revolutionary antifascism and outlining the perspective of an anti-totalitarianism that aimed at a new legitimacy of the constitutional democracy. On the other hand, their transnational connections and perspectives of the East Central European intellectuals, by taking vantage of the special Italian geopolitical position in the 1950s, contributed to open up a European space of conversation, well beyond the Cold War East/West divide. In both regards, their inquiry into the intellectual foundations of a new politics—which was first of all a search for truth—critically came to terms with the tragic experiences in the recent past and their echoes in the present, but at the same time tried to pave the way to a civil and decent progress of Europe, as modest and gradual as it might be.

Bibliography Arendt, Hannah. The Human Condition. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1958. Arendt, Hannah. The Origins of Totalitarianism, London: Allen & Unwin, 1958. Bresciani, Marco. La rivoluzione perduta. Andrea Caffi nell’Europa del Novecento. Bologna: Il Mulino, 2009. Bresciani, Marco. “Socialism, Anti-Fascism and Anti-Totalitarianism: The Intellectual Dialogue (and Discord) between Andrea Caffi and Nicola Chiaromonte.” History of European Ideas 40 (7, 2014), 984–1003.

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Bresciani, Marco. “Il 1956, l’antitotalitarismo e la tradizione antifascista tra Est e Ovest.” In Annali della Fondazione U. La Malfa. Edited by Flores, Marcello, 2016, 241–259. Bresciani, Marco. Quale antifascismo? Storia di Giustizia e Libertà. Rome: Carocci, 2017. Caffi, Andrea, and Chiaromonte, Nicola. “Cosa sperare?”. La corrispondenza tra Andrea Caffi e Nicola Chiaromonte: un dialogo sulla rivoluzione (1932–1955). Edited and with an introduction by Bresciani, Marco. Naples: INSMLI, ESI, 2012. Carlucci, Paola. “Intellettuali nel Novecento: il confronto di Nicola Chiaromonte con Hannah Arendt.” Ricerche di storia politica (April 2011). Chiaromonte, Nicola. “Il tempo della malafede.” Il Ponte (September 1952), 1237–1242. Chiaromonte, Nicola. “Commento all’inchiesta ‘Tre domande agli intellettuali’.” Tempo presente (February 1957), 99–103. Chiaromonte, Nicola. “Libri. Che cosa stiamo facendo?” Tempo presente (September–October 1958), 812–814. Colozza, Roberto. Partigiani in borghese. Unità Popolare nell’Italia del dopoguerra. Milan: FrancoAngeli, 2015. Fejtö, François. “La rivoluzione ungherese spiegata da chi l’ha fatta.” Tempo presente (May 1957), 345–357. Furet, François. Il passato di un’illusione. L’idea comunista nel 20. secolo. Milan: A. Mondadori, 1995. Garosci, Aldo. “Il Nume senza eredi.” Il Mondo (14 March 1953). Garosci, Aldo. “Kruscev e il silenzio degli intellettuali.” Tempo Presente (July 1956), 269–278. A.G. [Garosci, Aldo], “Libertà.” Resistenza, November 1956. Graziosi, Aldo. “Nazione, socialismo e cosmopolitismo. L’Unione Sovietica nell’evoluzione di Franco Venturi.” In Franco Venturi e la Russia. Con documenti inediti, ed. Venturi, Antonello, Milan: Feltrinelli, 2006, 131–165. Herling, Gustaw. “Due rivoluzioni: Varsavia e Budapest.” Tempo presente (November 1956), 587–592. Hobsbawm, Eric J. Anni interessanti: autobiografia di uno storico. Milan: Rizzoli, 2002. “Libertà per l’Ungheria.” Resistenza (November 1956). Masoero, Alberto. “Il partigiano e il cosacco. Franco Venturi, Herzen e l’Unione Sovietica (1952–1962).” In Franco Venturi e la Russia. Con documenti inediti, ed. Venturi, Antonello. Milan: Feltrinelli, 2006, 463–494. Masoero, Alberto. “Rileggendo Il populismo russo di Franco Venturi.” Rivista storica italiana CXXVII (3, 2015), 853–868. Panizza, Cesare. Nicola Chiaromonte. Una biografia. Rome: Donzelli, 2017.

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Pipitone, Daniele. Alla ricerca della libertà. Vita di Aldo Garosci. Milan: FrancoAngeli, 2017. Pons, Silvio. La rivoluzione globale. Storia del comunismo internazionale, 1917–1991. Turin: Einaudi, 2012. Ricciardi, Andrea. Leo Valiani. Gli anni della formazione. Tra socialismo, comunismo e rivoluzione democratica, Milan: FrancoAngeli, 2007. Savino, Elena. La diaspora azionista. Dalla Resistenza alla nascita del Partito radicale. Milan: FrancoAngeli, 2010. Tortarolo, Edoardo. “L’esilio della libertà: Franco Venturi.” In Il coraggio della ragione. Franco Venturi intellettuale e storico cosmopolita. Edited by Guerci, Luciano and Ricuperati, Giuseppe. Turin: Fondazione Einaudi, 1998, 89–114. Valiani, Leo. “Stalin e la via italiana.” Il Mondo (6 March 1956). Valiani, Leo. “La forza della verità.” Il Mondo (26 June 1956). Valiani, Leo. “Bilancio provvisorio.” Il Mondo (28 August 1956). Valiani, Leo. “La terza rivoluzione ungherese.” Tempo presente (January 1957), 1–6. Valiani, Leo. “Koestler e io nel campo di concentramento.” In Koestler, Arthur. Schiuma della terra. Bologna: Il Mulino, 1989, 249–260. Valiani, Leo, and Venturi, Franco. Lettere 1943–1979. Edited by Tortarolo, Edoardo. Scandicci: La nuova Italia, 1999. Venturi, Franco in Venturi, Franco La lotta per la libertà: scritti politici, saggi introduttivi di V.  Foa e A.  Galante Garrone. Edited by Casalino, Leonardo. Turin: Einaudi, 1996. Venturi, Franco. “Domande e speranze.” Il Ponte (April 1953), 452–453. Venturi, Franco. Il populismo russo, Einaudi, Torino 1952, vol. 1. Venturi, Franco. “Allargare il dibattito.” Il Mondo (24 July 1956). Venturi, Franco. “Sangue per la libertà.” Il Mondo (6 November 1956). Venturi, Franco in Tre domande agli intellettuali, “Tempo presente” December 1956, 707–708. Venturi, Franco. Comunismo e socialismo. Storia di un’idea. Edited by Albertone, Manuela, Steila, Daniela, Tortarolo, Edoardo, Venturi, Antonello. Turin: Università degli Studi di Torino, 2014. Viarengo, Adriano. Franco Venturi. Politica e storia nel Novecento. Rome: Carocci, 2014.

CHAPTER 4

Il Mulino and the East-West Ideological Confrontation: From Destalinization to 1968 Donatello Aramini and Laura Ciglioni

4.1   A Modern and Pragmatic Laboratory Founded in 1951 on the initiative of young graduates from the University of Bologna,1 the journal Il Mulino was launched during “the harshest phase of Cold War”,2 but also in that climate of cultural renewal, marked

Donatello Aramini is the author of the first and second sections, while Laura Ciglioni is the author of the third and fourth sections. 1  The group would remain remarkably stable for at least 15 years. The group was founded by Pier Luigi Contessi (who also became the first director of Il Mulino), Fabio Luca Cavazza, Francesco Compagna, Gian Luigi Degli Esposti, Renato Giordano, Gino Giugni, Nicola Matteucci, Federico Mancini, Luigi Pedrazzi, Ezio Raimondi, Mario Saccenti and Antonio Santucci. 2  Massimo Teodori, Storia dei laici nell’Italia clericale e comunista (Venice: Marsilio, 2008), 182.

D. Aramini (*) Università degli Studi Roma Tre, Rome, Italy L. Ciglioni (*) Sapienza Università di Roma, Rome, Italy IES Abroad, Rome, Italy © The Author(s) 2019 A. Tarquini, A. Guiso (eds.), Italian Intellectuals and International Politics, 1945–1992, Italian and Italian American Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-24938-0_4

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by the flourishing of a number of important political, cultural and literary journals, which characterized the early post-war years in Italy.3 From the moment of its foundation, Il Mulino was characterized by the participation of young people from very different cultural backgrounds, who—as the journal’s founders sustained—were Liberal but not liberalist; Catholic but not integralisti (integralists); reformist and democratic socialists.4 The journal therefore represented, as one of the first “mulinisti” put it, “a strange subject” in the Italian cultural and political context of that time.5 Which were Il Mulino’s intentions and objectives? The journal wanted to favor a “constant and open dialogue”,6 based on a cultural model inspired by pragmatism and neopositivism.7 In that sense, the “mulinisti” considered themselves the voice of a new generation. This self-defined post-fascist generation wanted to move beyond antifascism—considered one of the forces responsible for the legitimization of communism—in order to advance in the name of anti-totalitarianism and foster Italy’s further integration into the economic, political and military structures of the West and its establishment as a modern constitutional state.8 According to the journal’s young editors, it would thus be possible to overcome the ideological juxtaposition present in the Italian cultural debate and to spread a pragmatic and realistic vision according to which culture would 3  Bruno Bongiovanni, “Gli intellettuali, la cultura e i miti del dopoguerra”, in Storia d’Italia. V.  La Repubblica 1943–1963, eds. Giovanni Sabbatucci and Vittorio Vidotto (Rome-Bari: Laterza, 2002), 513–20. 4  On the history of the journal, see above all: Giuliana Iurlano, “La cultura liberale americana in Italia: “Il Mulino” (1951–1969)”, Nuova Rivista Storica 67, no. 5–6 (December 1983): 671–706; Barbara Covili, “La ricostruzione democratica nella riflessione dei giovani de ‘Il Mulino’”, in La formazione della classe politica in Europa (1945–1956), eds. Giovanni Orsina and Gaetano Quagliariello (Manduria: Lacaita, 2000), 497–533; Marzia Maccaferri, “Intellettuali italiani fra società opulenta e democrazia del benessere: il caso de Il Mulino”, Mondo contemporaneo 5, no. 1 (April 2009): 45–77; Marzia Maccaferri, “Intellectuals, Journals, and the Legitimisation of Political Power: the Case of the Italian Intellectual Group of Il Mulino (1950s and 1960s)”, Modern Italy 21, no. 2 (May 2016): 185–217. 5  Romano Prodi, “Un ricordo di Luigi Pedrazzi”, no. 2 (April 2017): 697–8 (when not otherwise specified, the articles cited are from Il Mulino). 6  Pier Luigi Contessi, “Editoriale”, no. 3 (May 25, 1951): 2. 7  Nicola Matteucci and Luigi Pedrazzi, “Filosofia americana e filosofia europea”, no. 2 (December 1951): 87–90. 8  Luca Polese Remaggi, “I ‘taciti accordi tra maggioranza e opposizione’. Nicola Matteucci e la crisi del sistema politico italiano (1968–1979)”, in Gli intellettuali nella crisi della Repubblica 1968–1980, eds. Ermanno Taviani and Giuseppe Vacca (Rome: Viella, 2016), 149–50.

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have a social function.9 In opposition to an emerging process of anti-­ intellectualism, the journal believed intellectuals had a major role to play, as both technical advisors who could contribute to the expansion of the welfare society and as a bridge between the elite and the rest of society; open to the new social sciences, they would elaborate the ideas that would provide the foundations of political action.10 Such an approach, which drew on Italian neo-illuminist philosophy,11 was affected by a broader debate, present in certain areas of Western culture during the post-war period, influenced by both the “end-of-ideologies” thesis and Raymond Aron’s12 well-known analysis of how the post-war period saw the stabilization and establishment of mixed regimes, in which market and planning, private and public property were all mixed together.13 The interests of Il Mulino’s editors soon extended to other organizations and activities, which were added to the journal and integrated over the years into the complex “group” structure, such as the eponymous publishing house, founded in 1954 and specialized in social science volumes, and the Associazione di studi e ricerche Carlo Cattaneo, founded in 1956 and specialized in empirical economic and social research. With such a cultural project, Il Mulino became a firm supporter of the “Opening to the left” (i.e. the inclusion of Pietro Nenni’s Socialist party in the government): a political operation which, with its prolonged and complicated preparation (domestic and international), occupied center stage in Italian politics during the second half of the 1950s–early 1960s. Il Mulino’s aim was to enable the encounter between Liberals, Catholics and reformist Socialists (the very political cultures that the journal was founded on) and to achieve—following the ideas of Joseph Schumpeter and most importantly John Dewey—a rational democracy, an empiricist vision of democracy, understood as a method of coexistence and a continuous, dynamic and expansive process based on freedom of discussion, pluralism and self-correction, on a continuous exchange between the elite, citizens 9  “Relazione introduttiva”, in Primo convegno amici e collaboratori del “Mulino” (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1954), 22. 10  Nicola Matteucci, “Cultura e politica”, no. 4 (April 1952): 161–8. 11  Massimo Ferrari, “Origini e motivi del neoilluminismo italiano tra il dopoguerra e gli anni Cinquanta”, Rivista di storia della filosofia 2, first section no. 3 (September 1985): 531–48; second section no. 4 (December 1985): 749–67. 12  See Raymond Aron, L’opium des intellectuels (Paris: Calmann-Levy, 1955). 13  Lucia Bonfreschi, Raymond Aron e il gollismo 1940–1969 (Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino, 2014), 305–12.

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and free associations.14 According to them, that was the only model capable of breaking through the immobility of Italian politics and of providing a serious, liberal competition to the Communist party. Il Mulino group— especially some of its members—became active protagonists, to some degree, of that political phase and of the emergence of the first center-left governments in the 1960s. Not only were they opinion molders, but, thanks to their developed network of connections and contacts in the Italian and American political and social circles,15 they became actors involved in the complex diplomatic relations between the United States and Italy.16 With its values and its openness toward the international scene, the journal became an intellectual test lab that was attentive to the dynamics and issues of foreign politics. Indeed, some of the international events of the 1950s (Stalin’s death, the Thaw, the emergence of a phase of collective leadership in the Soviet Union, the beginning of the process of European unification, and, most of all, the XX Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) and the Hungarian crisis of 1956) seemed to have created the right conditions for the very policies that Il Mulino promoted, that is, the expansion of economic welfare and political participation—themes which were at the center of an important debate on the concept of “affluence” on both sides of the Atlantic ocean.17 Faced with Soviet strategies aimed at integrating light industry and agriculture with heavy industry in the name of modernizing society,18 Il 14  See David Held, Models of Democracy (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2006), Italian trans. Modelli di democrazia, trans. Umberto Livini and Luca Verzichelli (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1996), 249–306; Stefano Petrucciani, Modelli di filosofia politica (Turin: Einaudi, 2003), 197–203. 15  The group received funds for translating works of sociology and political science and in 1958 won three triennial grants from American foundations. See Umberto Gentiloni Silveri, L’Italia e la nuova frontiera. Stati Uniti e centro-sinistra 1958–1965 (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1998), 68. 16  See Leopoldo Nuti, Gli Stati Uniti e l’apertura a sinistra. Importanza e limiti della presenza americana in Italia (Rome-Bari: Laterza, 1999), 5–52; Francesco Bello, “Fabio Luca Cavazza e il veto americano nella formazione del centrosinistra italiano”, Ricerche di storia politica 30, no. 2 (August 2015): 189–200; Id., Fabio Luca Cavazza, la Nuova Frontiera e l’apertura a sinistra. Il Mulino nelle relazioni politico-culturali tra Italia e Stati Uniti (1955–1963) (Naples: Giannini, 2016). 17  See Maccaferri, “Intellettuali”. 18  Armando Titta, “Evoluzione della politica economica dell’Urss”, no. 1 (January 1956): 65–79.

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Mulino called for an end to American conservatism19 and European immobility. The journal was in favor of the introduction of new organic reformist programs20 as a response to the Soviet Union’s intensifying global competition with the West; programs inspired by Keynesian interventionist politics such as those of the English Labour and Scandinavian governments. The repression in Hungary, stigmatized as an action of “one of the most brutal and reactionary imperialistic forces of all times” and interpreted as “an actual war declaration to all of the western world and all free people”, did more than just re-confirm Il Mulino’s firm anti-communist stance. It also showed that rather than being the expression of one man’s degeneration, Stalinism represented a structural defect of the Soviet world that had transformed Marxism into a philosophy of police reaction and occupation.21 The response could be nothing less than “a war with no exception and no rest”22 rooted in the values of Liberalism and democracy.

4.2   A Militant Democratic Journal With this call to arms, Il Mulino transformed itself into a “militant journal” whose aim was to “work for the existing democratic state”.23 The initial goal of creating an encounter between the different Italian political forces was no longer as important as moving beyond those forces through the creation of a new democratic model that could be firmly established in society. Italy was meant to become an outpost capable of influencing other European countries, inspiring them to abandon their colonialist heritage24 and to become a “peaceful and constructive force” in the new world order.25 This editorial line was being perceived as increasingly urgent as it became clear that the Soviets had the intention26 of politically isolating

19  Armando Titta, “Luci e ombre della politica economica degli Usa”, no. 8 (August 1956): 529–42; Alfonso Prandi, “Neo conservatorismo americano”, no. 10 (October 1956): 703–15. 20  “L’unificazione socialista e i cattolici”, no. 8 (August 1956): 543–46. 21  “Considerazioni filosofiche sui fatti d’Ungheria”, no. 1 (January 1957): 71–4. 22  Pier Luigi Contessi, “Guerra senza quartiere”, no. 10 (October 1956): 673–4. 23  “Editoriale”, no. 1 (January 1957): 3–13. 24  See “Gli anglofrancesi a Suez”, no. 11 (November 1956): 767–71. 25  “Le vie di una politica federalista”, no. 12 (December 1956): 836–40. 26  “Il tramonto dell’ideologia socialista”, no. 5 (May 1957): 360–4.

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Europe by severing its connections with the Middle East and Africa.27 It was necessary for Europe to rediscover its liberal and universal ethical-­ political foundations and to assume the role of a democratic guiding force, by financing modern development and welfare programs and supporting the new ruling classes in Africa.28 During the years (1959–1960) when Nicola Matteucci, one of the most important Italian intellectuals studying constitutionalism and Liberalism, was the journal’s director, Il Mulino became more academic. In some ways, that shift was an indication of the active cultural work that the journal’s director would do in the years to follow, aimed at spreading the liberal, mostly Anglo-American, tradition, as well as Montesquieu’s and McIlwain’s thought, and at underlining the Atlanticist origins of Italian constitutionalism.29 However, 1961 marked the true turning point for Il Mulino. New figures, such as Victor B.  Sullam30 and Altiero Spinelli,31 as well as Luigi Pedrazzi, the new director of the journal, participated in an ambitious reorganization project that had been conceived during the previous year. The project’s aim was to broaden the journal’s perspective, to bring even more attention to the analysis of international matters and to reach not only intellectuals but also the middle class.32 In order to keep up with current events, the journal returned to a monthly publishing cycle. Short articles and the color format, with one large, iconic photo on the cover, recalled the style of illustrated magazines.

27  “Semantica politica e diplomazia sovietica. A proposito della crisi in Medio Oriente”, no. 2 (February 1957): 120–5. 28  Alfonso Prandi, “L’ora dell’Africa”, no. 6 (June 1958): 379–404. 29  See Polese Remaggi, “I ‘taciti accordi tra maggioranza e opposizione’”, 149–51. On his ideas and his role in the journal, see also: Il liberalismo di Nicola Matteucci, eds. Tiziano Bonazzi and Saffo Testoni Binetti (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2007); Massimo Teodori, Nicola Matteucci. Il liberale scomodo (Rome: Luiss University Press, 2007); Arturo Colombo, “La lezione di Nicola Matteucci”, Il pensiero politico, no. 3 (December 2007): 562–8. 30  A Venetian who emigrated to the United States following the racial laws, in 1953 he began teaching Agricultural Economics at Johns Hopkins University and was a representative of the Federazione italiana dei consorzi agrari in the United States. Sullam was in contact with numerous research centers and young internationalist researchers, both democratic and republican (Gentiloni Silveri, L’Italia e la nuova frontiera, 68). 31  See Piero S. Graglia, Altiero Spinelli (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2008). 32  See Un nuovo Mulino, in Archivi storici dell’Unione europea (henceforth ASUE), Fondo Spinelli, AS 68.

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The first issue of the new year was dedicated to Kennedy, the new American president, and the ideal sense of the New Frontier. Kennedy was a symbol of the power of a new generation,33 whose objective was to respond to the decline that had characterized Eisenhower’s second term and to return to the “missionary” spirit of Roosevelt, mitigated by realism and pragmatism. The intellectuals of Il Mulino saw the arrival of Kennedy as a possibility for developing a new approach to international politics also in Italy—a country where intellectuals had been slow in considering the potential of realistic thought that was being developed by figures such as Reinhold Niebuhr, George Kennan and Hans Morgenthau34 in the United States and where at the same time not much direct influence had been conceded to intellectuals in matters of foreign politics. Moreover, the idea developed by experts close to the new president, which consisted in the conviction that only broad social and economic reforms would allow for the establishment of stable democracies,35 well-integrated with the very beliefs of the group based in Bologna and with the ideals that originated from the Congress for Cultural Freedom (with which some of Il Mulino members had connections).36 Kennedy represented, in short, a “historic opportunity”.37 Sullam, Spinelli and Galli were convinced that, as a result of his influence, the entire Western world would be able to prove its vitality by implementing a new global strategy. The nature of that strategy was developed and clarified during the conference International politics of the United States and the responsibility of Europe organized by Il Mulino in Bologna in April. The result of a long and intense dialogue between Il Mulino group, members of the American administration and intellectuals close to Kennedy,38 the conference was supposed to introduce Europeans, as Pedrazzi put it, to the new course of the United States and to start a debate that would influence and drive the  “Cosa è stato per noi Kennedy”, no. 12 (December 1963): 1172–5.  Giovanni Dessì, I confini della libertà. Realismo e idealismo nel pensiero politico americano (Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino, 2015), 107–45. 35  On American theories of modernization and their influence on the political domain, see Mario Del Pero, Libertà e impero. Gli Stati Uniti e il mondo 1776–2016 (Rome-Bari: Laterza, 2014), 315–20. 36  See Nuti, Gli Stati Uniti e l’apertura a sinistra, 313–46. 37  Victor B.  Sullam, Altiero Spinelli, Giorgio Galli, “La nuova frontiera in America, in Europa, in Italia”, no. 1 (January 1961): 3–13. 38  On the preparation of the conference and its consequences: Gentiloni Silveri, L’Italia e la nuova frontiera, 49–60, 95–109, 115–22; Nuti, Gli Stati Uniti e l’apertura a sinistra, 346–58, 384–8; Graglia, Spinelli, 408–19, 489–90. 33 34

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domestic and international policies of Western governments toward common goals.39 For the intellectuals of Il Mulino, the strategy was based on the New Deal myth of progress and welfare, the myth of a truly democratic international system that was supposed to be realized in the West by spreading affluence and through the participation of all citizens in the political and social life at the national level. In order to implement this strategy,40 it was absolutely necessary to reduce tensions in Europe by recognizing the German Democratic Republic and letting go of the myth of reunification. Arriving at a détente in the Old Continent would allow for a strengthening of the liberalization tendencies that existed behind the Iron curtain.41 Introducing truly democratic domestic policies aimed at ending positions of privilege and overcoming nationalistic conservatism, combined with an effort to relaunch the idea of a federalist Europe, would make Europe a proactive partner of the Americans in their push to establish a progressive democratic world order.42 The enormous resources regained from Europe43 could then be redirected toward the Third World, which had become a true battlefield for the worldwide struggle between democracies and communism (an analysis that shows deep similarities between Il Mulino’s positions and those of Kennedy’s entourage). The old rulers would have to put the remaining colonial practices to an end44 and implement a shared economic intervention policy that would facilitate and support the process of democratic and economic development in the newly independent countries and in areas characterized by backwardness and political instability.45 The above-mentioned goals would benefit from the support of the Church, that is, the formation of a local clergy in the Third World and rethinking both theology and liturgy in order to shape a local and original Christian culture that would foster national cohesion and universal peace.46 39  Luigi Pedrazzi, “Introduzione ai lavori”, no. 4 (April 1961): 209–13. See also Altiero Spinelli to “cari amici del Mulino”, letter dated February 7, 1961, in Asue, Fondo Spinelli, AS 68. 40  Special issue La politica internazionale degli Stati Uniti e le responsabilità dell’Europa, no. 4 (April 1961). 41  “Il blocco sovietico di fronte alla distensione”, no. 5 (May 1961): 271–4. 42  Altiero Spinelli, “Fine dell’Europa dei Sei”, no. 5 (May 1961): 290–2. 43  Pietro Armari, “Il dollaro e la bilancia americana”, no. 1 (January 1961): 15–19. 44  Altiero Spinelli, “Trattative in Algeria”, no. 1 (January 1961): 20–26. 45  Francesco Forte, “Il programma di aiuti economici ai paesi arretrati”, no. 9 (September 1961): 619–29. 46  Alfonso Prandi, “La Chiesa e l’indipendenza dell’Africa”, no. 5 (May 1961): 327–36.

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The XXII Congress of the CPSU and the Berlin crisis seemed to confirm Il Mulino’s analysis of the situation.47 It was necessary to move quickly toward a politically united and authentically democratic Europe, seen as the only way to face the new world order.48 The ideas were accompanied by tangible actions, such as the project to create a World Congress for Freedom and Democracy, which was intended to become a sort of democratic International.49 According to Spinelli, the World Congress for Freedom and Democracy was supposed to become a frontier for the progressive economic and political integration of Europe and the United States and serve as a foundation for a world government guided by Western democracies. It was supposed to become—as Spinelli wrote—“a new democratic Masonry”, capable of “expressing the democratic utopia of the XX century”.50 At the same time, Il Mulino launched two new book series. One of them was dedicated to American history, while the second consisted of the classics of modern democracy and was meant to demonstrate the close interconnectedness of the concept of democracy and Western culture. In the period between the spring and autumn of 1961, as a result of the atmosphere of cultural accord and cooperation that defined the conference in Bologna, the intense network of ties with American political and cultural milieus cultivated by Il Mulino group was expanding. At the same time, a long process of cultural elaboration was finally finding its mature expression in the journal: a vision rooted in a novel myth of the “frontier” of democracy.51

4.3   Toward the Crisis In the early 1960s, analysis of the international situation had taken on a position of predominance within the pages of Il Mulino. In the short editorial at the beginning of 1962, when reviewing the activities of the 47  Altiero Spinelli, “Che fare per Berlino?”, no. 8 (August 1961): 479–84; Giorgio Galli, “Il XXII Congresso del Pcus”, no. 10 (October 1961): 709–16. 48  Altiero Spinelli, “Alla ricerca di un politica estera per l’Italia”, no. 3 (March 1961): 115–20. 49  In the end, the project was not financed by the Ford Foundation, since it was considered too political, Frédéric Attal, “L’Istituto Affari Internazionali: la creazione sofferta di un think tank d’intellettuali”, Memoria e ricerca 24, no. 1 (April 2016): 48–9. 50  Quoted in Nuti, Gli Stati Uniti e l’apertura a sinistra, 384. 51  “Per un bilancio del 1961”, no. 12 (December 1961): 908.

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­ revious year, the journal’s editors admitted to certain “disproportions” in p the journal’s sections. In other words, they admitted to having dedicated much more attention to the international situation than to internal “political comment” and the “Italian situation”.52 The reason for the heightened relevance attributed to the international dimension lay in Il Mulino group’s growing conviction, in the first half of the 1960s, that the historical moment before them represented a “united universal history”, in which the destinies of the world’s countries were strongly interconnected.53 As one could read in the journal in 1962,54 “interdependence” was the new “law of contemporary history”. What they meant was not simply and exclusively the connection between the national and the international, even though the relevance of this nexus for the journal was becoming progressively more evident. Rather, there was the feeling that a bigger and more complex reality was coming to light: a “planetary (planetaria) age”,55 a time when the abstract ideal of humanity, which had inspired religions and revolutions for ages, seemed to be finding its concrete realization with the increased exchange of information, people and goods; the standardization of technologies; the narrowing of international space and the increased risk of a collective atomic suicide.56 Only by fully considering these processes—which were so important for the journal that they decided to found “Planetario”,57 a new book series dedicated to those processes—would it be possible for the group to define their “contribution of ideas and good will”.58 For the intellectuals of Il Mulino, that contribution had to be based on two elements. They strongly believed that “moral values – such as peace, freedom, rights, security –” would count most, ultimately, in the “planetary age”.59 However, at the same time, they recognized that a realistic evaluation of the existing political forces and their roles had to be adopted in order to favor effective  “Editoriale”, no. 1 (January 1962): 1.  Altiero Spinelli, “Meditazioni su una strategia della democrazia”, no. 3 (March 1962): 213. 54  A.P. [Alfonso Prandi], “Prospettive dell’Africa nera”, no. 7–8 (August 1962): 675–9. 55  “Editoriale”, no. 10 (October 1962): 1001. 56  Luigi Pedrazzi, “Planetario: una nuova collana del Mulino”, no. 1 (January 1963): 74–9. On the importance of the nuclear question in the research carried out by the group during these years, also in relation to funding received from American foundations, see Maccaferri, “Intellettuali italiani”, 71. 57  Luigi Pedrazzi, “Planetario”. 58  “Editoriale”, no. 11–12 (December 1962): 1115. 59  “Editoriale”, no. 10 (October 1962): 1001. 52 53

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political action over mere political velleities—a form of political realism that could be defined as “weak”, refuses “political ideologies” and recognizes “the need for compromise and pragmatism understood as an approach aimed at solving concrete problems through the available political and intellectual means”.60 It was necessary to “verify” ideas through their contact with historical reality: an approach rooted in the tradition of philosophic pragmatism and empiricism which had informed the journal from its very beginning.61 Within an international context that was characterized by greater interdependence and dynamism in comparison with the previous 20 years, Il Mulino’s vision of international politics in the early 1960s remained true to the ideas elaborated and discussed by all of the journal’s intellectuals during the “American” conference of 1961: the idea of a great new democratic frontier that encompassed the experience of the West (and Europe), which represented a moment of a broader—and more articulated—worldwide tendency toward democracy. Without any doubt, Spinelli, who in 1962 (together with Galli and Amirante) became part of the editorial board of the journal and was chosen as a supervisor for the international politics section,62 had a fundamental role in shaping the above-described vision. Spinelli, an ex-militant communist and an antifascist who was sent first to prison and then into confinement, was also a member of the Partito d’Azione (Party of Action) during the Resistance and a founder of the European federalist movement. At the time that he joined Il Mulino, Spinelli was going through a phase in which he was rethinking federalism’s role and objectives. His encounter with the group was extremely fruitful. His intuition and certain aspects of his thought integrated well with the cultural world of Il Mulino, such as his balance of idealism and realism (or, as Spinelli himself put it, a 60  Elisabetta Brighi and Or Rosenboim, “Realismo e geopolitica in Italia durante la guerra fredda: tramonto o rinascita?”, Memoria e ricerca 24, no. 1 (April 2016): 18. 61  For an analysis of the connections between Il Mulino and neo-illuminism over time, especially in relation to Santucci’s experience, see Walter Tega, “La ‘ragione’ dei moderni. Illuminismi e neoilluminismi nella filosofia della crisi (1930–1950)”, in Id., ed., Impegno per la ragione. Il caso del neoilluminsmo (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2010) 10–1; Id., “L’illuminismo come atteggiamento filosofico in alcuni scritti di Santucci”, in Un illuminista scettico. La ricerca filosofica di Antonio Santucci, eds. Walter Tega and Luigi Turco (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2008), 59–82; Ugo Berti Arnoaldi, “Un saluto e un ricordo. Santucci e il Mulino”, in ibid., 207–11. 62  Graglia, Spinelli, 405.

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c­ ombination of Kant’s and Machiavelli’s teachings); the importance of the institutional element for the construction of a federal Europe; the need for a more direct commitment on the part of federalism toward the democratic left in Europe; the idea of a democratic grand design, in which federalism was part of a bigger movement toward world democracy.63 At the same time, Spinelli’s ideas had an important role in defining the journal’s course during the years in which he was responsible for the majority of its articles on international politics, as well as for a series of projects and documents that would become fundamental for the group. Matteucci himself acknowledged Spinelli’s attempt to make the young members of Il Mulino “wise, namely adults”.64 And for Spinelli, the collaborative project would remain one of the most important of his intellectual career. What aspects made up this vision of a democratic frontier in the first half of the 1960s; what were the essential elements of this “Copernican” revolution and “global strategy” of democracy described by Spinelli himself in the journal in 1962?65 Essentially, this vision consisted of three interconnected aspects: the issue of modernization, a dichotomous vision of the international system and a certain idea of détente. Modernization and development remained the two central topics. They were always discussed in relation to the nexus between the national and international spheres as well as between affluent societies and underdeveloped areas of the world. The pages of Il Mulino were characterized by a clear faith in the rationalistic virtues of politics and in the potential of “planning”. This faith, which—as Marzia Maccaferri noted—was crucial for the journal’s debate on the welfare “government” in Italian society,66 also resounded in the pages dedicated to international politics, for example, in the proposals for European planning policies or for the creation of planning offices for the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Above all, the journal stressed the idea that any national plan would lose its significance 63  Ibid., 420–7. See also: Umberto Morelli, ed., Altiero Spinelli: il pensiero e l’azione per la federazione europea (Milan: Giuffré, 2010); Daniela Preda, ed., Altiero Spinelli e i movimenti per l’unità europea (Padova: CEDAM, 2010); Edmondo Paolini, ed., Altiero Spinelli. Appunti per una biografia (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1988); Nicola Matteucci and Ezio Raimondi, “La vita come utopia”, in Altiero Spinelli, Diario europeo. 1948–1969, edited by Edmondo Paolini (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1989). 64  Nicola Matteucci, “Anticomunismo, addio. Come gira la ruota del ‘Mulino’”, Nuova Storia Contemporanea 5, no. 2 (April 2001): 131. 65  Altiero Spinelli, “Meditazioni”. 66  See Maccaferri, “Intellettuali italiani”, 58–65.

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when proposed in a conservative international context. The “mulinisti” had a deep-rooted faith in the power of institutional reformism—guided by “dedicated” intellectuals and enlightened by technical and pragmatic knowledge—aimed at bringing together democracy and regulated development, on both the international and national levels, in a reciprocally beneficial relationship. Such a vision implied a dichotomous, yet dynamic, idea of the international system, expressed along dividing lines that only partially coincided with those of the Cold War. On the pages of Il Mulino, the world became the stage of a global confrontation between the forces of democracy and “progress” and the forces of conservatism or even democratic involution. Even though inspired by an empiricist and pragmatic approach, the journal’s ambition to reconcile realism and the ideal resulted in a strong prescriptive dimension, aimed at directing the actions of the potentially progressive forces that made up Il Mulino’s target audience. Spinelli’s interpretation of the situation in Europe (which also included an analysis of the evolution of relations within the Atlantic Alliance) was emblematic of this tendency. The most relevant political cleavage was defined by him in relation to the concept of the nation-state and the need to overcome it, with conservatism and nationalism, the forces concentrated on the “past”, being symbolized by De Gaulle’s political proposal. Spinelli was certainly not the only one proposing such interpretations. Galli, arguing from a position inspired by reformist socialism (by the end of the decade, he would define himself as a “reformist and neo-liberal”67), juxtaposed the actions of the “invisible government” and of the radical right with liberal and reformist forces. Thus, he emphasized the presence of dichotomies that were tied to the problem of the legitimacy of power in modern states vis-a-vis global and supranational forces, along dividing lines cutting across Cold War blocs.68 All these questions and approaches found a synthesis in the concept of détente that was being elaborated by Il Mulino during those years. Détente was considered both a necessary premise and a consequence of the spread of democracy and liberal reformism in the world.69 Such an approach 67  Giorgio Galli, La tigre di carta e il drago scarlatto. Il pensiero di Mao Tse-Tung e l’Occidente (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1970), 262–3. 68  Besides Galli’s writings in Il Mulino in the 1960s, see also Giorgio Galli, I colonnelli della guerra rivoluzionaria (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1962); Id., La tigre di carta, cit. 69  See, for example, “Editoriale”, no. 10 (October 1962): 1001; “Distensione e liberalizzazione”, no. 8 (August 1963): 707–10; Altiero Spinelli, “Il Trattato di Mosca e i problemi

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implied strong faith in the circularity of the connections activated by democracy. It also reveals some limitations that have been individuated in Spinelli’s activity and that could be, to some degree, extended to Il Mulino group as a whole: a certain “illuminist optimism” and, in some situations, a tendency to assume an abstract position with respect to the concrete dynamics of the Cold War.70 In the light of the dynamics and the complexity of the international system, the fundamental role of the intellectual became even more evident to the editors of Il Mulino, who came to realize the absolute necessity of the contribution of intellectuals to international politics, also in light of the shortcomings that the Italian political class had demonstrated in foreign affairs. Those limitations, according to the “mulinisti”, were evident even in the actions of center-left governments, toward which Il Mulino and especially Spinelli spared no criticism (with the exception of Saragat’s brief period as foreign minister between 1963 and 1964). The journal was critical of both the government’s lack of a defined strategy of international politics, especially in the European context, and of its attitude of “inertia and velleity”.71 In order to form an elite that would be capable of making up for that incompetence, the group (Spinelli and Cavazza, in particular) was assiduously working on creating a research center dedicated to foreign affairs and based on the Anglo-Saxon think tank model, an effort that eventually resulted in the foundation in 1965 of the Istituto Affari Internazionali (IAI), headed by Spinelli.72 As we mentioned above, this vision of the frontier of democracy was shared by the intellectuals of Il Mulino until the mid-1960s. Without any della coesistenza pacifica”, no. 9 (September 1963): 823–28; “Il riconoscimento della Cina serve alla pace?”, no. 2 (February 1964): 218–23. 70  For criticism on Spinelli, see Graglia, Spinelli, 330, and also Antonio Venece, L’Europa possibile. Il pensiero e l’azione di Altiero Spinelli (Rome: Carocci, 2010). 71  See Altiero Spinelli, “Esiste una politica estera del centro-sinistra?”, no. 6 (June 1962): 563–9; Id., “Le prospettive della politica estera italiana”, no. 2 (February 1967): 125–48 (from which the quote comes). See also, on the view expressed by Il Mulino about Aldo Moro’s lack of preparation in international politics in 1963, Guido Formigoni, “Democrazia cristiana e mondo cattolico dal neoatlantismo alla distensione”, in Un ponte atlantico. L’alleanza occidentale 1949–1999, eds. Agostino Giovagnoli and Luciano Tosi (Milan: Guerini e Associati, 2003), 159. 72  On the foundation of the IAI, see Graglia, Spinelli, 445–76; Id., “Altiero Spinelli e la genesi dello IAI: il federalismo, il gruppo de ‘Il Mulino’ e la dimensione internazionale del lavoro culturale”, in Preda, Altiero Spinelli, 245–77; Attal, “L’Istituto Affari Internazionali”, 47–53.

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doubt, one can easily detect the “voice” of Spinelli behind certain positions assumed by the journal. One example of his influence can be seen in the proposal of a more moderate type of anticommunism during détente, a position that was not necessarily shared by all of the members of Il Mulino.73 However, Matteucci himself would later emphasize how until 1965, the last year of Pedrazzi’s editorship, the journal had remained all in all faithful to the editorial line established in 1957.74 The climate of great optimism connected with the hopes related to the New Frontier that characterized Il Mulino in the first half of the 1960s was followed in the second half of the decade by a sense of crisis that fueled a general undertone of pessimism on the journal’s pages. According to some testimonies, the journal was going through a phase of “withdrawal” dedicated to research and study.75 In the second half of the 1960s, as attention for international politics progressively diminished in the journal and more space was being given to domestic problems, various conflicts began to create rifts among the editorial group (that process was even referred to as “loss of innocence” for the journal76). Il Mulino’s difficulties were also briefly noticed by Spinelli in his diary. During those years, Spinelli himself, possibly absorbed with the IAI, had a less important role in the journal (so much so that in 1967 in his diary he wrote of having promised Il Mulino group to resume a collaboration similar to that of 1960–196477). The difficulties and divisions that appeared in the mid-­ 1960s would become more defined toward the end of the decade, 73  On Spinelli’s reflection on communism, see Graglia, Spinelli, 413–6. On the differences of approaches to communism within the national context between Spinelli and Matteucci, see ibid., 440. 74  Matteucci, “Anticomunismo, addio”, 131. The fact that the liberal Matteucci and the Catholic Pedrazzi (together with Galli and Cavazza) both joined the Comitato Italiano per la Democrazia Europea (CIDE) in January 1964 is indicative of the cultural climate of those years within the group and of a cycle of activity that was, however, reaching its end (and undoubtedly reveals the great personal prestige of Spinelli). A creation of Spinelli’s, the CIDE was in fact primarily a “socialista-azionista” (socialist-actionist) organ, aimed at advancing the mission of democratizing the European Communities, and represented the phase of Spinelli’s close collaboration with the “progressive components of the center-left” and especially with the Italian Socialist Party (PSI) (Graglia, Spinelli, 443–5). On the CIDE and Spinelli, see also Andrea Becherucci, “Altiero Spinelli e il Comitato italiano per la democrazia europea”, in Preda, Altiero Spinelli, 279–294. 75  Maccaferri, “Intellettuali italiani”, 76. 76  Graglia, Spinelli, 456. 77  Spinelli, Diario europeo. 1948–1969, 504.

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e­ specially under the influence of the youth protests, and in the early 1970s. At this point—as Matteucci would later state—Il Mulino, also facing an “indiscriminate” broadening of the group of intellectuals affiliated with it, was already very distant from the “early Il Mulino” experience and from the cultural project that had been developed in 1957. Some of the journal’s intellectuals were beginning to comment, albeit from different perspectives (in which their rifts and increasingly diverging positions emerged), on what they saw as a crisis of Liberalism in the late 1960s. More radical in his assessment, Matteucci observed an isolation of liberal culture (and an incapacity on the part of both socialist and Catholic cultures to propose their own model of democracy).78 Galli, in more general terms, commented on the failure to promote a culture based on Liberalism—he would later speak of “heterogony of ends”79—within a world that was in constant transformation and in a context of renewed ideologization that became evident by the late 1960s: processes that found Catholic and socialist as well as liberal culture unprepared. Galli, the director of the journal at that time, was the one who provided the most comprehensive analysis of this complex crisis that Il Mulino was facing, focusing on the dynamics of the international system and on the idea of “revolutionary romanticism”, rooted in Mao Zedong’s China.80 It was a moment in which the future seemed extremely uncertain to the intellectuals of Il Mulino, a moment in which many “crossroads”81 had reappeared. They were less optimistic about both the possibility of facing the challenges of the “planetary” age and the capacity of affluent societies to reform. As soon as “new nations and new generations” had “enter[ed] history”,82 the reformist model based on welfare planning and democratization and on rationalization of the international system showed signs of crisis and was being criticized on both an international and domestic scale—a situation that was also reflected in the center-left crisis in Italy.

78  See Roberto Pertici, “Un liberale di fronte al Sessantotto”, in Bonazzi and Testoni Binetti, Il liberalismo di Nicola Matteucci, 77–98; Polese Remaggi, “I ‘taciti accordi tra maggioranza e opposizione’”, cit. 79  Giorgio Galli, Passato Prossimo. Persone e incontri 1949–1999 (Milan: Kaos edizioni, 2000), 92 ff. 80  See, for example, Giorgio Galli, “La cultura occidentale tra presunzione e rassegnazione”, no. 1 (January 1968): 3–11. 81  Altiero Spinelli, “Dopo la crisi del Medio Oriente”, no. 5–6 (May–June 1967): 311–21. 82  Luigi Amirante, “La forza di capire”, no. 1 (January 1968): 17.

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Considering the journal’s approach, it comes as no surprise that such crisis of interpretive and cultural paradigms—which was also seen as a break between culture and power, between “radical intelligentsia and the professional political class”83—coincided with the crisis of the very same interpretation of the international system and the détente process Il Mulino had believed in. The USSR had not lived up to the expectations of liberalization; the United States risked remaining the only big power in the international context, in a “solitude” that could lead to imperial power and result in an increased weakening of and pressure on reformist forces within American society. The Treaty of Non-Proliferation itself was considered by Il Mulino the result of a growing temptation on the part of the United States to consolidate a position of hegemony and monopoly.84 The most obvious and painful example of these dynamics was the war in Vietnam where, as Galli wrote, contrast “becomes conflict” and “strikes… our conscience”.85 However, the intellectuals of Il Mulino, opposed to a pessimistic and catastrophist vision of history, admitted regret, but not defeat. It was still possible for reformism to find its expression in industrialized countries where the tension connected to the Cold War was diminishing compared with the previous 20 years. Overcoming the nation-state and creating a continental state in Europe would be the ideal testing ground for Il Mulino’s ideas. As Galli claimed in September 1968, if Stalinism had been one of the elements that had inspired European economic integration in the early 1950s, the repression of the Prague Spring could become “the incentive” and catalyst for the process of European political integration.86

4.4   Conclusion As Frédéric Attal put it, international politics was “a testing ground”, “possibly the most important, together with the Southern question and the renewal of governmental and parliamentary procedures”, for those groups of “center and center-left anticommunist, liberal, … atlanticist” intellectuals—often formed around periodicals such as Il Mulino—who  Giorgio Galli, “Da Turati a Nixon”, no. 12 (December 1968): 1014–20.  Altiero Spinelli, “Per una non proliferazione che sia una cosa seria”, no. 3 (March 1967): 219–27. 85  Galli, “La cultura occidentale tra presunzione e rassegnazione”, 8. 86  Giorgio Galli, “L’indimenticabile 1968”, no. 9 (September 1968): 699–702. 83 84

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aimed at “directly affecting the political direction of Italy”87 during the post-war period. Inspired by a “pragmatic-reformist” approach88—which was always the central cultural inspiration for the journal—also in their analysis of international politics, the intellectuals of Il Mulino proposed a vision that united a recognition of power relations and a rejection of unrealistic politics with the elaboration of an ideal dimension; a vision aimed at understanding how democracy should best face the challenges of modernization. From that perspective, the journal based in Bologna can be considered an expression of that period of reformism and faith in the social sciences as an instrument for societal transformation that so attracted intellectuals on both sides of the Atlantic in the 1960s. Without a doubt, the United States with its power and influence played a prominent role in this process. However, from a long-term perspective, as Mario Del Pero has demonstrated in relation to the New Deal, which served as a crucial model for the modernizers of the 1960s, this phase of hope in reformism was also “the result of a process of exchange, interaction and transnational (or at least trans-Atlantic) hybridization”, in which the United States had often been at the receiving end of the exchange.89 With “universalism” as one of the “underlying assumptions” of this vision of modernization,90 it is clear how the idea of a frontier of democracy to be adopted on all the levels in the “planetary” age came to form an ideal point of reference which was shared, in spite of differences of intellectual tradition and approach, by the different cultures that formed the journal: the Catholic, the Liberal and the Socialist. During the second part of the decade Il Mulino would have to deal with the deteriorating high hopes of the reformist’s wave, a decline in the optimism inspired by affluence, and uncertainties about the détente: a scenario that coincided with the crisis of the periodical’s cultural project, of the very “illuminist optimism” that it was based on. It has recently been observed how in the 1960s Il Mulino was able to intuit and individuate problems regarding the Italian political system that  Attal, “L’Istituto Affari Internazionali”, 48.  Maccaferri, “Intellettuali italiani”, 76. 89  Mario Del Pero, “Gli Stati Uniti, i limiti e i dilemmi della modernizzazione”, in A cinquanta anni dal primo Centro-sinistra: un bilancio nel contesto internazionale, eds. Giovanni Bernardini and Michele Marchi, Ricerche di Storia Politica 29, special issue, no. 2 (June, 2014): 187–96. 90  Ibid., 189–90. 87 88

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would come to be of great importance in the future political and cultural debate in Italy—the question of the two-party system seems, for example, emblematic.91 The journal seems to have had the same capacity with regard to the international political system. This is evidenced by its reflections on topics that would prove to be crucial in the decades that followed, such as the search for a model of democracy and economic development capable of responding to both the necessities and disappointments of welfare democracies and the needs of underdeveloped areas of the world, faced by the challenges and interdependencies created by modernity.

Bibliography Aron, Raymond. L’opium des intellectuels. Paris: Calmann-Levy, 1955. Attal, Frédéric. “L’Istituto Affari Internazionali: la creazione sofferta di un think tank d’intellettuali.” Memoria e ricerca 24, no. 1 (April 2016): 45–56. Becherucci, Andrea. “Altiero Spinelli e il Comitato italiano per la democrazia europea.” In Altiero Spinelli e i movimenti per l’unità europea, edited by Daniela Preda, 279–294. Padova: CEDAM, 2010. Bello, Francesco. “Fabio Luca Cavazza e il veto americano nella formazione del centrosinistra italiano.” Ricerche di storia politica 30, no. 2 (August 2015): 189–200. Bello, Francesco. Fabio Luca Cavazza, la Nuova Frontiera e l’apertura a sinistra. Il Mulino nelle relazioni politico-culturali tra Italia e Stati Uniti (1955–1963). Naples: Giannini, 2016. Bernardini, Giovanni, and Marchi, Michele, eds. A cinquanta anni dal primo Centro-sinistra: un bilancio nel contesto internazionale. Special issue, Ricerche di Storia Politica 29, no. 2 (June, 2014). Berti Arnoaldi, Ugo. “Un saluto e un ricordo. Santucci e il Mulino.” In Un illuminista scettico. La ricerca filosofica di Antonio Santucci, edited by Walter Tega and Luigi Turco, 207–11. Bologna: Il Mulino, 2008. Bonazzi, Tiziano, and Testoni Binetti, Saffo, eds. Il liberalismo di Nicola Matteucci. Bologna: Il Mulino, 2007. Bonfreschi, Lucia. Raymond Aron e il gollismo 1940–1969. Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino, 2014. Bongiovanni, Bruno. “Gli intellettuali, la cultura e i miti del dopoguerra.” In Storia d’Italia. V.  La Repubblica 1943–1963, edited by Giovanni Sabbatucci and Vittorio Vidotto, 441–523. Rome-Bari: Laterza, 2002.

 Maccaferri, “Intellectuals, journals, and the legitimisation of political power”, 194.

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Brighi, Elisabetta, and Rosenboim, Or. “Realismo e geopolitica in Italia durante la guerra fredda: tramonto o rinascita?.” Memoria e ricerca 24, no. 1 (April 2016): 9–24. Colombo, Arturo. “La lezione di Nicola Matteucci.” Il pensiero politico, no. 3 (December 2007): 562–8. Covili, Barbara. “La ricostruzione democratica nella riflessione dei giovani de ‘Il Mulino’.” In La formazione della classe politica in Europa (1945–1956), edited by Giovanni Orsina and Gaetano Quagliariello, 497–533. Manduria: Lacaita, 2000. Del Pero, Mario. Libertà e impero. Gli Stati Uniti e il mondo 1776–2016. Rome-­ Bari: Laterza, 2014. Del Pero, Mario. “Gli Stati Uniti, i limiti e i dilemmi della modernizzazione.” In A cinquanta anni dal primo Centro-sinistra: un bilancio nel contesto internazionale, edited by Giovanni Bernardini and Michele Marchi, 187–96. Ricerche di Storia Politica 29, special issue, no. 2 (June, 2014). Dessì, Giovanni. I confini della libertà. Realismo e idealismo nel pensiero politico americano. Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino, 2015. Ferrari, Massimo. “Origini e motivi del neoilluminismo italiano tra il dopoguerra e gli anni Cinquanta.” Rivista di storia della filosofia 2, first section no. 3 (September 1985): 531–48; second section no. 4 (December 1985): 749–67. Formigoni, Guido. “Democrazia cristiana e mondo cattolico dal neoatlantismo alla distensione.” In Un ponte atlantico. L’alleanza occidentale 1949–1999, edited by Agostino Giovagnoli and Luciano Tosi, 141–167. Milan: Guerini e Associati, 2003. Galli, Giorgio. I colonnelli della guerra rivoluzionaria. Bologna: Il Mulino, 1962. Galli, Giorgio. La tigre di carta e il drago scarlatto. Il pensiero di Mao Tse-Tung e l’Occidente. Bologna: Il Mulino, 1970. Galli, Giorgio. Passato Prossimo. Persone e incontri 1949–1999. Milan: Kaos edizioni, 2000. Gentiloni Silveri, Umberto. L’Italia e la nuova frontiera. Stati Uniti e centro-­ sinistra 1958–1965. Bologna: Il Mulino, 1998. Giovagnoli, Agostino, and Tosi, Luciano, eds. Un ponte atlantico. L’alleanza occidentale 1949–1999. Milan: Guerini e Associati, 2003. Graglia, Piero S. Altiero Spinelli. Bologna: Il Mulino, 2008. Graglia, Piero S. “Altiero Spinelli e la genesi dello IAI: il federalismo, il gruppo de “Il Mulino” e la dimensione internazionale del lavoro culturale.” In Altiero Spinelli e i movimenti per l’unità europea, edited by Daniela Preda, 245–77. Padova: CEDAM, 2010. Held, David. Models of Democracy. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1996. It. trans. Modelli di democrazia. Translated by Umberto Livini and Luca Verzichelli. Bologna: Il Mulino, 1996.

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Iurlano, Giuliana. “La cultura liberale americana in Italia: “Il Mulino” (1951–1969).” Nuova Rivista Storica 67, no. 5–6 (December 1983): 671–706. Maccaferri, Marzia. “Intellettuali italiani fra società opulenta e democrazia del benessere: il caso de Il Mulino.” Mondo contemporaneo 5, no. 1 (April 2009): 45–77. Maccaferri, Marzia. “Intellectuals, Journals, and the Legitimisation of Political Power: the Case of the Italian Intellectual Group of Il Mulino (1950s and 1960s).” Modern Italy 21, no. 2 (May 2016): 185–217. Matteucci, Nicola. “Anticomunismo, addio. Come gira la ruota del “Mulino”.” Nuova Storia Contemporanea 5, no. 2 (April 2001): 129–132. Morelli, Umberto, ed. Altiero Spinelli: il pensiero e l’azione per la federazione europea. Milan: Giuffré, 2010. Nuti, Leopoldo. Gli Stati Uniti e l’apertura a sinistra. Importanza e limiti della presenza americana in Italia. Rome-Bari: Laterza, 1999. Orsina, Giovanni, and Quagliariello, Gaetano, eds. La formazione della classe politica in Europa (1945–1956). Manduria: Lacaita, 2000. Paolini, Edmondo, ed. Altiero Spinelli. Appunti per una biografia. Bologna: Il Mulino, 1988. Pertici, Roberto. “Un liberale di fronte al Sessantotto.” In Il liberalismo di Nicola Matteucci, edited by Tiziano Bonazzi and Saffo Testoni Binetti, 77–98. Bologna: Il Mulino, 2007. Petrucciani, Stefano. Modelli di filosofia politica. Turin: Einaudi, 2003. Polese Remaggi, Luca. “I “taciti accordi tra maggioranza e opposizione”. Nicola Matteucci e la crisi del sistema politico italiano (1968–1979).” In Gli intellettuali nella crisi della Repubblica 1968–1980, edited by Ermanno Taviani and Giuseppe Vacca, 149–174. Rome: Viella, 2016. Preda, Daniela, ed. Altiero Spinelli e i movimenti per l’unità europea. Padova: CEDAM, 2010. Primo convegno amici e collaboratori del “Mulino”. Bologna: Il Mulino, 1954. Sabbatucci, Giovanni, and Vidotto, Vittorio, eds. Storia d’Italia. V. La Repubblica 1943–1963. Rome-Bari: Laterza, 2002. Spinelli, Altiero. Diario europeo. 1948–1969, edited by Edmondo Paolini. Bologna: Il Mulino, 1989. Taviani, Ermanno, and Vacca, Giuseppe, eds. Gli intellettuali nella crisi della Repubblica 1968–1980. Rome: Viella, 2016. Tega, Walter. “L’illuminismo come atteggiamento filosofico in alcuni scritti di Santucci.” In Un illuminista scettico. La ricerca filosofica di Antonio Santucci, edited by Walter Tega and Luigi Turco, 59–82. Bologna: Il Mulino, 2008. Tega, Walter, and Turco, Luigi, eds. Un illuminista scettico. La ricerca filosofica di Antonio Santucci. Bologna: Il Mulino, 2008.

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Tega, Walter. “La “ragione” dei moderni. Illuminismi e neoilluminismi nella filosofia della crisi (1930–1950).” In Impegno per la ragione. Il caso del neoilluminsmo, edited by Walter Tega, 1–70. Bologna: Il Mulino, 2010. Tega, Walter, ed. Impegno per la ragione. Il caso del neoilluminsmo. Bologna: Il Mulino, 2010. Teodori, Massimo. Nicola Matteucci. Il liberale scomodo. Rome: Luiss University Press, 2007. Teodori, Massimo. Storia dei laici nell’Italia clericale e comunista. Venice: Marsilio, 2008. Venece, Antonio. L’Europa possibile. Il pensiero e l’azione di Altiero Spinelli. Rome: Carocci, 2010.

CHAPTER 5

Guido Carli: A Liberal Technician and the Making of Europe Daniele Caviglia

5.1   Looking for the Right Man to Face a Changing World Governor of the Bank of Italy for 15 years (1960–1975), Guido Carli was neither a full-fledged intellectual nor a politician. However, his cultural background and his position at the head of the central bank made him a key player in both fields. Graduated in law at the University of Padua in 1936, Carli focused his scientific interests on the relationship between monetary stability and free movement of goods and capital, thus becoming one of the main actors of Italy’s transformation from a protected to an open-market economy. Having started his career off in Istituto per la Ricostruzione Industriale (IRI),1 under the direction of a prominent economist such as Pasquale Saraceno, Carli assumed that public initiative should be flexible to deal with a short-term crisis but should also comply 1  The Institute for Industrial Reconstruction was an Italian public holding company established in 1933 by the Fascist regime to rescue, restructure, and finance banks and private companies that went bankrupt during the Great Depression.

D. Caviglia (*) Università degli Studi di Enna “Kore”, Enna, Italy © The Author(s) 2019 A. Tarquini, A. Guiso (eds.), Italian Intellectuals and International Politics, 1945–1992, Italian and Italian American Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-24938-0_5

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in the long run with a market-oriented approach. This “non-ideological” attitude distanced Carli both from a left-wing policy and from a conservative attitude based on a purely orthodox laissez-faire: he was indeed haunted by the alternative between economic austerity and the improvement of social welfare. In 1945, he was appointed to the “Consulta nazionale”2 at the request of the Italian Liberal Party in which he had been partly involved from 1943. Although Carli always preserved his “technical” role and did not hold any active function with responsibilities in the Italian Liberal Party, his formal and informal cultural education placed him within the context of a liberal-democratic approach. In 1947, he served as Executive Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) before being appointed President of the Mediocredito bank. Minister of Foreign Trade from May 1957 to July 1958, in October 1959 Carli became general director of the Bank of Italy and in August 1960 replaced Donato Menichella as Governor of the central bank. His former professional experiences, along with his cultural background, made him the right man to steer Italy’s economy after the postwar reconstruction. Deeply convinced that cooperation and economic interdependence were the hallmark of international relations, Guido Carli led the process of modernization and globalization of Italy’s economy in a changing scenario. The establishment of the Bretton Woods system in 1944 represented indeed a completely new departure as it was an unprecedented cooperative effort for nations that had been setting up barriers between their economies for more than a decade. This new multilateral framework implied a radical change for Italy after the experience of the Fascist regime that had advocated autarky to secure national self-sufficiency and independence through protectionist and interventionist economic policies. This approach was still deep-seated in the postwar years and Carli condemned it in 1948 by recalling that “the word market [in Italy] was completely meaningless in those days”.3 Contrary to this approach, the new economic order— championed by the United States—envisioned an international monetary system that would ensure exchange rate stability, prevent competitive devaluations, and promote economic growth through liberalization of world trade. Although both the Italian technocratic elite and policymakers agreed on these goals, the implementation turned out to be an enormous 2  It was a non-elected provisional legislature replacing the Parliament in the run-up to general elections. 3  Carli, Cinquant’anni di vita italiana, 33.

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undertaking as evidenced by the extremely cautious attitude adopted by the Governor of the central bank Donato Menichella. Guido Carli dropped his views on Europe into this wide-ranging framework. The main pillar of Carli’s vision for Europe rested on cooperation. In the postwar scenario, international collaboration was imperative since the modern state no longer confined itself to pursuing exchange rate stability and a balance of payments equilibrium but sought also price stability, economic growth, and higher levels of employment. The challenge was such that member states of the international community should “cooperate in maintaining the balance of payments equilibrium and in restoring it when disrupted”. This international collaboration aimed at preventing “too quick” adjustments to redress the balance “at the expense of economic growth and of the level of employment”.4 The coordination among industrialized countries was provided by the International Monetary Fund on a global scale and by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and the European Economic Community (EEC) at a regional level. As Guido Carli recalled ten years later to Otto Emminger,5 “at least a small part” of the Wirtschaftswunder “should be attached to the spirit of solidarity showed by Europeans”.6 Cooperation among Western industrialized countries played a key role not only on a European scale but also on a global level as the international monetary system came under increasing stress at the beginning of the 1960s. At that time a surplus of US dollars caused by foreign aid, military spending, and foreign investment threatened the system, since Washington did not have enough gold to cover the volume of dollars in worldwide circulation at the rate of $35 per ounce. Against this background, Italy— along with other Western countries such as Germany—largely contributed to supporting the Bretton Woods system by stemming the tide of international speculation. Therefore, when the first serious run on gold broke out in 1960,7 the Bank of Italy agreed to cooperate in a consortium8 with the 4  Conférence du Gouverneur de la Banca d’Italia “Aspects actuels de la coopération monétaire internationale”, 233. 5  A German economist who served as West Germany’s executive director at the International Monetary Fund from 1953 to 1959 and was appointed president of the Deutsche Bundesbank from 1977 to 1979. 6  Indirizzo di saluto del Governatore della Banca d’Italia, 48. 7  By mid-October, more than $40 an ounce had been reached on the London market. 8  France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Switzerland, West Germany, and the United Kingdom were the other member states. The theory behind the pool was that spikes in the free price

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Federal Reserve Bank of New York for the purpose of stabilizing the price of gold. The Italian government supported the initiative despite many doubts concerning the risk of “impoverishing national reserves”. However—as Carli stressed in a letter to the Ministry of Treasury Emilio Colombo—the first aim was “to preserve solidarity”9 among industrial countries against the speculative attacks on gold. Along with this intergovernmental cooperation, the Italian government, encouraged by Carli, also backed Washington’s proposal to empower the International Monetary Fund in creating additional resources. Once again, Carli explained, Italy’s support was grounded on the firm belief that “joint collaboration within the IMF [was] an essential asset”10 for a viable international monetary system. After years of intense negotiations, the IMF summit, convened in September 1967  in Rio de Janeiro, approved the project denominated “Outline of a Facility Based on Special Drawing Rights in the Fund”. The plan called for the creation of new liquidity by means of special, automatic drawing rights linked to the IMF.  This outcome was mainly due to Washington’s pressure, though Italy’s diplomacy played a key role as proved by the United States’ gratitude.11 These reforms of the international monetary system were directly related to Carli’s commitment to the European integration process as emphasized by the following crisis involving the pound. In order to prevent a massive run on the British currency in autumn 1967, the Italian Governor, backed by the German monetary authorities, called for a joint of gold in the London market could be controlled by having a pool of gold to sell on the open market that would then be recovered when the price of gold dropped. 9  Appunto di Carli per Colombo, Rome, March 12, 1968, Archivio Storico della Banca d’Italia (hereafter: Asbi), dc, c. 64, f. 1, sf. 8. 10  Carli, Scritti e Conferenze (1959–1963), 162. 11  The US government praised Italian representatives for having “consistently maintained the constructive position that new reserve assets should embody qualities of international money even if in the form of drawing rights and that the EEC common position should be one that is a reasonable basis for further negotiation with the rest of Group of Ten and other members of IMF” (Telegram From the Department of State to the Embassy in Italy, Washington, June 1, 1967, Frus, 1964–68, Vol. VIII, International Monetary and Trade Policy, doc. 126). Throughout negotiations, Italian diplomacy successfully acted “on a political and technical level” (Appunto del Servizio Studi della Banca d’Italia  – Ufficio Istituti Finanziari Internazionali, Rome, November 15, 1968, Asbi, Dc, c. 64, f. 2, sf. 7) insofar as President Johnson praised Colombo and Carli for having played “an important and vital role” (Messaggio di Johnson per Moro, Washington, December 31, 1967, Acs, Cm, b. 31, sf. 8 “Messaggi Johnson”).

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action. According to Carli, if Great Britain failed to defend the sterling, devalue its currency by a sizable amount, and apply import restrictions, the unification of the international markets would “decline” and would be replaced by “monetary associations which might catalyze economic and political associations which differ from the existing ones (USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Great Britain?)”. Against this gloomy scenario, even European economic integration “would become uncertain”. For this reason, when Great Britain reluctantly devalued sterling by 14.3%, the Governor of the Bank of Italy strongly supported the idea of maintaining European parities against the dollar since a change of parities could potentially “start a series of unpredictable reactions” which could run “out of control”.12 According to Carli, only an effective international monetary system would lay the foundations for the development of the European economic and monetary integration13; in reverse, only a close-­ knit European monetary bloc could prevent the collapse of the whole system.

5.2   Carli and European Monetary Union The first comprehensive project for a European Monetary Union (EMU) came to light at The Hague summit in December 1969. From a technical standpoint, the EMU was designed to prevent possible changes in the parities of major European currencies that could endanger the Common 12  Appunto di Carli per Colombo, Rome, November 18, 1967, Archivio Centrale dello Stato (hereafter: Acs), Dc, c. 63, f. 6, sf. 14. 13  This explains why, as financial turbulence hit the French franc at the end of 1968 causing high capital movements from Paris to the Federal Republic of Germany, the Italian central bank promoted a new plan of reform during the G-10 emergency conference in Bonn on 20–22 November. The proposal, later known as the “Carli plan”, aimed at creating an openend monetary facility to offset international short-term capital flows. Obviously, the monetary authorities of the country whose reserves were increasing should finance those countries whose reserves were decreasing as a result of short-term capital movements. The main arguments introduced by the Bank of Italy that fostered most of the criticism were the unspecified amount and duration of the financing as well as the collective guarantee of the risk of the transaction. Those two ideas were seen as rather ambitious by many national delegations since it was considered that a similar mechanism went far beyond the possibilities of pure cooperation between central banks. The “Carli plan”, studied in two different meetings at the Bank for International Settlements between December 1968 and January 1969, was later rejected in early February by a G-10 formal statement where the Governors of national central banks considered the existing resources adequate to alleviate the impact on reserves of speculative movements of funds.

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Market with specific reference to the Common Agricultural Policy. From a political point of view, the establishment of a regional monetary bloc aimed at furthering Europe’s international profile and identity. Despite a general agreement on the final goal of economic and monetary integration, very soon differences regarding the implementation of the Hague proposals surfaced among Europeans. Some countries, such as France and Belgium, saw monetary union as a first step toward economic union, while the Federal Republic of Germany insisted on a policy requiring economic convergence as a precondition for monetary union. From the beginning, Italy inclined toward the German position, hoping that a better coordination of economic policies would ease the restriction of intra-European parity margins. However, a few months after the launch of the EMU, the Bank of Italy and its Governor began to call into question the possibility of closer monetary cooperation at Community level. This growing skepticism was grounded on the belief that the EEC covered rather too small an area and it constituted only a customs union and not an economic and political union.14 Unless simultaneous economic harmonization—which included “the support of political unification, a gradual convergence on medium-term goals and priorities, and on economic policies”15—were to be put in place, it was “uncertain that the industrial countries would have at their disposal the instruments to coordinate aggregate demands in order to have equivalent inflationary or deflationary pressures”.16 According to the Governor, budgetary and structural policy carried out by the Europeans was developing along divergent and even contradictory lines. Under those circumstances, an exchange rate agreement attempting to bind together economies with different trends could produce tensions on the balance of payments imposing restrictive monetary and fiscal policies. More and more openly, the Bank of Italy and the Governor refused to rely exclusively on a monetary union which could not be “the driving force of economic and monetary union”. Against this background every kind of multilateral control over exchange rates (including narrower ­intra-­European

14  Carli, Cinquant’anni di vita italiana, 220–234; Varsori, La questione europea nella politica italiana, 337. 15  Asbi, Direttorio Carli, c. 65, f. 1, sf. 15. Appunto di Carli per Colombo, Rome, August 4, 1970. 16  European Central Bank, Committee of Governors: agendas & minutes, Procès-verbal de la trente-neuvième séance du Comité des Gouverneurs des banques centrales des États membres de la Communauté économique éuropéenne, last access July 2, 2014.

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margins) would be “dangerous”17 and should be granted only in return for coordinated and convergent economic policies. Although Carli complained about the evolution of the EMU, his true target was the Italian government’s inability to put the brakes on public spending. In the mid-1960s, the Governor had indeed begun his personal crusade against the economic policy guidelines sponsored by the center-­ left coalitions.18 The Italian Socialist Party’s involvement in the government19 implied a new approach based on a larger role of the State in the economy and on extensive reform plans. A turning point announced in May 1962 by the Minister for the Budget, Ugo La Malfa, in an additional

17  European Central Bank, Committee of Governors: agendas & minutes, Procès-verbal de la quarantième séance du Comité des Gouverneurs des banques centrales des États membres de la Communauté économique éuropéenne, last access July 2, 2014. 18  In the early 1960s the ruling coalition sought to broaden its government majority by inviting the Socialists to join as a center-left coalition member (the “opening to the left”). Each side made conciliatory gestures to accommodate the other. The Socialists withdrew their long-standing objection to Italy’s memebership of NATO and in turn the moderate parties accepted to undertake major structural reforms. In 1962, the Christian Democrats’ (DC) leader Amintore Fanfani formed a cabinet with members of the Italian Social Democratic Party (PSDI) and the Italian Republican Party (PRI); it is considered the beginning of the Organic Center-left. The Fanfani cabinet, even if it cannot be considered a traditional center-left government, approved many social reforms, such as the nationalization of industries like ENEL, which are considered left-leaning policies. On December 4, 1963, Aldo Moro formed the first government with the support of the Italian Socialist Party (PSI). Prominent socialist politicians, such as Pietro Nenni and Antonio Giolitti, were appointed ministers. The coalition program was based on an extensive reformist agenda which included the extension of compulsory education from elementary school to secondary school, free school books, the nationalization of the electric industry, the creation of ENEL, the divorce Law (1970), refused by the DC despite the 1974 referendum, the workers’ Statute Law, the creation of the Antimafia Commission, the creation of the Regions. However, Italy’s inflation, failing industrial growth and disputes within the coalition prevented Moro from initiating many of the reforms he had envisaged, and this angered the Socialists, who effected his defeat in January 1966. 19  Among the many studies on this issue, see Craveri, La repubblica dal 1958 al 1992, 160–343; Ginsborg, Storia d’Italia dal dopoguerra a oggi. 362–373; Giovagnoli, Il partito italiano. 107–127; Lanaro, Storia dell’Italia repubblicana, 223–306; Malgeri, L’Italia dal centro-sinistra agli “anni di piombo”, 682–693; Mammarella, L’Italia contemporanea, 247–365; Tamburrano, Storia e cronaca del centro sinistra; Y. Voulgaris, L’Italia del centrosinistra. Regarding the Italian political parties and the center-left, see Colarizi, Storia dei partiti nell’Italia repubblicana, 308–362; Scoppola, La repubblica dei partiti. 346–354. An overall assessment of Italy’s European policy during the center-left experience is in Varsori, L’Italia e la costruzione europea negli anni del centro-sinistra, 271–287.

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note20 to his report on the country’s economic situation. La Malfa addressed the Parliament on the issue of “economic planning” stressing the need to restructure the industrial sector and to promote the Southern regions that were lagging behind. As the Secretary of the Italian Socialist Party Pietro Nenni put it bluntly in a letter to the Prime Minister Aldo Moro, these reformist policies should not “bring hardship for the workers”.21 However, shortly after Nenni had to come to terms with a changing scenario. The Italian “economic boom” of the early 1960s and the resulting decade of extraordinarily high and relatively steady growth were coming to an end. As a result of wage increases and of the transfer of the rise in costs to prices, inflation started to rise and the trade balance to suffer. This trend challenged the foundations of the monetary policy followed by the Bank of Italy. From 1947 the Italian central bank had indeed successfully pursued a policy mix made up of monetary stability, a balanced current account, and non-inflationary growth. In order to achieve the latter, the key variable in the eyes of the Bank was profitability. Only adequately high profits could ensure the investments necessary to mop up the chronic unemployment.22 This strong bias toward the maintenance of capital accumulation and industrial profitability was wholeheartedly shared by Carli who “began to fear that the path of firms’ advance was narrowing as a consequence of the expansion of the system of state holdings and the demands for wage increases in excess of the rise in productivity”.23 At first, in the light of the strong wage and price push as well as a downturn in investments, the Bank of Italy ceded a sufficient quantity of liquidity to allow enterprises to reconstruct profit margins. Subsequently, due to the dramatic shrinkage of foreign currency reserves and the risk of devaluation in the summer of 1963, Carli imposed a credit squeeze in order to limit domestic demand and curb inflation.24 This shift to a very restrictive 20   The document was entitled “Problemi e prospettive dello sviluppo economico italiano”. 21  Lettera di Nenni per Moro, November 15, 1963, in P. Nenni, A. Moro, Carteggio 1960– 1978, 18. 22  On the other hand—due to the fact that workers’ marginal propensity to consume is higher than employers’—a wage rise would result, in the Bank’s view, in a greater demand for consumer goods, thus feeding inflation, higher imports, and current account imbalances, and in the end provoking an arrest of growth. 23  Fazio Emilio Colombo warned the prime, “Guido Carli Governor of the Bank of Italy”. 24  The more relevant monetary measures included a “moral suasion” toward the Italian banks in order to reduce their external debt and a “wait-and-see” policy in relation to the deflationary effects of the balance of payments deficit.

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monetary policy, in conjunction with severe fiscal measures,25 adopted by the government at the beginning of 1964, produced a swift and impressive turn-around in the Italian payments situation. It took only six months to change the heavy deficit to a large surplus. Nevertheless, the European Commission (EC) still pressed for deflationary prescriptions, especially as the position of the lira on the exchange markets continued to be shaky in the spring of 1964, in spite of the realignment in the basic balance. Bilateral aid was sought by Italy and given by the United States in March 1964, and this brought about an avalanche of criticism from the EEC partners. Besides, the Community renewed its call for deflation on the basis of article 108 of the Treaty of Rome that empowered the Commission to “indicate the measures which it recommends to the State concerned”. Under pressure from the EEC, a harsh confrontation in the ruling coalition took place. In a letter published in the newspaper Il Messaggero, the Secretary of the Treasury Emilio Colombo warned the prime minister that a “dogmatic policy of structural reforms”26 would pose a threat to Italian democracy. Furthermore, during his visit to Rome in June 1964, the Vice-President of the EC Robert Marjolin made it clear that the average increase in wages was “excessive” and pressed for “a revision of the salary indexation”. He stood firm against government representatives’ attempt to object that such a course of action would meet determined resistance from the Socialist Party. According to Marjolin, the Italian socialists should embark in earnest on a deflationary policy, without which they were “doomed to fail”.27 In general, the full set of measures restored the previous conditions of capital accumulation and kept inflation under control.28 However, the crisis showed the contradictions of the “economic miracle” as well as the influence of the Community bodies, in particular the Commission, in 25  The fiscal measures adopted by the government included the restriction of hire-purchase, a higher tax on gasoline, and the increase in purchase taxes on vehicles. For a more detailed description of the measures, see the following documents: Esame della situazione e delle prospettive economiche, nonché delle misure di stabilizzazione già adottate in Italia, and Memorandum inviato da Moro a Hallstein, Rome, 19 September 1964, Acs, Carte Moro (hereafter: cm), Presidenza del Consiglio dei Ministri (hereafter: pcm), b. 11, fasc. “Lettera Hallstein 20 May 1964”. 26  The letter was published in “Il Messaggero”, May 25, 1964. 27  Appunto del Consigliere diplomatico per il Presidente del Consiglio, Rome, June 19, 1964, Acs, cm, pcm, b. 11, f. 22 “Visita del Vice Presidente della Commissione Cee Marjolin”. 28  From 1966 GDP was rising again at a very sustained pace.

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shaping Italy’s economic policy. Under these circumstances, Carli warned that a restrictive monetary policy was not sufficient, that it was necessary to adapt the structure of supply to the changed composition of demand and achieve gains in competitiveness once more. The Governor was mainly concerned about the Italian government’s inability to face wage increases that should reflect labor productivity growth and should take into account developments in competitor countries. According to Carli, indeed, the Italian policymakers did not fully grasp the impact of the European project on the domestic scenario. Carli’s argument rested on the assumption that Italian policymakers were so reluctant to impose restrictions on public spending and wage increases that the inflation rate would impinge upon the capacity to defend the value of the lira. For this reason, he called for moving “the driving force [of the integration process] from economy to policy” and began to wonder if monetary union should follow after the achievement of a wage-bargaining policy “on a communitarian level”.29 In the absence of such a course of action, fixed exchange rates—which implied a more painful redressing of the balance of payments for deficit countries—“should be tempered by the acceptance of certain degree of flexibility”.30 In sum, Carli was advocating a negotiated handover of responsibilities to the European authorities and, at the same time, a looser exchange mechanism in order to preserve Italy’s commitment to the EMU. The Governor’s demands apparently implied a twofold perspective. The idea of strengthening the EC’s decision-making power in economic matters responded to emerging policy needs, while the proposal for a more flexible intra-European exchange rate mechanism was of a purely technical nature. Nonetheless, both of them came from the same source: Carli’s growing distrust of the political establishment and the idea that only participation in European construction could preserve the ongoing modernization. The problematic experience of the center-left governments31 and the emerging opposition movements inspired by distaste for traditional society and international protests confirmed Carli’s view of grasping the  Carli, Prospettive di sviluppo nelle relazioni internazionali, 51–52.  Conferenza del Governatore della Banca d’Italia “La visione dell’Europa unita sotto il profilo economico”, Rome, January 31, 1970, in Ibidem, p. 7. 31  Carli shared the widespread concerns about some reforms promoted by the new political coalition. In particular, he opposed the nationalization of the electrical sector, decided by the government in 1962, which hit the conservative heart of Italian private capitalism and the new withholding tax on stock dividends. 29 30

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European cause firmly. As social protests reached a climax during the mass strikes of 1968–1970 and the economy went progressively stagnant and entered its first recession after that of the late 1940s, the idea of the “external constraint” (“vincolo esterno”) was revived more than ever. Across the Italian political spectrum (with the exception of extreme left and right parties) and among the technocratic elite, the European integration process had been traditionally recognized as an instrument to address longer-­ term issues such as unemployment, the lack of private investments, and the North-South divide. However, in the specific context of the crisis of the 1970s, the external constraint began to be exploited by the technocratic elite (to which Carli belonged) in order to restrain the intrusiveness of the political parties and their incapacity to curb public spending. Therefore, the overarching foreign policy imperative to maintain Italian participation at the heart of the European integration process became a tool to overcome the problems posed by the “partitocrazia” (the domination of government by parties). The externally imposed economic discipline was in fact supposed to help a weak political leadership to impose the sacrifices that they would not otherwise accept on the Italian people. In this regard, Italy’s participation in the EMU and in an EC endowed with increased powers was meant to dilute within a Community framework the government’s decision-making power over economic issues. Overall, though, contrary to Carli’s expectations both the evolution of the EMU and the attempt to raise awareness in the Italian leading decision makers went in another direction.

5.3   A Prophecy Which Comes True The integration strategy originally outlined in the Werner Report was based on the assumption that exchange rates with the US dollar would remain stable. This proved not to be the case, as in August 1971 the United States decided to temporarily end the dollar’s convertibility into gold. Despite this setback, the plan set the framework for further steps toward monetary integration, especially after the Smithsonian agreement of December 1971 that entailed potentially disruptive economic consequences for the EEC countries. The agreement not only established a new set of parities but also widened the trading bands surrounding the new central rates from 2.25% to 4.5%. This meant that a European country’s currency could fluctuate from ceiling to floor by 4.5% against the dollar, but that the currencies of two European countries would fluctuate by 9%

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against each other if one rose from floor to ceiling while the other fell from ceiling to floor. This extended exchange rate created major risks for common policies, such as the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), and ran counter to the scheme of the Werner Report according to which the EEC central banks had to restrict the intra-European margins of fluctuation. With the Basel agreement signed in April 1972, the EEC members attempted to solve this problem by establishing the so-called Snake in the tunnel. The “tunnel” consisted of bands of 2.25% up and down, inside which currencies were allowed to trade, implying a maximum change between any two currencies of 4.5%, and with all the currencies tending to move together against the dollar.32 Playing that card, the Six were shifting their focus by weakening their ties with the dollar and reducing intra-­ Community currency fluctuation margins. From the beginning, the Bank of Italy voiced “comments and concerns about the possibility and the opportunity of taking decisive measures for monetary integration, without converging relevant progress towards economic integration and political solidarity among member countries”.33 As the Governor pointed out in his final remarks for the year 1971, it was necessary to speed up “the unification of institutions devoted to economic issues and the coordination of both objectives and policies to achieve them”.34 Unfortunately, however, the Six reacted to the monetary turmoil of 1971 “as separate entities”35 since the cyclical developments “continued to differ” within a European Community “lacking a sufficient degree of economic integration”.36 As Carli predicted, the system had a checkered history with the United Kingdom abandoning it after just six weeks, followed by Italy in February 1973.37 The withdrawal from the Snake revealed the shortcomings that were undermining Italy’s stability at the 32  The original participants in the mechanism were France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands. Denmark, Norway, and the United Kingdom joined shortly afterward. 33  Carli, Relazione annuale, anno 1971. 34  Carli, Considerazioni finali del Governatore della Banca d’Italia, 359. 35  Carli Relazione annuale, anno 1971, 19. 36  Carli, Considerazioni finali del Governatore della Banca d’Italia, 76. 37  Before making this decision, Italy had obtained a derogation from the intervention arrangements provided for in the Basel Agreement. First, it was to be allowed not to make reimbursements on the basis of the composition of monetary reserves for the credit it had already obtained by way of very short-term support, a procedure that would have required Italy to transfer gold at the official rate. Second, the central bank was to be authorized to intervene in dollars in the future, and not in Community currencies.

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beginning of the 1970s. The decision entailed “a certain estrangement of the country from the European Monetary Union”; nonetheless, according to the Governor, “this was the outcome of an estrangement which had already taken place but it was not the cause”. This phenomenon found its roots in the past, since “the recurrent pro-European professions of faith” were not matched by “a move closer to Europe either adjusting institutional structures or in the short-term economic domain”.38 Above all, Carli pointed his finger at “the new needs expressed by the national community” which negatively impinged upon the country’s performance since they necessitated “a large amount of resources that the system was unable to accumulate spontaneously in the short run”. Therefore—concluded Carli—the political establishment had to face problems “far more complex than those envisaged in the postwar years”.39 After the failure of the European currency snake, it took some years before a new initiative was put in place. This time it was the neglect of the US dollar by the administration of President Carter that prompted European leaders to look for a new approach to ensure currency stability. On 20 October 1977, in Florence, the President of the European Commission, Roy Jenkins, put forward a proposal that aimed toward monetary union but was met with skepticism. In 1978, it was the German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt who finally accepted the principle of a monetary agreement urged on him by the French President Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, concerned about growing domestic inflation. The operation aimed at creating a zone of monetary stability in Europe, avoiding continual devaluations and promoting trade, growth, and economic convergence. At the Copenhagen Summit, on April 7–8, 1978, the Franco-German couple revived the idea of a new European Monetary System (EMS40), open to all the EEC Member States. The launch of a new project designed to resume some kind of European monetary arrangements required a decision from the government concerned. In the heated debate that took place in Italy at the end of 1978, the EMS was generally regarded as a proxy for Europe and European  Lettera di Carli per Colombo, Rome, 24 February 1973, Asbi, dc, c. 65, f. 4, sf. 1.  Ibidem. 40  The basic elements of EMS were the definition of the European Currency Unit (ECU) as a basket of national currencies and an Exchange Rate Mechanism, which set an exchange rate toward the ECU for each participating currency. On the basis of those “central” rates, bilateral rates were then established between Member States. The system also included a preventive tool to avoid breaking the set exchange rates. 38 39

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i­ntegration. Thus, membership in the EMS was mainly discussed in geopolitical terms and less on the basis of economic considerations. This “politicization” of the issue resulted in a polarization of positions. In broad terms, the technical policymakers, such as the Bank of Italy, and many economic experts were reluctant to join the system, while the majority of political leadership supported accession.41 To some extent, such a split enshrined the differences between those who had developed a pessimistic view about Italy’s capacity to meet its commitments and the advocates of a European “external constraint” leading to externally imposed economic discipline. After a week’s pause for reflection, the Andreotti-led government decided to join the system but with a wider fluctuation band of 6%. Such a compromise allowed the Italian government to take part in the project, thus avoiding political consequences associated with non-participation, and reduced the risk of restrictive monetary policy to keep the lira within the Exchange Rate Mechanism. As President of Confindustria,42 Carli did not reject the Franco-German proposal provided it fulfilled two requirements. First, the European countries participating should “establish a Communitarian policy towards the dollar”43; second, each participating member should take an approach “consistent with the logic of the market economy”.44 Carli refused to pander to the anti-European feelings widely held among Italian industry representatives, nonetheless the failure of the Snake and his increasing distrust of the government made him very circumspect. During his farewell address to the Confindustria Assembly in May 1980, he remarked that the acceptance of the existing agreements “was giving rise to increasing concerns”. Carli pointed out that the European Monetary System “had failed to 41  Also, views diverged within the government. The “pessimistic” view was supported by, among others, the Minister of Foreign Trade, Rinaldo Ossola, a former Director-General of the Bank of Italy. Ossola believed that the EMS would be merely a second version of the Snake. Moreover, at the domestic level, Ossola doubted that the political parties and the social partners had the necessary commitment and cohesion to adopt the tough economic policy required to remain in the EMS. This line of thought was shared by the Governor of the Bank of Italy, Paolo Baffi, and by other members of the government. In contrast, the “optimistic” view, embodied by the Treasury Minister, Filippo Pandolfi, favored Italy’s joining the system, also on the grounds that EMS membership would support his economic adjustment plan. 42  He was appointed in 1976. 43  Relazione all’Assemblea della Confederazione Generale dell’Industria Italiana, Rome, May 3, 1978. 44  Carli: è una sfida che va accettata, “IlSole24Ore”, November 25, 1978.

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achieve one of its goals: the creation of a European monetary area impervious to the consequences of the United States monetary policy”. For this purpose, he urged European leaders “to show themselves more capable of releasing their own economies from a subordinate position” and “to provide greater solidarity in the face of external threats”. Over the years, Carli had accumulated undisputed pro-European credentials. Nevertheless, the bitter lesson of the Snake and the increasing resentment toward the Italian political system made him more and more cautious. This attitude, as he noted with some disappointment, “did not make him an enemy of Europe” since the assumption that being in Europe was equivalent “to always saying yes” was “totally unacceptable”.45 At the beginning of the 1980s, the European choice was not called into question but at the same time an increasing awareness of Italy’s weaknesses was paving the way to a more circumspect approach rising amongst the technocratic elite.

Bibliography Carli, Guido, Conférence du Gouverneur de la Banca d’Italia “Aspects actuels de la coopération monétaire internationale”, Grenoble, November 3, 1965, in Scritti e Conferenze di Guido Carli, Vol. II, (1964–1966). Rome: Banca d’Italia, 1969. Carli, Guido, Considerazioni finali del Governatore della Banca d’Italia. Rome: Banca d’Italia, 1972. Carli, Guido, in collaboration with Paolo Peluffo. Cinquant’anni di vita italiana. Rome-Bari: Laterza, 1993. Carli, Guido, Indirizzo di saluto del Governatore della Banca d’Italia, Comitato Monetario della Comunità Economica Europea, XIX seduta, Rome, 28 October 1960, in Scritti e Conferenze di Guido Carli, Vol. I, (1959–1963). Rome: Banca d’Italia, 1969. Carli, Guido, Scritti e Conferenze di Guido Carli, 9 volumes. Rome: Banca d’Italia, 1969–1975. Carli, Guido. Conferenza del Governatore della Banca d’Italia “La visione dell’Europa unita sotto il profilo economico”, Rome: January 31, 1970, in Scritti e Conferenze di Guido Carli, Vol. V, (1970–1971). Rome: Banca d’Italia, 1971. Carli, Guido. Considerazioni finali del Governatore della Banca d’Italia. Rome: Banca d’Italia, 1971.

 Saluto del presidente uscente all’Assemblea Confederale.

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Carli, Guido. Prospettive di sviluppo nelle relazioni internazionali, “Euromoney”, London, March 1970, in Scritti e Conferenze di Guido Carli, Vol. V, (1970–1971). Rome: Banca d’Italia, 1971. Carli, Guido. Relazione annuale. Rome: Banca d’Italia, 1971. Carli, Guido. Saluto del presidente uscente all’Assemblea Confederale. Rome: May 6, 1980, in www.cortmic.eu/confindustria/1980_carli.doc. Colarizi, Simona. Storia dei partiti nell’Italia repubblicana. Rome-Bari: Laterza, 1994. Craveri, Piero. La repubblica dal 1958 al 1992. Milan: TEA, 1995. European Central Bank. Committee of Governors: agendas & minutes, Procès-­ verbal de la trente-neuvième séance du Comité des Gouverneurs des banques centrales des États membres de la Communauté économique éuropéenne, Basel, May 11, 1970 (last access July 2, 2014). https://www.ecb.europa.eu/ecb/history/ archive/pdf/agendas/CoG_39th_meeting_11_05_1970_FR.pdf?dcb93ada1d b4a7ce92c8615d1a75d575. European Central Bank. Committee of Governors: agendas & minutes, Procès-­ verbal de la quarantième séance du Comité des Gouverneurs des banques centrales des États membres de la Communauté économique éuropéenne, Venice, May 29, 1970 (last access July 2, 2014). https://www.ecb.europa.eu/ecb/history/ archive/pdf/agendas/CoG_40th_meeting_29_05_1970_FR.pdf?fc325a6468 7cbbf615b31671b073c9a. Fazio, Antonio. Address by Antonio Fazio “Guido Carli Governor of the Bank of Italy”. Rome: Luiss-Libera Università Internazionale degli Studi Sociali Guido Carli, 2003. Ginsborg, Paul. Storia d’Italia dal dopoguerra a oggi. Società e politica 1943–1988. Turin: Einaudi, 1989. Giovagnoli, Agostino. Il partito italiano. La Democrazia Cristiana dal 1942 al 1994. Bari-Rome: Laterza, 1996. Lanaro, Silvio, Storia dell’Italia repubblicana. Dalla fine della guerra agli anni Novanta. Venice: Marsilio, 1992. Malgeri, Francesco. L’Italia dal centro-sinistra agli “anni di piombo”, in Due secoli al Duemila: transizione, mutamento, sviluppo nell’Europa contemporanea (1815–1998), G. Aliberti, and F. Malgeri, eds. Milan: Led, 1999. Mammarella, Giuseppe, L’Italia contemporanea (1943–1989). Bologna: Il Mulino, 1990. P. Nenni, A. Moro. Carteggio 1960–1978, Fondazione Pietro Nenni ed. Scandicci: La Nuova Italia, 1998. Scoppola, Pietro. La repubblica dei partiti. Profilo storico della democrazia in Italia (1945–1990). Bologna: Il Mulino, 1991. Tamburrano, Giuseppe. Storia e cronaca del centro sinistra. Milan: Feltrinelli, 1976.

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Varsori, Antonio, La questione europea nella politica italiana, in L’Italia repubblicana nella crisi degli anni settanta, Giovagnoli, Agostino, Pons Silvio, eds, vol. 1, Tra guerra fredda e distensione. Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino 2003. Varsori, Antonio. L’Italia e la costruzione europea negli anni del centro-sinistra: una proposta interpretativa, in Nazione, interdipendenza, integrazione. Le relazioni internazionali dell’Italia (1917–1989), Federico Romero, and Antonio Varsori eds., vol. I. Rome: Carocci, 2007. Voulgaris, Yannis. L’Italia del centro-sinistra 1960–1968. Rome: Carocci, 1998.

PART II

Catholic Political Culture

CHAPTER 6

Italian Catholic Intellectuals and Indigenous Latin Americans: Transnational Networks and Violence at the End of the Cold War Massimo De Giuseppe

Abbreviations 500-IBPR 500 Years of Indigenous Black and Popular Resistance ASAL Associazione Studi America Latina (Latin American Study Association) CELAM Consejo Episcopal Latinoamericano (Latin American Episcopal Council) CISL Confederazione Italiana Sindacati Lavoratori (Italian Confederation of Trade Unions) CONAIE Confederación de nacionalidades indígenas (Confederation of Indigenous Nations) EZLN Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional (Zapatista National Liberation Army) FSLN Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional (Sandinista National Liberation Front) FMLN Frente Farabundo Martí para la Liberación Nacional (Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front) M. De Giuseppe (*) Department of Humanities, Università IULM, Milan, Italy © The Author(s) 2019 A. Tarquini, A. Guiso (eds.), Italian Intellectuals and International Politics, 1945–1992, Italian and Italian American Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-24938-0_6

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LIDLIP

Lega Internazionale per i Diritti e la Liberazione dei Popoli (in English: ILPRL International League for People’s Rights and Liberation) MLAL Movimento Laici per l’America Latina (LMLA—Laity Movement for Latin America) MOJOCA Movimiento de los Jóvenes de la Calles (Movement of Street Youth) MST Movimento dos Trabalhadores Sem Terra (Landless Workers’ Movement) PC Pax Christi PCI Pax Christi International TPP Tribunale Permanente dei Popoli (PPT—Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal)

6.1   The Crossroads of 1992 As was the case one hundred years before, the five-hundredth anniversary of the ‘discovery of America’ set off a series of celebrations. However, differently from the previous centennial, it also gave rise to a number of counter-­ celebrations; these took the form of self-criticism on the part of the European conscience, acts of penance, or expressions of solidarity with indigenous peoples. Indeed, one might say that the celebrations themselves led to a substantial re-evaluation of the very event being celebrated: no longer could one dare laud the European culture that had been brought across the ocean five centuries ago; rather, more material, or in any case, functional aspects were highlighted: the feats of seamanship, the growth of trade, the birth of interdependence between world civilizations. Meanwhile, the negative view of the European conquest led to its demonization, while the indigenous cultures that had disappeared or in any case been defeated came to be strongly idealized. This is more than understandable; but it risks doing a disservice to the truth, which still remains the ultimate goal.1

With these difficult words, the Jesuit Armido Rizzi introduced an issue of the journal Servitium. Quaderni di spiritualità entirely dedicated to the 500th anniversary of the European discovery of the Americas. Specifically, it examined the contested celebrations that took place in that fateful year of 1992—celebrations which were intertwined with the debate over what remained of Latin American dictatorships (that same year marked the signing of the El Salvador peace accords, as well as the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to K’iche’ Mayan Rigoberta Menchú Tum), and which 1

 Rizzi, “Premessa”, 9.

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were set against the more general backdrop of the end of the Cold War and the twilight of the so-called First Italian Republic. This chapter aims to take 1992 as a starting point and retrace some of the debates involving a number of Italian Catholic intellectuals over the issue of indigenous peoples in Latin America. It was a wide-ranging issue with roots in the contradictions of the early modern period, but at the same time it was an opportunity to reflect on the progress that had been made by the Church, by Italian culture and even by Italian foreign policy in the post-conciliar age. While there were certainly strong ties between the Christian Democrats in Italy and their counterparts across the ocean, even more notable was the fact that thousands of Italian Catholics had mobilized themselves—through associations, clubs, research centers, religious congregations or missionary groups—to make Latin America into a sort of huge, post-conciliar laboratory, one that was as extreme and dramatic as it was creative and dynamic. The entire process was marked by a fascination with liberation theology and the “option for the poor”, themes which emerged in the conferences held in Medellín (1968) and Puebla (1979) and which involved several intellectuals who were sensitive to Italy’s international standing. All of this garnered wide national media coverage on television, in print and in current affairs.2 From a historical point of view, 1992 marked the end of a political and cultural era. This was clear in even the very first attempts by Catholics— some more consciously than others—to take stock of the Latin American experience from an international point of view. After all, Catholics had long been aware of the deep political, ecclesiastical and cultural ties between Italy and Latin America. This emerged in the brief observations of Rizzi, cited above, who was well aware of the complex nature of history, warning against maximalist simplifications. The same cannot be said of our current media debates: just look at the recent clashes that erupted in the United States between white supremacists, Native Americans, descendants of Italian immigrants and Latinos over the proposed removal of some statues of Columbus. The celebrations of 1992 also revived what had been a long-term process of European/American reflection on Latin America, especially in terms of Catholic thought (the same could certainly not be said of the Catholic experience in Asia or Africa). Practically speaking, ever since the origins of natural law, the issue of indigenous Latin American populations had been problematic from a political point of view; yet it had also been a 2  De Giuseppe, L’altra America. Cattolici italiani e America latina. Da Medellín a Francesco, 264–280.

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sort of cultural laboratory which, despite appearances, was by no means of marginal importance. Indeed, its unique influence could be seen not only in the development of theological, pastoral and devotional practices—formulas, symbols, methods—but even in diplomatic, legal and institutional spheres.3 In the twilight of the Cold War, that fateful year of 1992 provided new perspective on the issue of indigenous peoples in Latin America. It allowed European Catholicism—and in a unique way, Italian Catholicism—to carry out a sort of self-assessment, to measure itself against modernization, to examine the relationship between power and law, between local perspectives and global perspectives, between the past and the present. And indeed, there had been a long tradition of defending violently oppressed indigenous populations, starting with the establishment of the Juzgado General de Indios at the end of the sixteenth century and continuing up to the mobilization of human rights organizations at the end of the twentieth century. Likewise, this had been accompanied over the centuries by an unbroken series of local rebellions and transnational movements: from the colonial age to the era of post-separatism, from the populist movements of the 1930s to the Cold War, from Guevara-­ inspired foquismo to military dictatorships. This historical background helps explain the scope of the debate that erupted in conjunction with the celebrations and protests of 1992—a debate which, in the Catholic world, centered around the relationship between religion and violence. It was a gradual process which, as it unfolded, swept up the tensions and fears of a world at a particularly volatile historical crossroads. After all, the world was emerging from Cold War polarization and still reeling from the effects of the Gulf War; meanwhile, the Italian political system was embroiled in crisis, and there were signs of a shifting ecclesiastical structure on both a national and international level (the latter evidenced by the disappointing CELAM IV in Santo Domingo). That year of Columbus-inspired celebrations saw the involvement of almost all the main Catholic interlocutors with Latin America: from the Little Brother Arturo Paoli and the editors of Concilium to the Jesuits of San Fedele in Milan and writers and politicians active in the world of ­international cooperation. So too were theological seminaries, universities and research centers engaged, not to mention the disparate world of militant movements and resistance campaigns. 3  It is interesting to compare this Italian conception of development in Latin America with that of the United States; see Leary, A Cultural History, 1–22.

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6.2   Toward 1992 Fully aware of the contested celebrations that would be held shortly thereafter, the Italian nongovernmental organization (NGO) Mani Tese mobilized its network in advance, organizing a conference in Florence (Palazzo dei Congressi) in 1989 entitled America latina es tu hora! The event’s slogan left little room for interpretation: “the 500 years that Europeans are getting ready to celebrate have been 500 years of oppression. The discovery and conquest of America has cost 90 million people their lives”.4 The first part of the proceedings (La difficile strada per la democrazia, or The Hard Road to Democracy) was dominated by the topic of violence, featuring a number of notable speakers such as the Nobel laureate Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, Carlos Tunnermann and Mario López. That was followed by the contribution of the “voices of freedom”, where witnesses to the conflicts in Bolivia, Guatemala, Peru and Brazil had the opportunity to speak. The conference organizers had also invited farmers and members of cooperatives from several Latin American countries. Over the course of the conference, it became quite evident that there were still unresolved issues when it came to the Christian reaction to unjust social structures. In his introductory remarks, Silvano Orlandi spoke of the “Christian martyrs in the subcontinent” who had “fought against structural sin through their religious and pastoral work, and structural sin had killed them”. He highlighted the peaceful, evangelical approach of the Christian resistance, spearheaded by the poor and indigenous. He pointed out how many priests had carried out “strictly religious work”, and that it was only due to extraordinary circumstances in their countries that this work turned into “political” and “sociohistorical” engagement (the most noteworthy example was still that of El Salvador’s Oscar Romero, gunned down while celebrating mass on 24 March 1980).5 Ángel Tolosa—coordinator of the transnational movement Autodescubrimiento de nuestra América and activist in the Red de organizaciones campesinos-indígenas—struck a much more militant tone when speaking about the contro-conquista, going so far as to bring up armed revolution. Even the Bolognese journal Concilium explored the violence of the conquest and the debate around martyrs of the resistance in a special issue (6/90) called 1492–1992 la voce delle vit4  Mani tese Archive: Centro Documentazione, Sezione congressi, 1992, Materiali preparatori, Poster. 5  Orlandi, Le ragioni di un convegno, 10.

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time (The Voice of the Victims), edited by Leonardo Boff and Virgilio Elizondo. Contributors included Nancy Ribeiro and the Spanish Jesuit Ignacio Ellacuría, who had a keen understanding of the relationship between politics and religion (he would be assassinated just a few months later at the Universidad Centroamericana in El Salvador, along with five Jesuit brothers and two women). In this plurality of voices, one of the publications that best shed light on the approach of Catholic intellectuals during this unique foray into international politics was the above-mentioned monograph America Latina 500 anni di solitudine (Latin America: 500 Years of Solitude). It was published by the Servite journal Servitium, whose editorial board included intellectuals of the highest order, unequivocal in their political engagement: priests, like Camillo De Piaz and Abramo Levi, a historian of Christianity like Alberto Gallas, a female theologian like Maria Cristina Bartolomei, activists and pacifists like Mario Cuminetti, Enrico Peyretti and Umberto Vivarelli. Servitium had never dedicated much space to Latin America up to that point, despite the fact that the most famous Italian Servite, Father David Maria Turoldo, had been one of the first to spread the story of Rigoberta Menchú throughout Italy. His friend Ettore Masina—journalist, writer, activist and founder of the Radié Resch network—recalled Turoldo’s efforts in a posthumous tribute, citing the many hours and activities he dedicated to promoting and spreading Rigoberta’s book, doing so with fatherly tenderness (which many of you certainly know something about); he believed, as did many of us, that the book told a sacred story, a meeting of cosmogonies that come together in one divine breath, in the wail of men and women who refuse to give in to the power of evil: a wail that is both a cry of pain and a cry of defiance.6

Turoldo had dedicated a series of articles, poems and even the introduction to a children’s book to the Indians of Guatemala (“one of the countries most ravaged by the West: a bloodied, crucified land. Far from Eastern European countries! Suffice it to say that it was Rigoberta Menchú’s country, where an illiterate girl would end up writing one of the most important books of our time”).7 His fascination with Mesoamerica would even lead him to attempt an Italian translation of Ernesto Cardenal’s Quetzalcóatl, a work in which Cardenal, the Trappist  Masina, Davide, un uomo ingombrante.  Turoldo, La parola ai fanciulli, 6–7. There was even a text from as far back as 1980 called Celebrazione per l’America Amerindia, in Archivio Turoldo, Opere, Prosa, 14. 6 7

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monk and Sandinista minister, provides a poetic and political reinterpretation of the Náhuatl “feathered serpent” as a Christological symbol of peace and social justice.8 The special issue of Servitium was organized into two parts. The first part was edited by Armido Rizzi (who would subsequently deal with violence and the sacred in a future work), wherein Italian scholars were given an opportunity to discuss what they believed were “positive” examples of Euro-American integration. Specifically, they examined the experiences of Las Casas (Rizzi himself), the origin of Guadalupanism (Pietro Canova), the life of Poma de Ayala (Antonio Melis) and the long journey to rediscover the Christian community, from Fray Toribio de Benavente to the basic ecclesial communities (Clodomiro Boff). The second part was coordinated by the president of the Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal (PPT), Dr. Gianni Tognoni. Here the focus shifted directly to politics, with some contributions also dealing with what had long been hanging over this debate: violence. The PPT had been established as a private legal body under the guidance of Lelio Basso, building on the experience of the Russell Tribunals I and II. A special session of the PPT had been organized that very same year (4–9 October 1992) in Padua, with the backing of the Veneto region as well as that of the municipality, province and University of Padua.9 One of the tribunal’s most active exponents was Linda Bimbi, a former nun who had done missionary work in Brazil and who was a leader of human rights campaigns.10 In her contribution to the Servitium monograph, Bimbi provided a summary of that session’s proceedings, focusing on a key passage in the PPT’s sentence: namely, that in which the conquest of America was defined as having been legitimized through violence. Violent legitimization was understood as being an inherent part of modernity, the foundational building block of a system of nations which had war at its base.11 Naturally, the past was projected into the present, given that there seemed to be a crisis brewing among nation-states in the age of postpolarization; thus, it would fall on civil society and international law to provide the answers. Activists from the League for Peoples’ Rights (Lega 8  Letter from D. M. Turoldo to E. Cardenal, 1 May 1987, in Archivio Turoldo, Opere, Poesia, 9, Quetzalcoatl. 9  TPP, La conquista dell’America e il Diritto Internazionale: sentenza, sessione speciale, Padua-Venice, 5–9 October 1992, in Fondazione Lelio e Lisli Basso, sezione internazionale, documenti. 10  L. Bimbi, Tanti piccoli fuochi inestinguibili. Scritti sull’America latina e il diritto dei popoli (ed. A. Mulas), Nuova Delphi, Roma 2018. 11  Bimbi, “Esperienza di ascolto”, 110–111.

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internazionale per i diritti e la liberazione dei popoli) drew up a proposal with the support of the Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano, who penned the concluding contribution. They recommended strengthening the United Nations and “moving beyond the conqueror mentality that is so deeply engrained in our culture”. Tognoni also focused on this topic, urging the Italian public to become more and more engaged with what was happening far beyond European borders. Indeed, he observed as follows: To all of those who want to move past notions of pure dominion and conquest, the celebrations that have just concluded leave both a practical and a theoretical task to perform. Indeed, any celebration of folklore is purely for show – the ruler mentality and spirit of pure power have not disappeared, even if today the ways of ruling are more devious and difficult to detect. The problems of yesterday will present themselves again, and they will be just as dramatic as they once were.12

A few years earlier, in 1987, a global campaign had been launched in Quito. Entitled “500 Years of Indigenous, Black and Popular Resistance”, its aim was to fight against the “positive image portrayed by celebrations of the conquest”.13 It involved NGOs, movements, groups and schools, and it legitimized the idea of a “struggle for identity” that could lead to “a democratic, political proposal”. The legacy of this campaign was recorded in a textbook called A 500 anni dalla conquista: 1492–1992 (500  Years After the Conquest: 1492–1992), edited by Giovanni Kalci. The volume was organized into 20 chapters and featured illustrations by Mino Cerezo Barredo, the Spanish liberationist painter and Claretian missionary. Its opening words were particularly meaningful: we want them to listen to us, that they might hear the voice of our peoples, that they might discover the Popol Vuh, the Mayan Bible … the official history of the conquest is a colonialist history that transforms the invaders into heroes and masters. This view deliberately ignores the struggle, the resistance and the courage of our peoples to defend life and dignity.14

This work was actually a collection of writings from various contributors, which opened with another rather belligerent piece by Galeano. He  Tognoni, “Ipotesi”, 96.  Dacomo, “1992, oltre la conquista”, 101. 14  Kalci, A 500 anni dalla conquista, 2. 12 13

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returned to this idea of “otra historia” as a response to “a stolen land, a ravaged economy, a falsified history, a daily usurpation of reality”. At the height of his fame, the Uruguayan writer did not mince words: Sometimes Latin America becomes the latest trend: but like all trends, it is short-lived. And so northern intellectuals cast us their passing glances of adoration: at the end of the ‘50s it was Cuba’s turn; at the end of the ‘70s, Nicaragua. Between one gleaming illusion of revolution or another, there was the guerrilla warfare of Che Guevara and other romantic exploits. These fleeting passions inevitably met their end in disappointment and public scorn. Just like in the 16th century, the misleading hopes of El Dorado are soon dashed by reality. … the allure and the curse are but two sides of the same attitude that ignores and disrespects reality. In an article I published a few years ago, in which I was clearly in favor of the workers’ uprising in Poland, I allowed myself to make an observation that was received very poorly; nonetheless, I still believe I was right. I said that if Lech Walesa had been born in Guatemala, and if he had been an indio, they would have killed him during the first strike, and his assassination would not have warranted even a millimeter of text in the world’s greatest newspapers, nor a second of time on the big television channels.15

Among the articles chosen, a large section was dedicated to indigenous rebellions, wherein the silence on the part of Western foreign policy was denounced; there was also an opportunity for liberation theologians to share their views, while other articles addressed cases of persecution at the hands of dictators. One notable contribution came from the Peruvian Gustavo Gutiérrez, who wrote Verso il V centenario (Toward the Quincentenary). He dedicated his piece to the Ecuadorian bishop Leonidas Proaño (died 1988), one of the most important figures in the pastoral indigenista. Proaño had dialogued with Italians during his lifetime, including Dossetti supporters in Bologna, such as the historian Paolo Prodi (older brother of Romano), and the secular activist Sergio Paronetto from Pax Christi.16 The authors in this section were quite critical of John Paul II’s stance on the issue of indigenous peoples (they believed he viewed it exclusively in evangelical/devotional terms, deliberately avoiding a political stance so as not to irritate Washington). They struck a provocative tone by requesting that the Holy See formally include penitential celebrations during the planned commemoration of the quincentenary, “not out of masochism but as a sign of accepting responsibility for violence”.  Galeano, Persino la carta geografica mente, 4.  Gutiérrez, La storia dell’altro, 14–15.

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6.3   Revolution on the Horizon? Indigenous resistance movements were certainly tied to local politics and socioeconomic circumstances, but they had always had a deeply religious side as well. And being religious did not necessarily mean being conservative or slow-moving—far from it. The Cold War had only partially changed some of these characteristics, as international strategic interests became entangled with local historical circumstances. This could clearly be seen in the escalation of scorched earth (tierra arrasada) operations carried out by armed forces and paramilitary groups in the indigenous villages of Guatemala and in some rural areas of El Salvador between 1980 and 1983 (in conjunction with the outbreak of a “second” Cold War in Central America); or in the ethnic tensions that characterized the Peruvian civil war, which pitted the army against Maoist-inspired Sendero Luminoso terrorists between the 1980s and 1990s.17 These aspects seemed to have been recognized in Italy as far back as 1954, long before Rio, Medellín and Puebla—that was when the journal Adesso (founded by Primo Mazzolari, an intellectual who was concerned with the plight of rural communities) equated the Cold War with colonialism, urging Christians to be aware of the responsibilities and impacts that would arise from such a dangerous mix. In commenting on the coup in Guatemala, the free-thinking Catholic intellectual Aldo Pedrone compared it to the colonization of the Americas, lands which had been “scarred by pillaging and throat-cutting, the spirit of peaceful evangelization having been replaced by the cruel, slave-like system of the repartimientos”. He would go on to state that “The stories of the beautiful American races send shivers down the spine, from Chile to Northern Mexico, where more than twenty million Indians were completely exterminated in less than a century by Spanish conquistadores”.18 He then used the following words to describe the military coup that overthrew Arbenz Guzmán: I have heard Armas’ operation justified thusly: “communism is evil and must be crushed at any cost, wherever possible”. As always, there is only one cost. It is the cost of the cannon fodder, whose lives are worth so little on the world market that they are thrown into the hellish fray by the ton. I was once told by a right-minded person—who especially thinks rightly when it comes to his own self-interest—that in the end, it was just a little skirmish…  La Bella, Perù: il tempo della vergogna.  Mazzolari, “Guatemala”, 3–4.

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He told me this with the tact of someone pulling a sheet over the victims so as not to see the slaughtered corpses…Of course, one might say that it is all just water under the bridge, but if I’m seeing it clearly it is not water but blood, and that should be in the interest of any baptized soul.19

Twenty-five years after that “little indios skirmish”, Father Ernesto Balducci, one of the more politically active liberation theologians, struck a similar tone writing on the pages of “I-doc”. Commenting on the status of the Latin American Church leading up to the Puebla conference, he wrote: Is it true or is it not true that the history of the Christianization of Latin America is indistinguishable from the bloody history of colonization? Would this continent, now a veritable game reserve for Latin American politics to prey upon, have found itself in its current state of economic and political dependency without this missionary prehistory? As a product of history, a people’s culture unconsciously preserves the defeats, rebellions, longings and impossible expectations that have accumulated; it does not reflect a pure consciousness… while it is impossible go back and trace the origin of a people’s consciousness before their slavery – that very history creates a state of necessity – it is possible to discern in today’s cultural attitudes the typical dialectic of subaltern cultures: on the one hand, those ambiguous layers of a heritage that has been forced upon them, as Freire would describe it; on the other hand, the creative impulses of protest and utopia.20

The spiral of violence had left its indelible mark on Latin American history; in voicing his doubts and pleas, Balducci (creator of the “planetary human”21) was concerned with what that meant for universal Christianity and a Europe that was much closer to Latin America than it appeared. The years to come would see the media spotlight shine on the indigenous uprising in Chiapas—in the diocese of an indigenist bishop like “el tactic” (father) Samuel Ruiz—led by Subcomandante Marcos, which coincided with the North American Free Trade Agreement coming into force (1 January 1994). There would also be an increasing indigenous presence at international Social Summits (starting with Copenhagen in 1995). These  Pedrone, “Guatemala”, 4–5.  Balducci, Fede e cultura, 79. Other authors who contributed to that issue included Mario Cuminetti, Mario Gozzini, Joseph Comblin, Antonio Fragoso, Pablo Richard and Leonidas Proaño. 21  E. Balducci, L’uomo planetario, 12–13. 19 20

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events would usher in a new era of political questions concerning a potential youth movement—a movement that would be built around the relationship between Indios, nations and the international community. Records held in the archive at the Lelio and Lisli Basso Foundation demonstrate that the plight of indigenous peoples once again became the focus of Giulio Girardi’s political thought at that time. A Catholic intellectual, dissident and former Salesian (suspended a divinis in 1977), Girardi was one of the most famous and most complex exponents of European liberation theology, in addition to being a long-time proponent of dialogue between Christianity and Marxism.22 With the world no longer polarized by the Cold War, it was a difficult time of shifting geopolitical balances. It was also an age of hyper-globalized means of communication, and the polarization of wealth now came in new forms. Girardi believed that in such a scenario, “anti-neoliberal militants” had precious new tools at their disposal in the form of indigenous resistance movements and uprisings. Indeed, he felt that neither old nor new left-wing parties would be able to oppose the increasing (and unstoppable) financialization of the economy, but perhaps a mobilized indigenous population could. It seems that these reflections were a product of 1992 and its immediate consequences, with Girardi revisiting the issue of passive and active violence. Indeed, he was forced to reconsider some of his old theories, and he offered a new interpretation of the ideas and polemics that were first introduced during the old “dispute of the new world” from half a century before—that was when, from his vantage point in Peru, the Italian intellectual Antonello Gerbi had aligned himself (albeit with a number of caveats) with Las Casas against Hegel’s and De Pauw’s criticism of the noble savage.23 Girardi would address the issue a few years later in a volume edited by the Mexican historian Alicia Puente Lutteroth. Revisiting his notes from the early 1990s, Girardi would write: 22  This topic deeply influenced Girardi’s entire body of work, starting with the publication of his first book in 1966—Marxismo e cristianesimo—which had a great impact on the student movement of the time and initiated a dialogue with important figures such as Lucio Lombardo Radice and Roger Garaudy; up to his last book—Che Guevara visto da un cristiano—published only a few months before his death. The theologian dedicated many of his works to this dichotomy, and indirectly to the relationship between rebellion and religion and conflict and liberation. Some noteworthy examples include his books from 1971, Cristianesimo, liberazione umana, lotta di classe, and from 1986, Sandinismo, marxismo e cristianesimo. 23  Gerbi, La disputa del Nuovo mondo, pp. 616–617.

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There are some interesting new aspects to consider when it comes to the indigenous issue today. Traditionally, studies of indigenous peoples viewed them in a negative sense: primitive and primordial, with a marginal role in the history of humanity. Then there were studies carried out in solidarity with the indigenous, indignantly denouncing the injustices, spoliation and persecution to which these populations have been subjected ever since their subjugation to Western Christian domination. Subsequently, it would be none other than the Christians who rediscovered the central, spiritual importance of the option for the poor in their daily efforts, describing the indigenous as the poorest of the poor. In recent years, however, a completely new interpretation has emerged thanks to a realization, rebellion and mobilization of the indigenous themselves. This realization manifests itself in different shapes and to different extents in the various countries; there is no doubt, however, that its scope has widened both within and beyond the continent, at the very least since the celebrations and counter-celebrations of the conquest.24

Girardi did not just examine the consequences of this “renewed realization” of rights that had been violated for centuries—he also insisted on building an international and transnational grassroots movement using new technologies (Internet was appearing on the horizon). However, he did not resolve the issue of what kind of practical limits should be placed on insurrectionary violence. In any case, he believed that an organized political movement would have to consciously support itself through different forms of rebellion in different places; and although such rebellions might seem distant from one another, they would actually be an opportunity for each local situation to learn from the experiences of others, thereby contributing to a new indigenous presence on the world stage. Girardi was outlining a new form of global political mobilization, one that would be transgenerational in nature, capable of bringing together “old” and “new” historical subjects. And each subject would bring a distinctive spiritual and religious experience, as well as unique strategies when compared to the old logic of third-world foquismo. Essentially, the theologian envisioned the emergence of a unique, independent capacity for antagonism, rooted in an indigenous world that would become globalized while keeping its own ideal purity intact—an indigenous community that would sow the seeds of “diversity in unity” in an increasingly transnational scenario (such  Girardi G. (2006), Los pueblos indígenas, nuevos sujetos históricos, 34.

24

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a vision would jibe well with the media’s portrayal of Neozapatismo shortly thereafter, but it would fail to take into account the long-term effects of migratory flows and cultural modernization). In a certain sense, this meant that the theories behind liberation theology would have to be re-examined. New perspectives and new political leaders would have to be identified among the youth; and young people would have to renew their interest in a Latin America that had fallen into political oblivion in the second half of the 1980s. As indigenous and indigenist activism became more organized and interconnected toward the end of the twentieth century (not to mention more adept at navigating the network of NGOs and United Nations [UN] bodies),25 Girardi wanted to find a natural connection between the traditional methods of Christian political resistance and this emergent lucha subversiva. In other words, he wanted to establish a natural, modern-day dialogue between the “Christianized Che” of his adulthood and the first social forums of his old age. Indeed, when these forums started in Porto Alegre, they introduced the world to previously unknown indigenous organizations—such as the Confederación de nacionalidades indígenas (CONAIE) in Ecuador— which had the potential to become major social movements on a par with the Landless Worker’s Movement (MST) in Brazil.26 The theologian thus hoped for the birth of a new form of international popular politics. In that sense, he came to define “insurgent indigenous peoples” as the only real “option for rebellion” and the only “true threat to the current imperial order” in the age of globalization. He described the logical consequence of this as follows: Over the next 15 years, indigenous resistance movements in Latin America will be one of the main thorns in the side of national governments. These movements will grow on the strength of transnational activist networks that fight for indigenous rights and human rights, with the support of well-­ financed environmentalists. Tensions will mount, especially in the areas between Mexico and Amazonia. At the heart of these tensions, an unre25  The UN declared 1993 as the year of the “world’s indigenous peoples”; that same year, the Working Group on Indigenous Populations approved a draft declaration on the rights of indigenous peoples. On this topic, see Giraudo, La questione indigena in America latina. 26  While the first World Social Forum was being held in Porto Alegre in 2001, the UN Human Rights Committee named Mexican anthropologist Rodolfo Stavenhagen as Special Rapporteur on the human rights and fundamental freedoms of indigenous peoples. Montagnini, Il movimento leggero.

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solved conflict will emerge: that between the needs of globalization on the one hand, and the needs of participatory democracy and transparency on the other.27

This process would require increasing commitment at a transnational level on the part of new political activists and labor activists—and multilateralists (as well as the Holy See) would no longer be able to ignore them.28 From a political and cultural point of view, such a shift would inevitably bring the focus back to environmental issues and care for our common home. Indeed, Pope Francis’ encyclical Laudato si’ drew inspiration from the lessons learned in Latin America, emphasizing these very issues. It is no coincidence, then, that Girardi—together with Luigi Bettazzi, bishop of Ivrea and former president of Pax Christi International—was one of the main promoters, originally together with Movimento Laici per l’America Latina (MLAL),29 of Samuel Ruiz’s work in Italy. As bishop of San Cristóbal de las Casas in Chiapas (the same dioceses as the “obispo de indios”, Bartolomé de las Casas), the Mexican Ruiz had been the quintessential defender of indigenous causes. Ruiz had also stayed in close contact with a number of Italians ever since his studies in Rome, and Girardi had been a personal friend of his since the late 1970s, around the same time he had first come into contact with Sergio Méndez Arceo in Cuernavaca. Girardi would eventually work even more closely with Ruiz in the following decade as a result of Girardi’s direct involvement with the Sandinista revolution, first with the Centro Ecuménico Antonio Valdivieso in Managua and then alongside Movimiento de los Jóvenes de la Calles (MOJOCA) in Guatemala City.30 Having been an ardent supporter of the Cuban and Sandinista revolutions, Girardi himself admitted that only later did he come to see the indigenous issue in a new light. He confessed that he had only briefly touched upon the subject during his first Latin  Girardi, Los pueblos indígenas, 20–21.  Girardi, La nostra resistenza, 28–29. Most of the documents contained in this volume came from the Centro de Derechos humanos Fray Bartolomé de Las Casas. One of the more notable essays was Bugliani R., Dal Messico all’Ecuador: mappe dell’insurgencia nel XXI secolo. 29  MLAL was a movement of lay volunteers involved in projects of solidarity in Latin America, founded in 1966, with the approval of Pope Paul VI, by Armando Oberti. MLAL published for two decades the Quaderni ASAL series, an interesting collection of books dedicated to the religious and social problems of Latin American Church. 30  Lutte G., Habed N., L’amicizia liberatrice, in www.amistrada.net 27 28

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American experience in April 1972, at the Cristianos para el Socialismo conference in Santiago de Chile; likewise, he had not delved into the issue during his time as a professor of anthropology, Marxism and liberation theology at the Lumen Vitae religious institute in Brussels.31 Two years after the contested celebrations of 1992, Girardi would re-­ examine the relationship between religion and rebellion, as well that between international solidarity and political mobilization. In the introduction to a biography of Samuel Ruiz (published by the Parma-based Alfazeta), Girardi would write: When the Zapatista uprising broke out on the first of January, 1994, the first concern of the Mexican government and Chiapas landowners was to delegitimize it, refusing to recognize it as an independent indigenous movement; rather, they wanted to find out “who was behind it”. This reading of the facts was supposed to divert the public’s attention away from the real problems of hunger, oppression, marginalization and death, which were the causes of the uprising; the goal was to reduce it to an expression of violence and illegality that had been initiated and orchestrated by foreign agents. This interpretation was based on the racist assumption that indigenous populations were uncultured, passive and divided, and that they were therefore incapable of mobilizing on their own.32

According to Girardi, the “social church” in Nicaragua and El Salvador had struck a violent chord with the peasantry in basic ecclesial communities, as well as with Christian labor activists and the groups that would unite under the FSLN and FMLN. In Chiapas, however, it had contributed to a renewed sense of indigenous otherness that had the potential to change perceptions, to the point where this otherness (which had been largely neglected in neighboring Guatemala) could become a source of cultural enrichment for the church and the world. Furthermore, the Zapatista uprising seemed to be more the result of active non-violence, in line with the theories of Father Turoldo, Arturo Paoli, Luigi Bettazzi and 31  Girardi, La conquista dell’America. Dalla parte dei vinti and Gli esclusi costruiranno la loro storia? A big amount of other documents coming from the personal papers of the Italian catholic intellectuals are now conserved in the Fondo Giulio Girardi at Archivio Storico della Fondazione Lelio e Lisli Basso, in Rome. 32  Girardi, Samuel Ruiz, 9–10. On this theme, see also an interesting article written by the journalist Maurizio Chierici, the Latin American expert of Il Corriere della Sera; this article was used as preface to a book dedicated to the bishop of Chiapas Samuel Ruiz, published in Italy by the Catholic trade union CISL: M. Chierici, Prefazione, VII–XIII.

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Ernesto Balducci—in other words, a classic resistance movement rather than a foquista-inspired armed revolution. This meant there was more room for dialogue and cooperation, paving the way for potential political partnerships with Italian Catholic internationalists. Though Girardi had his own way of looking at the issue, like many other Catholic intellectuals he was well aware of the profound differences between the openly atheist Marcos and the “Lascasian” bishop Ruiz— indeed, a wide religious and cultural gap separated the two. Similarly, he recognized the differences between the indigenous Tzotzil youth who ardently supported the Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional (EZLN) and their Western (mostly student) backers. These differences also included where they fell on the peace-violence spectrum and what place either method should have in a social revolution. Once again, however, the hard part was establishing an actual dialogue that could bridge these gaps, even if that meant oversimplifying matters. Thus, Girardi would ultimately seek his solutions in the otherness of the indigenous world and its Latin American crucifixes (to cite Dussels)33; and if not there, then in the martyrdom of those who had fallen victim to violent coercion only to rise up with new solutions in hand, or at least with a newfound call for the construction of a transnational political network. In truth, having been imagined from afar, such an indigenous world was partially unreal; however, there were now different circumstances and new movements to consider. And to Girardi—a long-time scholar of the relationship between Christianity and Marxism—this world represented one last internationalist utopia, far from the tired schemes of traditional resistance movements and their propaganda.

Bibliography Balducci Ernesto, “Fede e cultura: la proposta di una civiltà cristiana”, in “America latina: la chiesa al bivio”, I-doc, no. 67, 1979, 76–79. Balducci Ernesto, L’uomo planetario, Brescia: Camunia, 1985. Bimbi Linda, “Esperienza di ascolto: Padova 5–9 Ottobre 1992”, in “America latina. 500 anni di solitudine”, Servitium. Quaderni di spiritualità, no. 85–86 (January–April 1993): 108–123.

33  From the opening dedication (“to all Latin American crucifixes”) in Dussels, 1492–1992. La Chiesa in america latina (1492–1992), 3.

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Bimbi Linda, Tanti piccoli fuochi inestinguibili : scritti sull’America latina e i diritti dei popoli, edited by A. Mulas, Rome, Nova Delphi, 2018. Burgos Elisabeth, Mi chiamo Rigoberta Menchú, translated by Andra Lethen (Barcelona: Vergara, 1982), Florence: Giunti, 1990. Cardenal Ernesto, Quetzalcoatl: il serpente piumato, Translated by David M. Turoldo (Milan: A. Mondadori, 1989). Ceci Lucia, La teologia della liberazione in America Latina: l’opera di Gustavo Gutiérrez, Milan: FrancoAngeli, 1999. Cellini Jacopo, Universalism and Liberation. Italian Catholic Culture and the Idea of International Community. 1963–1978, Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2017. Chierici Maurizio, Prefazione, in Samuel Ruiz, Giustizia e pace si baceranno, Edited by Jorge Santiago and Anne de Saint Phalle, translated by Enzo De Marchi, Rome: Edizioni Lavoro/Macondo, 1997. Dacomo Annoni Bianca, “1992, oltre la conquista”, in “America latina. 500 anni di solitudine”, Servitium. Quaderni di spiritualità, no. 85–86 (January–April 1993): 99–107. De Giuseppe Massimo, L’altra America. Cattolici italiani e America latina. Da Medellín a Francesco, Brescia: Morcelliana, 2017. De Giuseppe Massimo, Discovering the “other” America. The Latin-American Encounters of Italian Peace Movements (1955–1980), Peace Movements in Western Europe, Japan and the USA during the Cold War, edited by Benjamin Ziemann, Essen: Klartext, 2008, 107–128. Dussels Enrique, 1492–1992. La Chiesa in america latina. Il rovescio della storia, trans. Mirella Comba, Enzo De Marchi and others (Turnbridge Wells: Burns & Oats, 1992), Assisi: Cittadella, 1992. Galeano Eduardo, Persino la carta geografica mente, in A 500 anni dalla conquista. 1492–1992, edited by Giovanni Kalci, Celleno: La Piccola editrice, 1990–1992, 3–4; translated from Hasta el mapa miente, El Pais, January 31 1988. Gerbi Antonello, La disputa del Nuovo mondo: storia di una polemica, 1750–1900, Milan: Adelphi, 2000 (First Edition Lima 1955). Girardi Giulio, Marxismo e cristianesimo, Assisi: Cittadella, 1965. Girardi Giulio, Cristianesimo, liberazione umana, lotta di classe, Assisi: Cittadella, 1971. Girardi Giulio, Sandinismo, marxismo e cristianesimo, Rome: Borla, 1986. Girardi Giulio, Rivoluzione popolare e occupazione del tempio. Il popolo cristiano del Nicaragua sulle barricate, Milan: Edizioni Associate, 1989. Girardi Giulio, La conquista dell’America. Dalla parte dei vinti, Rome: Borla, 1992. Girardi Giulio, Gli esclusi costruiranno la loro storia?, Rome: Borla, 1994. Girardi Giulio, Samuel Ruiz: soggettività indigena e conversione della chiesa, in Samuel Ruiz. Sui sentieri indigeni della chiesa in Chiapas, edited by Giulio Girardi, Alberto Grossi, Aluisi Tosolini, Parma: Alfazeta, 1996, 9–10.

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Girardi Giulio, La nostra resistenza al capitalismo neoliberale prolungamento dei 500 anni di resistenza india, negra e popolare in Chiapas perché?, edited by Aldo Zanchetta, Lucca: Mani tese-Provincia di Lucca, 2000, 25–29. Girardi Giulio, Che Guevara visto da un cristiano. Il significato etico della sua scelta rivoluzionaria, Milan: Sperling & Kupfer, 2005. Girardi Giulio, Los pueblos indígenas, nuevos sujetos históricos: su aporte a la busqueda de una alternativa de civilización, in Actores y dimensión religiosa en los movimientos sociales latinoamericanos. 1960–1992, edited by María Alicia Puente Luetteroth, México City: Uaem-Porrúa, 2006, 17–44. Giraudo Laura, La questione indigena in America latina, Rome: Carocci, 2009. Gutiérrez Gustavo, La storia dell’altro, in A 500 anni dalla conquista. 1492–1992, edited by Giovanni Kalci, Celleno: La Piccola editrice, 1990–1992, 11–16. Kalci Giovanni (ed.), A 500 anni dalla conquista. 1492–1992, 2 vol., Celleno: La Piccola editrice, 1990–1992. La Bella Gianni, Perù: il tempo della vergogna. Rapporto finale della Commissione per la verità e la riconciliazione, Bolonia: Emi, 1994. Leary John Patrick, A Cultural History of Underdevelopment. Latin America in US Imagination, Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2016. Lutte Gérard, Habed Norma (eds.), “L’amicizia liberatrice. Giulio Girardi ci racconta la sua storia di vita”, in www.amistrada.net. Masina Ettore, Prefazione, in Jaime Wheelock Roman, America india: Nicaragua: la Conquista 1523–1881, translated by Ivo Fogliasso (Turin: Cooperativa di Cultura Lorenzo Milani, 1991), 3–11. Masina Ettore, Davide, un uomo ingombrante, march 2002, http://www.mondocrea.it/itriflessioni-325/. Mazzolari Primo, signed as Il Pacifico, “Guatemala”, Adesso, no. 1, 1954, 3–4. Mazzolari Primo, Scritti sulla pace e sulla guerra, edited by Guido Formigoni, Massimo De Giuseppe, Bolonia: Edizioni Dehoniane Bologna, 2010. Menchú Tum Rigoberta, Dante Liano, Gianni Miná, I maya e il mondo, Florence: Giunti, 1997. Monina Giancarlo, Memorie di repressione, resistenza e solidarietà in Brasile e in America Latina: in Brasile e in America Latina, Rome, Ediesse, 2013. Montagnini Eugenia, Il movimento leggero, Milan: Harmattan, 2007. Orlandi Silvano, Le ragioni di un convegno, in America latina. Es tu hora!, ed. Mani Tese (Torino-Milano: Sonda, 1990, 9–14). Pedrone Aldo, “Guatemala”, Adesso, no. 15, 4–5. Rizzi Armido, “Premessa”, in “America latina. 500 anni di solitudine”, Servitium. Quaderni di spiritualità, no. 85–86 (January–April 1993): 9–11. Sauvage Pierre, Martínez Luis, Cheza Maurice (eds), Dictionnaire historique de la théologie de la libération, Paris: Lessius, 2017.

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Santagata Alessandro, La contestazione cattolica: movimenti, cultura e politica dal Vaticano II al ‘68, Rome: Viella, 2016. Scatena Silvia, La teologia della liberazione in America latina, Rome: Carocci, 2008. Tognoni Gianni, “Ipotesi, strumenti, cammini, incontri, per un tempo di ri-­ conquista”, in “America latina. 500 anni di solitudine”, Servitium. Quaderni di spiritualità, no. 85–86 (January–April 1993): 94–98. Turoldo David Maria, La parola ai fanciulli, in Guatemala. Terra e cielo del Quetzal, ed. by Centro Nord-Est Milano (Milan: Cens, 1990), 4–12.

CHAPTER 7

Catholic Culture Put to the Test of Détente: The Case of Augusto Del Noce Giovanni Mario Ceci

7.1   A Critical Approach to Détente “Perhaps, the present détente represents the moment in which one realizes that such a process […] would show Pope Benedict XV’s 1916 description of the war as ‘the suicide of Europe’ to be true”. Augusto Del This chapter presents the first conclusions of broader research carried out by the author on Italian Culture Put to the Test of the Cold War: the Case of Augusto Del Noce. In this chapter the author has indicated only a few essential references to the analyses elaborated by Del Noce before and after the period taken into account here and a few fundamental bibliographical references to the academic analyses (mainly based on a philosophical approach) dealing with Del Noce’s thought and intellectual biography. For useful bibliographical information, see Massimo Borghesi, Augusto Del Noce. La legittimazione critica del moderno (Genoa-Milan: Marietti, 2011). Two final preliminary remarks: with regard to Del Noce’s articles later republished in books, the author has adopted the titles used when the articles were republished; unless otherwise indicated, the author refers in the text only to Del Noce’s writings. G. M. Ceci (*) Dipartimento di Scienze Politiche, Università degli Studi Roma Tre, Rome, Italy © The Author(s) 2019 A. Tarquini, A. Guiso (eds.), Italian Intellectuals and International Politics, 1945–1992, Italian and Italian American Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-24938-0_7

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Noce’s interpretation of détente could probably be summed up with the quote above, formulated in March 1973. Even though “relatively unknown among English readers”,1 Del Noce is without doubt one of the most important protagonists of Italian intellectual life and Catholic culture following the Second World War. Being an influential voice of Italian Catholicism with strong ties to the Christian Democratic Party (Democrazia cristiana, DC), Del Noce’s thought was original and not easily definable. He certainly was never organic as an intellectual. In comparison with other Italian intellectuals of the same period, he was sometimes misunderstood and remained, at least in some moments, at the margins of the national, cultural and political debate, as well as that of the DC and the Catholic world in general. These circumstances certainly explain Del Noce’s idea of himself as “a solitary thinker”.2 However, it would be a mistake to simply accept this self-definition or, even worse, to use it as a criterion with regard to his fate. By all means Del Noce was never an isolated or secondary figure in the Italian intellectual panorama of the post-Second World War period. Rather he was one of its most influential and “incisive voices”.3 Del Noce’s importance is rooted in the fact that his reflections helped express—in a systematic manner—tendencies, positions, certainties, beliefs and states of mind that were common to broad sections of the DC and of the Catholic world (and perhaps to some non-marginal sections of lay culture and public opinion). In particular, Del Noce embodied and gave voice to the tendencies (quite common and influential in the Catholic world and in the DC) that, contrary to equally common positions in Italian Catholicism that favored a strategy of mediation, called for a strategy of presence, a rediscovery of 1  Bjørn Thomassen and Rosario Forlenza, “Christianity and Political Thought: Augusto Del Noce and the Ideology of Christian Democracy in Post-War Italy”, Journal of Political Ideologies 21, no. 2, 2016: 182. This “lack of external visibility” may possibly be explained, first of all, by the fact that “his writings were never translated into English”. In fact, only very recently “has a volume been made available in English including a selection of Del Noce’s essays and lectures” (ibidem): The Crisis of Modernity, with an introduction by Carlo Lancellotti (Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2014). After this chapter was submitted, an important book published by Del Noce at the beginning of the 1970s was translated in English: The Age of Secularization, edited and translated by Carlo Lancellotti (Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2017). 2  See also Augusto Del Noce, “Storia di un pensatore solitario”, interview by Massimo Borghesi and Lucio Brunelli, 30 Giorni, no. 4, April, 1984, later republished in Giuseppe Ceci and Lorella Cedroni, eds., Filosofia e Democrazia in Augusto Del Noce (Rome: Cinque Lune, 1993), 223–233. 3  Thomassen and Forlenza, “Christianity and Political Thought”, 181.

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tradition and a reaffirmation of Christian values in response to mounting secularization. Neither anti-modern nor reactionary, throughout his career Del Noce tried to identify and to propose a Catholic path to modernity. Through a radical “philosophical-historical reconceptualization”4 and a deep re-thinking of both the process and the idea of modernity5 Del Noce wanted to introduce a “critical legitimization of the modern”,6 an “alternative concept of modernity open to transcendence”7 (and as a result not reduced to pure immanentism). What did this path look like? What, in his opinion, was the necessary attitude and solution Catholics would need to adopt in response to a modernity based on immanentism and secularization? Del Noce was convinced that the only solution was “a return to principles”.8 That is how he himself defined that solution in the DC newspaper Il Popolo in 1975. In other words, a rediscovery of Catholic tradition was needed. The idea was to reintroduce a Catholic vision of the world, to re-establish “Catholic values” by identifying their “philosophical grounds”. The purpose of such an operation was for those values to become a “central point of reference in a world that now referred to a different system of values”.9 Even though he was convinced that the DC had to remain a nonsectarian (lay) party, Del Noce wanted the “Catholic revival” to materialize in a form that was “inseparably religious, philosophical and political” in nature. It had to be “political, in the name of human society’s […] temporal salvation, but the politics would have to be founded on a philosophy which was in its turn a preamble to faith”.10 And Del Noce himself was strongly committed to reaching this complex objective. Accordingly, it is not surprising that in the period between the 1960s and the 1980s Del Noce was, first of all, particularly critical toward those prominent and influential sectors of Catholic culture that, in his opinion, passively underwent the effects of modernity rather than proposing a Weltanschauung founded and oriented around Catholicism. In Del Noce’s opinion, those branches surrendered to other political and cultural forces,  Thomassen and Forlenza, “Christianity and Political Thought”, 181.  Rocco Buttiglione, “Del Noce maestro di filosofia”, in Augusto Del Noce. Il problema della modernità (Rome: Studium, 1995), 14. 6  This is also the thesis of the aforementioned book by Massimo Borghesi, as shown in its title: Augusto Del Noce. La legittimazione critica del moderno. 7  Thomassen and Forlenza, “Christianity and Political Thought”, 181. 8  “L’identità della DC”, Il Popolo, September 30, 1975. 9  Tommaso Dell’Era, Augusto Del Noce. Filosofo della politica (Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino, 2000), 10 and 15. 10  Il marxismo di Gramsci e la religione, CRIS documenti, no. 35, February, 1977, 26. 4 5

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preferring to base their way of thinking and acting on values foreign to Christian tradition. It is also not surprising that during the entire post-­ Second World War period, Del Noce maintained a close relationship with the DC whose political project (especially the one designed by Alcide De Gasperi) seemed to him the most “fitting embodiment of the philosophical-­ cum-­political platform outlined in his writings”.11 However, while Del Noce’s relationship with the DC remained close, it was progressively more dialectical and at times became strongly critical. The reasons for such a tendency are easy to identify. For Del Noce there were two different types of Christian Democracy: the ideal Christian Democracy and the historic Christian Democracy. Del Noce’s main aspiration, as he himself often referred to it, was to “transform historical Christian Democracy into ideal Christian Democracy”,12 since his philosophy was of a “political character”.13 In particular, Del Noce wanted to achieve that goal by giving theoretical shape to the historical DC, in the hopes of “injecting the Christian Democratic project” with the necessary “oxygen”.14 There is no doubt that starting from the 1950s and until the very end of his career as an intellectual, Del Noce was growing progressively more dissatisfied, frustrated and critical toward the historical DC. The reasons for such a critical approach were related to the party’s gradual move away from the ideal DC and its progressive cultural weakening. In other words, according to Del Noce, the historical DC was “increasingly distancing itself from its (Catholic) ideological and cultural background” and by doing this displaying “a terrifying vacuum in terms of ideas and perspectives”.15 In spite of the growing dissatisfaction that is clearly present in Del Noce’s reflections, it is evident that this very awareness of a growing gap between the real DC and the ideal DC helped to reinforce his commitment to the party. Indeed, between the late 1950s and the late 1960s, Del Noce participated as a speaker in some of the most important conferences organized and promoted both by the DC and by the Catholic intellectual  Thomassen and Forlenza, “Christianity and Political Thought”, 189.  Danilo Castellano, La politica tra Scilla e Cariddi. Augusto Del Noce filosofo della politica attraverso la storia (Napoli: ESI, 2010), 34. 13  Cfr. Rocco Buttiglione, “Augusto Del Noce filosofo della politica italiana”, Il Nuovo Areopago 9, no. 33 (Spring 1990), 6 and Rocco Buttiglione, Augusto Del Noce. Biografia di un pensiero (Casale Monferrato: Piemme, 1991). See also Dell’Era, Augusto Del Noce. 14  Thomassen and Forlenza, “Christianity and Political Thought”, 189. 15  Thomassen and Forlenza, “Christianity and Political Thought”, 184. 11 12

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world in general. However, there is no doubt that Del Noce grew progressively more committed to the DC in the 1970s. This process reached its climax in the early 1980s when Del Noce was elected to the Senate of the Republic as a Catholic party candidate. It is important to mention that this event was far from being a coincidence. Del Noce’s positions and attitudes were undergoing a significant radicalization in the early 1970s. During those months, Del Noce began moving toward an active and energetic public commitment, which soon took on the form of an authentic cultural and political struggle. Del Noce’s activity was a struggle aimed at influencing vast areas of public opinion, not merely a delimited intellectual world. Such radicalization was rooted in his understanding that Italy and Europe were going through a dramatic crisis with potentially catastrophic outcomes. For Del Noce, the détente process was one of the main reasons for this crisis. Based on a number of contributions made to various publications (especially newspapers and journals) in those years, the aim of this chapter is to reconstruct Del Noce’s analysis, interpretations and points of view, as well as the solutions he presented with regard to the process of détente. I would like to emphasize the three aspects that are important for this chapter. The chronology in the chapter reflects Del Noce’s interpretation of the parabola of the process of détente. The chapter describes the events starting from the late 1960s, the moment when Del Noce started reflecting on the process of détente, up until the late 1970s. For Del Noce the late 1970s represented the peak of détente and its effects, but it also represented the beginning of its decline. The second aspect has to do with method. The approach Del Noce applied in order to evaluate the process of détente coincides with the one he constantly and consistently used in order to interpret contemporary history. Del Noce himself defined this approach as transpolitical (transpolitico), meaning an interpretation based on the primacy of ideal causality and the philosophical moment. This method was one of the elements that helped establish clarity and precision in the analysis of the détente process. Del Noce’s vision of the détente process was deeply pessimistic and negative. Indeed, Del Noce acknowledged the potentially positive side of the détente process. Therefore, he was not critical of the process itself. However, Del Noce was very critical of the effects and consequences of the détente process and of its actual fulfillment. According to him, in fact, détente risked representing the failure and the spiritual death of Europe. Détente guaranteed a form of peace to the Old Continent, but it was nothing more than a “peace of death”.

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Del Noce’s vision of détente remained extraordinarily consistent over the extended period that is examined in this essay. However, over the years Del Noce inflected this vision in multiple ways, since he was examining various topics and adopting new perspectives. Even though Del Noce’s vision was always nurtured by that initial deep thesis, one could notice the evolution of Del Noce’s interpretation of the détente process. In this chapter the evolution of Del Noce’s position is described in three main phases: (1) détente as an expression of reverse colonialism—1967–1969; (2) détente as the death of the sacred in Europe (on the responsibility of the United States)—1970–1973; (3) détente as “moral Finlandization” (on the responsibility of the Soviet Union)—1974–1978. The three sections of the chapter are dedicated to those three phases and are followed by some conclusive comments.

7.2   Détente as an Expression of Reverse Colonialism (1967–1969) In the magazine L’Europa in 1967, Del Noce described Europe’s potential fate in a new international context in which détente was becoming the clear path forward, claiming that “the abolition of colonialism would be replaced by a simple inversion of the colonization process”. The late 1960s represent the first phase of Del Noce’s reflection on détente. A crucial phase in the development of Del Noce’s thought, it is during these years that he constructs the foundation of his ideas to follow. In fact, those ideas, mixed and elaborated in various forms, would constitute the most important elements of Del Noce’s interpretation of the international situation until the late 1970s. Del Noce was already critical of the situation in the late 1960s. The dialogue, the “new proximity of the countries in the process of world unification”, as Del Noce himself described the new international context, would have an unwanted flipside, that is, the decline and even the hypothetical downfall of “European Europe” (an expression that Del Noce borrowed from De Gaulle). For Del Noce, détente would result in Europe’s downfall, precisely because it was materializing as a form of “reverse colonialism”, that is, a reversal of the process of colonization.16 This conclusion originates from Del Noce’s particular and nuanced understanding of colonization. For him colonization essentially meant a process that inevitably led to the  “Un colonialismo rovesciato”, L’Europa, October 6–13, 1967, 15.

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­ disaffiliation of nations from their traditions”. Indeed, for Del Noce the “ new détente process was bringing about a “disaffiliation of Europe from its soul”. In particular, it was the “triumph of instrumental thinking (concezione strumentalistica)”—one of the most important expressions of the détente period—that was sealing the “colonial destiny of Europe”. This triumph—which in Del Noce’s philosophical-transpolitical interpretation had resulted from the radical conflict between two different conceptions, “two juxtaposed and irreconcilable visions” of man: one, metaphysical-­ religious; the other sociologistic-instrumental—was tied to two ideas, both of which were considered dangerous and erroneous by Del Noce: (1) that “sociologism or instrumentalism” should be central to the détente process, that is, “the only position capable of creating an ideal bridge between Russia and America”17; and (2) that there were only two possible choices for Europe to become unified and strong in the new international context. Either by adjusting to American “modernity” or by surpassing both Russia and America in modernity by fully realizing the trajectory laid out by Enlightenment. According to Del Noce, both superpowers were responsible for the triumph of the instrumentalist vision, as well as the increasing likelihood of Europe’s “colonial destiny” that would consequently lead to its decline. It was evident that during these years the USSR was aggressively implementing a plan aimed at “establishing hegemony” over European countries on an ideological level. This plan was based on a strategy of action and an effective “cultural policy”, both of which were aimed at “European culture’s” disintegration. For the Soviets, acting in collaboration with Western communists (first and foremost, the Italian Communist Party) and with other “aware and unaware comrades”, the first step toward gradually taking over power was not “activation of the revolution”, but rather the “moral neutralization” of Western Europe to be realized through “disaffiliation of European countries from their traditions”. The United States, however, was equally responsible for the unfolding situation. During the fall of 1967, Del Noce wrote: nowadays American culture is subject to an instrumentalist conception of human thought. If colonialism consists in the disaffiliation of a nation from its traditions, it is also true that colonialism could be generated in the politically 17  “Il problema politico dei cattolici” (1967), later republished in Augusto Del Noce, Il problema politico dei cattolici (Rome: Unione Italiana per il Progresso della Cultura, 1967), 7–13.

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and economically strongest country even if the colonial intention is missing. From the point of view of the instrumentalist vision, complete victory would necessarily entail the disaffiliation of Europe from its spirit.18

Therefore, according to Del Noce, détente consisted of a convergent attack on Europe by both the United States and the USSR. As he declared in the second half of the 1960s, Europe was at great risk. It was moving toward the “beginning of a new ‘âge sombre’, of a new Iron Age”. According to the philosopher, “the moment in which history would be inversed” was approaching; the moment in which “Europe would become a prisoner of its own heresies, those that had produced the new imperial powers”.19 In the years to follow, the core of Del Noce’s interpretation would remain more or less unvaried. However, Del Noce would dedicate progressively more attention to the process of détente, which allowed him to integrate and enrich his vision with new elements. Moreover, over the years, Del Noce’s analysis would attribute, depending on the evolution of the international arena, varying degrees of responsibility to the two superpowers.

7.3   Détente as the Death of the Sacred in Europe: On the Responsibility of the United States (1970–1973) According to Del Noce, the “triumph of détente” took place between 1970 and 1973 and especially during the last months of 1972 and the very beginning of 1973. According to him, this triumph could have catastrophic consequences. In his reflection on détente and on international politics in general between 1970 and 1973, Del Noce took his cue from a very widespread but, according to him, arbitrary interpretation of the Cold War and its evolution understood as a linear and progressive development. In his critique, Del Noce identified two important moments in this “progressive” (progressista) reading. 18  “La collaborazione che offre il PCI”, L’Europa, February 22, 1969, 15 and 31; “Un colonialismo rovesciato”, 14–15. See also “Verso un nuovo totalitarismo”, L’Europa, March 7, 1970, 10–15. 19  “Il progressismo cattolico” (1966), later republished in Del Noce, Il problema politico dei cattolici, 105.

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This vision tended to criticize and dismiss—in an extremely simplified manner—the main protagonists (like Pius XII and “Foster Dulles, Calvinist crusader minister”), the positions, the political views and Western policies during the most intense phase of the Cold War (in the late 1940s and the early 1950s), describing them with terms such as “theological hatred”, “war of religion”, “‘visceral’ anticommunism”, “crusade”, a “dam” of the West against “twentieth-century Islam”. At the same time, this vision tended to exalt, without critically evaluating, the new phase of “détente”, characterized by “peace”, coexistence, “dialogue” (a term that, as Del Noce commented in 1973, had to be discarded because of the irritation it was causing). The new phase of détente was presented by the advocates of such vision not simply as a new historical moment, but as a total overturning of the past (a politics of peace versus a politics of war; dialogue versus crusade; a gaze toward the future versus a gaze toward the past). In other words, the new phase was interpreted in terms of radical discontinuity with and opposition to the Cold War period. In Del Noce’s view, such an understanding was “extremely one-sided and inaccurate”, based on “a dangerous simplification” and leading to serious consequences. According to Del Noce, a close analysis of the “ideal aspect” would demonstrate a picture that was drastically different. It would highlight a radical and irreducible contrast between the “ideal nature” of the first phase and that of the second, but in completely opposite terms with respect to the interpretation that was almost unanimously accepted in the Western political debate between the 1960s and the early 1970s. For Del Noce the error of that vision lay in its simplified understanding of Cold War politics as an offensive form of politics. As a matter of fact, Cold War politics had been essentially “defensive”, much more than détente politics was. Consequently, according to Del Noce, “containment” was the most suitable term for defining Cold War politics. In fact, defending authentic Western tradition (humanistic and Christian) and “Christian civilization” was the key strategy that had been adopted by the Western world and by Europe in particular (in Italy this approach had been applied by De Gasperi and the centrist political position [Centrismo]) as a response to the USSR, “Russian imperialism” and communism. And, according to Del Noce, this type of approach “achieved its goal”. In a September 1973 article entitled “The Mask and the Real Face of Détente”, Del Noce wrote that the success of containment politics “was supposed to contribute to the transition to détente politics, which was meant to become the next stage without being opposed to the previous stage”. “What happened instead—Del Noce

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continues—is that détente politics was conceived as the opposite of the previous politics”. Rather than being seen as “an ideal continuation of the previous course”, détente politics was interpreted as its “overturning”. “The previous politics was based on ‘Christian culture’, on defending the moral and ideological traditions that Europe was standing on […]. The only way to move towards the politics of détente was to ridicule both the ideas that were part of the previous politics, together with the ill-advised advocates of those ideas”. In line with this judgment, Del Noce also considered the positive and uncritical evaluation of the phase following the Cold War years to be equally inaccurate. That second phase, the period of dialogue, peace and détente, “philosophically” corresponded to the Italian center-left, while the politics of the Cold War years corresponded to Centrismo. According to Del Noce, the mistake of such an attitude consisted in denying the fact that, in comparison with the mainly defensive politics adopted during the Cold War years, détente—in spite of the dove and the olive branch brandished by détente advocates (especially the most radical ones)—was actually concealing an extremely offensive strategy on the part of the Western world and especially on the part of the United States. In an article written in spring 1973 Del Noce writes: “the so-called politics of détente is nothing but a ‘western (occidentalista) attack’ on Russia”. According to Del Noce, there was nothing wrong with the idea of “challenging” or attacking the Soviet Union, at least not on a theoretical level. However, the nature of that attack was concerning. The questions that Del Noce was addressing were: what is that challenge based on? On which battlefield was détente actually taking place? Del Noce was convinced that the essential aim of détente was the westernization of Russia. For Del Noce, the West was repeating the “same mistake” that the “radical mentality”—encouraged by both the Entente and the “democrats” who wanted “Russia to join the democratic powers, but as the last in line”—had already made during the February revolution of 1917. Half a century later, the West was trying to “seduce” Russia by using its new powerful instrument: the “affluent civilization (civiltà del benessere)”. In other words, the West believed that “its example alone would cause a major evolution in Russia”. The problem, however, was that Western theoreticians’ understanding of evolution essentially consisted of Russia acknowledging the “superiority of the West”. “Not a crusade, but a dialogue”, in which Russia was reduced to a “student” who was “constantly progressing” while remaining incapable of overcoming its

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status as “provincial”, of ever overcoming its “inferiority to the real democratic countries”. Del Noce had a clear understanding of the elements involved in the strategy of westernization. For him, the détente policy (especially on the part of the United States) was based on a conviction that the West could easily prevail over communism by surpassing it in terms of “laity”, “modern spirit”, “secularization”, “progress” (idolizing science and the social sciences), “affluent society”, consumerism and the “bourgeois spirit”. The process involved a complete overturning of the Western position that was common during the Cold War years. The transition from a Cold War to a détente position, from a policy of “containment” to an actual attack on the Soviets also marked a transition “from a preservation of tradition to its denial”, from a “religious battle” to one fought in the name of laity, “major secularity” and “desacralization”. According to Del Noce, the results of the West’s offensive were not positive. From a certain point of view, they were also paradoxical. As a response to the Western attack aimed at “liberation from religion” and “desecration”, the Russians responded with a message of renewed religious fervor (devoid of any “modernist” elements and based on maintaining “continuity with tradition”), with the revitalization of a “sacred mentality” and a rediscovery of the necessity of a “unity between politics and religion” as well as the need for a close relationship between faith, culture, national feeling and tradition. Culminating in “one of the major paradoxes of contemporary history”, it was really in Europe that détente, understood as westernization and a struggle for irreligion and modernity, was deploying its effects. While the USSR, driven by the attack of the West, had responded with an attempt at re-sacralization and a rediscovery of tradition (and, as Del Noce noted, it was not surprising that many Catholics, even the ones in the Vatican, when looking for potential allies in their fight against secularization, were tempted to consider Russia one), free and democratic Europe was going through a process of desacralization. In other words, the Western attack on Russia was turning into a dramatic “attack on Europe”. And, according to Del Noce, the consequences were disastrous. Overturning the positions of De Gasperi and Pius XII, Del Noce claimed that, in its passage to an offensive—as a form of challenge in the spheres of modernity and secularity—détente was actually turning out to be the defeat of Europe, demonstrated in the success of “atheist pedagogy”; the triumph of the “bourgeois spirit”; the destruction of tradition

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and of Europe’s Carolingian spirit; “Europe’s Americanization”; and the “death of the sacred”. According to Del Noce, the USSR was no passive spectator to the European crisis. While they were demonstrating their ability to hold out against the attack and to protect themselves against the threat of self-dissolution, this did not imply that the Russians were averse to the idea of launching a counterattack; a counterattack that was at the core of their idea of détente and that would potentially induce the same process of dissolution in Western European countries. According to Del Noce, the situation was an example of the “boomerang effect”. The détente policy, created by the West and aimed at causing a crisis in the USSR, was being employed by the USSR itself. As Del Noce highlighted, it was not surprising that such a situation, in which “a bourgeois alliance was corroding the bonds of Old Europe in the name of progress”, was “not unwelcome by a considerable part of American public opinion”. On the contrary, what was happening was “entirely in the spirit of Yalta”. As we can see from these considerations, although the Russians were indubitably contributing to Europe’s descent, for Del Noce, the West, and first of all the Americans (in 1971 Del Noce wrote that “the process of the dissolution of tradition was initiated by the United States”) were to blame for the European crisis. And more than the politicians’ or diplomats’ fault, it was the fault of a certain “ethical and political culture” of the “enlightened bourgeois” (and neo-illuminista), and of numerous theorists from the “‘secularist’ phase of détente”. Those theorists, a “huge army” of “anti-crusaders”, a heterogeneous but powerful “alliance” of people belonging to communist culture, “religious-modernist” culture and to the “illuministico-radicale” culture, represented an alliance that was exclusively united by one common enemy, Catholicism, understood as a “guardian of tradition”. It was the members of that alliance that defined the most important, according to them, elements of both détente and the struggle with the Soviets: laity, radical secularization, modern spirit and desacralization. So it comes as no surprise that, even though in 1973 Del Noce was still in favor of the idea of détente and considered it not only “desirable”, but even “indispensable”, he was still very critical of the way in which it had actually been implemented in the early 1970s. In fact, according to Del Noce, détente turned out to be a major “failure”. Not only did it not achieve its initial goal, the “liberalization and democratic evolution of the Soviet world”, but the Western-offensive approach backfired and led to a sort of suicide and self-dissolution. Europe itself turned out to be the first

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victim of détente. Del Noce’s writings from these years, which are dedicated to the ways in which détente determined Europe’s fate, were dark and at times catastrophist. The westernization-desacralization offensive was detaching the Old Continent from its roots and traditions and was inevitably leading to “neutralization of Europe”, and as a result to its “dethronement”, its “agony” and possibly its “descent”. In his 1973 article entitled “Disappointment and Hope”, dedicated to an analysis of the détente process and of recent European history in general, Del Noce writes: As time passes one begins to recognize the uniform nature of the historical epoch that began in 1914 with the outbreak of the First World War; an epoch whose fundamental moments were the two wars, the revolutions being no more than episodes, to assess in relation to the general overturning of positions of power which this unique process produced. Therefore, perhaps the present détente represents the moment in which one realizes that such a process, if it were to come to a conclusion now, would show the description of the war as ‘the suicide of Europe’ – used, if I’m not mistaken, for the first time by Pope Benedict XV during the 1916 Spring – to be true; or rather, we could see it as the definitive passage of Europe into aetas senescens. As of now, the unity of détente and the perpetuity of peace would risk leading Europe into a “peace of death”; a spiritual death, even if the highest satisfaction of the corporeal was assured.

For the United States and especially for Henry Kissinger, 1973 represented the “Year of Europe”. On the contrary, for Del Noce, 1973 was the year of Europe’s suicide, of its death. A death in which, according to Del Noce, the United States had certainly shared.20

20  The analysis as well as the quotations of this third paragraph are based on and are drawn from the following contributions, which constitute Del Noce’s most important comments and analyses on détente between 1970 and 1973: “La morte del sacro”, L’Europa, September 30, 1970, 29–45; “Una nuova tentazione dei cattolici”, L’Europa, January 15, 1971, 29–39; “‘Antifascismo’ e ‘unità antifascista’”, L’Europa, April 15, 1971, 41–60; “La parola incantata: ‘inveramento’”, L’Europa, October 15, 1971, 15–34; “Delusioni e speranze”, L’Europa, March 21, 1973, later republished in A. Del Noce, Rivoluzione, Risorgimento, Tradizione, edited by Francesco Mercadante, Antonio Tarantino, and Bernardino Casadei (Milan: Giuffrè, 1993), 465–469; “Filosofia del centro-sinistra”, Gli Stati, II, no. 14 (May 1973): 3–9; “Il Vaticano e la Russia”, L’Europa, May 15–31, 1973, 61–82; “La maschera ed. il volto della distensione”, L’Europa, September 30, 1973, 49–60.

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7.4   Détente as “Moral Finlandization”: On the Responsibility of the Soviet Union (1974–1978) Del Noce’s negative and pessimistic approach to the détente process reached its climax between 1975 and 1978 during the third and final phase of his reflections on the topic. According to Del Noce, this phase marked the apex of the effects of détente, following the success of the preceding months. Such radicalization of Del Noce’s view of détente was related to the evolution of his thought and especially to the discovery of Eurocommunism, a worrying new phenomenon that would come to occupy much of his attention in those years. Various elements of Del Noce’s previous positions remained unvaried in his new understanding of the détente process. Still in the second half of the 1970s Del Noce directed his criticism regarding the “meaning” of détente at the United States and “progressive western culture” in general. In particular he was criticizing the presumption that their politics of détente was nothing more than a Western attack aimed at “defeating communism on the plane of ‘modernity’”—as he described it in the 1975 article “Two Meanings of Détente”21—and at reaching an “ideal unity between two models, two systems, two civilizations, and world concepts”. The effects, repercussions and “dangers” of a “misinterpreted détente”, of the “modernization moralism (moralismo della modernizzazione)” typical of Western “democratic progressivism” were different from and “much worse” than any effects that could have been caused by “the most cynical of political realisms”: the “choice of Sade over Kant” (i.e. the choice of “libertine Enlightenment over rationalist religious Enlightenment”); the possibility of a “third war”. Most importantly it caused a dangerous and powerful counterattack on the part of the Soviets. During the second half of the 1970s, this was the factor that worried Del Noce the most. While during the period between 1970 and 1973 Del Noce mostly blamed the West (and first of all the United States) for having misconstrued the détente process and the subsequent crisis that followed in Europe, in the period between 1974 and 1978 he turned his criticism to the Soviets (together with their loyal agents in the West). Del Noce considered Eurocommunism the main “instrument of Russia’s politics of expansion” into the Old Continent. Del Noce openly disagreed with those in the  Il Tempo, June 14, 1975.

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Western world who considered Eurocommunism a positive “outcome” of détente. For those people Eurocommunism represented a “victory of democracy”,22 while Del Noce saw a close connection between Eurocommunism and a Soviet “Imperialist” vision of détente. According to him, that connection was mortal for Europe, whose murder/suicide was becoming progressively more evident, under the deadly conditions of its moral Finlandization. Such a conclusion was drawn from a specific interpretation of Eurocommunism elaborated by Del Noce.23 Understood as a synonym of Gramscism, for Del Noce Eurocommunism represented a certain idea of communism that cannot be directly deduced from Marx’s teachings or Lenin’s action, but that was necessary to define the strategy of the Italian Communist Party (and which would serve as a model for other Western communist parties). That idea consisted of a strategy of capturing power in a non-violent way, by gradually gaining cultural hegemony. According to Del Noce, there was one particular element that defined the strategy and the purpose of Eurocommunism-Gramscism. This element consisted of the idea of putting in place, through the implementation of a storicist and pacific pedagogy of secularization, a negative campaign aimed at the “unchristianization” of Western societies and at reaching complete secularism through the dissolution of ideal and traditional roots. In this interpretation, Eurocommunism-Gramscism wholly corresponded with the Soviet imperialistic vision of détente. In fact, for Del Noce the encounter between the Russians and Eurocommunism-­ Gramscism (understood as an unmatchable “dissolving force” of traditions and a cluster of negative forces against moral and intellectual positions connected with religious-transcendent thought) seemed inevitable. It comes as no surprise that in 1978 Del Noce defined that encounter as a “perfect convergence”.24 And, when one considered the Soviet conception of détente, the inevitability of that encounter seemed quite obvious. On July 4, 1977, Del Noce wrote in Il Tempo: since the primary objective of Soviet politics during that phase was to gain “total control over countries 22  Augusto Del Noce, Futuro prossimo? Ipotesi, giudizi, discussioni sull’eurocomunismo (Bologna: Cappelli, 1978), 6. 23   For a more in-depth analysis of Del Noce’s interpretation of EurocommunismGramscism, see Giovanni Mario Ceci, “La parabola dell’eurocomunismo e i dilemmi del cattolicesimo politico: Augusto Del Noce”, in Gli intellettuali nella crisi della Repubblica, ed. Ermanno Taviani and Giuseppe Vacca (Rome: Viella, 2016), 237–264. 24  Del Noce, Futuro prossimo?, 11.

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of the Third World while excluding China from the race”, détente was considered by the USSR as “a necessary and subordinate flipside of that same political vision”. But what exactly was the Soviet conception of détente? What purpose was it supposed to serve? According to Del Noce, the answer to that question was evident but very rarely articulated in the public debate. The Soviets’ goal was not “to bring about the rise of communist regimes in Western Europe”, but rather to bring about, with the help of other communist parties in the West, the “neutralization”, the moral, civil and cultural “Finlandization” of Western Europe and consequently to transform European countries into a “land in decline”. In other words, the USSR’s détente policy was aimed at “dissolving Western European countries by disconnecting them from those traditions that constitute the very foundations of their culture and civilization”. In February 1978, Del Noce wrote in Il Settimanale: “disconnecting a nation from its culture is the only way of neutralizing a country that has ever been invented”.25 Between 1975 and 1978 this analysis led Del Noce to make a deeply critical and pessimistic evaluation of the consequences of détente. With a clear contribution from the Western world, détente was resulting in the great success of communism and the actual hegemony of the USSR. As Del Noce wrote: “if one starts analyzing the consequences of détente, one notices two major effects: a significant increase of Russian military power and the possibility for communist parties to obtain power within the current framework of international alliances and NATO”. On the basis of this evaluation, Del Noce concluded: “Using the classical historical terms, one could maintain that the consequences of the détente policy represented the preconditions for the Soviet occupation of Europe”.26

25  “Le avventure dell’eurocomunismo”, Il Tempo, July 4, 1977 (later republished in Scritti di Augusto Del Noce [Rome: Circolo Stato e Libertà, 1978], 45–49) and “Anatomia del dissenso”, Il Settimanale, February 8, 1978 (later republished in Scritti, 63–68). Cfr. anche “Dibattito sul comunismo internazionale”, L’Opinione, January 31, 1978 (later republished in Scritti, 59–62). 26  “Il consiglio dei cinesi”, Il Tempo, March 11, 1976, later republished in Augusto Del Noce, L’Eurocomunismo e l’Italia (Rome: Europa Informazioni, 1976), 135–140.

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7.5   A Cold War Intellectual At the end of this analysis three questions still remain unanswered. Was Del Noce the only figure in the Italian political-intellectual context of these years to have such a position with regard to the détente policy? Did détente, understood by Del Noce as a “concentric” attack on the part of the United States and the USSR aimed at moral Finlandization of Europe, represent for him a crisis with no way out or a problem with possible solutions? For Del Noce, what was the role of the intellectual in the age of détente? Let’s start with the first question. Even if Del Noce’s analysis was characterized by distinctive elements, related to his transpolitical approach and original understanding of contemporary history in general, one could maintain that Del Noce’s position with regard to détente was far from being sui generis. On the contrary, Del Noce’s point of view and the fears expressed by him reflected attitudes, considerations and worries that were very common in Italian (and not only) culture during the period between the late 1960s and the late 1970s. In order to prove that, one would merely have to recall the three most important points of Del Noce’s interpretation of the détente process. Actually, the idea at the very core of Del Noce’s position was extremely common among those participating in the public and intellectual debate in those years. This idea consisted of the fear that détente represented a compromise (that has also been defined by Del Noce as “alliance”) between the world’s two superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union, which would result in a bipolar process tending to exclude Europe. Such a process would be extremely damaging for Europe and could lead to its decline, or, as Del Noce described it, its “death”. Del Noce’s fear that détente was threatening spiritual and cultural values as well as Italian and European “traditions” was very widespread as well, especially among broad and relevant areas of the DC and the Catholic world. Also, Del Noce’s idea that détente mostly represented a surrender to the Soviet Union was shared by many Italian intellectuals between the late 1960s and the 1970s. According to this idea, détente was considered a part of the “politics of dialogue” (a term that Del Noce considered ambiguous and dangerous), a part of the “culture of surrender”. According to this shared point of view, in Italy, the culture of “surrender” had first resulted in the encounter between Christian democrats and socialists and in the birth of the center-left formula in the 1960s, and during the 1970s was leading to a (dangerous) opening toward the

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c­ ommunists. On the international level, the result was détente. The consequences could be dramatic: surrendering to the Soviets and their loyal agents in the West (a fear common not only in Italy and Europe, but in the United States as well) would result in the moral Finlandization of Italy and Europe and the loss of their political and cultural independence. As we can see, Del Noce’s interpretation of the détente process corresponded to attitudes, positions and fears common among substantial sectors of Italian culture. Those positions were especially common among Atlanticist (atlantisti) milieus, or, to be more precise, among extreme Atlanticist milieus, which had a certain significance for the Catholic world and for the DC. It is important to mention though that Del Noce never embraced the Atlanticist vision, meaning not merely a political choice but also an identity. In fact, Del Noce always refused to use the term “West”. Rather, he preferred to use the all-embracing terms “Christian culture/ civilization/tradition”. On the whole, it is worth mentioning that Del Noce’s critical and pessimist approach to détente was a reflection of a general attitude change within the larger political, cultural and diplomatic debate taking place in the second half of the 1960s. While in earlier years a positive and optimistic approach had prevailed, starting from 1965 to 1968 the positive vision began “breaking down” and a more critical and apprehensive approach began interpreting détente as “progressively more threatening”.27 The second question concerns the search for an effective way out of the crisis. Was détente, interpreted as a mortal attack, seen as a problem with no solution? Del Noce did not think so. Even though détente had led to a dangerous crisis, he was convinced that possible solutions existed. In 27  Leopoldo Nuti, “La politica estera italiana negli anni della distensione. Una riflessione”, in Aldo Moro nella dimensione internazionale, ed. Alfonso Alfonsi (Milan: FrancoAngeli, 2013), 45–46. For an analysis of the most common attitudes toward détente in Italian culture (and especially in Catholic culture) in those years, besides this extremely important contribution by Nuti, see the persuasive reconstruction recently elaborated by Laura Fasanaro (“Continuity and Transformation. Alternative Visions of Italy’s Three Decades of Détente”, in The Long Détente, ed. Oliver Bange and Poul Villaume [Budapest-New York: CEU Press, 2017], 155–182) and the several illuminating contributions by Guido Formigoni: “Democrazia cristiana e mondo cattolico dal neoatlantismo alla distensione”, in Un ponte sull’Atlantico, ed. Agostino Giovagnoli and Luciano Tosi (Milan: Guerini e Associati, 2003), 141–167; “La cultura internazionale della Democrazia cristiana”, in Uomini e nazioni, ed. Giorgio Petracchi (Udine: Gaspari, 2005), 96–113; “La DC e il dibattito sulla pace nel mondo cattolico postconciliare”, in Le sfide della pace, ed. Alfredo Canavero, Guido Formigoni, and Giorgio Vecchio (Milan: Led, 2008), 231–248.

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particular, he considered the rediscovery and protection of tradition the only possible response to that crisis. This solution mostly concerned Europe, the victim of détente, which, however, according to Del Noce, was also the only political actor capable of improving the general situation. In order to do so, Europe had to start defending itself again, adopt a strategy of political and especially cultural independence (not neutrality though) from the two blocks. What was the best way to realize that plan? Del Noce was convinced that the only way was to reject the model of Europeanism (which had a progressively growing number of supporters) based on European markets (and treaties) and a merely geographical interpretation of Europe. In other words, according to Del Noce, it was necessary to reject such a form of Europeanism—a Europe without a strong idea of Europe—which would lead to the downfall of the Old Continent. The solution was to reintroduce and reinvigorate the idea of a “European Europe”, as Del Noce described it, intentionally using De Gaulle’s expression; a Europe inspired by and founded on European ideas and spirit. This consciousness and these shared ideas would have to be inspired and permeated by a re-valorization of tradition and rediscovery of the value of Christian civilization (interpreted as a common horizon including Christian humanism, liberal humanism, socialist humanism: besides, for Del Noce, this actually was the real meaning of Benedetto Croce’s Perché non possiamo non dirci cristiani [Why We Cannot Help Calling Ourselves Christians]). According to Del Noce, this rediscovery implied a return to principles for Catholics, a reaffirmation, following the steps of Leo XIII, of a close connection between faith, culture and politics that would inspire them not to be passive in regard to modernity. In general, for Del Noce, re-valorization of tradition also implicated borrowing from past examples (Pius XII, centrism and De Gasperi, Croce’s Why We Cannot Help Calling Ourselves Christians) as well as taking inspiration from the examples of the toughest years of the Cold War and the containment approach (interpreted as politics aimed at re-discovering and revitalizing tradition). It is possible to conclude that Del Noce was not only a European philosopher but also a Cold War intellectual. Also, the model of intellectual and “cultural militancy” adopted and put into practice by Del Noce must be understood within the context of the Cold War. Del Noce was convinced that a recovery of “European Europe” and an attempt to save the European soul were absolutely necessary to save Europe from the detrimental effects of détente. He was also convinced that it was the duty of the intellectual to undertake that task. For Del Noce, this was not supposed to

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remain a mere intention. This conviction resulted in his extraordinary (and unprecedented) personal public commitment as well as in the manner in which some of his positions were radicalized to a certain degree. For Del Noce there was only one way to prevent détente from bringing about the dissolution of Europe and the triumph of a culture of surrender: by preventing culture (and intellectuals) from surrendering to that danger.

Bibliography Borghesi, Massimo. Augusto Del Noce. La legittimazione critica del moderno. Genoa-Milan: Marietti, 2011. Buttiglione, Rocco. “Augusto Del Noce filosofo della politica italiana.” Il Nuovo Areopago 9, no. 33 (Spring 1990): 6–30. Buttiglione, Rocco. “Del Noce maestro di filosofia.” In Augusto Del Noce. Il problema della modernità, 13–28. Rome: Studium, 1995. Buttiglione, Rocco. Augusto Del Noce. Biografia di un pensiero. Casale Monferrato: Piemme, 1991. Castellano, Danilo. La politica tra Scilla e Cariddi. Augusto Del Noce filosofo della politica attraverso la storia. Naples: ESI, 2010. Ceci, Giovanni Mario. “La parabola dell’eurocomunismo e i dilemmi del cattolicesimo politico: Augusto Del Noce.” In Gli intellettuali nella crisi della Repubblica, edited by Ermanni Taviani and Giuseppe Vacca, 237–264. Rome: Viella, 2016. Ceci, Giuseppe, and Lorella Cedroni, eds. Filosofia e Democrazia in Augusto Del Noce. Rome: Cinque Lune, 1993. Del Noce, Augusto. Futuro prossimo? Ipotesi, giudizi, discussioni sull’eurocomunismo. Bologna: Cappelli, 1978. Del Noce, Augusto. Il problema politico dei cattolici. Rome: Unione Italiana per il Progresso della Cultura, 1967. Del Noce, Augusto. L’Eurocomunismo e l’Italia. Rome: Europa Informazioni, 1976. Del Noce, Augusto. Scritti di Augusto Del Noce. Rome: Circolo Stato e Libertà, 1978. Del Noce, Augusto. Rivoluzione, Risorgimento, Tradizione. Edited by Francesco Mercadante, Antonio Tarantino, and Bernardino Casadei. Milan: Giuffrè, 1993. Del Noce, Augusto. The Crisis of Modernity. With an introduction by Carlo Lancellotti. Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2014. Del Noce, Augusto. The Age of Secularization. Edited and translated by Carlo Lancellotti. Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2017. Dell’Era, Tommaso. Augusto Del Noce. Filosofo della politica. Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino, 2000.

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Fasanaro, Laura. “Continuity and Transformation. Alternative Visions of Italy’s Three Decades of Détente.” In The Long Détente, edited by Oliver Bange and Poul Villaume, 155–182. Budapest-New York: CEU Press, 2017. Formigoni, Guido. “Democrazia cristiana e mondo cattolico dal neoatlantismo alla distensione.” In Un ponte sull’Atlantico, edited by Agostino Giovagnoli and Luciano Tosi, 141–167. Milan: Guerini e Associati, 2003. Formigoni, Guido. “La cultura internazionale della Democrazia cristiana.” In Uomini e nazioni, edited by Giorgio Petracchi, 96–113. Udine: Gaspari, 2005. Formigoni, Guido. “La DC e il dibattito sulla pace nel mondo cattolico postconciliare.” In Le sfide della pace, edited by Alfredo Canavero, Guido Formigoni, and Giorgio Vecchio, 231–248. Milan: Led, 2008. Nuti, Leopoldo. “La politica estera italiana negli anni della distensione. Una riflessione.” In Aldo Moro nella dimensione internazionale, edited by Alfonso Alfonsi, 40–62. Milan: FrancoAngeli, 2013. Thomassen, Bjørn, and Rosario Forlenza. “Christianity and Political Thought: Augusto Del Noce and the Ideology of Christian Democracy in Post-War Italy.” Journal of Political Ideologies 21, no. 2, 2016: 181–199.

CHAPTER 8

The International Politics of a Christian Realist: Beniamino Andreatta and Europe Andrea Guiso

8.1   Italy and Europe: The Turning Point of the 1960s The process of European integration was one of the critical factors in the democratic and economic development of post-Second World War Italy. The construction of a common European space inserted in the institutional framework of military, political and economic ties between Europe and the United States contributed decisively to promoting, over the medium to long term, the sense of belonging of the country to the values​ and institutions of the liberal-democratic West. The link between Atlanticism and Europeanism, forged in the framework of the Cold War and the anti-totalitarian political culture of the 1950s, became from the start a structural element of the international politics of the Republic, functional to the re-legitimization of the role of Italy as a medium-power after the collapse of the imperial and hypernationalist ideology of fascism,

A. Guiso (*) Dipartimento di Comunicazione e Ricerca Sociale, Università di Roma “La Sapienza”, Rome, Italy © The Author(s) 2019 A. Tarquini, A. Guiso (eds.), Italian Intellectuals and International Politics, 1945–1992, Italian and Italian American Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-24938-0_8

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as well as to the redefinition of national interest in an open, cooperative and multilateral context of interstate relations.1 Although firmly anchored to this essential historical and cultural background, Italy’s European policy has never taken on a univocal and constant meaning over time. The limits and opportunities of the link with Europe have in fact always been the object of a lively and tense confrontation between political forces, influenced by the logic and strategy of international alliances, by the evolution of the global political system of the Cold War and by a constant interaction between national interests and strategic choices at European level.2 From the end of the 1960s a period of profound rethinking took place on Europe’s role in world politics, less marked by the traditional logics of the Cold War and more autonomous in its strategic articulation. According to a rich tradition of studies, in the presence of this general evolution, Italy’s European policy would be characterized by a chronic deficit of strategy compared to those governments—French and German especially—armed with a clearer vision of national interest. However, more recent studies have corrected this interpretation, highlighting how the Italian authorities, despite uncertainties and contradictions, had tried to elaborate an effective response to the presentation of a new and different phase of the European Community project.3 Not without underlining the crucial role played in this regard by important sectors of the national government of economy, sectors that were an expression of the technical bodies of the state closely tied to European policies. With the coming into force on 13 March 1979 of the European Monetary System (EMS) a new course of relations between Italy and Europe began to take shape, guided by a specific orientation of some influential national technostructures, the Treasury and the Bank of Italy first and foremost, in favor of the transformation of the European bond into an “orthopedic” instrument for reforming the institutions of government of republican democracy, no longer aligned—in their impermeable rationale of organizing fragmented political and social interests— with the processes of economic globalization and the associated fall in sovereignty of the national state.4 A model of political democracy, that of  See Formigoni, Storia d’Italia nella Guerra fredda.  See Ludlow, European Integration and the Cold War. 3  For an overview of the historiographical debate on Italy and Europe, see A. Varsori, La cenerentola d’Europa?, 1–29. 4  See Gualtieri, L’Europa come vincolo esterno. Craveri, Caduta di sovranità e riforma delle istituzioni in Italia. Fabbrini, L’Italia e l’integrazione sovranazionale. 1 2

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Italy in the 1960s and 1970s, increasingly based on the assumptions of state leadership and accondiscendenza finanziaria (financial compliance) of the monetary authorities regarding the redistributive policies of the Treasury filtered by the parties, leading and almost exclusive representatives of the intermediation between the state and economic and social interests.5 While the role of Guido Carli in theorizing the disciplinary use of supranational constraints for government action in the national sphere now appears better documented,6 the influence and action of intellectual-­ managerial élite is less explored. They were operating, with the same rationale, in the joints between political parties, national  government institutions  and supranational economic governance. The figure of Beniamino Andreatta can in fact be considered from this point of view an exemplary testimony of the value that Europeanism has played in the redefinition of the country’s international politics in an open context of multilateral relations. At the same time it sheds light on the role of that intellectual-mandarins have given to Europe as an orthopedic corrector and regenerative pedagogy of a political system that had become increasingly inefficient, patronizing, uneconomic: in a word, ungovernable— a parliamentarian system expression of a proven technique of corporate mediation of political and social interests, functional to the re-stitching of the increasingly frayed civil fabric of Italy in the 1970s.7 The purpose of this contribution is to investigate, through the prism of one of the most original personalities of economic culture and Italian politics of the 1970s–1990s, the theme of international politics as a mirror of the country’s conflictual identity and, in return, as a field of interest and speculative relevance for intellectuals. Because there is no doubt that Beniamino Andreatta, even before being a competent politician and a man of the institutions, should be considered an intellectual, for the features of his thought as a refined and eclectic economist, an unconventional interpreter of political and social change and a believer rooted in a Christian dimension of history marked by the tension between faith and reason, between aspiration to infinity and the awareness of the contingent value of  In this regard, see Carli, Intervista sul capitalismo italiano, 52–54.  For a reconstruction of the role of Carli Minister of Treasury, see Craveri, Guido Carli senatore e ministro del Tesoro. 7  On these topics sheds light the essay of Craveri, L’arte del non governo. See also Caviglia, La democrazia della lira. 5 6

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every human conquest. Starting from this premise, this chapter will first try to highlight which specific elements of Andreatta’s intellectual and cultural formation were the foundation of his vision of international politics. To then rebuild how this vision materialized at the operational level, paying particular attention to the most significant circumstances of the commitment of Andreatta within the political institutions.

8.2   Reformer, Professor, Christian Realist: The Cultural and Intellectual Matrixes of Andreatta’s International Politics In Beniamino Andreatta’s international politics the imprint of the years of his intellectual formation was strong, marked by the cultural renewal of Catholic social thought that had begun in the context of the crisis of totalitarian systems, post-war reconstruction and the country’s democratic re-­ establishment. The influence of Giuseppe Dossetti’s ideas and those of the group of the journal Cronache Sociali certainly played an essential role in the development of an “interventionist” approach to public power as a tool to realize the idea of ​a deep and organic moral and material reform of the country, aimed at responding to the attese della povera gente (“expectations of poor people”) and to a more general instance of social justice. What Andreatta would derive from contact with Dossettian political culture in his youth was not therefore a generic reformist expression. It was rather a complete vision of participatory democracy, centered on the state as the driving force of economic development and solidarity between classes.8 The merit of the pressure group gathered around the figure of Dossetti was certainly to have contributed in the post-war period to the creation of a heterodox culture of Keynesian inspiration within the Catholic world and at the same time of being able to impose the theme of “reform” as a problem of “economic policy” in the public debate, with a consistent macroeconomic approach both at the level of analysis and of the programmatic proposal.9 After the Second World War, Italy was a country that was still mostly agricultural and was the ideal terrain for developing strategies for public intervention inspired by the theoretical principles and application methods of the “development economy”. This discipline had become mainstream in that intellectual Cambridge world 8 9

 See D’Adda, Lo Stato al centro della sua filosofia politica.  See Pombeni, Il gruppo dossettiano e la fondazione della democrazia italiana.

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that the young Andreatta, who had graduated at the Università Cattolica under the guidance of Siro Lombardini, had the privilege of attending in the mid-1950s as a visiting scholar. A privileged place for cultural exchange, the Cambridge of Nicholas Kaldor and Joan Robinson, destined to deeply affect his intellectual personality, opening it up to a strongly “global” vision of the problems of development and economic growth.10 Defining Andreatta as a reformer, in the light of this cultural and formative background, is not in contradiction with the role he had taken on, especially from the late 1970s, in Italian politics and government culture. His progressive divorce from Keynesian orthodoxy, as well as his commitment to favor a structural reform of the economy linked to the strengthening of the market and the goal of ending the stranglehold policy in strategic economic sectors, was not a classic conversion on the road to Damascus. The years in which Andreatta was Treasury Minister (between 1980 and 1982) are those in which strong is the impression of a dense and continuous dialogue between the old social-reformist creed and the new monetarist approach to stabilization.11 A dialogue interwoven with the aspiration to a profound and radical reform of politics and, primarily, the Christian-­ inspired party, both unimaginable without a moral regeneration of the state to be undertaken through a vigorous, inflexible correction of public accounts and incremental dynamics of spending, structurally linked to the self-referential and increasingly patronizing logic of power management.12 In this sense, the role played by Andreatta in many of the key events in the increasingly tense and problematic relations between political and economic power is certainly not random: from the so-called divorzio (“divorce”) between the Treasury and the Bank of Italy13 to the restructuring of Catholic finance after the Banco Ambrosiano crack,14 until the appointment of one of his Bolognese students—the industrial economics expert, as well as future head of the euro entry government, Romano Prodi—at the top of the Istituto per la Ricostruzione Industriale (IRI— 10  Cf. Quadrio Curzio, Alberto & Claudia Rotondi, Investimenti e sviluppo economico: teorie, fatti, politiche. 11  See Letta, Introduzione. 12  Andreatta, Strutture organizzative per una nuova strategia nella società italiana. 13  In technical terms, the word “divorce” meant the end of the obligation for the Bank of Italy to buy unsold Treasury  bonds. On the monetary policy of Andreatta, see Salsano, Andreatta Ministro del Tesoro. 14  Cf. the interventions of Andreatta at the Camera dei Deputati on 2 July 1982 and 8 October 1982 now in Andreatta, Discorsi parlamentari, I, 341–382.

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Institute for Industrial Reconstruction). An appointment desired for the purpose of reorganizing, according to more stringent criteria of economic efficiency, a public industrial apparatus transformed, between the 1960s and 1970s, into the “field hospital” of the great industrial enterprises in crisis and into a permanent tool for social conflict mediation.15 Implacable flogger of the “spending party”—in particular as president of the Senate budget commission16—Andreatta was always in the frontline in the battle to put Democrazia Cristiana at the service of the state, and not vice versa.17 A state whose competences were now no less difficult than those carried out, with undoubted success, within the framework of the great transformation of Italy from a pre-industrial society into an industrial society, which took place roughly between the 1950s and 1960s, in the long transition from “centrist” governments to those of “center-left”: that is to ensure the efficiency of the market through adequate regulatory powers of the increasingly stringent commitments made by the country in the European environment; remedy its dysfunctions; prevent any possible negative consequence of incongruous sectoral choices with the new framework of global interdependencies that emerged from the end of the fixed exchange rate system, the incipient crisis of the Fordist model and finally the relaunching of European integration in a strategic framework marked by the stabilization of national economies and the liberalization of markets and financial services.18 It is therefore the culture of reform that gives the exact measure of what unites Andreatta the intellectual to Andreatta the politician, separated only by a formal biographical break. A bond that takes on more precise meanings through the definition—“professor”—which habitually accompanied him even in the years of his “total” commitment to active politics. When one says professor, it is the case to omit further specifications (such as “lent to politics”). Andreatta was a professor in the full etymological  In general cf. Silva, Storia dell’IRI, 3. See also Berta, L’Italia delle fabbriche, 197–269.  A position that he filled from 4 August 1987 to 22 April 1992. 17  See in particular the speech to the Senate on 6 December 1987 in Andreatta, Discorsi parlamentari, 459 and ff. See also, among the many interventions on the subject, the one at the Veneto Regional DC (Democrazia Cristiana, Christian Democrat) Congress, Padua spring 1982, La volontà della DC non può essere la compensazione delle correnti armate, in Andreatta politico, 35–39. 18  See Andreatta, Radio interview…. See also Andreatta, Le conseguenze economiche del sistema monetario europeo per l’Europa e per l’Italia, 83–94; Andreatta, Discorsi di un inverno; Andreatta, Pluralismo sociale, programmazione e libertà. 15 16

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sense of the term: that of profiteri, of “openly” or “publicly declaring itself”, in deference to a philosophy of teaching as a science that professes itself, that “declares itself to others”, offering itself to the right to criticize, principle and the end of every dialectic that aspires to innervate the plural and value-driven fabric of democracy. In this aspect there is a peculiar, almost essential feature of the political Andreatta and man of institutions, well witnessed by the “sacral” consideration that he had of Parliament and the party as indispensable instruments in the education and creation of an authoritative ruling class: authoritative because responsible (able to conquer consensus and trust through discussion). A “politician is always in public”, Andreatta loved to say, as an attentive reader of Hannah Arendt. Only through an effort of clarity and sincerity would the public discourse succeed in putting itself at the service of that morale della responsabilità (“moral of responsibility”), repeatedly recalled in his political discourses and rooted in the practice and ethics of politics, independently of the institutional place and role played.19 It will not be surprising then to see the unorthodox absence of dialectical sophisms, of all forms of allusiveness, even, we could say, of circumspection, in the international political discourse adopted by Andreatta as Minister of Foreign Affairs or Minister of Defense, far, even in the usual depth of his analysis, from the cautious, measured, cabalistic lexical register of the “professional diplomat”.20 Andreatta claimed the affiliation of politics and intellectual activity to the same methodological order, founded on the stringent connection between knowledge, freedom and responsibility. An order in its own way consistent, where the “wisdom” of the scholar, always expressed in clear and rigorous terms, was to be considered at the service of politics and values ​that, through the act of deciding, fatally came to be brought into play. Economist, and therefore, by definition “competent” (he was the one to introduce in Italy modern techniques of analysis based on econometric models), Andreatta was never a cold lover of the dismal science, in his firm belief that the task of the economist was to orient politics to whose faculty of synthesis every final decision was necessarily referred. Andreatta was a man of insatiable curiosity, of the most varied readings and interests, which constantly emerged in his public interventions, also, and it could be said above all in the more technical ones. He never culti Andreatta, Politica e politici tra etica delle intenzioni ed etica delle responsabilità.  Andreatta was Minister for Foreign Affairs from April 1993 to April 1994 and Minister of Defense from May 1996 to October 1998. 19 20

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vated the idea of a​ “competence government” capable of replacing the democratic system of the decision (an idea that—in the opinion of Andreatta—Communism had taken to its most complete expression21), despite having long been committed to fighting the limits and distortions of consociational parliamentarianism established between the 1960s and 1970s.22 It is in this sense that Andreatta’s adhesion to that principle of conoscere per deliberare (“knowing so as to deliberate”) should be interpreted; that had inspired one of the most important chapters of Luigi Einaudi’s Prediche inutili (Useless Sermons). Einaudi was the noble father of Italian liberalism, whose moral and intellectual magisterium Andreatta,— Keynesian by training—often felt he had to recall. And not only when the defense of the spirit and the wisdom of article 81 of the Constitution was at stake on the financial coverage of the laws against an “evolutionary” interpretation of the same,23 tending to see in the budget law the “place of social peace” (that means of expenditory deficit).24 For Andreatta the professions of the scientist and of the politician rested on a common methodological background that was never ideologically neutral. You know to choose. Science and politics, from this point of view, can only be fields of conflict between different values. It is illusory to think of being able to dissolve this contrast in an irenistic agreement. From this “Weberian” position thus derived a further, essential element of Andreatta’s political philosophy, permeated by what we could define as a tragic conception of politics and history. A conception intimately linked to awareness of the conflictual, self-contradictory character of the reality within which men—constantly engaged in value choices—are called to work. Wearing the “sandals that make politics a drama” the politician—it is Andreatta who emphasizes this—shows himself to be aware of how much his work requires the most profound understanding of human nature.25 And consequently, of the deeper understanding of the ever tense and problematic character of the relationship between morality and power. Through this “Pascalian” gnoseological nucleus, it is possible here to glimpse the radically Christian matrix of a political philosophy, that of  Andreatta, Sentiamo le radici religiose della democrazia, 254.  Andreatta, Se i dadi sono truccati, 211–216. See then Andreatta, Una leadership vigorosa. 23  Cf. Andreatta, Intervention in the Senate of 8 March 1987, in Discorsi parlamentari, II, 472–479. 24  Andreatta, Quando la politica muore, 207–210. 25  Ibid., 207–210. 21 22

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professor Andreatta, ascribable in many ways to the great tradition of Western political realism. Because “doing politics”, as he pointed out, “does not mean palingenesis” (which “takes place at the altar of God, not in the offices of power”).26 That of Christian realist then seems the most pertinent definition to describe a secular conception of politics as revelation and constant experience of the ambiguous nature of the human condition: free and determined at the same time, because marked by the coexistence of the aspiration to infinity and awareness of the partiality of each result achieved. Understanding this limitation of the human condition meant—for a profound connoisseur of Protestant theology, and in particular the work of Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Reinhold Niebuhr, as was Andreatta—to recognize the inconsistency of any claim to exclusively determine or identify relationships between morality and power; and consequently, the “sacrilegious” character of the claim itself of involving God in earthly decisions or of founding human morality on some cult of reason.27 This meant, on the one hand, recognizing, without abandoning itself to forms of complacent cynicism, the “profound evil that exists in history”, to find, in the conditions posed by the irrepressible finitude of the human being, the most effective remedy; on the other hand, recognizing the groundlessness of any claim to bend the reality of power to an abstract moral, not to be pursued when there were interests, visions, and radical and irreconcilable wills at stake. Hence the claim—which we will find as a constant in Andreatta as Minister of Foreign Affairs and then of Defense during the humanitarian catastrophes of Somalia, of former Yugoslavia and of Rwanda—of a realism equally distant from two typical and specular deformations of international public opinion. The first, the abstract and pretentious sentimentality of a humanitarian theology inclined to closing one’s eyes to the dark side of things, in the dogmatic certainty that evil is a result of ignorance and cultural delay: that is to say the inability of moral and social science to keep up with the progress of rational and scientific understanding of the world. The second, cynical realism, which is such, when it assumes that a characteristic of human behavior must be considered the universal rule to which, in any place and at any time, the order of decisions should be brought back, without any ambition of civil improvement.

 Andreatta, Ciascuno è frantumato e ha più lealtà, 257–258.  Andreatta, Una cristiana laicità, 256.

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8.3   Andreatta’s Europe: External Constraint to Reform Italian Politics, Architecture with Flexible Geometry, Global Actor of Collective Security The three definitions—reformer, professor, Christian realist—that have so far facilitated the task of reconstructing, albeit broadly, the cultural and intellectual matrixes of Andreatta’s politics, will not be limited to guiding us in drafting an ideal inventory of concepts and general statements. The purpose of this chapter is, as explained in the introduction, to analyze the relationship between the intellectual sphere and the political sphere, highlighting how intellectuals have been able to influence the country’s international choices at crucial moments in its history. It is therefore time to focused on  Andreatta’s Europe, which represents the ideal point of intersection and at the same time the main field of application of those three definitions. For almost 30 years, Andreatta was in fact among the greatest protagonists, always from different positions of the political and institutional chessboard, of the country’s European policy. An expert in budget matters and appreciated as an economic and industrial policy advisor; a party man who was always bravely engaged in the arduous battle for the moralization of political and administrative life; an influential member of the European People’s Party (EPP) Group; finally Minister responsible for various key dicasteries of economic and international politics, Andreatta was able to see first-hand every aspect of the relations between European governance and national politics. Relationships made ever more extensive and complex by the close operational connection between the two areas created since the signing of the EMS treaty of 1979.28 Simplifying in the extreme, we can observe his influence on the country’s foreign policy within a triple strategic dimension of Europe: external constraint (“vincolo esterno”) in order to reform the country’s institutions; a variable-geometry model of national inclusion; a global actor and pivot of collective security. As well-known it was Guido Carli, Minister of the Treasury from July 1989 to June 1992, to underline the pedagogical value of the concept of an external constraint, with reference to a political strategy aimed at forcing—through the prerogatives of the European Community’s economic discipline—an improvement of the  national public accounts that would  Andreatta, Intervento, in Il sistema monetario europeo…, 25–33.

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otherwise be difficult, if not impossible, to pursue through the party ­system.29 The discussions and controversies that arose, in a climate of visceral anti-Europeanism and anti-establishment rebellion, around the need or not to act in this sense had, and still have, in our opinion, their main limit in the double removal of the political-structural causes of the debtdeficit spiral in which Italy had been sucked since the 1970s, and the contextually negative effects of economic globalization on the “autarchical” organization of industrial relations. The main Italian anomaly in those years, compared to the economies of the most industrialized countries, was in fact due to monetary instability, highlighted by an inflation differential compared to the average of European partners that in less than a decade would go from 1.1 to 6.2; and not secondarily by the simultaneous limitation of the Bank of Italy’s prerogatives for intervention on monetary policy.30 A policy encapsulated, since the 1960s, in the redistributive logic of income subordinated to the needs of the Treasury, that is to say of the parties and their electoral clients. It was in this context that the monetization of the public debt ended up reaching such high percentages as to encourage the new central bank governor, Paolo Baffi, to compare, in his report to the Assembly of the Bank of Italy in 1976, the government of financial flows in Italy to the “the state-of-siege economy”.31 Inevitably, in these conditions, the Ministry of Treasury was fingered as the one to blame, together with the Bank of Italy, for the launching of a structural reform of the government of the economy, necessary to synchronize the country with the line of monetary stability launched in the European Community at the end of the 1970s. The choice of Italy and of the governing parties to enter the EMS also marked a turning point in the modalities of Italy’s participation in the revival of European integration.32 The emphasis with which the disruptive force of the “divorce” between the Treasury and the Bank of Italy, carried out by Andreatta and Ciampi in 1981, has often been emphasized, is undoubtedly excessive if it is compared with the real performance of public debt and expenditure in Italy in the 1980s (both constantly increasing during the decade). It is not at all if one takes into account the difficulty of allowing a recalcitrant ruling class  Carli, Cinquant’anni di vita italiana.  Rossi, La politica economica italiana. 31  Baffi, Considerazioni finali del governatore della Banca d’Italia, 426, 432–433. 32  For a reconstruction of the lively internal debate of the DC, see Varsori, La cenerentola d’Europa?, 224–230. 29 30

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to digest a measure of disintermediation between politics and the e­ conomy which in other times would have been tempted to define as “seditious”. This provision was also part of a new stabilization culture, now prevalent at central bank level, based on the idea of ​monetary policy as the main instrument for the correction and rationalization of public budgets.33 A culture that overthrew the Ptolemaic universe on which the vicious circle between expenditure deficit and growth of public debt had been legitimizing itself in Italy, thus allowing the “Via Nazionale” institute to nibble some non-ephemeral margin of political autonomy, to be spent in the direction of a more general rethinking of the economic governance of the Italian state. Even more seditious was the regulatory discontinuity introduced by the Single European Act of 1986, thanks to which rules were then incorporated would introduce changes in the “economic constitution” of the country, undermining the basic mechanisms of the formation of consensus and power management built around the system of state holdings and control of the public financial and industrial apparatus. The approach of the Maastricht deadline and the single currency would end up sounding like a sudden alert to a governing class almost astonished to find itself, in the words of Giulio Andreotti, “with our backs to the wall”.34 The decision of the Prime Minister Andreotti to entrust Guido Carli with the keys of the Treasury in 1989 was not yet the sign of a surrender, but also made it clear what would be, from that moment on, the responsibilities that the different players of the socio-economic system—political class, entrepreneurial and financial elite, trade union organizations and interests—were irrevocably called to take on. In this general framework, Andreatta’s brief experience at the head of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (April 1993–April 1994), in the “technical” government led by the former governor of the Bank of Italy, Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, was certainly not casual. A government created to deal with the national emergency that exploded—against the backdrop of the end of the Cold War and its logics of legitimation—due to the combined effect of the 1992 currency crisis and the transformation of the “moral question” into an inquisitorial machine.35 The qualifying point of the Ciampi program was an ambitious privatization plan which, in the wake of  Cama, La Banca d’Italia.  Varsori, L’Italia e la fine della guerra fredda. 35  See Colarizi, Gervasoni, La tela di Penelope. 33 34

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the measures already approved by the previous semi-technical government led by Giuliano Amato, envisaged the disposal of substantial sectors of state industry and of the public financial system. As immediately became clear, the privatization plan did not incidentally intersect the crisis of the party system. On the contrary, it became a decisive factor of orientation of the reform process, destined to put an end to the traditional pre-eminence of political power over economic power. Compared to the way in which the major privatization processes were designed and conducted by the leading governments of the European Community (with the launching of a parallel process of liberalization and market regulation), Italy was immediately an anomalous case. Not politics, but rather a sort of civil defense committee, half political and half technical-managerial (mainly of banking extraction), had the task of launching a new “economic constitution” as a way out of the country’s financial and moral catastrophe. The plethora of notices of investigation and arrest warrants that had decimated, under the blows of media justicialism, the ministerial structure led by the socialist Amato and had transformed his parliamentary majority into an army on an undisciplined course, had in fact marked the point of no return in the perception/representation of an inseparable link between the public economy and malfeasance, legitimizing the urgent and irrevocable nature of the process of the state leaving the industrial and financial sector.36 Fanning the flames of anti-politics the press was in fact able to give shape, between 1992 and 1993, to a metanarrative of political change in the name of purification from the sins of the past—the dissipation and dispossession of collective resources, the accumulation of enormous debt, the excessive “milking” of the entrepreneurial system and so on—would end up tracing an ethically impassable boundary between public and private; and consequently depriving politics as such of legitimacy to intervene on issues that are politically far from neutral, such as those relating to the state’s economic organization and to the country’s industrial and financial strategies within the institutional framework of the forthcoming European Single Currency. In this confusing scenario, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs led by Andreatta came to play a delicate and crucial role. A complex dispute between Italy and Europe was in progress in those months concerning the infringement procedure opened by the Delors III Commission on the distortive effects of competition on the guarantees offered by the Italian state for all the debts of EFIM (Mechanical Engineering Financial Agency),  Cf. Guiso, “Declino e trasformazione dello Stato banchiere”.

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the third Italian public holding company, which for years had been in a situation of serious financial disruption. First in line, in an intimidated and split DC, in t​he parliamentary battle for the reorganization of the state industry according to criteria of efficiency and transparency,37 Andreatta authoritatively assumed the role of negotiator of Italy’s position in Europe in the matter of privatization, with the aim of softening the resolute attitude of the Commission on the crucial issue of the ban on the so-called state aid, which included the more general principle of the supremacy of Community law over national law. In trying to defend the national interests in the best way and with a more gradual application of the community rules on the country’s industrial policies, Andreatta proved to possess a diplomatic sensitivity firmly anchored to the philosophy of national interest and to the search for the necessary compromise between ethics of belief and ethics of responsibility. The process of that difficult negotiation, concluded with the Andreatta-Van Miert agreements, was indeed revealing of the capacity of the then foreign minister—as the political endpoint of an institutional polyhedron of technicians and officials that also included the then president of IRI Romano Prodi—to declare the hypothesis of the external constraint on a not abstractly doctrinal, rather pragmatic and flexible, terrain able to combine the general objective of cutting collusive relations between politics and economics contained in the community orientations with the prerogatives of control of the entire process of national level divestments.38 Starting from a similar center-periphery scheme, Andreatta and Ciampi would then also work on the next Italian proposal to entrust the task of “collective surveillance” of the evolution of the member states’ monetary and fiscal policies to the European Monetary Institute, then in the planning stage, aimed at reconciling the need to have a stable exchange system in the face of the ungovernability of the “vast mobile masses of money”, management of which had imposed “heroic and impossible undertakings”39 on the monetary authorities in the recent past. As Andreatta himself would recognize, it was a politically demanding and technically complex proposal, advanced in a difficult situation, in which the greatest political commitment came from the German chancellor, that is from the head of a country that attributed to the mark

 Andreatta, Discorsi parlamentari, II, 740–745.  For a detailed reconstruction, see Curli, Il “vincolo europeo”. 39  Andreatta, Beniamino, “Ho un piano per salvare l’ONU”, Corriere della sera, 26 August 1993. 37 38

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a “value as the symbol of national unity”.40 This is a consideration that assumes almost paradigmatic value of the closure of Andreatta toward those forms of “federalist Jacobinism” not very respectful of European historical-cultural particularism.41 The scenario that emerged from the end of the Cold War—characterized by the proliferation of global disorder and the awakening, in the territories of the former communist bloc, of aggressive and proud ethno-nationalism—was also a new, very hard test of Europe’s ability, long experimented in its 1000-year-old and eventful history, of culturally integrating diversity and transforming, through the resilience of its institutions, plurality into a political resource. It was not a question here, as Andreatta repeatedly emphasized, of appealing to the resources of an unmemorable, mythical wisdom, deposited at the bottom of the centuries-old European affair. In imagining a Europe of the socalled enlargement as “flexible geometry architecture”,42 he, unlike many intellectuals who converted to the Europeanist faith after the collapse of revolutionary ideologies of communist inspiration, did not betray doubts or memory lapses about the values and political and ideological premises from which the integration process had started. The Cold War had postulated a specific raison d’être of Europe, as a political space for integration and cooperation between former enemy powers in the framework of what had just begun to define itself as Atlantic civilization43—an expression which Andreatta often claimed with pride, recognizing it as the result of a joint effort to build a plural enterprise of improvement of civil and human order in freedom. Hence the need to preserve—also recognizing the usefulness of force and consequently the importance of a European capacity for intervention in a military sense—the “unity of the great countries of the West”, and with it the nucleus that cannot be renounced of aspirations, ideal principles and values ​on which political Europe had laid its historical foundations.44 That nucleus, as Andreatta pointed out, had in the collective security policy built in the Euro-Atlantic framework, and therefore also in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s superior military response capability, not only its defensive bulwark, but also an essential tool for strategic articulation of multilateral culture of power in those  Ibidem.  Andreatta, Garantire la pace, non fare la guerra. 42  Andreatta, Una nuova architettura europea, 659–663. 43  Andreatta, Beniamino, “Garantire la pace, non fare la guerra”, Il Tempo, 18 February 1994. 44  Andreatta, Discorsi parlamentari, vol. II, 870. 40 41

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geopolitical contexts likely to elevate the entropy of international relations.45 Moreover, European history taught how impervious the path of integration between different cultures was based on the concept and practice of tolerance. Democracy was born in the blood, from a rib of the religious conflict that had inflamed the Europe of the sixteenth-seventeenth centuries.46 Fury and prayer had kept her baptism, breaking her spiritual and civil unity. The emergence of an increasingly “professionalized” politics and related administrative functions of an impersonal nature had allowed the development of flexible institutions for the rule of complexity, as well as the structuring of a first embryo of European public law, condemned nevertheless to live with the cyclical re-exploding of radical collective passions intertwined with the particularist drives of states. Only at the end of a second Thirty Years’ War did the European and American heirs of that crushing finally understand the value of a common politicalinstitutional commitment through which to dissolve the old divisions and defend the founding principles of an open and inclusive society. This lesson came back strongly from current events in the face of the challenges posed to Western democracy by the conflict in former Yugoslavia and by the political crises that exploded in some regions, such as the Horn of Africa or Rwanda, where the limits and the uncertainties of collective agencies like the United Nations (UN) and of an international diplomacy were clearly evident as they were less and less culturally equipped to deal with the violent nature of power.47 According to Andreatta, the end of the Cold War brought out “a certain exasperated idea of national interest”, as well as the tendency to “privatize the advantages of the end of the Cold War”, in a game of increasingly unfriendly velleity. Hence, the two roads that it would be necessary to travel in his opinion. The first was ideally connected to the general theme of “reform”, which had been one of the cornerstones of the cultural formation of the young economist Andreatta. A topic that as Foreign Minister he could now revive at the center of a proposal by the Italian delegation to the UN to review the functions and operational structure of the UN Security Council. The proposal envisaged the possibility of creating a sort of “Senate” of about 20 “semi-permanent” 45  Andreatta, Una politica estera per l’Italia, 881–891. See then Andreatta, Discorsi parlamentari, II, intervention of 7 December 1994. 46  Cf. Andreatta, Sentiamo le radici religiose della democrazia…, 253. 47  Andreatta, Discorsi parlamentari, II, intervention on the situation in Rwanda of 10 May 1995; intervention on the situation in Bosnia of 1 June 1995.

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members (two years of ­presidency every six), capable of giving new legitimacy and new resources to the Council itself.48 The second road could only be the logical and inevitable consequence of the first. In the blank spaces of the project of a “new UN” many questions remained to be defined, including the crucial problem of the legitimacy of military interventions and the “power of command” of international police operations. In this specific context, Europe was called on, according to Andreatta, to finally make a decisive contribution to the problem of international “order”, marked by the sense of responsibility and the multilateral culture of power that the challenge of the global Cold War had shaped and made articulate and flexible. The profound crisis of many countries of the former Soviet bloc left no other choice than, according to Andreatta, that of an extension of NATO that laid the foundations for a fruitful and lasting cooperation with Russia in the crisis management of the post-bipolar world. It was necessary “not to leave Russia alone in its military operations in Asia, in Tajikistan, in Georgia, in Armenia”, and to give these interventions “a general rule of international legitimacy”.49 It would be sufficient, in an “indivisible” logic of security, to enhance existing institutional resources, such as the Conference for Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE), with a view to finally realizing the transformation of the “cold war armistices into an international order”.50 The reference to the spirit of Helsinki certainly contained a biographical element to which Andreatta felt particularly close, that is, the memory of the figure of Aldo Moro (for whom he was an authoritative and appreciated economic advisor), and in particular that of his role as an important actor in the birth of the CSCE. A role that Andreatta linked to tradition, or rather, to the European “culture” of the balance and the mediation of interests, the art of compromise, the philosophy of small steps that in the great settlements of Westphalia and the Congress of Vienna had found their most complete expression. It was the great tradition of realism, forged through a gradual process of professionalizing conflict management and the weighted use of force. Andreatta’s call to the failed affair of 48  Andreatta, Beniamino, “Ho un piano per salvare l’ONU”, Corriere della sera, 26 August 1993. 49  Andreatta, Beniamino, “Con la Russia alleanza per la pace”, Avvenire, 28 November 1993. 50  Ibidem. See then Andreatta, Discorsi parlamentari, II, intervention of 5 October 1993. But especially the parliamentary intervention on the Italian semester as president of the European Union in Andreatta, Discorsi parlamentari, II, 884–891.

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the European Defense Community and to the need to set up a “European military pillar”51 in the new post-Cold War scenario, as well as his commitment to the reform of the armed forces and to increasing the Italian State’s military budget in the operational framework of peacekeeping and the Dayton agreements,52 was therefore the logical consequence of the general assumptions of his thinking on international politics. It was still necessary to convince—and it was not a matter to be overlooked—an “idealistic” diplomacy, culturally unprepared to face the tragic reality of power. “Diplomacy and politics”, he stated in an interview with the Catholic newspaper Avvenire, are not utopias, their matter is facts, the unexpected, the ability to react to it. History is also made up of failures. The attempt [to re-launch a strategic role of the CSCE and to involve Russia, author’s note.] is ambitious because we are trying to organize a lasting order, in which the vanquished and the winners of the Cold War participate on a level of equality. If the perception is spread, in Russia, of this substantial equality, certain reactions, certain humiliations that might be nurtured by militarist nationalism in Russia, come to be reduced.53

It would be even more difficult, however, to persuade of the need for force a public opinion now unaccustomed to thinking of the tension between morality and power, ready to spring forth and ask for “interventions”, without being willing to pay the costs. “There is a death rate”—he stated significantly on the occasion of the tragic events of Srebrenica— “beyond which it (public opinion, author’s note) is demoralized and calls for withdrawal”.54 Confiding in the resolutive power of diplomacy could prove to be a fatal illusion, easy to convert, in moments of paralysis, into pure and simple sentiment of indignation. Without realism there is no politics: Former Yugoslavia is presented by the media as the check of diplomacy. But when people want to prevail militarily there is no military intervention that

 Andreatta, Discorsi parlamentari, II, intervention of 12 October 1994.  Cf. Andreatta, Discorsi parlamentari, II, interventions of 20 June 1996, 19 September 1996 and 6 February 1997. 53  Andreatta, Con la Russia alleanza per la pace. 54  Andreatta, Discorsi Parlamentari, vol. II, 869. 51 52

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holds, if not that with preponderant forces willing to shoot at everyone. Peace cannot be guaranteed when people want to kill each other.55

As he would say during his parliamentary speech on the crisis in Rwanda, before certain facts one could not think of accepting “an easy (and irresponsible) way”. A “sort of hope in human progressive destinies”, incapable of “living with the profound evil that exists in history”. From a Christian realist’s point of view there was nothing left to do but to reaffirm the need to commit oneself to appease it, knowing however that, it is not by attacking international organizations or governments that we will succeed in taking a step forward. […] Having the sense of the limits and errors of the political activity of man is perhaps the beginning of wisdom and allows us to ask the different organizations what they can do without making them imprudently take steps for which we have not given them mandate, nor sufficient human, political and military resources.56

Bibliography Andreatta, Beniamino. “Pluralismo sociale, programmazione e libertà”, in La società italiana. Atti del secondo convegno di studio della Democrazia cristiana, Rome: Cinque Lune, 1963. Andreatta, Beniamino. Cronache di un’economia bloccata: 1969–1973. Bologna: Il Mulino, 1973 Andreatta, Beniamino. “Strutture organizzative per una nuova strategia nella società italiana”, Il Mulino, 3/77. Andreatta, Beniamino. “Le conseguenze economiche del sistema monetario europeo per l’Europa e per l’Italia”, Quaderni di economia e di finanza dell’Istituto bancario San Paolo di Torino“, 2 (1978): 83–94 Andreatta, Beniamino. Discorsi di un inverno. Rome: AREL, 1982a. Andreatta, Beniamino. “Una leadership vigorosa, una nuova moralità”, in Beniamino Andreatta, Discorsi di un inverno, Bologna: AREL, 1982b. Andreatta, Beniamino. “Intervento”, in Il sistema monetario europeo a dieci anni dal suo atto costitutivo: risultati e prospettive, Atti del convegno promosso dal ministero degli Affari Esteri e dall’Istituto Mobiliare Italiano, Rome: IMI, 1988. Andreatta, Beniamino. “Una nuova architettura europea”, Affari Esteri, 100, n. 3, 1993a.  Andreatta, Con la Russia…, 63.  Andreatta, Discorsi Parlamentari, vol. II, 854–855.

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Andreatta, Beniamino. “Una politica estera per l’Italia”, Il Mulino, 349, n. 5, 1993b. Andreatta, Beniamino. Discorsi parlamentari, vol. I, Rome: Camera dei Deputati, 2011a. Andreatta, Beniamino. Discorsi parlamentari, vol. II, Rome: Camera dei Deputati, 2011b. Andreatta, Beniamino. Radio interview in 1992, now published in “AREL”, 2/2012. Andreatta, Beniamino. “Ciascuno è frantumato e ha più lealtà”, in Colimberti Mariantonietta, Enrico Letta, ed., Andreatta politico, Rome: “AREL, La rivista”, 3.2015 / I.2016a. Andreatta, Beniamino. “La volontà della DC non può essere la compensazione delle correnti armate”, in Colimberti Mariantonietta, Enrico Letta, ed., Andreatta politico, Rome: “AREL, La rivista”, 3.2015 / I.2016b. Andreatta, Beniamino. “Politica e politici tra etica delle intenzioni ed etica delle responsabilità, in Colimberti Mariantonietta, Enrico Letta, ed., Andreatta politico, Rome: “AREL, La rivista”, 3.2015 / I.2016c. Andreatta, Beniamino. “Quando la politica muore”, in Colimberti Mariantonietta, Enrico Letta, ed., Andreatta politico, Rome: “AREL, La rivista”, 3.2015 / I.2016d. Andreatta, Beniamino. “Se i dadi sono truccati”, in Colimberti Mariantonietta, Enrico Letta, ed., Andreatta politico, Rome: “AREL, La rivista”, 3.2015 / I.2016e. Andreatta, Beniamino. “Sentiamo le radici religiose della democrazia, ma non siamo il partito del Vaticano”, in Colimberti Mariantonietta, Enrico Letta, ed., Andreatta politico, Rome: “AREL, La rivista”, 3.2015 / I.2016f. Andreatta, Beniamino. “Una cristiana laicità”, in Colimberti Mariantonietta, Enrico Letta, ed., Andreatta politico, Rome: “AREL, La rivista”, 3.2015 / I.2016g. Baffi, Paolo. Considerazioni finali del governatore della Banca d’Italia concernenti l’esercizio del 1975, Rome: Bank of Italy, 1976 Berta, Giuseppe. L’Italia delle fabbriche. La parabola dell’industrialismo nel Novecento. Bologna: il Mulino, 2001 Cama, Giampiero. La Banca d’Italia. Bologna: Il Mulino, 2010 Carli, Guido. Cinquant’anni di vita italiana. In collaboration with Paolo Peluffo. Rome-Bari: Laterza, 1993. Carli, Guido. Intervista sul capitalismo italiano. Eugenio Scalfari, ed. Turin: Bollati Boringhieri, 2008 (First edition, Laterza: 1977). Caviglia, Daniele. La democrazia della lira. L’Italia e la crisi del sistema di Bretton Woods (1958–1973). Milan: FrancoAngeli, 2013.

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Colarizi, Simona, Gervasoni, Marco. La tela di Penelope. Storia della seconda Repubblica. Bari-Rome: Laterza, 2012 Craveri, Piero, Antonio Varsori, eds. L’Italia nella costruzione europea. Un bilancio storico (1957–2007). Milan: FrancoAngeli, 2009. Craveri, Piero. Caduta di sovranità e riforma delle istituzioni in Italia, in L’Italia contemporanea dagli anni Ottanta a oggi, Simona Colarizi, Agostino Giovagnoli, P. Pombeni, ed., III, Istituzioni e politica, Rome: Carocci, 2014 Craveri, Piero, ed. Guido Carli senatore e ministro del Tesoro 1983–1992. Turin: Bollati Boringhieri, 2009. Craveri, Piero. L’arte del non governo. Venezia: Marsilio, 2016. Curli, Barbara. “Il “vincolo europeo”: le privatizzazioni dell’IRI tra Commissione europea e governo italiano”, Storia dell’IRI, 4, Crisi e privatizzazione 1990–2002, Roberto Artoni ed. Bari-Rome: Laterza, 2014. D’Adda, Carlo. “Lo Stato al centro della sua filosofia politica”, in Gli allievi ricordano Nino Andreatta, ed. Alberto Quadrio Curzio, Claudia Rotondi. Bologna: pubblicazioni AREL, Il Mulino, 2014. Fabbrini, Sergio. L’Italia e l’integrazione sovranazionale l’europeizzazione contrastata, in L’Italia contemporanea dagli anni Ottanta a oggi, Silvio Pons, Adriano Roccucci, Federico Romero, ed., I, Fine della guerra fredda e globalizzazione, Rome: Carocci, 2014. Formigoni, Guido. Storia d’Italia nella Guerra fredda (1943–1978). Bologna: Il Mulino, 2016. Giovagnoli, Agostino. La cultura democristiana. Bari-Roma: Laterza, 1991. Gualtieri, Roberto. L’Europa come vincolo esterno, in L’Italia nella costruzione europea. Un bilancio storico (1957–2007), Piero Craveri, Antonio Varsori ed., Milan: FrancoAngeli, 2009. Guiso, Andrea. “Declino e trasformazione dello Stato banchiere. Mutamenti della costituzione materiale nella crisi politica della Prima Repubblica”, Ventunesimo secolo. Rivista di studi sulle transizioni, 39, 2016. Letta, Enrico. Introduzione, Beniamino Andreatta, Discorsi parlamentari, I, Rome: Camera dei deputati, 2011. Ludlow, Piers, ed. European Integration and the Cold War: Ostpolitik-Westpolitik, 1965–1973, London: Routledge, 2007 Pombeni, Paolo. Il gruppo dossettiano e la fondazione della democrazia italiana (1938–1948). Bologna: il Mulino, 1979. Quadrio, Curzio, Alberto, Claudia Rotondi. Un economista eclettico. Distribuzione, tecnologie e sviluppo nel pensiero di Nino Andreatta, Bologna: AREL, Il Mulino, 2013. Rossi, Salvatore. La politica economica italiana 1968–2000. Bari-Rome: Laterza, 1998

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Salsano, Francesco. Andreatta Ministro del Tesoro. Bologna: Il Mulino, 2009. Silva, Francesco, ed., Storia dell’IRI, vol. 3, I difficili anni ‘70 e i tentativi di rilancio negli anni ‘80, Bari-Rome: Laterza, 2013. Varsori, Antonio. L’Italia e la fine della guerra fredda. La politica estera dei governi Andreotti. Bologna: Il Mulino, 2013. Varsori, Antonio. La cenerentola d’Europa? L’Italia e l’integrazione europea dal 1947 a oggi. Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino, 2010.

PART III

Socialists and Communists

CHAPTER 9

Anti-Semitism and the Arab-Israeli Question: The Italian Left in the First Ten Years of the Republic Alessandra Tarquini

9.1   Introduction In the following pages, I will try to analyze how the main exponents of the Italian Left—parties, movements and intellectuals—were confronted with two very different themes from 1946 to 1956: the problem of anti-­ Semitism in the aftermath of the Second World War and the Arab-Israeli question from the birth of the State of Israel to the Suez crisis. The aim of this chapter is to study how men and women, who in Italy referred to the Marxist tradition, considered a minority that historically presented itself to the world especially concerning cultural, religious and national elements. It will therefore be necessary to answer the following questions: what space did Jews have in the culture and politics of the Left? And is the Italian case unique or is it similar to other European experiences? The chapter is divided into three parts: in the first I will try to describe the protagonists of the research; in the second I will deal with the problem

A. Tarquini (*) Sapienza University of Rome, Rome, Italy © The Author(s) 2019 A. Tarquini, A. Guiso (eds.), Italian Intellectuals and International Politics, 1945–1992, Italian and Italian American Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-24938-0_9

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of anti-Semitism in the Italian Left in the aftermath of the World War and in the third of how socialists and communists tackled the Arab-Israeli question from 1948 to the Suez crisis of 1956.

9.2   The Italian Left After the Second World War In the elections of 2 June 1946, the first free vote after 20 years of the fascist regime, there were two main parties in the Italian Left: the Partito socialista di unità proletaria (PSIUP—Socialist Party of Proletarian Unity) and the Partito comunista italiano (PCI—Italian Communist Party). The PSIUP, led by Pietro Nenni, received 20.7% of the votes. He garnered his greatest support in the industrial proletariat of the north and in the unions, and despite the financial and logistical difficulties of the post-war period, he succeeded in creating an efficient organizational structure and in proposing it as one of the most important parties in the country. With a media outlet and several magazines gravitating in the socialist area, committed to training its 700,000 members, the militants and, in theory, all Italian public opinion were divided into three main currents: reformists, who proposed forging ties with European and democratic socialism; fusionists who, on the contrary, hoped to merge with the PCI and finally the maximalist current that was fighting for the unity of action with the communists, while maintaining that it had to preserve its autonomy.1 In January 1947, the clash between these different groups in Rome led to the division of Palazzo Barberini and to the birth of the Partito socialista dei lavoratori italiani (PSLI—Socialist Party of Italian Workers), which was led by Giuseppe Saragat, who was supported by the group of Critica Sociale reformists and youth of Iniziativa socialista and who was a staunch supporter of both the Marshall Plan and the European choice.2 A few 1  Giovanni Sabbatucci, Il riformismo impossibile. Storie del socialismo italiano (Rome-Bari: Laterza, 1991), 79–91; Zeffiro Ciuffoletti, Maurizio Degl’Innocenti, Giovanni Sabbatucci, Storia del Psi. III. Dal dopoguerra a oggi (Rome-Bari: Laterza, 1993), 59; Paolo Mattera, Storia del Psi. 1892–1994 (Rome: Carocci, 2010); Paolo Mattera, I socialisti, in Storia delle sinistre nell’Italia Repubblicana, eds. Marco Gervasoni (Cosenza: Marco editore, 2010), 56–59. 2  Francesca Taddei, Il socialismo italiano del dopoguerra: correnti ideologiche e scelte politiche (1943–1947), (Milan: FrancoAngeli, 1984); Michele Donno, Socialisti democratici. Giuseppe Saragat e il Psli (1945–52), (Soveria Mannelli: Rubettino, 2009); Daniele Pipitone, Il socialismo democratico italiano fra la Liberazione e la legge truffa. Fratture, ricomposizioni e culture politiche di un’area di frontiera, (Milan: Ledizioni, 2013).

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months later the PSLI welcomed some members of the Partito d’azione (PdA—Action Party), which had obtained just over 1% at the elections and disbanded in October 1947, even though the majority of its members split between the socialists and the republicans. In the following years, it almost always settled around 4% and never became a mass party. Indeed, unlike what happened in the rest of Europe, in Italy there was no labor or social democratic party, capable of competing with the communists and their allies. From then on, and until the early 1960s, the Italian Left  was represented by the Partito Socialista Italiano (PSI—Italian Socialist Party) and the PCI, allied and in a position of clear supremacy compared to the Social Democrats, who for the next four decades remained a small party, available to support the governments led by Christian Democrats. So, in Europe the PSI talked with the socialists of the Left and not with Labor, in Italy it had its preferential relationship with the PCI, was not part of the Socialist International that was reborn as an organization of social democratic parties in 1951, and was preparing to assume a neutralist position in the political-international alliance brought about by the Cold War.3 According to many historians, this neutralism resulted in an ambiguous policy, given the alliance with the Communist Party that, after the creation of COMINFORM, acted more and more clearly in strict accordance with Soviet directives.4 In fact, Italian socialists, linked to the PCI, suffered hegemony, so in the late 1940s expressed a political culture that, although not Stalinist, was decidedly pro-Soviet and struggled to propose an independent line of thinking.

3  On the PSI’s foreign policy: Alberto Benzoni, I socialisti e la politica estera, in La politica estera della repubblica italiana, (Milan: Edizioni di Comunità, 1967), III, 927–949; Pietro Nenni, I nodi della politica estera italiana, eds. Domenico Zucaro, (Milan: Sugarco, 1974); Danilo Ardia, Il partito socialista e il patto atlantico, (Milan: FrancoAngeli, 1976); Ennio Di Nolfo, Il socialismo italiano tra i due blocchi, in Trent’anni di politica socialista, Atti del Convegno di Parma, January 1977, (Rome: Mondo Operaio, 1977), 47–66; Giovanni Scirocco, “Politique d’abord”. Il Psi, la guerra fredda e la politica internazionale (1948–1957), (Milan: Unicopli, 2010). For the clash between the PSI and International socialist between 1948 and 1949, see Lucio Pesetti, L’internazionale socialista dal 1951 al 1983 (Venice: Marsilio, 1989), 14–20. 4  Ennio Di Nolfo, Il socialismo italiano tra i due blocchi, 56; Giuseppe Mammarella, L’Italia contemporanea, (1943–1985), (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1985), 134–135.

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The other major party of the Italian Left was the PCI, which in the elections of June 1946 obtained 19% of the votes, becoming the second party of the Left and the third Italian party, with a particularly strong consensus in the regions of central and central-northern Italy and 1,900,000 members.5 The only party not to have undergone splits during its years of exile; it had no division into currents comparable to that of the socialists. Its secretary, Palmiro Togliatti, had been working hard to reestablish the PCI, transforming the small revolutionary formation of the 1920s into a mass party, which saw Marxism-Leninism as its point of reference and was engaged in giving life to a network of intellectuals active in the spreading of a new culture. For this reason, after the war, the PCI was full of initiatives and publications addressed to the militants but also to a wider public.6 After initially adhering to a pacifist perspective, which included the alliance between the victors of the Second World War, the PCI became a supporter of a foreign policy faithful to that of the Soviet Union.7 In this scenario, the memory of anti-Jewish persecutions and, more generally, the reflection on anti-Semitism were not priorities on the political agenda of the parties of the Left.8 In the early post-war years, the PCI and the PSI, which together represented one third of Italians, were committed to building a real mass mobilization, to becoming the privileged interlocutors of the working class and middle classes, to defining their identity in the recent fight against the fascist regime and, therefore, to 5  Il Pci nell’Italia repubblicana (1943–1991), eds. Roberto Gualtieri, (Roma: Carocci, 2001); Giovanni Cerchia, I comunisti, in Storia delle sinistre nell’Italia repubblicana, 11–50. 6  See Albertina Vittoria, Togliatti e gli intellettuali. La politica culturale dei comunisti italiani (1944–1964), (Rome: Carocci, 2014), 24–66. 7  Silvio Pons, L’Unione Sovietica nella politica estera di Togliatti (1944–1949), Studi Storici 33, no. 2, 1992: 435–456; Silvio Pons, La politica estera dell’Urss. Il Cominform e il Pci, (1947–1948), Studi Storici 35, no. 4, 1994: 1123–1147; Silvio Pons, L’impossibile egemonia. L’Unione Sovietica, il Partito Comunista Italiano e le origini della guerra fredda (1943–1948), (Rome: Carocci, 1999); Victor Zaslavsky, Lo stalinismo e la Sinistra Italiana. Dal mito dell’URSS alla fine del comunismo 1945–1991, (Milan: Mondadori, 2004); Elena Aga Rossi, Victor Zaslavski, Togliatti e Stalin. Il Pci e la politica estera negli archivi di Mosca, (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1997); Andrea Guiso, La colomba e la spada. “Lotta per la pace” e antiamericanismo nella politica del Partito Comunista Italiano (1949–1954), (Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino, 2007). 8  At that time the question of the fate of Palestine under a British mandate was represented in Italy by Jewish emigration that stopped off in the peninsula. Cf. Mario Toscano, La “Porta di Sion”. L’Italia e l’immigrazione clandestina ebraica in Palestina 1945–1948, (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1987).

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presenting themselves to their constituents and to the entire public opinion, as the architects of the new-found democracy, the protagonists of a new phase in Italy’s history.

9.3   The Problem of Anti-Semitism in the Italian Left’s Political Culture In the aftermath of the Second World War, although the survivors of the concentration camps were often described in the main newspapers of the Left, and although the Nuremberg trials had attracted the attention of the entire world to the presence of concentration camps, the reflection on anti-Semitism was decidedly poor and left mostly to the testimony of veterans. The first reason for this poverty of analysis was underlined recently by recalling that the Nuremberg trials placed emphasis on the faults of the National Socialist regime: “The enormity of the genocide perpetrated by the Hitler regime […] led, in the post-war period, to raise Nazi anti-­ Semitism and its exterminationist approach to an abstract model of reference, in relation to which to interpret, to measure  – but, finally to hierarchize – historical experiences different from the German one”.9 The second reason concerns Italian Jews. We know that between 1945 and 1947, in addition to the first attempts to reconstruct the history of Italian anti-Semitism, and alongside the texts of writers such as Curzio Malaparte and Giacomo Debenedetti, which were almost totally overlooked, 55 volumes and pamphlets written by Jews were published, in the form of first-person reports. As recent studies have pointed out, these authors described their deportation by presenting themselves as anti-­ fascists, ignoring the specificity of anti-Jewish persecution and including it in a broader discourse on the violence of the Nazi-Fascist regimes.10 Therefore, the Jews themselves chose to contribute to the construction of the national myth of the Italian Republic, born from the fight against fascism, with a celebration of the sacrifice of many of them in the anti-fascist 9  Ilaria Pavan, Gli storici e la Shoah in Italia, in eds. Marcello Flores, Simon Levis Sullam, Anne-Marie Matard Bonucci, Enzo Traverso, Storia della Shoah in Italia. Vicende, memorie, rappresentazioni, (Turin: UTET, 2010), II, 137. 10  Robert S.C. Gordon, Scolpitelo nei cuori. L’olocausto nella cultura italiana (1944–2010), (Turin: Bollati Boringhieri, 2013), 72–86, and Anna Bravo, Daniele Jalla, Una misura onesta. Gli scritti di memoria della deportazione dall’Italia (1944–1993), (Milan: FrancoAngeli, 1994); Annette Wieviorka, Déportation et génocide. Entre la mémoire et l’oubli (Paris: Hachette, 1992).

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battle and with the reconstruction of a Resistance as a united and mass movement. Thus, in the post-war period, many Jews participated in anti-­ fascist rhetoric by accepting an equation still to be proved and that those persecuted by fascism were anti-fascist naturaliter. “Cela a donné ­naissance à une espèce de vulgate qui a décrit les juifs italiens comme organiquement antifascistes”.11 In reality, at the end of the war, Italian Jews, worn out by the experience of the totalitarian regime and by deportation, economically and materially and morally destroyed, showed no interest in reopening profound and painful questions in memory of the survivors. The third reason is political in nature and can be summarized by noting that the reflection on anti-Semitism was not coherent or compatible with the political proposal of the main anti-fascist protagonists. In the early post-war years, large sectors of Italian culture and politics proved incapable of, or not interested in, dealing with the problems posed by the condition of the Jews.12 Many of them minimized the relevance of racism by helping to build the myth of the good Italian. In general, the different currents of anti-fascism were not able to grasp the specificity of anti-­ Semitism as shown by three different cases: the story of one of the most important post-war books, Se questo è un uomo (If this is a man) by Primo Levi of 1947; the reviews of the volume Réflexions sur la question juive (Reflections on the Jewish question) by the existentialist philosopher Jean-­ Paul Sartre, translated into Italian in 1947; and the cartoons of a comic book published in 1951 by the journal Il Pioniere, a children’s comic book directed by Gianni Rodari. Primo Levi wrote his most successful book between December 1945 and January 1947.13 It was based on his experience as a detainee in the Monowitz concentration camp, which was an Auschwitz subcamp, but the book was turned down by the Einaudi publishing house consultants 11  Ilaria Pavan, Les Juifs italiens et le fascisme (1922–1938), in L’Italie et la Shoah, vol. 1: Le fascisme et les Juifs, Revue d’Histoire de la Shoah 204, (March 2016), 36. 12  For a panoramic view of the main European countries cf. Robert S.  Wistrich, AntiSemitism in Europe after 1945 in Terms of survival: The Jewish world since 1945, eds. Robert S. Wistrich, (London: Routledge, 1995), 269–296; Anna Rossi Doria, Memoria e storia. Il caso della deportazione, (Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino, 1998); Mario Toscano, Ebraismo e antisemitismo in Italia. Dal 1848 alla guerra dei Sei giorni, (Milan: FrancoAngeli, 2003), 211; G. Schwarz, The Reconstruction of Jewish life in Italy after World War II, Journal of Modern Jewish Studies, 8, 2009: 365; Id., Ritrovare se stessi. Gli ebrei nell’Italia postfascista, (Rome: Laterza, 2004), 111–172; Ilaria Pavan, Gli storici e la Shoah in Italia, 133–164. 13  Cf. Robert S.C. Gordon, Scolpitelo nei cuori, 99–128, and also Primo Levi, The voice of memory, (New York: The New Press, 2001) 185.

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(Natalia Ginzburg and Cesare Pavese—the former did not consider it suitable and the latter was convinced that the topic did not interest Einaudi readers because it had already been saturated by the numerous volumes that had already come out). Published in 1947 by the small publisher De Silva, owned by Franco Antonicelli, it came out in 2500 copies and was rejected again by Einaudi in 1952. For many years, it fell into oblivion and came to fame in 1958 when the Turin publishing house decided to reprint it. With more than 500,000 copies sold in Italy, it has been translated into eight languages and become one of the best-known texts on the Shoah. Among the very few who realized its importance, there was the social-­ democratic historian Aldo Garosci who reviewed it in December 1947, comparing it to the great masterpieces of literature of all time not only for the author’s ability to describe pain but also to give depth and realism to the victims.14 Garosci recalled that the men turned into gray ghosts deported to Auschwitz were Jews. He was an exception because, in the aftermath of the Second World War, the discovery of the concentration camps did not produce a reflection on the Holocaust. This is also confirmed by the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre’s volume  Réflexions sur la question juive (Reflections on the Jewish question), which after the World War was one of the first to deal with anti-Semitism.15 Published in 1946 and translated two years later into Italian by the editor of Comunità, the book denied that there was a Jewish identity and claimed that it was created by anti-Semites. Always described in the most indistinct ways, Jews were the object of feelings and fears that had existed since the dawn of civilization. In modern society, secularized and divided into classes, in a world without landmarks, uprooted individuals had built their lives on hatred against Jews. In this way, according to Sartre, bourgeois frightened by their own instincts, by freedom and loneliness, had projected their anxieties onto the Jew, as shown by anti-Semitic intellectuals such as Barrés, Maurras, Drumont and Celine, severe critics of modern society. Unlike the Marxist tradition from which he came, Sartre emphasized the emotional aspects of anti-Jewish hatred, its being a passion and a vision of the world, and he did not limit his analysis to class dynamics. On the 14  Aldo Garosci, Se questo è un uomo, Italia Socialista, 27 December 1947, 3. In the journal that was heir of “Italia libera” del Partito d’Azione, cf. Daniele Pipitone, “L’Italia socialista” fra lotta politica e giornalismo d’opinione, Annali della Fondazione Einaudi 45, 2011: 113–166. 15  Jean-Paul Sartre, L’antisemitismo, (Milan: Comunità, 1947).

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other hand, like all Marxists, he believed that anti-Semitism would disappear with the socialist revolution. If we did not know that Sartre published the book in 1946, after the Nuremberg trials, we would be led to think that he had written it before 1933, before the coming to power of Nazism, before the Nuremberg laws, before the Italian legislation of 1938 and before the final solution, because there is no trace of any of these topics in the volume. In one passage from the book, Sartre mentions the extermination of 6 million Jews, but does not comment on it nor analyze it.16 And while in the same years the founders of the Frankfurt School dedicated attention to the anti-Semitism of American workers and in Dialektik der Aufklarung (Dialectic of the Enlightenment), they elaborated a reflection on Auschwitz as the symbol of a phase and an aspect of modernity; in Italy there were those who criticized Sartre for moving away from Marxism. In July 1948, the young socialist critic Franco Fortini wrote a long review in Avanti! noting that Sartre, with whom he had collaborated on the writing of the journal Les Temps Modernes, had not followed Marx’s reflections to the end. In his opinion, the French philosopher had not analyzed the phenomenon in depth and had described a top-down anti-­ Semitism, not anchored to class dynamics. By dwelling on the emotional aspects, he did not understand the structural and therefore economic reasons for the violence that had struck the Jewish world.17 Thus, one of the main post-war Marxist philosophers ignored the existence of concentration camps, provoking the observations of a leftist intellectual who did not criticize him for not having dealt with a decisive aspect of anti-Jewish persecution, but because he had moved away from Marx. Even Franco Fortini, did not feel the need to deepen the question of the origins and nature of anti-Semitism nor that of its relationship with fascism. In reviewing Sartre in 1948, Fortini proposed his interpretation of anti-­ Semitism and fascism to the readers of the PSI newspaper. The first was to be read through Marx’s categories, bearing the materialistic analysis of social processes firmly in mind and rejecting attempts to understand their subjective dynamics, as Sartre had proposed. The second, underlining the inability of the parties that were going to lead the country betraying the original anti-fascist spirit: two barbaric and reactionary phenomena, fought  Enzo Traverso, The Blindness of the Intellectuals: Historicizing Sartre’s “Antisemite and Jew”, October 87, (1999): 73–88. 17  Franco Fortini, Gli ebrei di Sartre, Avanti!, 17 July 1948, 1. 16

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by a conscience that showed itself to the world as an exponent of the good part of the country, the different and better, the one that had fought fascism and had been betrayed by the parties. Il Pioniere comic book was not far behind. It was a weekly for children, aged 6–14, directed by Gianni Rodari and edited by the pioneering ­association of Italy, born from the initiative of the PCI that set out to educate with a different pedagogy to that of Catholicism.18 Since 1950, the magazine had been narrating the adventures of Chiodino, Cipollino and Stenderello, but also the most significant moments in the history of Italy, starting with the Resistance. After an autonomous start in 1963, it became an insert of Unità and then passed to Noi donne and closed in 1970. In 1951, Il Pioniere published a comic story, taken from a fable by Jiri Wolker, a poet and member of the Czechoslovak Communist Party, titled Il milionario che rubò il sole (The millionaire who stole the sun). Among the various events, the protagonist of the comic, the worker Primo (First), had to run away from his creditors.19 Drawn as Orthodox Jews, with protruding noses, black coats, thick beards and hats, these gentlemen gave no respite to poor Primo until when, at the end of the story, they joined forces with him to get back the sun stolen by Ultimo (Last). Why draw creditors as Orthodox Jews? Was Il milionario che rubò il sole an anti-­ Semitic comic? Officially not, but using images that portray Jews in a caricatural way, without distancing yourself from them, in a publication aimed at children, or claiming that Jewish people must atone for the original sin means expressing anti-Semitism.

9.4   International Politics: From the Birth of Israel to the Suez War This reluctance of the Left culture to elaborate a memory of the anti-­ Semitism of totalitarian regimes, but also the same casual and unintentional use of anti-Semitic stereotypes, coincided with a series of difficulties of the Left parties toward Israel already present at the end of the 1940s 18  Rossella Greco, “Educare senza annoiare. Appassionare senza corrompere”. Gianni Rodari e la direzione de Il Pioniere (1950–1953), (Como: Il ciliegio, 2014). I thank my friend Andrea Guiso for this information and refer to Andrea Guiso, La colomba e la spada. “Lotta per la pace” e antiamericanismo nella politica del Partito comunista Italiano (1949–1954), 558–561. 19  Il milionario che rubò il sole, Il Pioniere 2, no. 15, (April 1951): 7.

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and not, as is usually claimed, after the Six-Day War of 1967. That certainly marked a deep break in the relations between the Italian Left and the Jewish state but that had a history of 20 years behind it. Indeed, at the end of the Second World War, the proximity of Italian socialists and ­communists to the new state was based on a very fragile balance because it depended on the support of the USSR for the Israeli cause. With the aim of limiting Western influence in the Middle East, the Soviets had been the main supporters of Israel’s cause, struggling in the United Nations for the birth of the new state. In May 1947, Andrej Gromyko had declared to the United Nations that the international community should do justice to the Jews, since no Western country had been able to ensure the protection of the basic rights of the Jewish people and to defend them from the fascists’ violence.20 After being the first to juridically recognize the existence of Israel, during the war of 1948 the Soviets had supplied it with arms through Czechoslovakia.21 In fact, in the days following the declaration of independence, the Prime Minister of Israel, the social democrat David Ben-Gurion, declared to the American ambassador MacDonald: Israel acknowledges with satisfaction the Russian support at the United Nations, but will not tolerate Russian domination. Not only is Israel Western by its own orientation, but our people are democratic and they are aware that they cannot become strong and remain free except through their cooperation with the United States. Only the West, humiliating and abandoning it, at the United Nations and elsewhere, could alienate our people.22

For its part, the USSR changed its policy of supporting Israel immediately after the birth of the new state. In September 1948, the arrival of the Israeli ambassador to Moscow, Golda Meir, provoked a very positive reaction from the Muscovite Jewish community that made the Soviet authorities suspicious.23 Since the end of the war, among other things, while 20  Léon Poliakov, Dall’antisionismo all’antisemitismo, (Firenze: La Nuova Italia, 1971), 34. 21  Uri Bialer, Between East and West: Israel’s Foreign Policy, 1948–1956, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990). 22  The episode is reported in Alan Gresh, Dominique Vidal, Palestina 1947. Una spartizione mai nata, (Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino, 1990), 198. Cf. Walter Eytan, The First Ten Years. A Diplomatic History of Israel, (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1958). 23   The episode is reported, among others, in Léon Poliakov, Dall’antisionismo all’antisemitismo, (Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1971), 33–35.

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defending Israel, the Soviets had been engaged in a harsh and decisive campaign against the Jews that led to the erasing of Yiddish culture from the USSR in just a few years. “The very word Jew would gradually become a forbidden word, disguised under euphemisms such as cosmopolitan or Zionist and expunged from dictionaries”. One of the effects of this policy, all directed within the Stalinist regime, was to create confusion between the term Zionist and the term Jew. As one of the few survivors wrote: as soon as a new name appears, the investigators entrust themselves to find out if it is Jewish. […] if the person is really of Jewish origin, the investigators will endeavor to include it in their reports on one pretext or another. […] and to this name the ritual qualification of Zionist is applied. Especially since we never talk about Jews. […] I point out to him that Zionist is not a political qualification. I showed him the difference between Jew and Zionist. No way. […] until the end this Zionist qualification will remain attached to the names of men and women who have never had anything in common with Zionism.24

Thus, Moscow’s support for Israel was flanked by the persecution of Soviet Jews. Ever since the two main parties of the Italian Left expressed severe criticism of the Israeli ruling class accusing it of having transformed the country into a nation dependent on the United States and, from January 1949, they expressed their disappointment with the election victory of David Ben-Gurion who suffered harsh attacks. The then young communist historian Gabriele De Rosa in Unità noted that the new state was based on nationalistic and racial premises, and that it was certainly not a socialist country, despite being helped by the USSR.25 The socialists were not far behind: in Mondo Operaio an anonymous collaborator referred to Zionism as “a hybrid of racism and religion”.26 In the July 1951 elections in Israel, once again won by Mapai, s/he described Ben-Gurion as a charismatic leader who manipulated the media.27 The  Artur London, La confessione, (Milan: Garzanti, 1969), 210–211  in Léon Poliakov, Dall’antisionismo all’antisemitismo, 39. 25  È uscito dalle urne lo Stato progressista d’Israele, Avanti!, 27 January 1949, 4. Laurent Rucker, Stalin, Israel et les juifs, (Paris: Persée, 2001). Cf. also Maurizio Ferrara, Il Medio Oriente in rivolta contro l’imperialismo, Rinascita 8, no. 7, (October 1951), 444–448. 26  Thus wrote Pietro Nenni in his diary of 2 December 1948, Tempo di guerra fredda, Diari 1943–1956, (Milan: Sugarco, 1981), 468. G.B. White, Israele, Mondoperaio, 4, 116, 17 February 1951, 7. Cf. anche Id., Israele, Mondoperaio, 4, 117 and 118, 24 February and 3 March 1951. 27  Compagni d’Israele, Avanti!, 19 October 1951, 3. 24

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attack on the social democrat Mapai was linked to defense of the Israeli socialist party Mapam that wanted to give the new state a new policy of peace and detente and had lost the elections because it did not receive American funding, as did the Ben-Gurion party. Among these accusations the socialists compared the Israeli situation to the Italian one: as allies of the communists, they remembered their battle against the social democrats and against Christian Democracy  (DC), the main protagonist of Italy’s accession to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Indeed, the PSI’s support for Mapam was born from a real affinity between the two parties, which were authoritative representatives of leftist socialism at the time, and that affinity revolved around three themes: the movement for peace, understood in the strictly pro-Soviet sense, the politics of class unity together with their communist ally and “the reference to structural reforms, inserted in a planning perspective, where the myth of the experience of Soviet power and then of the progressive democracy of Eastern countries he had an influence that was anything but marginal”.28 It was a vision of the world of “cadres and militants, who operated in direct contact with the communists in mass organizations and in the management of local administrations”.29 As the socialist exponent Giorgio Fenoaltea summed up to Rodolfo Morandi in January 1953, “the situation of those who, only for the sake of brevity, can be understood, despite the different nuances under the global name of ‘leftist socialists’ is very difficult”. In any case, their goal was “to create within the social democratic parties a core of resistance consistent with imperialist politics”.30 Within this ideological standpoint, in the summer of 1952 Mapam joined the appeal launched by the PSI to the parties of COMISCO, the Committee of the International Socialist Conference—which remained alive until the re-establishment of the Socialist International—for a united action in defense of world peace.31 After all, the PCI from 1947 had close relations with the Maki, the Israeli Communist Party, that was divided internally by an anti-Zionist and pro-Arab current and another more closely linked to the new state.

 Maurizio Degl’Innocenti, Storia del Psi, 169.  Ibid., p. 172. 30  ACS, Archivio Pietro Nenni, Carteggio, 1949–1979, b. 25, f. 1352, Letter from Giorgio Fenoaltea to Rodolfo Morandi of 18 January 1953. 31  Maurizio Degl’Innocenti, Storia del Psi, 167. 28 29

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In February 1953, Moscow broke off diplomatic relations with Tel Aviv.32 It would reopen them in July of the same year, but unlike what socialists and communists wrote, Israel was in a position of isolation, deriving from its difficult relations with the Soviets and the Americans’ decision to build relations with Arab countries and with Nasser’s Egypt. Indeed, during the early years of the Eisenhower presidency, the United States was engaged in the creation of the Middle East Defense Organization (MEDO), which would fail due to the impossibility of finding agreement between Great Britain and Egypt, but which arose from an attempt to stem Soviet influence in the Mediterranean and the Middle East and to disengage from support for Israel.33 The left-wing press gave no news of these balances of power, and even accused the Americans of maneuvering “the proletariat in an anti-socialist manner” and the Israelis of having renounced the class struggle. In the PSI’s newspaper there were those who explained that in Israel, a phenomenon similar to that which struck Tito’s Yugoslavia had happened, where advanced forms of social and political coexistence survived as long as they could offer “a service to imperialism”.34 The change of the Italian Left toward Israel and Zionism corresponded to a new attitude toward the Arab-Israeli conflict, and particularly to Nasser’s Egypt, which in April 1955 achieved great success in Bandung, at the conference of non-aligned countries, based on the theme of decolonization. At the end of September of that year, the Egyptian colonel declared that his country would supply cotton to Czechoslovakia in exchange for arms.35 The trade agreement was a clear sign of the good relations between Cairo and Moscow, but also a sign of an important transformation, that is, the fact that the conflict between Israel and its neighbors, from secondary 32  L’Urss rompe le relazioni diplomatiche con Israele denunciando le responsabilità di Tel Aviv, Avanti!, 13 February 1953, 6. 33  Antonio Donno, La politica americana verso Israele nei primi anni della presidenza Eisenhower (1953–1954), in Gli Stati Uniti, la Shoah e i primi anni di Israele, eds. Antonio Donno, (Florence: Giuntina, 1995, 153) and ff. and Manuela Maglio, Gli Stati Uniti, la Gran Bretagna e la difesa del Medio Oriente: la middle east defense organization (1950–1953), 115–152. 34  Bruto Provedoni, Gli americani speculano sul nazionalismo ebraico III, Avanti!, 12 February 1953, 3. Id., Il controllo americano sullo Stato d’Israele, Avanti!, 21 February 1953, 3. 35  Il governo egiziano accentua la sua politica d’indipendenza, l’Unità, 29 September 1955, 8; Appoggio di massa a Nasser contro l’ingerenza straniera, l’Unità, 8 October 1955, 8; Nasser accusa le potenze occidentali di voler asservire il Medio Oriente, in l’Unità, 3 October 1955, 7.

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confrontation and relative to a small area of the Middle East, would soon be transformed into a veritable frontier of the Cold War.36 In October 1955, the socialist press commented on Egypt’s decision to buy arms and accused Israel of “nationalistic psychosis”. The country, they wrote in Avanti!, had made great strides, but now it was choking in the compression of its own limits.37 In the same way, the PCI, which until February 1955 had accused Nasser of persecuting the communists in his country and had defined the military regime as “a fascist dictatorship”,38 changed its attitude in the autumn of 1955. Faced with the transformations of the USSR, which set itself out as a patron of the non-aligned, Unità was less and less concerned with Nasser’s internal politics and described him as one of the protagonists of the Third Socialist World in the struggle against Israel, now a “pawn of American politics in the Middle East” in setting up “an anti-Soviet military blockade”.39 In March 1956, Nasser “began to take on the glorious vestments of the hero fighting imperialism”, “a flag, a kind of symbol of a Third World”.40 When, at the end of July, the colonel announced the nationalization of the Suez Canal, in response to the World Bank’s refusal to finance the construction of the Aswan dam on the Nile, from which enormous economic benefits for irrigation and electricity production were expected, the socialists declared:

36  Luca Riccardi, Il “problema Israele”. Diplomazia italiana e Pci di fronte allo Stato ebraico (1948–1973), 71 and 121; Gianmarco Santese, Il Partito comunista italiano e la questione palestinese (1945–1956), 90–93. 37  J.K∗∗., Israele tiene in pugno la miccia della polveriera del Medio Oriente, Avanti!, 30 October 1955, 7. 38  Cf. Cronache del mese. Situazione internazionale Rinascita 11, no. 10, (October) 1954, 702; Un primo bilancio del regime di Nasser, in Rinascita 12, no. 2, (February), 1955: 101–107. 39  Il primo ministro di Israele dichiara di essere disposto ad incontrarsi con Nasser, l’Unità, 3 November 1955, 7. Even the military clashes were described in a different way compared to 1948: Violenti combattimenti riaccesi presso El Auja da un attacco notturno delle truppe israeliane, l’Unità, 4 November 1955, 1; J.K.∗∗, Cinquantacinque soldati siriani uccisi per rappresaglia da Israele, in “Avanti!”, 13 December 1955, p.  6. E.B∗∗. Celentano, Marines americani verso il Medio Oriente?, in “Avanti!”, 13 April 1956, p. 1. A different voice in the communist world was that of Maria Maddalena Rossi, leader of the Italian women’s union, who went from 14 to 16 June 1956 to Israel. APCI, Minutes of direction, 7 September 1956, mf 127. 40  Pietro Ingrao, impossibili. raccontata con Tranfaglia, and Gianmarco Santese, Il Partito comunista italiano e la questione palestinese (1945–1956), 92.

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no opposition to the nationalization of the Suez Canal; full solidarity with the aspiration of the colonial peoples to free themselves from the oppressive game of colonialism; condemnation of every gesture of force; request for adequate and convincing international guarantees for freedom of traffic; a warning against the danger of Nasser moving from an anti-colonialist and neutralist position to a pan-Arab, militaristic and aggressive nationalism.41

And at the party leadership meeting on 7 September 1956, Togliatti proposed to discuss Egypt being attacked by Anglo-French imperialist forces. The communists are in solidarity with all nations and with all countries that, freed from the colonial yoke, defend their national rights against any form of foreign intervention and repudiate the arrogance of the imperialists, who are enemies of liberty, peoples and peace.42

Consistent with these statements, the two parties of the Italian Left asked the government to take a stance. Indeed, on 2 October 1956, in the Senate, Foreign Minister Gaetano Martino recalled the condemnation “never revoked in doubt of the Egyptian decision of 26 July”. “We do not deny”, Martino pointed out, “the right of the Egyptian people to modify the legal regime of the Suez Canal, but we challenge the fact that Nasser violated an international agreement”.43 The next day, in the Chamber (of Deputies) Nenni commented on the minister’s words criticizing the absence of clear support for the “movement of the Arab peoples towards their full 41  Continuano a Roma i contatti diplomatici, Avanti!, 8 August 1956, 1; L’Italia non rifiuterebbe una funzione mediatrice per la vertenza del canale di Suez, in Avanti!, 7 August 1956, 1. 42  APCI, verbale Direzione, 7 September 1956. Also in Quel terribile 1956. I verbali della direzione comunista tra il XX congresso del Pcus e l’VIII Congresso del Pci, eds. Maria Luisa Righi, (Rome: Editori Riuniti, 1996), 168. Ottavio Pastore, La nazionalizzazione del canale di Suez, l’Unità, 27 July 1956, 1. Gianmarco Santese, Il partito comunista italiano e la questione palestinese (1945–1956), 98. APCI, Sezione Estero, 1956, f. 1310. a. I, 15 November 1956. In Le vie del Socialismo the bulletin of documentation, edited by the foreign section of the PCI, in November 1956 one reads: “We have gone through an extremely serious moment: the imperialist aggression against Egypt has led us to the brink of a world war. … Never, as in this case, has imperialism presented itself in all its abjection, without a mask. … French and English imperialism believed in a coup d’état to overthrow the government of Nasser by definitively seizing the so coveted canal”. 43  Gaetano Martino, Stralci del discorso pronunciato dall’on. Gaetano Martino, Ministro degli Affari Esteri, al Senato della Repubblica il 2 ottobre 1956, in L’Italia e la questione di Suez (Rome: La Pace, 1956), 7–11. See, Atti Parlamentari, House of Deputies, Discussions, 2 October 1956, p. 28465.

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independence”.44 The socialists considered “the movement towards the independence of Asian or African peoples as a fact of civilization” and for this reason in 1952 they had expressed their solidarity with the coup d’état of Colonel Nasser, even though aware of the limits and dangers of his politics. “In this regard”, explained Nenni, “it is not fair to talk about fascism and Nazism towards today’s Egypt, if not for a relationship with secondary aspects of a psychological nature” and in this sense criticized Martino for not having expressed any “breath of solidarity” with respect to Arab nationalism. In the same session, in the Chamber, Gian Carlo Pajetta reiterated the Italian communists’ support for the colonized peoples who were seeking freedom. He did not cover up the story of the Egyptian communists persecuted by a dictatorial regime, but he maintained that the road to democracy passed through that of the struggle against imperialism.45 Between 22 and 24 October, the prime ministers of Great Britain, France and Israel signed an agreement for an attack on Egypt that began on 29 October with socialists and communists asking the government, chaired by Antonio Segni, to refuse any support to the invading countries.46 For its part, Italy did not approve of Israel’s decision to invade Egypt, even though it did not revoke the criticism against the Egyptian decision to nationalize the Canal and reiterated the need for an international management of Suez. The decision revealed the foreign policy needs that Italians had been pursuing since the late 1940s and it is on these that attention must be focused to understand the relations between the Left parties and the Christian Democracy on the eve of the CenterLeft governments, which would see a radical transformation of the relations between socialists and communists. Giampaolo Calchi Novati recalled that the traditional pro-Arab policy of the Italian government was accelerated in 1955 after being admitted to the United Nations Organization.47 It was then that the Italian political 44  Pietro Nenni, Discorso pronunciato dall’on. Pietro Nenni alla Camera dei Deputati 3 October 1956, in Ibidem, 41. 45  Cronache del mese. Politica internazionale, in Rinascita (November) 1956, 628. Luca Riccardi, Il “problema Israele”. Diplomazia italiana e Pci di fronte allo Stato ebraico (1948–1973), 155, which also recalls the cultural initiatives taken by the PCI and by Alicata at that time to build new and positive relations with the Arab countries. 46  Cf. Giorgio Fenoaltea, La guerra del canale: crisi del socialismo?, Mondoperaio ∗, no. (November 1956): 629–631; e Gianmarco Santese, Il partito comunista italiano e la questione palestinese (1945–1956), 98–102. 47  Giampaolo Calchi Novati, Mediterraneo e questione araba, 211.

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class tried to carve out an autonomous role with respect to its NATO allies, trying to be accredited by the Arabs as a more credible country compared to the colonialist and hegemonic aims of France, Great Britain and the very same United States. It did this by showing its interest in the Middle East, a strategic area for Italian economic affairs and the possibility of stemming Soviet influence in the region. In this sphere, the government had tried to build good relations with the Arabs—as it had done thanks to the initiatives of Enrico Mattei—never failing to support pro-­ Western politics48: it was the so-called neo-Atlanticism for which, while recognizing that Israel was a Western country, Italians did not fully adhere to its policy in order not to contradict the efforts in approaching Arab countries.49 Represented by President Gronchi, Amintore Fanfani and Giorgio La Pira, neo-Atlanticism had its own exceptional protagonist in Enrico Mattei, “key element of this parallel foreign policy”. It was not a question of changing course with respect to the traditional double-track policy, Atlantic and Mediterranean, but of strengthening it by also using “a nationalist component veiled by the rhetoric of the mare nostrum” and justifying it with the will to bring the Arabs along the Western road: a political line that both the United States and the secular parties of the centrist coalition considered unrealistic, full of danger and ambiguity.50 Despite fearing that the neo-Atlanticism of the christian democrats might be resolved in a new form of exploitation of Arab countries, socialists and communists positively considered the affirmation of nationalist movements because they saw an action against Western colonialism and in this sense approved the attempt by the christian democrats to build autonomous relations with the Arabs, freeing themselves from the rigid application of Western and Atlantic politics.51 For example, on 21 August 1957,  Giampaolo Calchi Novati, Mediterraneo e questione araba, 228.  Giuseppe Mammarella, Paolo Cacace, La politica estera dell’Italia, (Rome-Bari: Laterza, 2006), 206. Cf. also Pietro Pastorelli, La politica estera italiana del secondo dopoguerra, (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1987); Bruna Bagnato, Vincoli europei, echi mediterranei: l’Italia e la crisi francese in Marocco e in Tunisia, (Florence: Ponte alle Grazie, 1991) 11; Valter Coralluzzo, La politica estera dell’Italia repubblicana (1946–1992). Modello di analisi e studio dei casi, (Milan: FrancoAngeli, 2000), 274–278. 50  Vittorio Ianari, L’Italia e il Medio Oriente, 387; Leopoldo Nuti, Gli Stati Uniti e l’apertura a sinistra; Umberto Gentiloni Silveri, L’Italia e la nuova frontiera. Stati Uniti e centro-sinistra, 1958–1965, (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1998). 51  Cf. Luca Riccardi, Il “problema Israele”. Diplomazia italiana e Pci di fronte allo Stato ebraico (1948–1973). 48 49

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Avanti! opened with an article titled L’Italia e il Medio Oriente: gli arabi ci guardano con simpatia (Italy and the Middle East: Arabs look on us kindly) in which it commented on the Eisenhower doctrine which provided for military and economic aid to the countries of the Middle East in an attempt to restrain Soviet hegemony. In this regard, the PSI pointed out the fears of Arab countries faced with the American political plan, which might hide a new form of imperialism, and highlighted the importance of ENI’s agreements with Iran by presenting them as a model to be imitated in the future.52 It was the same position as the communists, even though, in the second half of the 1950s, the road of the Italian Left had divided into two different directions. In fact, faced with the invasion of Hungary, the communists sided with the USSR, while the socialists developed an autonomous position that would lead them, in the following decade, to inaugurate a different path of collaboration with the government forces.

9.5   Conclusions In the decade that we have examined the two main parties of the Italian Left, the PSI and the PCI, confirmed their alliance stipulated in 1934 to fight against fascism. In the aftermath of the Second World War, indeed, socialists and communists shared a theoretical viewpoint deriving from Marxism and the bipolar line that emerged from the Cold War and took a position of harsh criticism against the United States, against NATO and against the Christian Democrat government that in Italy led the inclusion of the country in the Western bloc. Although different in structure, given that the PSI was a party divided into currents, while the PCI was perfectly united around the ideas of its secretary, the two parties of Marxist t­ radition failed to elaborate a statement or a historiographical reflection on antiSemitism, as demonstrated by two authoritative sources: the party press and the contribution of intellectuals who in that first decade of republican Italy had had a role and visibility of great importance. In both cases, socialists and communists presented themselves to the public and the world, as 52  “The Arabs – we read in the PSI journal – look with natural sympathy to us for different reasons, but above all because we do not have imperialist and colonialist interests to defend in the area”, 21 August 1957. Cf. also V[ittorio] O[rilia], Situazione più calma in Medio Oriente, Critica sociale, 5 March 1957, 117; Nenni chiede un’azione dell’Italia nel M.O. per la pace e l’indipendenza dei popoli arabi, Avanti!, 17 July 1958, 1; L. Lizzadri, Le truppe americane sgomberino il Libano, Avanti!, 17 July 1958, 1.

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the protagonists of the anti-fascist struggle and the rebirth of democracy, and above all the latter, did not deal with the reasons for, causes, or the outcomes of the persecution of Jews in the 1930s and 1940s or the antiSemitic demonstrations in the USSR of the 1950s. In some cases, the theme fell under the ax of silence; in others it was presented in an ambiguous way, as one of the many forms of Nazi-fascist violence. In this way, talking about concentration camps meant dealing with places of detention for the persecuted, without dwelling on the fact that the reason for the persecution and the Shoah was racial rather than political. This difficulty in analyzing anti-Semitism, in recognizing its specificity, without including it in the great container of anti-Fascism, was expressed in the same years in which left-wing intellectuals and politicians spoke about the Arab-Israeli conflict. From the birth of Israel to the Suez crisis, communists and socialists changed their initial positions: from 1946 to 1951 the main supporters of the state that was born in 1948 were to be found in Italy; they demanded their immediate recognition by Italy, presented and described as a possibility for democracy and for socialism in the Middle East. For this reason, during the first Arab-Israeli war, they strongly supported Israel, a symbol of the struggle against British imperialism. As we have seen, this was limited support: already in 1951, when relations between Israel and the USSR entered a new, decidedly conflictual phase, the PSI and PCI changed their judgments of and their position on the conflict. In 1956, in fact, during the Suez war, socialists and communists supported Colonel Nasser criticizing the politics of Israel, now considered a friendly country of the United States, and therefore enslaved to imperialism and the cause of Western democracies. The next decade would see the beginning of another story, the birth of a new strategy and a new reflection in the socialist house.

Bibliography Aga Rossi, Elena, Zaslavski Victor, Togliatti e Stalin. Il Pci e la politica estera negli archivi di Mosca. Bologna: Il Mulino, 1997. Ardia, Danilo, Il partito socialista e il patto atlantico. Milan: FrancoAngeli, 1976. Arfè, Gaetano, I socialisti italiani dal 1945 a oggi in Intellettuali e società di massa. Genoa: Ecig, 1984. Bagnato, Bruna, Vincoli europei, echi mediterranei: l’Italia e la crisi francese in Marocco e in Tunisia. Florence: Ponte alle Grazie, 1991.

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Benzoni, Alberto, I socialisti e la politica estera in La politica estera della repubblica italiana, 927–949, Milan: Edizioni di Comunità, 1967, vol. III. Bialer, Uri, Between East and West: Israel’s Foreign Policy 1948–1956. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990. Bravo, Anna, Jalla, Daniele, Una misura onesta. Gli scritti di memoria della deportazione dall’Italia (1944–1993). Milan: FrancoAngeli, 1994. Calchi Novati, Giampaolo, Mediterraneo e questione araba nella politica estera italiana in Storia dell’Italia repubblicana, vol. 2., t.1, 197–263, Torino: Einaudi, 1995. Cerchia, Giovanni, I comunisti. In Storia delle sinistre nell’Italia repubblicana, 11–50, Lungro: Marco, 2007. Coralluzzo, Valter, La politica estera dell’Italia repubblicana (1946–1992), modello di analisi e studio dei casi. Milan: FrancoAngeli, 2000. Ciuffoletti, Zeffiro, Degl’Innocenti, Maurizio, Sabbatucci, Giovanni, Storia del Psi. III. Dal dopoguerra a oggi. Rome-Bari: Laterza 1993. Di Nolfo, Ennio, Il socialismo italiano tra i due blocchi in Trent’anni di politica socialista, 47–66, Rome: Mondo Operaio, 1977. Donno, Antonio, La politica americana verso Israele nei primi anni della presidenza Eisenhower (1953–1954) in Gli Stati Uniti, la Shoah e i primi anni di Israele, 71–98, edited by Donno, Antonio, Florence: Giuntina, 1995. Donno, Michele, Socialisti democratici. Giuseppe Saragat e il Psli (1945–52). Soveria Mannelli: Rubettino, 2009. Eytan, Walter, The First Ten Years. A Diplomatic History of Israel. New  York: Simon and Schuster, 1958. Ferrara, Maurizio, Il Medio Oriente in rivolta contro l’imperialismo, “Rinascita”, October 1951, 444–448. Fortini, Franco, Gli ebrei di Sartre, “Avanti!”, 17 July 1948. Garosci, Aldo, Se questo è un uomo, “Italia Socialista”, 27 December 1947. Gentiloni Silveri, Umberto, L’Italia e la nuova frontiera. Stati Uniti e centro-­ sinistra, 1958–1965, Bologna: Il Mulino, 1998. Gordon, Robert S.C, Scolpitelo nei cuori. L’olocausto nella cultura italiana (1944–2010). Turin: Bollati Boringhieri, 2013. Greco, Rossella, “Educare senza annoiare. Appassionare senza corrompere”. Gianni Rodari e la direzione de Il Pioniere (1950–1953). Como: Il ciliegio, 2014. Gresh, Alan, Vidal, Dominique, Palestina 1947. Una spartizione mai nata. Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino, 1990. Il Pci nell’Italia repubblicana (1943–1991), edited by Gualtieri, Roberto. Rome: Carocci, 2001. Guiso, Andrea, La colomba e la spada. “Lotta per la pace” e antiamericanismo nella politica del Partito Comunista Italiano (1949–1954). Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino, 2007.

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Ianari, Vittorio, L’Italia e il Medio Oriente dal “neoatlantismo” al peace-keeping in Giovagnoli, Agostino, Pons, Silvio, edited by, Tra guerra fredda e distensione. Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino, 2003. Ingrao, Pietro, Le cose impossibili. Un’autobiografia raccontata e discussa con Nicola Tranfaglia. Reggio Emilia: Aliberti, 1990. Levi, Primo, The voice of memory. New York: The New Press, 2001. Mammarella, Giuseppe, L’Italia contemporanea, (1943–1985). Bologna: Il Mulino, 1985. Mammarella, Giuseppe, Cacace Paolo, La politica estera dell’Italia. Rome-Bari: Laterza, 2006. Martino, Gaetano, Stralci del discorso pronunciato dall’on. Gaetano Martino, Ministro degli Affari Esteri, al Senato della Repubblica il 2 ottobre 1956. in L’Italia e la questione di Suez, 7–11, Rome: La Pace, 1956. Mattera, Paolo, Storia del Psi. 1892–1994. Rome: Carocci, 2010. Mattera, Paolo, I socialisti, in Storia delle sinistre nell’Italia repubblicana, ∗∗, Lungro: Marco, 2007. Nenni, Pietro, I nodi della politica estera italiana. Milan: Sugarco, 1974. Nuti Leopoldo, Gli Stati Uniti e l’apertura a Sinistra. Importanza e limiti della presenza americana in Italia. Bologna: Il Mulino, 1999. Pastorelli, Pietro, La politica estera italiana del secondo dopoguerra. Bologna: Il Mulino, 1987. Pavan, Ilaria, Gli storici e la Shoah in Italia in Flores, Marcello, Levis Sullam, Simon, Matard Bonucci, Anne Marie, Traverso, Enzo, edited by, Storia della Shoah in Italia. Vicende, memorie, rappresentazioni, 135–164, Turin: UTET, 2010, vol. II. Pavan, Ilaria, Les Juifs italiens et le fascisme (1922–1938) in L’Italie et la Shoah, vol. 1: Le fascisme et les Juifs in “Revue d’Histoire de la Shoah”, 204, March 2016, ∗∗. Pesetti, Lucio, L’internazionale socialista dal 1951 al 1983. Venice: Marsilio, 1989. Pipitone, Daniele, Il socialismo democratico italiano fra la Liberazione e la legge truffa. Fratture, ricomposizioni e culture politiche di un’area di frontiera. Milan: Ledizioni, 2013. Pipitone, Daniele, “L’Italia socialista” fra lotta politica e giornalismo d’opinione, “Annali della Fondazione Einaudi”, 45, 2011, 113–166. Poliakov, Léon, Dall’antisionismo all’antisemitismo. Firenze: La Nuova Italia, 1971. Pons, Silvio, L’impossibile egemonia. L’Unione Sovietica, il Partito Comunista Italiano e le origini della guerra fredda (1943–1948). Rome: Carocci, 1999. Pons, Silvio, L’Unione Sovietica nella politica estera di Togliatti (1944–1949), “Studi Storici”, 33, 2, 1992, 435–456. Pons, Silvio, La politica estera dell’Urss. Il Cominform e il Pci, (1947–1948), “Studi Storici”, 35, 4, 1994, 1123–1147.

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Provedoni, Bruno, Gli americani speculano sul nazionalismo ebraico III, “Avanti!”, 12 February 1953. Provedoni, Bruno, Il controllo americano sullo Stato d’Israele, “Avanti!”, 21 February 1953. Riccardi, Luca, Il “problema Israele”. Diplomazia italiana e Pci di fronte allo Stato ebraico (1948–1973). Milan: Guerini associati, 2003. Quel terribile 1956. I verbali della direzione comunista tra il XX congresso del Pcus e l’VIII Congresso del Pci, edited by Righi Maria, Luisa. Rome: Editori Riuniti, 1996. Rossi Doria, Anna, Memoria e storia. Il caso della deportazione. Soveria Mannelli: Rubettino, 1998. Sabbatucci, Giovanni, Il riformismo impossibile. Storie del socialismo italiano. Rome-Bari: Laterza, 1991. Santese, Gianmarco, Il Partito comunista italiano e la questione palestinese (1945–1956). “L’Unità” e “Rinascita”, “Mondo Contemporaneo”, 2, 2007, 63–104. Sartre, Jean-Paul, L’antisemitismo. Milan: Comunità, 1947. Schwarz, Guri, Ritrovare se stessi. Gli ebrei nell’Italia postfascista. Rome: Laterza, 2004. Schwarz, Guri, The Reconstruction of Jewish life in Italy after World War II, “Journal of Modern Jewish Studies”, 8, 2009, 360–377. Scirocco, Giovanni, “Politique d’abord”. Il Psi, la guerra fredda e la politica internazionale (1948–1957). Milan: Unicopli, 2010. Taddei, Francesca, Il socialismo italiano del dopoguerra: correnti ideologiche e scelte politiche (1943–1947). Milan: FrancoAngeli, 1984. Toscano, Mario, La “Porta di Sion”. L’Italia e l’immigrazione clandestina ebraica in Palestina 1945–1948. Bologna: Il Mulino, 1987. Toscano, Mario, Ebraismo e antisemitismo in Italia. Dal 1848 alla guerra dei Sei giorni. Milan: FrancoAngeli, 2003. Traverso, Enzo, The Blindness of the Intellectuals: Historicizing Sartre’s “Antisemite and Jew”, “October”, 87, 1999, 73–88. Vittoria, Albertina, Togliatti e gli intellettuali. La politica culturale dei comunisti italiani (1944–1964). Rome: Carocci, 2014. Wistrich, Robert S., Anti-semitism in Europe after 1945. In Terms of survival: The Jewish world since 1945, ed. by R.S.  Wistrich, 269–296. London: Routledge, 1995. Zaslavsky, Victor, Lo stalinismo e la Sinistra Italiana. Dal mito dell’URSS alla fine del comunismo 1945–1991. Milan: Mondadori, 2004.

CHAPTER 10

An Italian Communist in the Spain of the 1960s: The Worthless Journey of Rossana Rossanda Paola Lo Cascio

10.1   Introduction In the spring of 1962, Rossana Rossanda traveled for a month in Francoist Spain, on behalf of the Central Committee of the PCI (Partito Comunista Italiano). Her mission was to make contact with Spanish intellectuals for a unitary solidarity initiative against Francoism, to collect information about the situation in the Iberian country, and to meet some representatives of the opposition forces.1 Her impressions about the journey were collected in a report—which unfortunately is not kept in the archives— delivered to the Party’s Secretariat and were published by the same author

1  The initiative was then carried out in Rome, with the participation of various personalities such as Santiago Carrillo and Julio Álvarez del Vayo. It is worth pointing out that the initiative started a long season of “attention” of Italian politics to Spanish events. See Treglia, Patria, (Granada: Comares, 2017): 163–192.

P. Lo Cascio (*) University of Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain © The Author(s) 2019 A. Tarquini, A. Guiso (eds.), Italian Intellectuals and International Politics, 1945–1992, Italian and Italian American Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-24938-0_10

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some years later, first in installments in Il Manifesto, in the summer of 1980, and then, in 1981, as a book, by Bompiani publishing house.2 Many are the reasons that led us to study this event. The first one has to do with the protagonist: Rossanda lived intensely all the great turning points of Italian and international politics in the second half of the twentieth century from a peculiar position: between journalism, intellectual meditation, and political action, first inside the PCI, and then in the world built around Il Manifesto. The second one has to do with the subject of her adventure. The Spanish Civil War was, for many, a sort of training school, one of the most important events in the configuration of the mental schemes of many Italian politicians and intellectuals. For the left, Spain had been the first major test of the anti-fascist struggle. The survival of Francoism after the Second World War posed some questions about the interpretation of that political phenomenon, an interpretation influenced by the overlapping— often also biographical—of the struggle to defend the Spanish Republic at the end of the 1930s, and the commitment in the ranks of the Resistance movement during the Second World War.3 In this context, the choice of the communist leadership to send Rossanda to Spain was related to the intellectual and political concerns of the last part of Togliatti’s political trajectory, connected to the entire Gramscian reflection about the pervasiveness and diversity of the forms of capitalism, and to its relations with democracy, or with its denial.4 From this point of view, Spain could be an important observation workshop. A third reason is related to the publication of the notes of that journey almost 20 years later, a thing that allows us to analyze the way in which that experience was revised by the author in the light of the changes that took place.

2  The book was then republished by Il Saggiatore in 1996 and by Einaudi in 2008—the edition used on these pages—with some minor changes. See Massimo Gioseffi, “Rossana Rossanda, “Un viaggio inutile”. Una segnalazione bibliografica”. L’indice dei libri del mese, 25 (July 2008), 2. 3  The reports sent by Togliatti to the Comintern, as well as the articles written by the communist secretary, were collected and published later. See Togliatti, Escritos sobre la guerra de España (Barcelona: Crítica, 1980). 4  Agosti, Palmiro Togliatti, (London: IB Tauris, 2008): 265–266.

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10.2   Communist Cultural Policy and Rossana Rossanda at the Beginning of the 1960s The beginning of the 1960s was, for the PCI, a moment of great transformations, especially for what concerns the way of conceiving the party’s commitment in the context of the political and cultural debate. The importance given to the presence in the national cultural debate was a distinctive element of the new Party built by the secretary Palmiro Togliatti in the aftermath of the Second World War.5 In a first phase, the most relevant issues of the debate were maintenance of the unitary anti-fascism, the “autonomy” of the party’s intellectuals, their organization forms— 1949 saw the creation of the Cultural Commission—and the instruments through which the PCI would participate in the national cultural debate. Despite the international context and the electoral defeat of 1948, and despite the subsequent strengthening of the militant dimension in the communist cultural action, a first turning point took place in 1953. Stalin’s death marked the cultural “thaw”6: a new and more ambitious impulse to the publishing activity, and the conversion of the Gramsci Foundation (created in 1950) into an Institute, with the goal of consolidating it as a reference point for training and debate, directed to the whole of Italian society. Precisely during this expansion, the 1956 crisis represented a hard setback.7 The PCI—especially thanks to the impulse of Togliatti and of the head of the Cultural Commission Mario Alicata—emerged from that crisis through an effort to reposition its cultural policy in a wider perspective. In terms of contents, this was the moment of maximum public demand for the figure of Gramsci as an essential basis for the “Italian way to socialism”.8 And in operational terms, the cooperation with persons not strictly party-­ related in public initiatives was strengthened, enhancing the professionalism of the intellectuals of the PCI. The results of this new impulse were 5  Regarding the cultural policy of the PCI up to the mid-1960s, see the imprescindible Vittoria Togliatti e gli intellettuali (Carocci: Rome, 2014). 6  Ibidem, p. 98. 7  Ajello, Intellettuali e PCI (Bari: Laterza, 1979). 8  As Vittoria points out, it was no coincidence that the first major public cultural initiative of the PCI after 1956 was a conference of Gramscian Studies, organized in Rome by the Gramsci Institute in January 1958. Personalities such as Eugenio Garin, Luporini and Roberto Cessi participated, in addition, of course, to Togliatti. See Vittoria, Togliatti e gli intellettuali, 260.

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the creation of competitive instruments in the scientific and cultural fields—such as the journal Studi Storici—and the realization of open initiatives, such as those related to the celebration of the centenary of the unification of Italy.9 Rossanda entered the PCI immediately after the war and her participation in the Resistance movement. She had worked for a short time in Rome, and then at the federation of Milan, precisely with the task of being the link between the party and the intellectuals, taking on the direction of the Culture House,10 from 1952 until 1962.11 Her assignment was to be one of the many intellectuals that should mediate between the needs of the party and those of culture. She was able to manage not only the disputes between intellectuals of different cultural traditions—the Culture House, although in fact bound to the PCI, never lost its unitary nature,12 even after the events of 195613— but also the relation with the town’s secretariat of the PCI, which was not always so easy, at least until the arrival of Armando Cossutta, in 1958. More than once, in the early 1950s, the Milanese secretariat reproached her for her position in support of a broad autonomy of cultural  Such as the conference Problemi dell’Unità d’Italia, held in Rome in March 1960.  Consiglio, Il PCI e la costruzione di una cultura di massa (Milan: Unicopli, 2006). 11  For an autobiographical account of that experience, see Rossana Rossanda, “Di sera si andava in via Borgogna”, in Canova, Cinquant’anni di cultura a Milano (Milan: Casa della Cultura, 1997): 52–60. 12  For example, Rossanda chose as president of the executive board Carlo Arnaudi, future socialist minister of scientific research. At the same time, non-communist intellectuals, such as Antonio Ghiringhelli, Ernesto Nathan Rogers, Luigi Rognoni, Sergio Antonielli, Paolo Grassi, Raffaele Mattioli (president of the Commercial Bank, financer of the Culture House), Marco Zanuso, Guido Piovene, and, for a short time, even Eugenio Montale, were members of the board. See Giovanni Scirocco “Le fiaccole di Prometeo. Circoli politico-culturali e centro-sinistra a Milano (1957–1969)”. In Lacaita, Milano, Anni Sessanta, (Milan: Lacaita, 2008): 131–170. 13  In her memoirs, she recalls that circumstance as follows: “That evening, after a sad and harsh meeting in the suburbs – that year my first white hair came out – I went down, alarmed, at midnight, the stairs of Via Borgogna; there was a large crowd and I heard the voice of Alicata thundering ‘… because in this moment the Soviet Army is defending the independence of Hungary’. Good lord. The hall roared […] The following morning Franco Fortini sent me a telegram: ‘I hope the workers will come to smash you in the face’. They did not come and Franco returned, we felt as if the tanks had passed over us too”. Rossana Rossanda, “Di sera si andava in via Borgogna”, in Canova, Cinquant’anni di cultura a Milano, 55. In another context, she adds: “We were brave enough to talk about the skeleton in our closet, and it was a huge skeleton. With that debate, then, we saved our institution”, in: Giacomoni, Miseria e nobiltà (Milan: Feltrinelli, 1979): 162. 9

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engagement,14 and above all, for her desire not to limit the initiatives of the Culture House to the themes of work or technological progress, but to leave room for philosophy, literature, history, and social sciences.15 It was that long Milanese experience that increased the position of Rossanda in the ranks of the PCI. She became a member of the Central Committee in 1958, and collaborator of Alicata, who wanted her in Rome in his place, at the end of 1962, to direct the Cultural Commission.16 Only a few months after returning from her journey to Spain.

10.3   The Journey and Its Impact on the PCI’s Look on Spain At the beginning of the 1960s in Spain, after more than 20 years marked by a savage repression of dissidence17 and by divisions of the exiled opposition18 (which saw the marginalization of the communists),19 apparently something started moving. The creation of early trade union structures alongside the official corporative organizations,20 the reawakening of a Catholicism less connected to power,21 the rise of socialist groups less tied 14  The issue of the autonomy of intellectuals was the subject of a debate at the House of Culture on May 10, 1960. Among the participants, there were Mario Alicata, Remo Cantoni, Giansiro Ferrata, Franco Fortini, Albe Steiner, Elio Vittorini, and Giulio Einaudi. 15  To prove it, at the end of the 1950s, we can remember the close relationship with the National Center for Prevention and Social Defense, founded by a group of magistrates of the Juvenile Court, headed by Adolfo Beria d’Argentine, and with the collaboration of the former Olivetti executive Gino Martinoli. 16  On this issue, Rossanda explains: “Later Alicata nominated me to his role, to direct intellectuals in Rome—and there he would have taken me on, it was obvious. He died young, and I never knew which topic led him to trust me, perhaps the perception that I was loyal, and that was true, and the belief that, if I wanted a more democratic party, I wanted it more moderate, and that was not true”. Rossanda, La ragazza del secolo (Torino: Einaudi, 2005):191. 17  Aróstegui, Franco: la represión como sistema (Barcelona: Flor del Viento Ediciones, 2012). 18  David Ginard i Féron, “Historiografía española reciente sobre la oposición antifranquista y el exilio (1939–1977)”. Iberoamericana 30 (July 2008), 199–210. 19  For the cultural dimension, see Glondys, La Guerra Fría cultural. 20  Babiano, Historia de comisiones obreras (Madrid: Siglo XXI Ediciones, 1993); Álvaro Soto Carmona, “No todo fue igual: cambios en las relaciones laborales, trabajo y nivel de vida de los españoles, 1958–1975”. Pasado y memoria, 5 (2006), 15–43. 21  Javier Muñoz Soro, “Después de la tormenta. acción política y cultural de los intelectuales católicos entre 1956 y 1962”. Historia y Política, 28 (2012), 83–108.

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to the aging exiled direction,22 the public dissent of some Falangists disillusioned with the conservative and reactionary government of Franco23: all these were the signs of an incipient transformation of the opposition to the regime. At the same time, Francoism showed some abilities to adapt itself: the request for an International Monetary Fund intervention, made by a reluctant Franco in 1957 to save his country from bankruptcy, which materialized in the Stabilization and Liberalization Plans, meant the opening of the country to international markets and a beginning of modernization of the productive economy after a long autarkic post-war period.24 More than one voice—among the new ministers of Opus Dei but also, more generally, among the more “modern” Francoist political staff—understood the need for some kind of transformation (not necessarily democratic) that could bring, even only formally, Spain closer to its European neighbors: it was not by chance that in 1962 Franco requested— without obtaining it—adhesion to the European Economic Community (EEC). The direction of the PCI and Togliatti himself took these signals as an exhortation to deepen and review their judgment of Francoism. The Spanish dictatorship, for the bulk of the Italian left, was still a more or less imperfect and now extemporaneous form of fascism.25 Fully reinserted in the international context (it had entered the United Nations in 1955), Franco’s Spain was moving toward a partial economic boom, and the attempts of anti-Francoists to recover political initiative, first through arms, with the Maquis,26 until the beginning of the 1950s, and then through civilian actions—such as the general political strikes called by the direction of the Partido Comunista de España (PCE—Spanish Communist  Mateos, Las izquierdas españolas (Madrid: UNED, 1997).  Sergio Rodríguez Tejada, “El largo viaje a través del falangismo: primera línea del SEU y disidencia interna en los años cincuenta”. Spagna Contemporanea, 37 (2010), 61–74. Francisco Morente, “Il falangista “rivoluzionario”. Tre momenti nell’itinerario politico di Dionisio Ridruejo”. Spagna Contemporanea, 48 (2015). 24  Muns, Historia de las relaciones (Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 1986). 25  This was the vision, especially in the immediate post-war period, when the fate of Spain was the focus of much of the anti-fascist press (not least Il Politecnico of Vittorini) and Francoism was considered—in the words of Alfonso Botti—as an “unnatural survival of fascist dictatorships established in the inter-war period”. During the 1950s, the attention of the Italian left for Spain had undergone a sharp downsizing. It would resume only in the mid1960s. See Alfonso Botti, “Il caso spagnolo”: percezioni, storia, storiografia, in: Del Zanna and Giovagnoli, Il mondo visto dall’Italia (Milano: Guerini, 2004): 1000–1013. 26  Aróstegui, Marco. El último frente (Madrid: Los libros de la Catarata, 2008); Sánchez Cervelló and Llauradó, Maquis (Barcelona: Flor de Viento Ediciones, 2003). 22 23

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Party) in France—had proven ineffective. The regime seemed to enjoy excellent health and the communists, on the other hand, could not come out of isolation. Therefore, the journey would serve to review the Spanish situation, and also to change the way the PCI would confront it, opening a new season of attention and activity. After the meeting of intellectuals held in Rome in April 1962, the Italian Committee for the Freedom of Spanish People (CILPS, in Italian) was created: a unitary organism that was supposed to “study and promote all the actions that can broaden and generalize” the solidarity initiatives with the Spanish people.27 This Committee was supported by many parties and trades unions (PCI, PSI, PRI [Partito Socialista Democatico Italiano— Italian Democratic Socialist Party], PSDI, CGIL, and UIL), and among the members of the executive committee were Giuliano Pajetta, Fausto Nitti, Adriana Martelli, and Giancarlo Vigorelli, even if the list of participants in the initiative was very long, including Altiero Spinelli, Umberto Terracini, Pietro Nenni, Giangiacomo Feltrinelli, Antonio Giolitti, Paolo Spriano, Ignazio Silone, Elio Vittorini, and many others. The CILPS carried out solidarity initiatives with the Asturian miners, put pressure on the EEC to ignore the Spanish request to join it, and led the mobilization for the trial and the execution of Julián Grimau.28 Its work brought interest back to Spanish events, and also led to parliamentary initiatives, especially about the conditions of political prisoners.29 Rossanda’s journey also marked a change in the relations between Italian communists and their “comrades” of the PCE: there would be more space for leaders within Spain than for the exiled direction.30 The good relations with the PCE secretary Santiago Carrillo did not suffer any repercussions, even though from this contact arose a new way of looking at the reality of Spanish communists, at their internal diversity, and also at the limits and problems of their direction in France.  Historical Archives of the European Union in Florence, Fondo Spinelli, AS-185.  Julián Grimau, communist militant, was judged and sentenced to death in 1962 for events dating back to the Civil War. See Carvajal Urquijo, Julián Grimau (Madrid: Santillana, 2003). 29  In particular, on October 30, 1964, two parliamentary questions were addressed in the Senate to the Minister of Foreign Affairs: one from the PCI, signed by senators Terracini, Pajetta, Vidali, Roasio, and Palermo, and a second one from the PSI, signed by Romagnoli, Banfi, and Vittorelli. See the pamphlet by the Foreign Section of the PCI Spagna in Prigione, Arxiu CEHI-Pavelló de la Rebública, Barcelona. 30  Only in 1962 did senators Palermo and Minella and deputy Adriana Martelli travel to Spain. 27 28

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The communication channel opened by Rossanda with the opposition inside Spain provided some decisive elements for her analysis: the relations of force, the characteristics of the new anti-Francoism and their differences with the world of exile, the ability of the dictatorship’s elites of proposing, at the same time, repression and a certain well-being, the burden of the memory of a civil war as an element of massive depoliticization, and the importance of the international context. All these were elements that helped Italian communists to develop a realistic reading—not related to the epic of the anti-fascist struggle, even though this continued to be an active narrative at grass-roots level, through the Associazione Nazionale Partigiani d’Italia (ANPI—National Association of Italian Partisans)—of what was happening, and above all of what could happen and how in the Iberian country. From that journey onward, the PCI assumed that there would not be a decisive moment or a twist. It was necessary to build a democratic option, with a patient effort of resistance and complaint about the lack of freedom, creating a broader consensus among the different forces of the opposition, and therefore also with probable sacrifices. The social basis of dictatorship would not disappear, and the ruling classes of Francoism would probably play a new role, beyond mere repression. The update of the analysis originated by that journey was put into practice: the interest and support of the CGIL to the Comisiones Obreras—the new trade union movement born at the beginning of the 1960s31; the attention to the new unitary initiatives grown around the repression; later the support—even concrete—to the Spanish comrades aiming at their “democratic normalization”, that did not, however, exclude increasing attention toward the socialist world.32

10.4   Spain in Rossana Rossanda’s Memory The impossibility of consulting the original report prevents us from appreciating the distance between the instant analysis and the one inevitably adjusted by memory and by the subsequent experiences of the author. However, it is interesting to analyze the narration of that journey, not only  About this, there are some ideas in Tappi, Un’impresa italiana (Perugia: Crace, 2008).  From this point of view, it seems especially interesting to recall the close relationship between the Piedmontese PCI federation and the Catalan communists of PSUC, which lasted until the mid-1980s. Paola Lo Cascio, José Manuel Rúa, “Cari Compagni. El recolzament de la Federació piamontesa del PCI a l’estrena democràtica del PSUC”, 1er. Congrés d’història del PSUC in: Martín Ramos et  al. 70 anys de socialisme comunista (Barcelona: Museu d’Història de Catalunya, 2006). 31 32

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for the information revealing her movements and her meetings but also, and especially, for the observations that follow the text. Before crossing the Spanish border, Rossanda narrates that in Florence she met “Federico Sánchez” (pseudonym of the PCE leader Jorge Semprún),33 who was then, together with Fernando Claudín, one of the most important intellectuals and leaders of the Spanish communists. Lucid and troublesome intellectuals34: they would be expelled in 1964 by Santiago Carrillo, because they were criticizing the judgment of the party about the internal situation.35 “Federico” gave Rossanda some names, and gave her indications about the itinerary to follow, suggesting she started from Barcelona. He alerted her: the regime was strong, it would last, and there was absolutely nothing about the pre-revolutionary situation constantly repeated by the PCE official propaganda. Speaking of this, Rossanda also narrates that she had gone to meet the banker Raffaele Mattioli—a friend, and a financer of the Culture House— to be given some names of professionals and representatives of the productive economy. In the re-worked version of 1980, she made explicit her conscience about leaving for Spain with prejudices, especially about the atmosphere that she would find: an atmosphere that she would inevitably measure with respect to her own experience, which was that of the transition from fascism to democracy.36 The meeting with the city of Barcelona— “old town, worn out, uncertain, asleep”37—soon unveiled all the distance from her Milan just before the Liberation. In the Barcelona of 1962, she wrote, despite the years, despite the changes, that distant war was still absolutely present, as if it had never ended, and Francoism was simply its continuation. And she went further: the fear and the memory of the horrors of war were two of the distinctive and peculiar elements of Francoism,38 a conservative, Catholic, ruthless but politically empty regime, the 33  Dell’Acqua, La biblioteca di Buchenwald (Imola: La Mandragora, 2001); Nieto, La aventura comunista de Jorge Semprún (Barcelona: Grupo Planeta, 2014). 34  María José Valverde Márquez, “Intelectuales y Estudiantes Comunistas ante la Política del PCE (1956–64)”. Revista de Historia Actual, 3 (2010), 83–94. 35  On the conflict between Semprún and Claudín and the direction of the PCE, see Pala, Cultura clandestina. 36  “And maybe it appears again, changed, as it was here after 1945. Or maybe not really like here, but something similar. After all, on which other parameter can I measure what awaits me?” Rossanda, Un viaggio inutile. (Torino: Einaudi, 2008): 15. 37  Rossanda, Un viaggio inutile, 17. 38  “[N]o one told me about it [the war ed.] as if it was more distant than just a few years ago (…) at least, none of those I met”, Rossanda, Un viaggio inutile, 17.

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s­olidification of those class relations that the Spanish Republic had challenged, losing its battle.39 In Barcelona she also tells us that she discovered the dimension of the linguistic, cultural, and political Catalan singularity. She found little dislike between communists and socialists, and the presence of a bourgeois and nationalist opposition, both old and new. She met respectable gentlemen of a certain age, such as Joan Cornudella,40 secretary of the Front Nacional de Catalunya, or the old politician of Esquerra Republicana Josep Andreu i Abelló, who she probably confuses in the text with Heribert Barrera.41 They had both lived the war, they were both practically on probation, they both accepted the invitation to attend the conference, perhaps even to arouse some reaction of a power that seemed to have almost forgotten them. She also narrates that she discovered, from these same environments—and that she regretted not having insisted on meeting any of  The historiographical debate on the nature of Francoism and, especially, on its possible inclusion in the category of “fascism” is still alive, and has involved Spanish, Italian, and foreign historians and political scientists. A part of the debate can be found in: Gallego, El evangelio fascista (Barcelona: Crítica, 2014); Saz, España contra España; Ismael “Religión política y religión católica en el fascismo español. Religión y política en España contemporánea”, in: Boyd, Religión y política, (Madrid: Centro de Estudios Políticos y Constitucionales, 2007): 33–55; Francisco Cobo Romero: “El franquismo y los imaginarios míticos del fascismo europeo de entreguerras”. In: Ayer, 71 (2008), 117–151; Eduardo González Calleja: “La violencia y sus discursos: los límites de la “fascistización” de la derecha española durante el régimen de la Segunda República”. In: Ayer, 71 (2008), 85–116, and Id., Contrarrevolucionarios (Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 2011); Gentile et al. Fascismo y franquismo (Madrid: Biblioteca Nueva, 2004). For a recent state of the art on the debate, see Javier Rodrigo: “A este lado del bisturí. Guerra, fascistización y cultura falangista. Falange. Las culturas políticas del fascismo en la España de Franco”. In: Ruiz Carnicer, Falange (Zaragoza: IFC, 2013), especially 143–147. 40  Rubiralta, Joan Cornudella (Barcelona: PAM, 2003). 41  The assumption of an error is confirmed by a report of Josep Solé Barberà, lawyer and leader of the PSUC, and Rossanda’s guide in Barcelona, in which, informing the Central Committee of the visit of the “bambina”—this was the name chosen to protect her identity—he tells about the meeting with the Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya (ERC— Republican Left of Catalonia).  There is no mention of the name of the ERC leader with whom Rossanda spoke, but the close relations of Solé Barberà with Andreu i Abelló suggest that it was the latter, and not Barrera, who met the young Italian communist. The other element that suggests it is the insistence of the ERC executive on the experience of war in his conversations with Rossanda. Andreu i Abelló at the time was 55 years old, and Barrera only 44. The former had a political career during the Spanish Republic (he had been president of the Catalan Supreme Court) and after the war he was sentenced to death (even if the sentence was commuted). The latter had been little more than an adolescent. See Mayayo Josep Solé Barberà (Barcelona: L’Avenç, 2007). 39

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them—the existence of some groups of young Catholics of good stock, Catalanists and anti-Francoists, who during the Transition to democracy would play a prominent role,42 like Jordi Pujol. She tells us that she found the dichotomy between old and new opposition also on the left. She was able to meet what was left of the ancient anarchist trade union Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT— National Confederation of Labour), whose militants seemed to her not only old, but irreparably defeated. She also found herself immediately on the same wavelength with a group of workers. In the text she calls them “socialists”, but everything suggests that they were of the Socialist Unified Party of Catalonia (PSUC),43 the party of Catalan communists. With them—many of them were young, immigrants from Andalusia or Extremadura—she said she found the same concerns as young Milanese workers: the salary and the organization of the factory, the house, or the lack of services in the suburbs. In Madrid, instead, the “comrades” were still traumatized by the failure of the last general strike attempts of 1959,44 and above all they were much more isolated. The new workers’ movement, she said, would be born from the suburbs, and its strength would arise from the practice of struggles for the improvement of material conditions of life: a new fight, which concerned primarily the distribution of wealth due to the incipient economic boom.45 A new perspective that, she says, was also clear to significant parts of the middle classes, both inside and outside the regime.46 In Madrid and Seville, she also met those Christian Democrats who many believed would be protagonists of the future: Gil-Robles,47 a lawyer and right-wing Catholic, and Ruiz-Giménez,48 a university professor and left-wing Catholic. 42  Andrew Dowling: “For Christ and Catalonia: Catholic Catalanism and nationalist revival in late Francoism”. Journal of Contemporary History, 47(2012), 594–610. 43  Here too, the Solé Barberà report already mentioned is decisive. 44  Emanuele Treglia: “El PCE y la huelga general (1958–1967)”. Espacio Tiempo y Forma. Historia Contemporánea, 20 (2008), 249–263. 45  Xavier Doménech Sampere, “El problema de la conflictividad bajo el franquismo: saliendo del paradigma”. Historia social, 42 (2002), 123–143. 46  “These connections open out, those who argue with the ‘open-minded’ Francoists, will be the midwife of change; I must resign myself to admit it”, Rossanda, Un viaggio inutile, 49. 47  Rojas Quintana, José María Gil-Robles (Madrid: Editorial Síntesis, 2010). 48  Javier Muñoz Soro, “Joaquín Ruiz-Giménez o el católico total: apuntes para una biografía política e intelectual hasta 1963”. Pasado y memoria, 5 (2006), 259–288.

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Tolerated by the regime, they helped her understand that a new social bloc was being reorganized on the wave of the progressive economic opening, a bloc that wanted, above all, the anchorage with the EEC. The clash, of which the conquest of democracy would be only a part, would be played on the modernization of the country. On the other hand, she writes that, in the Basque Country, she found herself with another face of that country and of its dictatorship, that, even if ferocious—she said—only communists kept on calling “fascism”. She stayed for a long time with the socialists lawyer Antonio Amat and writer Luís Martín Santos,49 with whom she had a strong friendship. Euskadi was an occupied area, and there Francoism showed the fierce face of the military, not that of a controlling country,50 ready to intervene against any form of dissent. Despite not explicitly mentioning the national question, she defined the profile of a “patriotic” resistance in describing a country occupied and transversely cohesive against “the invader”.51 In the Basque Country she understood the full potential of Spanish socialism. Unlike what was happening with the PCE, the socialists would be less affected by the weight of a connection with the Spanish Civil War. It was still a fragile project, but in the future it could count on important Western European allies.52 On her way back home, in Paris she again met Federico Sánchez. On this subject, she recounted that it was he who helped her focus on the image of Spain that she would bring back home. An image that was very far from the one she had had when she left, and that gave a disturbing answer to the two questions she said she had asked herself before her journey: could fascism change by itself? In Spain—assuming that Francoism was fascism, a thing that the journey had questioned—it seemed so. Indeed, that was exactly what was going to happen. And then, what role 49  In that same year, he published a very successful novel, Tiempos de Silencio, presented under a pseudonym the year before at the Pío Baroja prize, with the title Tiempo Frustrado. The novel told the story of a young doctor who could not advance in his research on cancer in the bleak scenery of Spain in the 1940s. See Suárez Granda, Tiempo de silencio (Barcelona: Alhambra, 1986). 50  “[T]he Francoist repressive system never ceased to surprise me, for its subtlety and ductility”, Rossanda, Un viaggio inutile, 86. 51  “The Basques were all in the defeated field, and yet not paralyzed by the tragedy”, Rossanda, Un viaggio inutile, 83. 52  Abdón Mateos, “El socialismo español ante el cambio político posfranquista: apoyo internacional y federalización”. Historia Contemporánea, 54 (2017), 311–338.

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would the communists have? They understood that the solution would not be the expected one, but they seemed to have no tools to intervene on that situation. In Rossanda’s memoir, the journey ended with a rather harsh consideration: “Now, there was nothing left to do but talk to the party. And tell them: nothing will happen in Spain. Nothing that we expect. Nice perspective”.53 The memories of that journey were revisited in a new context in the long preface of the 1981 book, published shortly after the February coup attempt. Summarizing her reflection, she gave a rather bitter judgment: as she sensed in 1962, the fear of civil war, of repression, of the “reversibility” of every democratic achievement, were still there, despite everything. Spain got out of Francoism, indeed, but without a moment of complete liberation, without the possibility of a real breaking off. For this reason—unlike what, in those years, was done by the extra-parliamentary left, which accused the communists of being under ambitious—she understood the “moderation” of the PCE during the Transition, its renunciations, and its acceptance of an all-in-all modest role, beside a new Socialism destined to be the protagonist on the left. In Spain, democracy arrived in a very different way from Italy.54 It was a mutation of the dictatorship, which the social and political movements of the opposition managed to influence, turning it into a liberal democracy, but failed to drive. For this, there was “desilusión” (disenchantment) but not reflux, because there had never been a real flux.

10.5   A Diagnosis and Some Final Considerations So were Rossana Rossanda’s journey to Spain really worthless? The impression that we have is that the strong adjective of the title was dictated, above all, by the mood of the author when the book was published: 1981 was the year of the attempted coup in Spain, and in Italy, the “March of the 40,000” in 1980 was the sign of the decline of the long phase of student and worker mobilizations. In fact, beyond the title of the book, those 53  Rossanda, Un viaggio inutile, 111. And she said she added, in the report to the bureau: “Spain is no longer that of 1936 or 1939; countries continue to live. And the regime will dissolve, in the coming months or years, in forms that will be completely different from those that marked the end of other fascisms, and – if much, almost everything, does not change in the opposition – not very encouraging”. 54  “The new Spain was born wise”, Rossanda, Un viaggio inutile, XV.

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reflections of Rossana Rossanda helped to clarify some important elements about Spain—it is not known to what extent already in the 1960s, or later, when they were published. The first of these elements was the reflection on the nature of Francoism: a class dictatorship, authoritarian, Catholic, reactionary, which had little to do with fascism in 1962.55 The second one was the awareness that the fear, never completely extinguished, of the outbreak of a new civil war, had marked the features of the regime, and the way in which Spain would arrive at democracy.56 The third one instead referred to the importance of the international context. It had been instrumental in maintaining Francoism in power after the Second World War, and it would also be so in view of its overcoming, as for the other dictatorships in southern Europe.57 The fourth one referred to the social and political actors: a part of Francoism itself was ready to change to maintain its dominant position,58 and the opposition was too weak to force a breaking off. The journey, ultimately, was a powerful exhortation to adhere to reality, to get out of the box, to rethink analysis. It was a passage—perhaps tangential, but significant—in the communist reflection about the relations between capitalism, democracy, and dictatorship in the context of the years after 1956.59 And it left a mark: both the Party and Rossanda

55  “The more the years have passed, and the more I have seen Spain, Greece, and Portugal change, the less peremptory seems to me the certainty about fascism that was a part of my political apprenticeship, and that seemed simple, solid, unquestionable. A regime [Fascism] for its nature transitory, fierce but fragile, a degeneration of bourgeois class domination. In Spain it was fierce but not fragile. (…) True Francoists were agrarian and financial capital, and pure repression. They did not excite masses, they did not do the mass-identification comedy. Perhaps the Spanish Civil War was the purest among class struggles”, Rossanda, Un viaggio inutile, 88. 56  Pérez-Díaz, La lezione spagnola (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2003). 57  Del Pero, et al. Democrazie (Firenze: Le Monnier, 2010). 58  “[T]he right seems to act concretely as a force of change, proposing a new historical experience, that is, the liquidation of fascism from within the same class that created it”, Rossanda, Un viaggio inutile, 114. 59  “[O]n the subject of births, deaths, and resurrections of fascisms, we thought we knew a thing or two. We felt invincible. Instead, in the story I am about to tell you, our knowledge turned out to be mocking, and reality, for which it seemed custom made, cryptic and elusive (…) For me, that journey was a hard, sentimental education. I will remember Spain like that, forever (…). Its events took place, in part, as we had guessed in 1962. In part, they were even more tormenting”, Rossanda, Un viaggio inutile, 3.

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herself60 explained the Transition to democracy in quite a similar way. An explanation that, in whole or in part, despite their separation in 1968–1969, was generated by the intuitions of that journey.61

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Muñoz Soro, Javier “Después de la tormenta. acción política y cultural de los intelectuales católicos entre 1956 y 1962”. Historia y Política, 28 (2012), 83–108. Muns, Joaquín Historia de las relaciones entre España y el Fondo Monetario Internacional 1958–1982: veinticinco años de economía española. Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 1986. Nieto, Felipe La aventura comunista de Jorge Semprún: exilio, clandestinidad y ruptura. Barcelona: Grupo Planeta, 2014. Pala, Gaime Cultura clandestina: Los intelectuales del PSUC bajo el franquismo. Granada: Editorial Comares, 2016. Pérez-Díaz, Víctor La lezione spagnola. Società civile, politica e legalità. Bologna: Il Mulino, 2003. Rojas Quintana, Alfonso José María Gil-Robles: historia de un injusto fracaso. Madrid: Editorial Síntesis, 2010. Ruiz Carnicer, Miguel Ángel Falange, las culturas políticas del fascismo español, Zaragoza: IFC, 2013. Rossanda, Rossana La ragazza del secolo scorso. Torino: Einaudi, 2005. Rossanda, Rossana Un viaggio inutile. Torino: Einaudi, 2008. Rubiralta, Fermí Joan Cornudella Barberà. Biografia política, Barcelona: PAM, 2003. Sánchez Cervelló, Josep Carles Llauradó, Maquis: El puño que golpeó al franquismo: la agrupación guerrillera de Levante y Aragón (Agla). Barcelona: Flor de Viento Ediciones, 2003. Saz, Ismael España contra España: los nacionalismos franquistas. Madrid: Marcial Pons, 2003. Saz, Ismael “Religión política y religión católica en el fascismo español. Religión y política en España contemporánea”, in: Boyd, Carolyn P. Religión y política en la España contemporánea, Madrid: Centro de Estudios Políticos y Constitucionales, 2007, 33–55. Scirocco, Giovanni “Le fiaccole di Prometeo. Circoli politico-culturali e centro-­ sinistra a Milano (1957–1969)”, in: Lacaita, Carlo Milano, Anni Sessanta. Dagli esordi del centro-sinistra alla contestazione, Milan: Lacaita, 2008, 131–170. Soto Carmona, Álvaro “No todo fue igual: cambios en las relaciones laborales, trabajo y nivel de vida de los españoles, 1958–1975”. Pasado y memoria, 5 (2006), 15–43. Suárez Granda, José Luís Tiempo de silencio: Luis Martín-Santos Barcelona: Alhambra, 1986. Tappi, Andrea Un’impresa italiana nella Spagna di Franco: il rapporto Fiat-Seat dal 1950 al 1980. Perugia: Crace, 2008. Rodríguez Tejada, Sergio “El largo viaje a través del falangismo: primera línea del SEU y disidencia interna en los años cincuenta”. Spagna Contemporanea, 37 (2010), 61–74.

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Togliatti, Palmiro Escritos sobre la guerra de España. Barcelona: Crítica, 1980. Treglia, Emanuele: “El PCE y la huelga general (1958–1967)”. Espacio Tiempo y Forma. Historia Contemporánea, 20 (2008), 249–263. Treglia, Emanuele and Muñoz Soro, Javier Patria, pan…amore e fantasia, Granada: Comares, 2017. Valverde Márquez, María José (2010). “Intelectuales y Estudiantes Comunistas ante la Política del PCE (1956–64)”. Revista de Historia Actual, (3), 83–94. Valverde Márquez, María José “Intelectuales y Estudiantes Comunistas ante la Política del PCE (1956–64)”. Revista de Historia Actual, 3 (2010), 83–94. Vittoria, Albertina Togliatti e gli intellettuali. La politica culturale dei comunisti italiani (1944–1964). Carocci: Rome, 2014.

CHAPTER 11

The Debate on Post-colonial Africa in the Pages of Mondoperaio: The Reflection of Socialists on Decolonization (1955–1987) Gianluca Scroccu

The relationship between intellectuals coming from the socialist area, close in particular to the Italian Socialist Party (PSI) and Italian Socialdemocrat Party (PSDI), and the issue of Africa decolonization in the period between 1955 and 1987 represents a significant example of how Italian socialist culture related with international realities during the course of the First Republic. The views expressed on the problems of decolonization in Africa by Mondoperaio, Italian socialism’s most important magazine, tied to the PSI, appear particularly intriguing. We deemed it sometimes useful to compare them with passages from Critica Sociale, a magazine closer to the PSDI. An analysis of these two sources, the focus of this contribution, will confirm how the space and interest given by these two periodicals to the issue of African decolonization were far from episodic, but consistent and meaningful especially regarding significant moments of post-colonial African history. All of this shows the need for a more in-depth analysis of Italian socialism’s international vision post-Second World War, freed from

G. Scroccu (*) Department of History, Cultural and Territorial Heritage, University of Cagliari, Cagliari, Italy © The Author(s) 2019 A. Tarquini, A. Guiso (eds.), Italian Intellectuals and International Politics, 1945–1992, Italian and Italian American Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-24938-0_11

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the exclusive references to the dynamics of European and West-East confrontations and more focused on the contributions of figures not directly tied to institutional or party leadership roles.1 On this latter point, it is indeed important to point out as an element of originality how most of the articles, the essays, and book and film reviews relating to the decolonization of Africa were authored by non-prominent figures or anyway not invested with leadership roles inside the PSI or the PSDI. Among the sources, two great blocks, thematic and chronological at the same time, can be identified on the level of the general approach and the judgments regarding the issues of decolonization: a first phase, from 1955 to 1973–1976, where an anti-occidental, anti-imperialist Marxist vision was applied, especially by Mondoperaio, through direct reportages derived from journeys to different African countries. These first-hand, eye-witness reports, whose observations were summarized and published serially, combined argumentations expressed at a more theoretical level to eye-witness testimony, giving the former substance. The second block of articles, starting after the first half of the 1970s, is less tied to Marxist schemata and more in line with contemporary reflections of European socialism’s culture regarding the relationship between the North and South worlds. This holds true both with regard to the political and ideological characteristics of the new post-colonial states, and with regard to issues like Islam’s penetration in the African continent, the evolution of the commitment to safeguarding human’s rights, especially in South Africa, and the modernization prospects observed in some of the social and economic political choices taken by the new political leadership of some of the continent’s states.2 As for the first temporal phase, it is useful to remember how the main intellectual debt in matters of colonialism was owed by intellectuals belonging to the socialist area to Lenin’s thesis, expressed in 1916, of imperialism as the “highest stage of capitalism” and to self-determination of peoples as carrier elements of revolution. In addition, albeit on a level more directly tied to Africa, Frantz Fanon’s thesis regarding the need for a revolt of colonized peoples against their colonizers, and the positions 1  For an analysis of the historiographic reflections on Italian socialism’s foreign policy, in addition to the direct testimony of Pietro Nenni in his Diari, see I nodi di politica estera. See also Di Nolfo, Il socialismo italiano tra i due blocchi; Benzoni, Gritti, Landolfi (ed. by), La dimensione internazionale del socialismo italiano; Borruso, L’Italia e la crisi della decolonizzazione, 397–442; Favretto, Alle radici della svolta autonomista; Spiri (ed. by), Bettino Craxi. 2  Calchi Novati, Quartapelle, Terzo mondo, 118–119.

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and contrasts between Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus regarding the Algerian question and the need to put an end to French colonialism. Sartre in particular embraced the pro-Algerian and anti-colonialist thesis as opposed to Camus’s humanitarian position of a pacification between Algerians and French people, as he expressed it in his essay “The Rebel”. In such a context, also influenced by Cold War logics, it was not easy for the intellectuals writing in Italian socialist magazines to understand fully the reasons and the meaning of new ideas, such as pan-Africanism, which were developing in the context of anti-colonial struggles and which were alien to the workers’ movement tradition. The variegated world of Italian socialism found itself forced to change its traditional framework of analysis regarding international affairs to adapt to a new politics that tended now to rotate around a North-South axis instead of an East-West one, in agreement with the position European socialism had taken and to which Italian socialism came closer after the 1956 turning point.3 These modifications were destined to change approaches and redefine mentalities and tools of analysis traditionally tied to an orthodox vision of Marxism, as it would have appeared especially starting from the 1970s. There were two events in particular that marked a turning point in the attitude of many of those who belonged to the varied cultural worlds revolving around Italian socialism: the 1955 Bandung Afro-Asian Conference and the crisis caused by the controversy around control of the Suez Canal in 1956. The Suez Canal crisis exerted a strong impact on Italian socialism’s political culture and gave new room, following the years immediately after the Second World War, to a search for a third way alternative to both the United States and the Soviet Union. Consequently, the need for a reflection on socialism as an ideological main tool suitable to interpret the anti-­ colonial wave started to take root, albeit imperfectly. With this in mind, Nasser’s Egypt appeared as an interesting model because, despite important problems in winning full internal democracy, it succeeded in making great strides forward on the concrete modernization of agricultural production, which was why European countries should have taken its development as an important matter not to be underestimated.4 It was not by  Colarizi, “I socialisti italiani e l’Internazionale Socialista: 1947–1958”, 5–66.  Uboldi, “L’Egitto in movimento”, Mondoperaio, a. X, no. 2–3, February–March 1957, 121. Uboldi’s analysis originates from the review of Jean and Simonne Lacouture, L’Égypte en mouvement. 3 4

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chance that this nation was at the front of the Non-Aligned Movement, which was destined to work as a spur for the development of newer pan-­ Africanist approaches on the issue of post-colonial leadership political platforms. If the world was changing, if what had been built on the power of bourgeoisie was crumbling, if weaker states were able to pick themselves up and build their own movement as the Bandung conference showed, then socialist culture had the duty to study in depth what was happening in order to take hold of the elements of interest for Europe and in particular for Italy, as was highlighted by Mondoperaio in a long article by Giorgio Fenoaltea.5 In his analysis, a conference such as the Indonesian one that, despite the United States’ attempts to boycott, proved highly innovative, must be judged for its strategical importance for the change it brought to international relations not only politically but also ideologically; from this assumption derived the possibility, for Italian socialist culture, to find new ways of understanding and new and increased awareness of the post-­ colonial phenomenon. Likewise, Rinaldo Baldussi6 praises the same conference in Critica Sociale and celebrates the topics of the safeguarding of human rights and of the struggle against apartheid in South Africa that arose in Bandung. He underscores, however, how the condemnation of white colonialism was not unanimous, especially by those who did not wish to appear too close to filo-Soviet positions. The two periodicals confirmed their support of the anti-colonial movement, with all the aforementioned nuances, on the occasion of the Cairo conference in December 1957. The socialist magazine then made a critical allusion to all those who doubted the non-aligned movement’s neutrality due to alleged influences by China and the USSR7: according to Mondoperaio, the Cairo conference was “ours”, meaning Italian socialists, because colonialists of whichever nationality were also the PSI’s foes. A very specific focus of attention by socialist culture was without doubt the Algerian matter, a textbook example of how the class struggle against bourgeois imperialism could be actualized everywhere in the world—a position that failed to understand the complexity of the political, institutional, and cultural meaning the Algerian matter had for France. The two 5  Fenoaltea, “La conferenza di Bandung”, Mondoperaio, a. VIII, no. 9, May 7, 1955, 7–9; Id., “La questione marocchina”, Mondoperaio, a. VIII, no. 20, 22nd October 1955, 3–7. 6  Baldussi, “La conferenza afro-asiatica di Bandung”, in Critica Sociale, a. XLVII, no. 9, 5th May 1955. 7  Luzzatto, “Un congresso contro il colonialismo” e Libertini, “Sulla conferenza del Cairo”, Mondoperaio, a. X, no. 12, November–December 1957, 5 e 6.

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socialist periodicals devoted various articles to the Algerian question: what emerges strongly from their analysis, even from different point of views, more radical for Mondoperaio, is a pressing critique not just of France’s politics but also of French culture and society. France is described as a prisoner of a now in-decline colonial past, as shown by the Indochina matter.8 What was happening in Algeria was in essence the clearest representation of the failure of conservative forces’ secular colonial policy, eventually destined to be overcome also thanks to the emancipatory element present in socialism. These examples help understand how Italian socialism’s cultural advocates wanted to relate Africa’s situation, the historical reasons for the anti-­ colonial struggle, and the right to self-government as instruments for the progress of the continent’s peoples. Within this context, various book reviews and suggestions appeared in this phase in Mondoperaio books that should have helped readers to better understand the reality the magazine was trying to describe; starting from 1957 the magazine devoted particular space in the advertising to the reissue of Jomo Kenyatta’s My People of Kikuyu (I Kikuju), first published by Avanti! editions in 1954, in the editorial series “Il Gallo”.9 This was a book that enjoyed fairly good success and which contributed to popularizing among Italian socialists the history and culture of the Kenyan ethnicity to which Kenyatta belonged, an intellectual and hero of his country’s independence from British domination. It seems in general that the two magazines analyzed here showed an interest focalized on certain specific areas of the continent, with analysis focused not only on Algeria, Morocco, Lumumba’s Congo, Nigeria, and Biafra but also on South Africa, to which Mondoperaio devoted no small space, as shown by Nicola Caracciolo’s essay (April–May 1960) written as

8  Uboldi, “Algeri: via una sola d’uscita”, in Mondoperaio anno X, no. 5, June 1957, p. 16; Marie, “La stretta algerina”, in Critica Sociale, a. LII, no. 21, 5th November 1960, 559–560; see also Tamburrano, “La Francia e l’Algeria”, Mondoperaio, a. XIII, no. 2, February 1960, pp.  8–13; “Responsabilità dell’Algeria”, Mondoperaio, a. XV, no. 8–9, August–September 1962, 5 and A. Acone, “Corrispondenza dall’Algeria”, Mondoperaio, a. XV, no. 8–9, August– September 1962, 27–33. 9  Kenyatta, “I Kikuju”, edited by Borelli, edizioni Avanti!, Milan-Rome, 1954; an interesting review of this book in Cirese, “Il popolo di Kikuju”, Avanti!, ed. Rome, January 4, 1955.

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a way to understand the history and roots of racial segregation.10 South Africa’s black emancipation movement takes, according to the PSI and PSDI “area intellectual’s” point of view, an explicitly socialist and Marxist character. On the basis of these premises, Third Worldism was the explicit point of reference also for Western workers’ movement parties, now acting in the context of distension. These factors of regeneration and new interaction between nations were to be greeted positively. As written by Francesco Gozzano in Mondoperaio in April 1961,11 there was a profound bond between African independence and the new phase of international political relations inspired by distension criteria and by a greater dialogue acknowledging the rights of peoples to self-determination and development. There also existed, however, the danger about which the socialist periodical duly informed its readers of a neo-colonialism replacing the older one carried out especially by countries such the United States, France, Great Britain, and Belgium—a neo-colonialism less coercive on the level of brute strength but no less insidious for African people’s rights. These countries, which had formally accepted their former colonies’ independence, were still trying, according to the authors of various Mondoperaio articles, to condition their history, altering their democratic processes and halting their economic development through intromissions and rough conditioning. Mondoperaio’s theses were, however, still narrowed by an anti-occidental bias that ignored, contrary to what happened later in the 1970s, the role of conditioning and destabilization played by the Soviet Union, China, and Cuba on the African continent.12 In this sense, in Italian socialist culture as expressed in that historical moment, a clear examination of the meaning of the word “neo-colonial” seems to be missing, so much so that, even if a certain descriptive ability regarding certain particular situations must be acknowledged, there still seems to lack a general reflection on decolonization processes’ more profound motivations. This was in great part due to the conditionings of Italian politics, which weakened those analyses. 10  Caracciolo, “Lotta razziale nel Sud-Africa”, Mondoperaio, a. XIII, no. 4–5, April–May 1960, 21–24. 11  Gozzano, “La terza conferenza dei popoli africani”, Mondoperaio, a. XIV, no. 4, April 1961, 27–31. 12  Vasconi, “Dal Congo a Cuba un solo problema”, Mondoperaio, a. XIII, no. 9, September 1960, 18–21; Vittorelli, “La nuova prospettiva internazionale”, Mondoperaio, a. XIII, no. 12, December 1960, 3–5.

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Beyond the reflection on historical and political themes, in the 1960s we see a large increment of articles more connected to cultural and artistic themes. A strong interest then emerges toward Italian movie production focused on the African continent, as is the case with Africa Addio by Gualtiero Jacopetti and Franco Prosperi, an extremely controversial documentary film that came out in 1966 and was awarded the David di Donatello. According to the socialist magazine, this film was nothing other than an apology for colonialism, what is more with the use of extremely crude images, and with the object of conveying, through a clear manipulation of history, an image of Africans as incapable of living in peace without European control.13 The article Problemi attuali del cinema afro-arabo, published in December 1966 in Mondoperaio by the later-to-be-sociologist of cultural and communicative processes Emilia Buonanno, is instead more connected to the condition of local African productions.14 More in particular the author is focused on the problematic of how, despite a good quality of various African directors, a “sharing space” on a continental level for their works was missing for practical reasons like lack of cinema and funds, which prevented the establishing of a homogeneous movie production structure in the territory, with the exception of some works that also enjoyed international acclaim. According to the author, there was a strict correlation between the new former colonies’ growth on a political level and their cultural growth, which should inevitably be found in a meeting point between African and Western traditions. The end of the 1960s, with all the evident repercussions connected to what had happened politically and culturally with the 1968 movement, a reflection opened among the authors and intellectuals, writing for Italian socialist cultural magazines, about what categories should be applied to the African scenario, and especially pan-Africanism with its historical characters and its influence on the contemporary political context.15 So Gianaldo Grossi, a journalist especially aware of the African and Middle Eastern cultural context, asked himself in April 1969 what should Africa’s future be, with particular attention to its political and cultural profile vis-­ à-­vis the international scenario; in his examination, Grossi begins with  Calderone, “Africa addio”, in Mondoperaio, a. XIX, no. 3, March 1966, 43–44.  Buonanno, “Problemi attuali del cinema afro-arabo”, in Mondoperaio, a. XIX, no. 12, December 1966, 49–55. 15  Faber, “Il panafricanismo”, in Mondoperaio, a. XXI, no. 7, July 1968, 24–32. 13 14

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analyzing some texts of those African intellectuals, like Léopold Sédar Senghor, Alioune Diop, and Aimé Césaire, who had begun a reflection on the theme of négritude.16 The 1970s saw the emergence of the contradictions of Africa’s decolonization process: it was by now a reality made of bloody conflicts and harsh territorial contrasts often inspired by ethnic rivalries that were disfiguring the continent. The difficult scenario determined by the evolution of the Cold War and the changes on an international level of the geopolitical order had a strong impact on the African case and also affected Italian socialist culture’s examinations. The complexity of Africa’s post-colonial history, and the civil wars then bloodying the continent, was made object of specific examinations which, for their merit, succeeded in going beyond an excessively positive rhetoric about the independence processes of the previous decades. From that point on there are indeed many reportages and eye-witness accounts on the interethnic conflicts that arose from the difficult construction of post-­ colonial independent states. From then on there are numerous very cogent reflections about the ideological and political character of the new military-­ led governments, judged by the socialist cultural press, in disagreement with the more moderate publications, as very distant from experiences such as Nasserism in Egypt and Kemalism in Turkey. Proof of this new tendency is a long article by Liliana Magrini in March 1975,17 I difficili equilibri dell’Africa nera, not only centered on the problems that arose after the troubled processes of independence in Mozambique and Angola but also on the relations between the new territorial realities in sub-­ Saharan Africa and the states in northern Africa.18 Many of these realities, after all, identified themselves as socialist in their fundamental government structure, an element that of course had to meet the interest of Italian socialism’s magazines. See on this as an example the article centered on the future of “the different African socialisms” according to what had emerged during the Tunis conference in July 1975; an interesting meeting, according to the socialism periodical, because the participants had worked following the thematic commissions method,  Grossi, “L’Africa dopo il nazionalismo”, Mondoperaio, a. XX, no. 12, December 1969.  Magrini, “I difficili equilibri dell’Africa nera”, in Mondoperaio, a. XXVIII, no. 3, March 1975, 80. 18  Magrini, “Socialismi africani”, Mondoperaio, a. XVIII, no. 8–9, August–September 1975, 77; Salvi, “L’indipendenza del Mozambico”, Mondoperaio, a. XVIII, no. 8–9, August– September 1975, 80. 16 17

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with a more reformist and pragmatic approach over the approach more connected to classical Marxist positions that had prevailed in previous years. According to Mondoperaio, African socialism was discovering in the practical struggle against inequality a central turning point useful for dealing with the international order’s new challenges. This was a new scenario, where the Soviet Union was beginning to be seen as an agent of chaos and a bearer of a vision Italian socialists had to reject, a judgment also eased by the choices made under Brezhnev. This position can already be glimpsed in an article by Augusto Valente, published in 1973 by Critica Sociale and titled L’Urss e i regimi di sinistra del terzo mondo and would have emerged more clearly starting in the following three-year period,19 as shown by Mino Vignolo’s essay, published by Mondoperaio in July–August 1977, a reflexion disapproving Moscow’s interferences in the Somalian-Ethiopian conflict and in countries like Rhodesia and South Africa, and classifying them as dangerous territorial actualizations of the Cold War.20 The myth of the Soviet Union as a nation close to oppressed peoples seemed to be, by that point, tarnished even in many leftist and youth milieus; in those milieus Moscow’s government was by then seen, just as the United States was, as an imperialistic power responsible for the destabilization and wars of many post-colonial areas. This theme perfectly adapted to the new course set by Craxi, PSI’s new secretary. A course, which on the matter of it being an alternative to communism, deeply influenced Italian socialism’s cultural reflection.21 The new secretary devoted great attention to Africa on a political level and he kept doing so during his Palazzo Chigi years. A change of the political line on the African question was then unavoidable, also as a challenge to Italian communists’ political line. See on this Franco Pierini who, in a detailed article in March 1978, outlined the reasons why the Ethiopian borders should not stay unalterable, in opposition to the Italian Communist Party’s (PCI) thought, as with Pajetta.22 See also Giuseppe Sacco’s polemical article in

19  Valente, “L’Urss e i regimi di sinistra del terzo mondo”, Critica Sociale, a. LXV, no. 16/17, August 20–September 5, 1973, 383–384. 20  Vignolo “La polveriera africana”, Mondoperaio, a. XXX, July–August 1977, 101. 21  On these themes, see at least Colarizi, Gervasoni, La cruna dell’ago; Spiri, La svolta socialista; Gervasoni, La guerra delle sinistre. 22  Pierini, “Il Corno d’Africa, l’Urss e il PCI”, Mondoperaio, a. XXXI, no. 3, March 1978, 117; by the same author see also “Etiopia: la disgregazione di un impero”, in Mondoperaio, a. XXXI, no. 1, January 1978, 118.

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May 1983,23 where he highlighted how the USSR and Cuba, which with Castro was carrying out an “imperialism on commission” (imperialismo per conto terzi), had little to do with ideas such as “internationalism”, especially inside a historical context where concepts like socialism, colonialism, and imperialism were changing their meaning, in Africa and elsewhere. However, many important questions remained open, such as the future of the continent’s territorial arrangements and what could be caused on the African social and cultural fabrics by non-positive tendencies like Islamic extremism. To all these aspects, two must be added, which acquired a very particular position inside Italian socialists’ cultural reflection on Africa in the 1970s and 1980s: the themes of underdevelopment and of cooperation prospects. In December 1981 Mondoperaio hosted a panel discussion between Giuseppe Calchi Novati and Paolo Sylos Labini, tellingly entitled Third World: Revolution or Reforms (Terzo mondo: rivoluzione o riforme), where, starting from Encyclopedia Treccani’s entry Underdevelopment, edited by the economist, the more catastrophic evaluations of the Third World were unmasked.24 These were all attempts by Mondoperaio to try and reflect in a more modern, less tied to Marxism, fashion, with the awareness that there was a need to accept the existence of an interdependence between the development of the West and that of “Third” and “Fourth” world countries. These arguments let a signal of increased dialogue with European socialism’s positions on decolonization shine through and the destiny of developing countries to be freed from the two superpowers’ interferences. These themes were well developed in the broad monographic dossier published by Critica Sociale on June 3, 1980, named Dossier Africa: 1960–1980,25 and in particular in Paolo Anselmi’s piece White Money and the Call of the Wild (Il denaro bianco e il richiamo della foresta). 23  Sacco, “Cubani in africa: l’imperialismo per conto terzi”, Mondoperaio, a. XXXVI, no. 5, May 1983, 55–59. 24  “Terzo mondo: rivoluzione o riforme, dibattito fra Giampaolo Calchi Novati e Paolo Sylos Labini”, Mondoperaio, a. XXXIV, no. 12, December 1981, 4. See also Giolitti, “A proposito di Sylos Labini e del sottosviluppo”, Mondoperaio, a. XXXVI, no. 4, April 1983, 104–110. Giolitti, then European Commissioner, had always been very attentive to the relations between developed and developing countries. He was convinced that, thanks to good international cooperation starting with a tighter relation between Africa and Europe, it would be possible to actualize the conditions to overcome underdevelopment. On this I take the liberty of citing Scroccu, La sinistra credibile, 84 & 137. 25  “Dossier Africa: 1960–1980”, Critica Sociale, a. LXXII, no. 11, 3 June 1980.

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A much more specific attitude was reserved by socialist culture for an area like the Horn of Africa, especially Mengistu’s Ethiopia and Siad Barre’s Somalia. The Horn of Africa was in the last stage of the 1970s an area of strong Italian interest, both because of the events connected to the post-colonial transition and because of cooperation agreements. By taking advantage of the ambivalences of the PCI, which had initially developed attention toward Somalia later diverted toward Mengistu’s Ethiopia,26 Craxi had skillfully fostered a relationship with Siad Barre’s Somalia, with which he started building a tight web of relations.27 Socialist magazines’ attitude toward this situation was one of attempting to reconstruct the cultural and historical reasons on which this approach toward that land was based, a land so unfortunate and yet so important for Italian foreign policy. Rome’s presence in the area could make a significant contribution to peace in the area and could contribute to solving the issues of Somalia, Ethiopia, and Eritrea avoiding at the same time the interferences of one of the two major powers, especially the Soviet Union. According to the socialist line, in the context of the complicated events in East Africa, the principles of self-determination and of the inviolability of the borders had to be upheld, also in order to oppose imperialisms and conditionings by the great powers, starting with the Soviet Union. The USSR did not indeed hide its willingness to control those countries in order to guard the accesses to the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean. In all of this Italy, thanks to evident historical and cultural reasons, could offer a significant patrimony of knowledge and experience and be able to assist in the Somalian and Ethiopian causes. This was highlighted by Critica Sociale in January 1980 in a special issue edited by Carlo Maria Lomartire that included on the same topic an interview with Angelo Del Boca on the history of Italian colonialism in the region.28 It also included an analysis by Paolo Pillitteri focusing on the cultural ties between Rome, Mogadishu, and Addis Ababa.29  Borruso, Il Pci e l’Africa indipendente, 204.  Del Boca, Gli italiani in Africa orientale, nostalgie delle colonie, 292–293 and Id., L’Africa nella coscienza degli italiani. Miti, memorie, errori, sconfitte, 48. 28  Lo Martire, “Africa. Fra il Mar rosso e l’oceano Indiano”, Critica Sociale, a. LXXII, no. 2, January 29, 1980, 33–39. 29  Pillitteri, “Quei cubani in verde oliva”, Critica Sociale, a. LXXII, no. 2, January 29, 1980, 40. 26 27

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By that moment, a new climate of attention toward cooperation could be noted, favored also by new specific laws, and destined to produce an impact on the socialist magazines’ cultural narration vis-à-vis African topics. The year 1981 was a watershed year for the politics of humanitarian aid, which notably increased from then also thanks to the operative impulse provided by law 38 (February 1979). The law allocated very important sums to the development of relations with Third World countries, for example, as much as 220 billion lire in the years 1981–1983 allocated in favor of Italian-Somalian cooperation with the addition of an additional credit supporting the balance of payments. Craxi sensed the possibility of acting autonomously on that line and strengthening the Italian socialists’ position vis-à-vis the relations between the world’s North and South; in that sense the work of Mondoperaio and Critica Sociale was particularly propitious as they provided the historical, cultural, and economical tools of analysis needed for the party’s action. Craxi, for that matter, wanted a PSI knowledgeable on African culture and history so that it could be among the main actors pushing for a new Italian role on the continent.30 He said so first in Tunis on February 20, 1981, during the African socialist international’s constitutive congress, where he also denounced Italian politics for its delays in African cooperation,31 and a second time during his visit to Somalia in 1985, the first visit by an Italian prime minister to the former colony. In his logic the socialists, who were historically and traditionally pacifists regarding the colonial adventures of Giolittian and Fascist Italy, could give an important contribution to The Horn of Africa’s development, helping Somalia and Ethiopia economically, politically, culturally, and also at the level of internal democracy. Socialist leadership spent this political capital very well, as shown by the fact that Craxi was seen, thanks to his factual acknowledgment of the self-determination principle, as an ally by other African leaders like Tanzania’s Julius Nyerere or Uganda’s Yoweri Musavi, who welcomed his appointment as the United Nations’ special counselor for the problems of development, peace, security, and debt of Third World countries.32 30  Del Boca, Gli italiani in Africa orientale, nostalgie delle colonie, 500. Cinema had the chance to be a very important contributor to guaranteeing this cultural contamination; see on this Vittorio Craxi who in his article “Quello schermo nel Sahel”, Critica Sociale, a. XCIV, no. January 1, 1985, 38–39, describes the success of the first Italian cinema festival in Dakar taking place a couple of weeks earlier. 31  Del Boca, Gli italiani in Africa orientale, nostalgie delle colonie, 501. 32  Borruso, L’Africa nell’orizzonte italiano degli anni Ottanta e Novanta, 361.

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There were, however, at least two other actors in the African continent drawing the socialist cultural magazines’ attention. The first one was Gaddafi’s Libya that was judged non-univocally: negatively on the one hand for his challenge to Reagan,33 for which Gaddafi was considered a reckless pirate the world had to get rid of as soon as possible “avoiding however to come to blows and to have to bring him in front of a Nuremberg trial jury after his crimes”; positively on the other, as Tripoli dictator’s laicism, vis-à-vis the growing threat of Islamic extremism that was well examined in socialist magazines’ analysis, could represent an important ally for the West.34 The second actor was South Africa, as seen above already made object of analysis in the previous decades. In the 1980s, the interest of many socialist area commentators was due to the fact that South Africa, by this time internationally isolated, was going through the declining phase of the Apartheid regime, as shown by the progressively more evident weakening of the Johannesburg regime’s rigid segregationist politics. In Mondoperaio, the question was whether this was happening because of a new awareness making it easier for Botha and Mandela to guide a responsible and peaceful transition, or if it was simply due to the already mentioned increasing international pressure. From this point of view, an article, published by the magazine in March 1986, is very interesting, where Botha’s difficulties and his doubts on Apartheid’s efficiency are analyzed. The author takes note of how both economic problems and institutional ones, connected to the difficulties of a fossilized regime, had slowed down the openings toward the black community that, also exasperated by their discriminatory treatment compared with the Colored and Indian communities, exploded in violent acts displaying all their anger. The socialist magazine was appreciative of the white South African leader’s cautious reformism, and Botha was seen as a leader capable of achieving the reforms necessary to go beyond Apartheid and ensure a future for South Africa free of any form of racial segregation.

33  Vasconi, “La Libia, l’America, la Nato”, Mondoperaio, a. XXXIX, no. 5, May 1986, 30–33, and “Dossier Libia”, Mondoperaio, a. XXXIX, no. 6, June 1986, in which particularly Baccianini and Fenizi, Tutti i nemici del colonnello: 57–60, about Gaddafi’s internal enemies and Sacco, “L’incubo americano”, Mondoperaio, a. XXXIX, no. 6, June 1986, 42–51. 34  Reference to Gaddafi as a bulwark against Islamic extremism can also be found in a text of the great student of Islam and translator of the Quran Peirone, “L’Africa è grande, ma Allah è più grande”, Critica Sociale, a. LXXII, no. 5, March 11, 1980, 55–57.

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In conclusion, it can be said with a fair degree of certainty that Mondoperaio and Critica Sociale represent a useful source to understand the socialist intellectuals’ thought evolution in relation to international politics. The articles mentioned in this chapter also show how socialist culture’s interest toward Africa was neither episodic nor lacking in originality. The journalists and intellectuals who dealt with these themes through their historical and sociological articles, their cultural references, their field reports, and book reviews proved themselves keen observers of the political, social, and cultural developments coming from post-colonial Africa, both the negative and the positive ones. Even though the articles were surely influenced by the general political context, it appears, from the analysis of the sources, that those same articles helped the PSI shape and develop an original political line vis-à-vis the relationship between Africa and European socialism. These positions helped the socialists develop, when they were in government with Craxi, an autonomous position on the situation in post-colonial Africa that was more in line with European social democracy’s culture. Italian socialist intellectuals thus gave their own reflections a more international vision and understood how the theme of the relationship between the world’s North and South was pivotal to the future of global politics and the actualization of democratic socialism’s principles.

Bibliography Acone, Andrea. “Corrispondenza dall’Algeria”, in Mondoperaio”, a. XV, no. 8–9, (August–September 1962): 27–33. Baccianini Mario, Fenizi, Luciano. “Tutti i nemici del colonnello”, Mondoperaio, a. XXXIX, no. 6, (June 1986): 57–60. Baldussi, Renato. “La conferenza afro-asiatica di Bandung”, Critica Sociale, a. XLVII, no 9, (5th May 1955). Benzoni, Alberto, Gritti, Roberto, Landolfi, Antonio. La dimensione internazionale del socialismo italiano. 100 anni di politica estera del Psi. Roma: Edizioni associate, 1993. Borruso, Paolo. “L’Italia e la crisi della decolonizzazione”. in L’Italia repubblicana nella crisi degli anni Settanta. Tra guerra fredda e distensione edited by Agostino Giovagnoli, Silvio Pons, Federico Romero, 397–442. Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino, 2003. Borruso, Paolo. Il Pci e l’Africa indipendente. Apogeo e crisi di un’utopia socialista (1956–1989). Firenze: Le Monnier, 2009, 204.

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Buonanno, Emilia. “Problemi attuali del cinema afro-arabo”, Mondoperaio, a. XIX, no. 12, (December 1966): 49–55. Calchi Novati, Giuseppe, Quartapelle Lia. “Terzo mondo. Terzomondismo alla prova del revisionismo”, in Terzo mondo addio. La Conferenza afro-asiatica di Bandung in una prospettiva storica edited by Giuseppe Calchi Novati, Lia Quartapelle, 118–119. Roma: Carocci, 2007. Calderone, Franco. “Africa addio”, Mondoperaio, a. XIX, no. 3, (March 1966): 43–44. Caracciolo, Nicola. “Lotta razziale nel Sud-Africa”, Mondoperaio, a. XIII, no 4–5, (April–May 1960): 21–24. Cirese, Antonio Maria. “Il popolo di Kikuju”, Avanti!, ed. Roma, (January 4, 1955). Colarizi, Simona. “I socialisti italiani e l’Internazionale Socialista: 1947–1958”, Mondo contemporaneo, no. 2, (2005): 5–66. Colarizi, Simona, Gervasoni, Marco. La cruna dell’ago. Craxi, il partito socialista e la crisi della Repubblica. Roma-Bari: Laterza, 2005. Craxi, Vittorio. “Quello schermo nel Sahel”, Critica Sociale, a. XCIV, no. 1, (January 1985): 38–39. Del Boca, Angelo. Gli italiani in Africa orientale, nostalgie delle colonie. Roma-­ Bari: Laterza, 1984. Del Boca, Angelo. L’Africa nella coscienza degli italiani. Miti, memorie, errori, sconfitte. Roma-Bari: Laterza, 1992. Di Nolfo, Ennio. Il socialismo italiano tra i due blocchi, in Istituto socialista di studi storici, Trent’anni di politica socialista. Atti del convegno di Parma. Roma: Mondo operaio, 1977. Faber, Gianluigi. “Il panafricanismo”, Mondoperaio, a. XXI, no. 7, (July 1968): 24–32. Favretto, Ilaria. Alle radici della svolta autonomista. PSI e Labour Party, due vicende parallele, 1956–1970. Roma: Carocci, 2003. Fenoaltea, Giorgio. “La conferenza di Bandung”, Mondoperaio, a. VIII, no. 9, (May 7, 1955a): 7–9. Fenoaltea, Giorgio. “La questione marocchina”, Mondoperaio, a. VIII, no. 20, (22nd October 1955b): 3–7. “Dossier Africa: 1960–1980”, Critica Sociale, a. LXXII, no. 11, (3 June 1980). Gervasoni, Marco. La guerra delle sinistre. Socialisti e comunisti dal ‘68 a Tangentopoli. Venezia: Marsilio, 2013. Giolitti, Antonio. “A proposito di Sylos Labini e del sottosviluppo”, Mondoperaio, a. XXXVI, no. 4, (April 1983): 104–110. Gozzano, Francesco. “La terza conferenza dei popoli africani”, Mondoperaio, a. XIV, no. 4, (April 1961): 27–31. Grossi, Gianaldo. “L’Africa dopo il nazionalismo”, Mondoperaio, a. XX, no. 12, (December 1969).

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Kenyatta, Jomo. I Kikuju edited by S.  Borelli. Milano-Roma, edizioni Avanti!, 1954. Libertini, Lucio. “Sulla conferenza del Cairo”, Mondoperaio, a. X, no. 12, (November–December 1957): 6. Lo Martire, Carlo Maria. “Africa. Fra il Mar rosso e l’oceano Indiano”, Critica Sociale, a. LXXII, no. 2, (January 29, 1980): 33–39. Luzzatto, Lucio, “Un congresso contro il colonialismo”, Mondoperaio, a. X, no. 12, (November–December 1957): 5. Magrini, Liliana. “I difficili equilibri dell’Africa nera”, Mondoperaio, a. XXVIII, no. 3, (March 1975a): 80. Magrini, Liliana. “Socialismi africani”, Mondoperaio, a. XVIII, no. 8–9, (August– September 1975b): 7. Marie, Jean Jacques. “La stretta algerina”, in Critica Sociale, a. LII, no. 21, (5 November 1960): 559–560. Nenni, Pietro. Diari. I nodi di politica estera. edited by Domenico Zucaro. Milano: Sugarco, 1974. Peirone, Federico. “L’Africa è grande, ma Allah è più grande”, Critica Sociale, a. LXXII, no. 5, (March 11, 1980): 55–57. Pierini, Franco. “Il Corno d’Africa, l’Urss e il PCI”, Mondoperaio, a. XXXI, no. 3, (March 1978a): 117. Pierini, Franco. “Etiopia: la disgregazione di un impero, in Mondoperaio, a. XXXI, no. 1, (January 1978b): 118. Pillitteri, Paolo. “Quei cubani in verde oliva”, Critica Sociale, a. LXXII, no. 2, (January 29, 1980): 40. Sacco, Giuseppe. “Cubani in africa: l’imperialismo per conto terzi”, Mondoperaio, a. XXXVI, no. 5, (May 1983): 55–59. Sacco, Giuseppe. “L’incubo Americano”, Mondoperaio, a. XXXIX, no. 6, (June 1986): pp. 42–51. Salvi, Maurizio. “L’indipendenza del Mozambico”, Mondoperaio, a. XVIII, no. 8–9, (August–September 1975): 80. Scroccu, Gianluca. La sinistra credibile. Antonio Giolitti tra socialismo, riformismo ed europeismo (1964–2010). Roma: Carocci, 2016. Spiri, Andrea. (edited by). Bettino Craxi, il socialismo europeo e il sistema internazionale. Venezia: Marsilio, 2006. Spiri, Andrea. La svolta socialista. Il Psi e la leadership di Craxi dal Midas a Palermo (1976–1981). Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino, 2012. Tamburrano, Giuseppe, “La Francia e l’Algeria”, in Mondoperaio, a. XIII, no. 2, (February 1960): 8–13. Tamburrano, Giuseppe, “Responsabilità dell’Algeria”, in Mondoperaio, a. XV, no. 8–9, (August–September 1962): 5. “Terzo mondo: rivoluzione o riforme, dibattito fra Giampaolo Calchi Novati e Paolo Sylos Labini”, Mondoperaio, a. XXXIV, no. 12, (December 1981): 4.

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Uboldi, Raffaello. “L’Egitto in movimento”, Mondoperaio, a. X, no. 2–3, (February–March 1957a): 121. Uboldi, Raffaello. “Algeri: via una sola d’uscita”, Mondoperaio, a. X, no. 5, (June 1957b): 16. Valente, Augusto. “L’Urss e i regimi di sinistra del terzo mondo”, Critica Sociale, a. LXV, no. 16/17, (August 20–September 5 1973): 383–384. Vasconi, Luciano. “Dal Congo a Cuba un solo problema”, Mondoperaio, a. XIII, no. 9, (September 1960): 18–21. Vasconi, Luciano. “La Libia, l’America, la Nato”, Mondoperaio, a. XXXIX, no. 5, (May 1986): 30–33. Vignolo, Mino. “La polveriera africana”, Mondoperaio, a. XXX, (July–August 1977): 101. Vittorelli, Paolo. “La nuova prospettiva internazionale”, Mondoperaio, a. XIII, no. 12, (December 1960): 3–5.

CHAPTER 12

Solidarity and Italian Labor Movement Culture: CGIL Intellectuals and Revision of the CGIL’s International Relations (1980–1982) Enrico Serventi Longhi

12.1   Trade Union CGIL and Its International Relations The purpose of this chapter is to examine the debate over international policy generated by events in Poland in 1980 with regard to the Italian trade union movement’s most important member, the Italian General Confederation of Labor (CGIL). On the basis of writings and some internal documents, significant interpretations emerge regarding Solidarity’s fight by those within the CGIL responsible for cultural policy. This reconsideration took place as part of an extended process involving not only a redefinition by the union of its relations with the political left but also a rethinking of its association with “the socialist camp” and traditional categories of Marxist analysis.

E. Serventi Longhi (*) Università di Roma “La Sapienza”, Rome, Italy © The Author(s) 2019 A. Tarquini, A. Guiso (eds.), Italian Intellectuals and International Politics, 1945–1992, Italian and Italian American Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-24938-0_12

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This study has to take into account the particular role of intellectuals in an organization such as a trade union that based its identity on being a direct or representative expression of a collectivity of workers. For this reason, it would be incorrect to isolate particular individuals, while it would be far more profitable to look to the collegiality of a debate taking place in the CGIL’s two cultural offices (Office of Studies and Office of International Relations) and the editorial board of its house organ, Rassegna Sindacale (“Trade Union Review”). The CGIL was founded in 1906, starting from a socialist and reformist matrix; after the Fascist interruption, it was re-founded in 1944 as a unitary union, bringing together Social-communist, Catholic and democratic currents in a single entity. The dominance of the Social-communist current became evident after the decision to call a general strike in 1948, following the attempted assassination of Italian Communist Party head Palmiro Togliatti. This involved a choice not shared by the other currents that, in line with divisions taking place in general in Italian society, took advantage of the situation to set up their own confederations: thus, the Italian Confederation of Trade Unions (CISL) for Catholics and the Italian Labor Union (UIL) for secular democrats were born. Polarization in Italian society between government forces and Social-communist opposition induced the CGIL to align without delay with the “socialist camp,” both at a national and international level: it consolidated an exclusive relationship with the Italian Communist and Socialist parties (PCI and PSI respectively) and adhered to the World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU) from its founding in Paris in 1945. The WFTU was an international organization that, after an initial period, represented exclusively unions from the “socialist camp” from 1949 onward, reflecting the foreign policy interests of the Soviet bloc. An ideological tension prevailed in Italy throughout the 1950s—a labor movement little “Cold War”—that sublimated trade union demands to the needs of a party system that left little autonomy to social forces, weakened the labor movement and, in fact, favored the (European) liberal policies of the first Christian Democratic governments.1 This generated profound discomfort within the CGIL with regard to conceiving trade unions as mere “transmission belts” of the Socialcommunist parties and the Soviet bloc. Such a concept did not take into account the CGIL’s national and reformist culture, which continued to 1

 Pepe et al., “La CGIL e la costruzione della democrazia,” 169 ff.

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prevail although often sacrificed in the name of mounting opposition to government policies. The contradictions exploded in 1956 on the occasion of Soviet intervention in Hungary, when CGIL Secretary Giuseppe Di Vittorio ­condemned the military choice, attracting the anger and disapproval of the PCI’s leadership. The clash ended with a significant, but nonetheless limited, affirmation of the right of the union to criticize the Italian Communist Party.2 The economic boom of the 1960s, the reformist policies of center-left governments and the growth of stronger social movements favored a new concept of trade unionism, more attentive to its intermediary role between society and institutions and more determined to carve out a defined space for trade union autonomy. A trade unionism of this new type, according to Trentin and Foa, should make autonomous representation of workers as a whole the reason for breaking dependence on the party system and again drawing close to (notwithstanding various distinguished and diverse internal critics) the other political cultures, particularly the democratic and Catholic. The Italian labor movement’s “golden season” culminated with the passage in 1970 of the Workers Statute and, two years later, the reunification of the CGIL, CISL and UIL in a Unitary Federation.3 Until then, the few positions taken by trade union officials regarding problems of international order did not arise out of the logic of the Cold War. Far from showing elements of the liberty and autonomy it demanded on a national level, the CGIL’s stance on international matters was subordinated to positions taken by the Italian Communist Party. The PCI’s post-World War II strategy was characterized in particular by its dependence on and conflict with Soviet leadership and by ideas proposed by Togliatti—following the Soviet Union’s destalinization process and the establishment of the European Economic Community—in terms of autonomy and polycentrism. If the concept of autonomy from Soviet power had an exquisitely national character, that of polycentrism implied the creation of a specific regional space, that of Western Europe, where the national Communist parties composing it—the Spanish, French and Italian—should connect and integrate, contributing more efficiently to strengthening the international “socialist camp.” This was a minimalist vision of polycentrism which, however, also included potential “strategic”

 Guerra and Trentin, Di Vittorio e l’ombra di Stalin.  Bordogna, Le relazioni industriali in Italia, 191–195. Torre Santos, I sindacati italiani nel secondo dopoguerra, 80. Loreto, L’“anima bella” del sindacato, 270 ff. 2 3

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consequences, such as the development of an international political ­analysis bringing into question the USSR’s primacy in the socialist camp.4 Coordination of the activities of the Western Communist parties proceeded well in the first half of the 1960s, but the Czechoslovak crisis of 1968 brought a sudden halt, with differences emerging among the several parties (especially as between the Italian and French) and the limits of a revisionist process still anchored in the “socialist camp.”5 All the same, between 1968 and 1969 acute problems and profound divergences emerged with regard to the Soviet regime, although not to the point of desiring a complete rupture. Affirmation of the principle of diversity and freedom to criticize regarding Soviet policy became acceptable, without formulating a genuinely alternative model to actual socialism and a genuinely incisive criticism of the logic of the blocs.6 Together with the French Communist Party, new PCI Secretary Enrico Berlinguer developed the strategy of Eurocommunism between 1969 and 1973, a product of the generalized wish of Western Communist leaders to harmonize their own policies and renegotiate their tie to a Soviet “mother.”7 The new orientation was formalized in 1973, as a response to the crisis in Chile, and had as a consequence for domestic politics recognition of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and opening of the way for the “Historic Compromise” between the PCI and the Christian Democrats.8 Given the substantive change this represented in terms of redefining international relations, the Soviets considered Eurocommunism a genuine menace and, in the context of the ending of détente, it was abandoned between 1978 and 1979.9 Throughout the 1970s the social and trade union forces orbiting around the Party were affected by the tensions between the PCI and the USSR and, given a larger space in which to act, took advantage of the situation to make more courageous choices in their international positioning, which brought about a break with trade unionism of the Soviet bloc. The CGIL’s season of repositioning began in 1973 with its joining of the European Trade Union Confederation and proceeded apace with official  Bracke, Proletarian Internationalism, 7–44.  Bracke, Quale socialismo, quale distensione. 6  Pons, L’Italia e il PCI, 63–87. 7  Pons, La rivoluzione globale, 345. 8  Sassoon, The strategy of the Italian Communist Party. Pons, “La formazione della politica internazionale di Berlinguer,” 569–609. 9  Bracke, Quale socialismo, quale distensione, 277 ff. 4 5

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exit from the WFTU in 1978.10 Bruno Trentin, one of the Italian union’s most sensitive theoreticians, justified this international repositioning ­strategy by the need to break with the logic of the Cold War and strengthen the European trade union movement, with the objective of fostering the processes of disarmament and détente.11 Trentin’s reflections on CGIL international policy were part of a process of rethinking an array of fundamental trade union principles. These implicated overcoming the centrality of the working class, an organic relationship with a political party, the myth of salary equality and, at an international level, abandoning the Soviet model based on economic planning and the primacy of the socialist state.12 This was, however, mainly a national exercise, one that seemed satisfied with incorporating and encouraging the realignment taking place in Italy’s leftist parties (PCI and PSI) after the Czech crisis. For Trentin this involved positioning and rendering the Secretariat’s choices and decisions more homogeneous—a Secretariat composed of Secretary General Luciano Lama (a Communist tied to Enrico Berlinguer) and deputies Agostino Marianetti and Giacinto Militello, both tied to other associated parties. Marianetti was a Socialist tied to Bettino Craxi (at the time a rising star in the PSI) and therefore all the more inclined to support a profound renewal of the working class left in a SocialDemocratic and anti-Soviet sense. Militello, a member of the Italian Socialist Party of Proletarian Unity—a formation of the radical left—exemplified the radical spirit in the union and intended to connect repositioning with a clear-cut pacifist program, one that would enhance the role of European institutions and national unions in a not only conciliatory but anti-capitalist mode.13 In the face of a leadership that, all things considered, was reluctant to deepen contradictions in the great international issues stood a group of “organic” intellectuals in the Studies and International offices, who elaborated a vision that was more original and closely tied to the policy of détente. In labor movement terms, the realignment was designed to assimilate Scandinavian and German experiences, of a Social-Democratic nature, and promote its renewal in terms of class collaboration and worker management. In international terms, this pointed toward strengthening  Ciampani and Gabaglio, L’Europa sociale e la Confederazione europea dei sindacati.  Wittenberg, “Che pensano gli americani.” 12  Trentin, Lavoro e Libertà. Foa, Il cavallo e la torre. 13  Militello, “Posizione e iniziative della Cgil.” 10 11

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the international trade union movement by means of participation in the process of European integration and encouraging departure from the static system of international bipolar competition. The myth of a “Europe of the workers,” based on the autonomy of the labor movements of the same national/political parties, provided the framework best adapted to break the logic of the blocs still dividing the continent. Aldo Bonaccini, the CGIL official responsible for international policy, repeatedly placed the question of an overall restructuring of the union’s international relationship at the center of debate, connecting it directly to the formation of continental political institutions. Bonaccini was one of the most faithful members of the current inside the CGIL that had been proposing the union adopt a Europeanist stance without, however, giving way to Social-Democratic impulses. The concept of enlarging the European Community, according to the Europeanists, would be useful in creating a topic of international policy tending toward incompatibility with the existence of the Atlantic Pact. CGIL’s reformists linked that perspective to the concept of trade union autonomy and emphasized the significance of an integrated Europe as being an alternative to the Soviet state as well. Moved by the debate among his cultural office colleagues, Marianetti began in 1978 to speak about “Eurosyndicalism,” a term that, with respect to the formula “Eurocommunism,” was somewhat late in arriving. But it had a completely original connotation, based on a concept of autonomy of the trade union movement, a force potentially more dynamic in democratic societies and better equipped to renew socialist ones, that was completely absent from the political strategy of the Communist leadership.14 But the proposal of “Eurosyndicalism,” which perhaps represented the most advanced form of a new model of trade unionism, one ready to confront new international challenges, attracted little support—indifference at the union’s grassroots and suspicion at the confederation’s top.

12.2   Solidarity’s Victory Reformists and socialists hoped the trade union movement could succeed, by supporting the continent’s political forces, in relaunching the process of international détente. That hope was dashed by the first European elections in June 1979, which saw the return of blocs and an outcome that  Wittenberg, “Intervista con Agostino Marianetti.”

14

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rewarded moderate forces.15 Nonetheless, it was the failure of the political initiative that convinced CGIL leaders, rather than to aim at supporting political undertakings, to develop cooperation among Eastern and Western Europe’s trade union forces.16 It was in this light that the autonomous initiative of the CGIL and Unitary Federation to protest against political repression in the USSR under way between 1978 and 1979 should be seen. The persecution by Soviet authorities of the Russian nuclear physicist, who for years had been involved in a campaign for civil rights in his country, led to a rupture in bilateral relations with Soviet unions. This involved a highly polemical choice, perhaps the first such ever undertaken by a substantially communist trade union confederation, with a follow-through choice to highlight various reformist processes taking place in other countries in the Eastern bloc. The Office of Studies’ October 1979 visit to East German unions served to accentuate the two entities’ common “reformist” bent, revealing the possibility that the trade union movement of all Europe—both that of the European Economic Community and the Council of Mutual Economic Assistance—might take part to a greater degree than that of traditional political parties in a process of institutional renewal.17 An interview with Hungarian trade union leader Sandor Gaspar that appeared in the June 1980 issue of Rassegna Sindacale underlined the originality of the new economic policy, based on salary reform and its linkage to productivity, approved in that country. Themes of the greater autonomy of economic forces and the role of unions as part of a more organic co-responsibility of management, on both sides of the Iron Curtain, emerged in the background.18 Francesco Cuozzo, a member of the Studies Office and editor of Rassegna Sindacale, launched a profound criticism of the first 30 years of economic planning and denounced the impasse experienced by socialist regimes, given their inability to adjust industrial policy to their economies’ changing needs.19 Cuozzo’s analysis underlined the disquiet of both the management and workforce in Eastern European factories, with particular focus on the developing situation in Poland—soon destined to monopolize the attention of all trade union observers.  Magnani, “Elezioni europee.”  Wittenberg, “Due sistemi diversi.” 17  Wittenberg, “La Cgil in Rdt.” 18  Wittenberg, “Il salario non è un premio di presenza.” 19  Cuozzo, “Trent’anni dopo.” 15 16

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The Polish worker committees’ propaganda activities and clandestine fight had been receiving little attention in Italy. The Helsinki accords of 1975, viewed as the peak of the détente process and considered a great success for Soviet foreign policy, had for a long time promoted social and political change in Eastern Europe, demonstrating the limits of the “popular democracies” with respect to human rights and, in fact, legitimizing the dissident movements.20 Of all countries in the Eastern bloc, it was Poland perhaps that had accumulated the most experience in matters of conflict with Soviet power. Worker protests in 1956 had taken on political implications such as to force Soviet authorities to change the Polish government. At first the new President, Wladyslaw Gomulka, had shown himself open to a series of economic-social reforms, only progressively to close every door to popular requests for political openings. A supporter of Soviet repression in Czechoslovakia, Gomulka had fallen into disgrace after violent incidents that broke out in 1970 at the shipyards in Gdansk, Stettin and other Baltic localities following widespread worker protests against pricing policies.21 With the consent of and support from Moscow, Edward Gierek was appointed as new head of government, able to guarantee overcoming of the most acute phase of social tensions. During the period of détente, the Communist authorities’ less rigid attitude made possible the resurgence of an impressive trade union movement that, taking advantage of the post-­ Helsinki accord climate, established links with dissident groups. A series of political and cultural circles took shape alongside the labor movement, closely tied to political émigrés and support groups in Western Europe. The most important of these was the Committee for Worker Defense (KOR), which worked hard to promote a process of overall political renewal based on working-class initiative. As part of a profound process reconsidering the nature of trade unionism, KOR intellectuals wound up clandestinely denouncing communism’s totalitarian character and questioned the socialist state’s professed pro-worker nature. KOR called for a national and anti-communist alliance between the secular community and the Polish episcopate—something that would be necessary to bring about the progressive outlook that was of interest especially for workers. The episcopate, 20  Bracke, Quale socialismo, quale distensione, p. 256; Hitchcock, The Struggle for Europe, 301–310. 21  Kramer, “The Soviet Union and the 1956 Crises,” 163–214. Korbonski, “Soviet Policy Toward Poland,” 61–92.

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in fact, while after years of going along with socialist g ­ overnments to the extent of its ability, had become the sole institution in Polish society that could be an alternative to Communist power.22 The USSR’s December 1979 invasion of Afghanistan provoked international tension that, in combination with the Polish government’s evident inability to adjust the economy’s productive system, caused economic difficulty and led, in July 1980, to a rise in the price of meat. This brought about new demonstrations, capable of arousing widespread international attention. Strike coordinators, who once again were active in the Gdansk and Stettin shipyards, got together with the Solidarity movement, which became the most important embodiment of dissent in the entire Eastern bloc. Notwithstanding the change in government, the Communist authorities were constrained under pressure from the protests to sign the Gdansk accords, by which government institutions for the first time recognized the trade union movement’s independence and accepted, although in measured doses, the principle of separation of state and society that seemed little compatible with communist ideology. As for the CGIL, as noted, events in Poland arrived at a particularly sensitive time in regard to reformist processes taking place in the “popular democracies” and the European trade union movement’s role in supporting and quickening them. Cuozzo singled out the genuine novelty in the Polish case of the marked association of traditional economic demands for better working conditions with more advanced ones for political liberty, civil rights and trade union autonomy. He went beyond that, considering the existence of a free labor movement hardly compatible with “present socialist structures,” characterized by central planning and its related bureaucratic apparatus. A sole resource remained by which genuine socialism might reform itself—that is to say, by enlarging the progressive role of the trade union movement. As the Polish case showed, the trade unions were the only institution with an ability to transform the socialist system, cutting loose the state’s authoritarian and bureaucratic mechanisms from within while, at the same time, preventing its final collapse.23 If Cuozzo’s analysis involved above all the internal situation in Poland, valuing a concept of the trade unions as the sole force capable of driving social issues in particular national contexts, other observers linked the process under way more directly to the crisis in the world situation. According  Soutou, La guerre de Cinquante ans, 622–623.  Cuozzo, “La scelta c’è stata… e domani?.”

22 23

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to Giancarlo Meroni, who headed the CGIL’s International Office after Bonaccini left the union, Solidarity’s successful trade union initiative was capable of permanently ending with the Cold War’s pervasiveness and “making a first order contribution to overcoming the political and ideological bipolar competition that had been the Second World War’s paralyzing legacy.”24 Aware of the limits of the PCI’s strategy, Meroni believed it necessary that the Party overcome its strategy and reticence, to be open to the trade unionism of the West and pay increasing attention to Solidarity’s accomplishments—the better to grasp and value its most significant revisionist dynamics.25 Solidarity’s national and Catholic nature did not go unnoticed, but was even pointed to as the element fundamental to understanding its richness and originality. Solidarity showed, even for Western trade unionism, how the elements of trade unionism, religious faith and different political cultures could coexist in a workers’ movement. The movement’s pluralism gave value to the expression, “autonomy of the social,” which confirmed the oddness of practices among traditional ideologies. According to Militello, the “autonomy of the social” that Solidarity’s struggle affirmed could serve as a model for a new culture of Italian trade unionism—more open to the pluralism necessary to promote a genuinely democratic society.26 The terms of this rethinking about trade unionism seemed still anchored, however, to traditional divisions in the labor movement. Apart from themes of economic cooperation, the role of civil society and protection of human rights little echoed of the Helsinki accords that at the time had affirmed, even in international debate, democratic values in the Western sense of the term. Other Western unions had already developed a clear perception of genuine socialism’s failings and, without hesitation, enthusiastically backed Solidarity.27 But within the CGIL an unresolved tension persisted between, on the one hand, a concept more disposed to acknowledge the failings of regimes with a planned economy and, on the other, one (yet prevalent) that exalted the worth of unions as a means for promoting political democratization but did not involve leaving “the socialist camp.” This “camp” was still seen as the better adapted and, perhaps, the only one able to combine the widespread call for greater political  Meroni, “Fiducia condizionata,” 28 and 37.  Ciampani, “La CGIL e il suo ingresso,” 15–30. 26  Militello, “L’autonomia del sociale.” 27  Goddeeris, Solidarity with Solidarity. 24 25

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democracy with a system that would succeed nonetheless in promoting economic equality and social justice.28 This musing on the Polish question revealed a naïve faith in the effectiveness of a progressive fight undertaken directly by workers and union representatives in a context of genuine socialism. Meroni explained the difficulty in relations between party and labor movement in Poland by linking them to external factors, such as the resurgence of political ideology in the blocs and a slowing down of the process of détente, without considering the impassible limits imposed by the authoritarian and unreformable nature of the socialist regimes.29 Even in October 1980, the International Office considered socialist and reformist sensitivities prevalent in Solidarity and expressed assurance in “Polish society’s determination to manage itself” and “Polish society’s recovery of its cultural distinctiveness, history and even its contradictions.” These positions were considered not to be incompatible with a communist government capable of opening itself to the demands of society.30 There was no shortage of shades of opinion within the CGIL, a consequence of the differing ideological positions of the union’s executives.31 Socialist Marianetti and Studies Office staff underscored the absolute primacy of social autonomy and strongly suggested trade unionism and a planned economy were incompatible.32 Communist Militello and International Office staff, more cautious in regard to relations with the Soviet bloc, were happy to emphasize renewed rapport in Poland between party, government and union and asserted compatibility between trade union autonomy and economic programming was not only possible but constituted the basis for a strategy to pursue even in Italy.33 However, there was a fundamental point of agreement between these two positions: The concept of sindacalità (a stronger form of “trade unionism”)—understood as the inherent power of trade unions and the possibility they could embody the most dynamic element in any political regime. That concept was pointed to as the dominant note in the January 1981 trip to Rome of Lech Walesa, representative of the Solidarity  See the statement of the International Office, Rome, September 4, 1980, in Cgil Archives, “Cartella Delegazioni per l’estero,” 1980. 29  Magnani, “La CGIL e Solidarność,” 115–118. 30  Magnani, “In nome della solidarietà.” 31  Wittenberg, “Qualche domanda sulla Polonia.” 32  Lauzi, “Al centro della democrazia polacca.” 33  Fusi, “Perché vogliamo incontrare gli operai di Danzica.” 28

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­ elegation that was visiting Italian unions. A celebration was staged at the d Savoy theater in Rome, praising the Polish group for its ability to guide the worker movement’s progressive thrusts and protect against eventual antisocialist tendencies.34 A worsening of tensions in Poland in March 1981 aroused concern in Italian unions because it seemed clear Solidarity’s rank and file wanted to go beyond its own leadership and bring into question the very nature of the socialist system. For their part, communist authorities once again responded by taking orders from Moscow, naming General Wojciech Jaruzelski (a former Defense Minister long known as “Moscow’s man”) the head of government.35 The Solidarity crisis accordingly required new choices and new solutions that would rise above the rhetoric of sindacalità and consider the ups and downs of the Polish political-ideological scene. Given the union leadership’s inability to take a clear position, it fell once again to the intellectuals to put a review process into operation. Meroni’s International Office this time did not limit itself to symbolic criticism of the Warsaw government’s threatened repression or rationalize it on the basis of international tensions. Instead it condemned the vices that now seemed second nature to the Polish government: “We do not deny that, in fact, an authoritarian and totalitarian vision of socialism exists.” This authoritarian drift could be dealt with by recuperating the working class’s decision-making political role and speeding up the reform process: “Revitalization of the State and improvement in the economy and [the government’s] institutions requires either profound democratization of the party or political pluralism.”36

12.3   The Coup d’état On December 13, 1981, the illusion of a democratic renewal of Poland’s socialist system, based on trade union action, vanished with Wojciech Jaruzelski’s declaration of a state of siege and arrest orders against multiple Solidarity leaders. Italian trade union leaders immediately condemned this resort to force. The Polish government’s repressive act shattered the dream that a pluralist system could be achieved in actual socialism, with

 Scabello, “Walesa a Roma.”  Soutou, La guerre de Cinquante ans, 624.ges. 36  Meroni, “Un pesante avvertimento.” 34 35

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guarantees of autonomy for society, without abolishing collective ownership of the means of production.37 The Studies and International Relations Offices acknowledged not only comments that came from the Socialist Party but also ideas advanced by PCI officials who, on the occasion of the Polish government’s repression, spoke of the exhaustion of the renovating and liberating spirit of the Soviet model and the organic limits of a regime of state socialism.38 CGIL Secretary General Luciano Lama mused that all Soviet systems seemed to be stricken by “sclerosis in the economy and increased costs that reduce the economic system’s productivity and lead to crises that are not only economic but political.” The most serious contradiction, at any rate, remained that of a regime that reiterated it was speaking in the name of the working class “without losing sleep over whether the working class recognized this representativeness; indeed, it pretends to continue to act on the workers’ behalf even as the working class resoundingly denies such claim to representativeness.”39 The debate subsequently involved others, even at a local level, such as CGIL officials linked to (PSI) Piedmont Regional Secretary Fausto Bertinotti and Emilia-Romagna Regional Secretary Giuliano Cazzola. Harsh positions were taken against the “totalitarian” culture that engulfed not only the Soviet but also the Italian Left. For Bertinotti it was vital to side without hesitation with Solidarity, holding the fight of workers inherently democratic and, together with all forces—“even those otherwise interested” (i.e., those liberal and Catholic)—starting a profound reconsideration over the nature of countries of the East.40 For Cazzola this review had to be penetrating, and the Italian Left had to get to “thinking of itself as an integral part of the great progressive alignments of the West, not being the other face of capitalism but the bearers of culture, values, political models, and social alternatives to those of conservative and reactionary forces.” For this, according to Cazzola, judgment regarding Polish events could not be anything commonplace: “this is in fact a different concept of politics, of society, of civil and human relations, of all those values about which people in the course of history were prepared even to give their lives.”41 Ready to share the comments submitted by numerous mid-level officials, the Studies Office in January 1982 proposed to formalize the  Wittenberg, “Precipita la crisi.”  Napolitano, “Polonia, una vicenda cruciale.” 39  D’Agostini, “In nome della classe operaia.” 40  Federazione dei Lavoratori Metalmeccanici – Piemonte, Polonia ’81. 41  Cazzola, “Emilia-Romagna: revisione per tutta la sinistra.” 37 38

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a­ nti-­Soviet breakthrough at a round table led by Michele Magno. All those who participated took note that Eastern systems could not be changed and had exhausted any margin for democratic advance.42 It had become necessary to point out for the masses new models of relations between state, trade union and society, beginning with recognition of the value of SocialDemocratic models—the only ones able to describe in completely new terms the relationship between free market and programming and, consequently, between democracy and socialism.43 The joint pro-Solidarity rally called for February 13, 1982, was supposed to ratify rejection of socialism as experienced in the East; overcoming it was to signify acceptance that more advanced forms of democratic society were needed.44 However, notwithstanding the commitment of CGIL cultural office staff and the presence of a large number of union officials, this initiative proved a substantial failure, unable to engage the rank and file and harbinger for a series of protests against this revisionist turn.45 The pro-Solidarity campaign remained weak and, for all practical purposes, the preserve of lay or Catholic political and trade union leaders or of social forces (such as Communion and Liberation) outside the labor movement.46 On September 13, 1982, the editorial staff at socialist journal Mondoperaio held a further discussion. Alongside calls to step up support efforts for the Polish movement, Studies Office head Michele Magno responded by listing the many past and future actions promoted in support of Solidarity and revived his plea to engage the European trade union movement. He had to admit, however, that most workers remained substantially indifferent.47 In line with pressures coming from other trade union confederations and the cultural milieu of Italy’s Democratic Left, and faced with the ­difficulties of energizing workers in the labor movement, CGIL trade union officials emphasized the open and united character of the pro-Solidarity mobilization. To stress the overlap between the more open exponents of social Catholicism and the labor movement’s new cultural horizons, Rassegna Sindacale hosted several gatherings of Catholic 42  See the statement of Agostino Marianetti, Situazione polacca: iniziative e riflessioni, January 8, 1982, Circular n. 3570, in Cgil Archives, “Cartella Raccolta Circolari,” 1982. 43  Wittenberg, “Democrazia e socialismo.” 44  Magno, “Dopo la Polonia quale distensione?.” 45  Filios, “Solidarietà con la Polonia.” 46  Tortorelli, Il lavoro della talpa, 25. 47  “Lettera di Magno, Gabaglio e Levati.”

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i­ntellectuals. The figure of new Pope Karol Wojtyla was analyzed and reworked in Europeanist terms by the priest Gianni Baget Bozzo—theologian, historian and Catholic intellectual who, in that very period, finished the “parable” of (a Catholic Church) drawing closer to the Italian Socialist Party. He considered the idea of a potential social transformation based on “the Polish model,” that is, commitment to rebuild a bridge between East and West within a “primacy of a culture of the nation and family over the State.” The fight against materialism and imperialism on which Wojtyla’s message hinged, according to Baget Bozzo’s reading, was filled with anti-­totalitarian and democratic significance that integrated well with the cultural transformation taking place in the CGIL.  The same Baget Bozzo perceived a convergence between the Church—which although conservative on a theological plane could become progressive on the political one—and the trade union movement that, in turn, was providing a basis for profound cultural renewal in terms of civil society’s autonomy and political liberty.48 At the height of Jaruzelski’s repression, a delegation of some 20 European trade unionists (among them Agostino Marianetti and Solidarity Counselor Bohdan Cywinski) met in audience with John Paul II.  The Pope recognized in Solidarity “a character of authentic representation of the workers, acknowledged and confirmed by the organs of power,” and called it an “autonomous and independent trade union…concerned about being a constructive force for the nation.” Wojtyla repeated that, in general (and not only in Poland), “unions assume a specific function, which is not political in the sense of seeking political power, but which acquire general social importance.”49 Wojtyla’s October 1982 trip to Poland and the end of the state of siege did not appear to stop the process of ideological revision in the union, even as the worker initiative underlying the rise of Solidarity appeared now to have given way to a nationalist and even confessional one.50 Still, the mass of unionized workers began to reject this shift in the CGIL’s international policy and progressively distance themselves from the pro-Solidarity campaign. According to various observers, the ghost of “partisans for peace” (pacifists of a pro-Soviet persuasion who betrayed the revivalist wind out of Poland) reappeared at the great rally—of evidently and  Baget Bozzo, “Papa Wojtyla e Santa polacca chiesa.”  Santini, “Il Papa chiede.” 50  Olivero, “L’attività dell’Ufficio Internazionale,” 55–56. 48 49

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e­ xclusively an anti-American cast—called on October 22 for peace and against Euro-missiles. The CGIL’s leadership, confirming its commitment in support of Solidarity, refused to join the rally. This deepened the crisis of confidence that increasingly distanced the CGIL’s leadership from its base, which saw this as confirmation of the union bureaucracy’s opportunistic drift and as much a proof of the absence of a credible alternative to Soviet communism as to aggressive neo-liberalist capitalism.51 On the other hand, CGIL cultural office staff, even in the absence of the hoped-for mass mobilization, continued to stand by Solidarity—collecting funds and sending assistance. The CGIL was, in fact, among the organizations that in January 1982 founded the Italian Trade Union Support Committee, which remained active until 1989. That solidarity did not imply, on the other hand, any further attempt at autonomous thinking in regard to international relations. On the contrary, it was accompanied by a return to the concept of a working-class struggle based on economic disputes taking place in an exclusively national framework. The pro-Solidarity campaign’s limited effectiveness testified to the fact that, notwithstanding the efforts of Cuozzo, Meroni and Magno to articulate and develop a more intense and mature ideological worldview, obstacles remained.52 The debate seemed unable to appreciate the profound nature of crises involving the legitimacy of Soviet communism and the challenge of the “liberal revolution” Ronald Reagan was about to launch. Consideration remained suspended, self-criticism was absent, and there seemed no willingness to take into account an evolution in the relationships between national politics and the global economic dynamics brought about in the context of a “new Cold War.” Once again it became necessary to choose between the worlds of capitalism and socialism. The group of CGIL intellectuals did not understand, as has been pointed out, that the Polish movement represented “a new nail in communism’s coffin.”53 Solidarity required a choice: either for one of the two worlds or for a radical shift that, getting right down to it, the CGIL did not want to do. Something of the Polish experience remained in its culture. Still, it was very little compared with the dramatic consequences of the crisis faced by the peoples’ democracies of the “socialist camp.” Vittorio Foa pointed out how the relationship with Solidarity helped overcome a “monastic con Wittenberg, “Manifestazione per la pace.”  Maffei, La CGIL di fronte alle lotte di liberazione nell’Est europeo, 221. 53  Soutou, La guerre de Cinquante ans, 625. 51 52

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ception of the working class” that did not perceive the coexistence, in the mind-set of workers (indeed in every single worker), of different concepts of solidarity and even a range of selfish interests.54 In certain contexts, a sense of national consciousness, religious conscience and democratic conscience could support, complement and enrich class-consciousness. The effort of interpretation undertaken by the CGIL in these months of the Polish crisis strengthened pluralism and trade union autonomy and served to enhance the “natural” differences within the labor movement. What it did not do was develop an alternative worldview, one capable of re-equipping the labor movement to face the crisis international communism was undergoing and new challenges in the global economy. Union intellectuals failed to grasp the problems Solidarity posed, even in terms of relations between state and society and the concept of class struggle. In the face of an irreversible crisis in the Soviet bloc and the traditional trade union movement, they lacked the will to overcome the movement’s bureaucratic and unidirectional nature. On the one hand, in the face of hesitation and reticence on the part of union leadership, intellectuals and staff demonstrated centrifugal impulses that led them to search out new areas for involvement outside the organization’s “cage,” and, on the other, intensification on the part of ordinary workers to show little willingness to digest hard-to-understand, uncertain and contradictory cultural and ideological changes. This was the profound confusion that contributed to the CGIL’s crisis of identity and confusion in subsequent years.55

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 Marcenaro and Foa, Riprendere tempo, 113.  Accornero, La parabola del sindacato.

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Pons, Silvio. “L’Italia e il PCI nella politica estera dell’URSS di Brežnev.” In Tra guerra fredda e distensione. L’Italia repubblicana nella crisi degli anni settanta, edited by Agostino Giovagnoli and Silvio Pons. Soveria Mannelli (CZ): Rubbettino Editore, 2003. Santini, Alceste. “Il Papa chiede a Jaruzelski di legalizzare Solidarność.” l’Unità, February 10, 1982. Sassoon, Donald. The strategy of the Italian Communist Party. From the Resistance to the Historic Compromise. London: Pinter Publishers, 1981. Scabello, Sandro. “Walesa a Roma: con i sindacati italiani un confronto sul movimento operaio polacco.” Il Corriere della Sera, January 14, 1981. Soutou, George-Henri. La guerre de Cinquante ans. Les relations Est-Ouest 1943–1990. Paris: Fayard, 2001. Torre Santos, Jorge. “I sindacati italiani nel secondo dopoguerra.” In Per una storia del sindacato in Europa, edited by Maurizio Antonioli. Milan-Turin: Bruno Mondadori Editore, 2012. Tortorelli, Gianfranco. Il lavoro della talpa: storia delle Edizioni E/O dal 1979 al 2005. Bologna: Pendragon, 2008. Trentin, Bruno. Lavoro e Libertà: scritti scelti e un dialogo inedito con Vittorio Foa e Andrea Ranieri: Rome: Ediesse, 2008. Wittenberg, Raul, “Che pensano gli americani del ‘caso Italia’.” Rassegna Sindacale, December 21, 1978. Wittenberg, Raul. “Democrazia e socialismo. Ecco il punto. Tavola rotonda sul caso Polonia.” Rassegna Sindacale, January 14, 1982. Wittenberg, Raul. “Due sistemi diversi e un interesse comune.” Rassegna Sindacale, October 25, 1979. Wittenberg, Raul. “Il salario non è un premio di presenza.” Rassegna Sindacale, June 12, 1980. Wittenberg, Raul. “Intervista con Agostino Marianetti sui sindacati in Svezia.” Rassegna Sindacale, June 8, 1978. Wittenberg, Raul. “La Cgil in Rdt. Distinti ma non avversari.” Rassegna Sindacale, October 26, 1978. Wittenberg, Raul. “Manifestazione per la pace. Oltre il 22 ottobre.” Rassegna Sindacale, October 28, 1983. Wittenberg, Raul. “Precipita la crisi.” Rassegna Sindacale, December 17, 1981. Wittenberg, Raul. “Qualche domanda sulla Polonia. Intervista ad Agostino Marianetti e Giacinto Militello.” Rassegna Sindacale, September 11, 1980.

CHAPTER 13

PCI Intellectuals and the Image of “Reagan’s America” Gregorio Sorgonà

This chapter investigates how Ronald Reagan’s presidency has been portrayed on the pages of Rinascita, a weekly journal edited by the Italian Communist Party (PCI). It will focus specifically on contributions by Leonardo Paggi, Riccardo Parboni, and Pier Carlo Padoan—historian of politics and ideas and lecturers in Economics, respectively. The image they offer of Reagan’s America is a mirror through which American modernity reflects back on the communist culture. This chapter will explore what aspects were taken into account or ignored, what transformations affected the party’s tradition in which Marxist approaches spanning from orthodoxy to revisionism coexisted, and finally, if and how the intellectuals’ contribution affected the party’s politics and the choices of its leadership. Parboni is an isolated intellectual within the geography of the PCI’s currents of thoughts, while Paggi and Padoan are rather “organic” to the left and the right of the party, respectively. The left current rises at the end of the 1950s with Pietro Ingrao as its leading figure; more or less in the same years, the right of the party finds its reference in Giorgio Amendola. The two currents animate the debate within the PCI at least until 1969, when the group of the “Manifesto”, critic both of the moderate positions G. Sorgonà (*) Fondazione Gramsci, Rome, Italy © The Author(s) 2019 A. Tarquini, A. Guiso (eds.), Italian Intellectuals and International Politics, 1945–1992, Italian and Italian American Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-24938-0_13

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of Italian communism and of the authoritarianism of Soviet communism, is expelled from the party. After this break, the PCI’s center—majority in the party—establishes a preferential bond with the right which endures until November 1980, when Berlinguer decides to shift the PCI’s barycenter to the left. A relevant part of “Manifesto” comes back again to Ingrao’s current, which in that decade notably attempts to engage a conversation with the leftist political and social movements established outside the PCI (feminism, neo-pacifism, ecologism, and anti-nuclearism). In the same years, the right of the PCI, now led by Giorgio Napolitano, renounces any allegiance to the international communist movement, proposes the shift of the PCI to European socialism, abdicates the values of anti-capitalism, and discovers instead those of democratic changeover, that is, a political bipolar dialectic between right and left. The issue of the political role of intellectuals has been a central topic for Italian communism since the group “L’Ordine Nuovo”, from Turin, takes the lead of the PCI. The reflection on the role of intellectuals in Italian history had been part of the theoretical work of Antonio Gramsci, party secretary since 1924, from the pre-prison writings to the Prison Notebooks. After Gramsci is arrested in November 1926, Palmiro Togliatti’s leadership is established among Italian communists. Exiled in Moscow until 1944 and back in Italy in the spring of that year, he aspires to entrench the communist culture within the national one. In June 1945, Togliatti launches Rinascita, the weekly  journal he would edit until his death in 1964. The paper is meant to nurture communist militancy and to provide the party’s intellectuals with a flexible tool for action.1 The publication of Gramsci’s Letters from Prison and of the Notebooks thematic edition is one of the bedrocks of Togliatti’s strategy.2 The volumes are published by Einaudi, a publishing house that represents the driving force behind the cultural debate in Italy after Fascism, and which collaborates closely with young communist intellectuals.3 The contribution of the PCI to the cultural debate unfolds mainly in the fields of literary critique, historiography, and philosophy. The party also equips itself with research institutes such as the Gramsci Foundation and supports journals specialized in these fields, such as Società, Il Contemporaneo,  For a general account, Vittoria, Togliatti.  Chiarotto, Operazione Gramsci. 3  Mangoni, Pensare i libri, 540–74. 1 2

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and Studi storici. The penetration in the national culture is, however, hard to harmonize with the PCI’s membership in the international communist movement, in which culture is systematically denied an autonomous space. The events  of 1956 make some intellectuals close to the PCI abandon Marxism, while others become even more radical, both arguing with the party.4 Togliatti confronts the post-1956 period trying to shift Gramsci’s figure “from the national arena to the broader stage of the international communist movement”, in order to endow historicist Marxism with “the traits of a general theory of politics”.5 This attempt slows down the hemorrhage from the left of the PCI, although it does not heal it completely, and helps to revive the communists’ cultural politics in the early 1960s. The relation between intellectuals and the PCI after Togliatti’s death is more complicated to periodize. Studies on this are patchy, although original contributions have recently been offered on the 1970s.6 A general impression is that in this decade the PCI tends to diversify the fields of its cultural intervention. This is especially true since Enrico Berlinguer inaugurates the historic compromise  (that is the proposal for an alliance with Christian Democracy launched after the 1973 Chilean coup) and the party increasingly needs technical skills to face its potential engagement in the government. Studies on the PCI and intellectuals in the 1980s are almost irrelevant.

13.1   Leonardo Paggi: America, from Laboratory to Exception Paggi (1941–) is a protagonist of the debate around Gramsci at the beginning of the 1970s. His research, printed by publishers organic to the PCI (Editori Riuniti and De Donato), deals with the cultural and political growth of the Sardinian communist7 and the debate on the intellectuals in the Second International.8 In the 1980s, his most relevant studies, published by Einaudi, look at the reformist traditions within the labor ­movement and their contribution to the welfare state.9 Simultaneously, Paggi devotes himself to the analysis of contemporary United States, running  Corradi, Storia dei marxismi, 168.  Izzo, “I tre convegni gramsciani”, 225. 6  Sorgonà, “La proposta storiografica di Franco De Felice”, 11–193; Panvini, “Gli intellettuali comunisti”, 113–48. 7  Paggi, Antonio Gramsci. 8  Paggi, “Introduzione”, in Il socialismo e gli intellettuali. 9  Paggi, D’Angelillo, I comunisti italiani; Paggi, Americanismo e riformismo. 4 5

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the column “International observatory” (“Osservatorio Internazionale”) in Rinascita from 1978 to 1986. From the 1990s onward, Paggi focuses his studies on anti-Fascism and the origins of republican Italy.10 Paggi debuts as Americanist in Rinascita on December 22, 1978, when he signs a reportage in six parts about the United States. Italian communists have only an indirect knowledge of the United States’ reality, since the first leader to visit, invited by prestigious American universities, is Giorgio Napolitano in April 1978. Paggi’s observations address some aspects of the transformations sweeping American society and politics in the 1970s—in particular, the decline of Fordist industry, the disarticulation of social demands and groups, and the effects of these transformations on political life. The “development of communication system technology”, the “innovations in social stratification, in the ways and styles of living, in the very organization of power”, and the “exceptional expansion of the intellectual class” peculiarly made the United States a sort of laboratory for the future. This reveals among other things, the fragility of some of the interpretive categories of the Marxist left. Paggi’s recurrent polemical target is the Frankfurt School, especially Herbert Marcuse, blamed for a flattening mono-­ dimensional interpretation of American society. Paggi also seems, however, to take the Gramscian paradigm as deficient: the categorization of Americanism proposed by the Prison Notebooks wrongly considered the United States an example of “a hegemonic system deprived of intellectuals”11 and emphasized the “transformations taking place in the division of labor”, underestimating Americanism’s cultural and political. The latter was well alive even after the United States ceased to be the “driving locomotive”12 of the world economy. Reflected by the American mirror, the crisis of the welfare state is also thematized. It is co-produced by the proliferation of “particular issues pertaining the most disparate aspects” of public life,13 “the rebellion of the individual against the quality of development”, and “the demand for more advanced norms for democratic life”.14 Originally aimed at guaranteeing  Paggi, Il popolo dei morti.  Leonardo Paggi, “La mutazione del sistema politico americano”, Rinascita, January 20, 1979, 30–1. 12  Leonardo Paggi, “La sfida americana all’intellettuale europeo”, Rinascita, March 2, 1979, 19. 13  Leonardo Paggi, “La mutazione del sistema politico americano”, 30–1. 14  Leonardo Paggi, “La sfida americana”, 20. 10 11

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“the assertion of the universal” compatibly “with the full, autonomous development of particular interests”,15 the welfare state appears therefore unable to harmonize its aim—the achievement of general interest—with the dissemination of particular and diverse demands coming from social groups. The above-mentioned transformations speak of the weaknesses of the structures established to control social conflict, which bear the mark of the labor movement’s reformist tradition. The 1970s mark therefore a fracture that sweeps the western left, especially the social-democratic and labor parties. They face in fact the need to renew political vocabularies and cultures that, albeit useful in the past to explain and represent stable societies, easily groupable in classes, reveal themselves inapt to account for the new politics/society  nexus prefigured by the British and American scenarios. The British general elections on May 3, 1979, won by Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative Party, reveal for example that “the vicissitudes of the seventies” have shattered both “the old labor ideology of ‘national interest’ as a space in which an harmonious conciliation of divergent social interests can be attained”, and the idea of “liberal democracy as a system of political coexistence and compromise between opposite social forces”.16 The United States is where the crisis of the compromise between social forces is the harshest. Paggi introduces reflections of American intellectuals such as Seymour Martin Lipset, James O’Connor, and Carl Lester Thurow17 in the communist debate—respectively, a neoconservative, a Marxist, and an economist critical of liberalism and supportive of the state’s intervention in the economy. Despite coming from disparate theoretical perspectives, they all agreed that the role of the vital center,18 played by the Democratic Party since the New Deal, could not be replicated in a historical context characterized by the proliferation of interest groups. The impasse of European lefts and of the Democratic Party is assessed in real time,19 but in Paggi’s reflections their crisis seems to imply an eclipse  Leonardo Paggi, “Governo difficile”, Rinascita, February 2, 1979, 19.  Leonardo Paggi, “Crisi laburista e intransigenza ‘tory’”, Rinascita, May 11, 1979, 4. 17  Leonardo Paggi, “Inchiesta sugli Stati Uniti/1”, Rinascita, December 28, 1978, 5; “Lipset: I vecchi progressisti e i nuovi”, Rinascita, May 9, 1980, 24–5; Leonardo Paggi, “Ancora indefinita la sfida Kennedy-Carter”, Rinascita, November 9, 1979, 16; Leonardo Paggi, “La fine delle presidenze imperiali”, Rinascita, October 31, 1980, 3. 18  The reference is to Schlesinger, The vital center. 19  About this impasse, see Eley, Forging Democracy, 338, 372–85; Harvey, A Brief History, 13. 15 16

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of politics tout court. No party, in fact, seems able to offer any political program adequate to the unfolding transformations. Also in this respect, the United States shows trends which are shared by the entire west. The “slow consumption of traditional political alliance” characterizes “the entire capitalist area”,20 but no organization or ideology emerges to fill that void. The confrontation between Carter and Reagan is therefore characterized by a state of immobility21: the former reinstates the traditionally democratic principle of the “all people party”, while the latter elaborates “the most usual themes of American conservatism”. The term “Reaganism” is introduced in Rinascita with the aim of stating its inconsistency. It is propaganda rather than ideology, because it reconciles conflictual instances, such as “the declaration of faith in liberal ideologies” and the promise of “weighty advantages on the short term” both for “entrepreneurs” and for the “large middle class”.22 Moreover, Reaganism is not “an organic, coherent, neatly defined platform”, but rather “a kaleidoscope of groups which formed around single issues” and “a form of critique of politics”. Although the American vote provides a “new point of reference” for the “moderate and conservative forces in Europe and in the world”, thus increasing the “pressure of the European right”,23 it is neither in the right/left divide, nor in a particular ideology, that Paggi situates the nature of Reaganism, which he considers a short-lived phenomenon. Reagan’s politics responds thus to a merely pragmatic necessity: to reinstate the American hegemony which had  been shaken during the 1970s, even if this meant to destabilize “the basic conditions of the system of alliance (Europe and Japan) with which [the United States] came out of the Second World War”.24 Deprived of its political specificity, Reaganism seems to have no impact even on the ways the political debate unfolds or on the confrontation between parties. In the following years, Paggi’s arguments seem to remain unchanged and grounded in the conviction that the diversification of western societies represents the priority theme on the political agenda. Among contemporary authors that acknowledge the redefinition of the society/politics nexus, Paggi refers in particular to Niklas Luhmann. He is probably  Leonardo Paggi, “Stallo dopo le primarie”, Rinascita, June 13, 1980, 41.  Leonardo Paggi, “La crisi del ‘centro vitale’”, Rinascita, May 9, 1980, 24. 22  Leonardo Paggi, “Carter tra Khomeini e Reagan”, Rinascita, April 18, 1980, 24. 23  Leonardo Paggi, “L’America di Reagan”, Rinascita, November 7, 1980, 4–5. 24  Leonardo Paggi, “Il sistema di alleanze e le fonti di petrolio”, Rinascita, November 28, 1980, 24. 20 21

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the most important theorist of the need to defend political decisional processes “from widespread participation”, therefore consigning them “to bureaucrats”.25 Paggi delves into Luhmann’s studies with the purpose of turning his conclusions on their head, thus promoting an idea of democracy that is sensitive to social diversification. This task is miserably failed by socialist regimes, characterized by obtuse and authoritarian planning, but also by the western left, which can neither go beyond “a purely distributive and egalitarian philosophy”, nor has managed to elaborate its own “system of differences”.26 In Paggi’s perspective, the shortcomings of the western left favor Reaganism’s success. Reaganism “has a place more because of the absence of traditional political actors than by virtue of its own creative force”. Reagan’s economic politics, for example, is considered a mix of propaganda, as in the case of the supply-side economics, and a merely cosmetic intervention on the “great strategic move made by America under the Democratic Party, which lies simultaneously on the two pillars of economic development and military force”. Nothing new, or a novelty that means nothing indeed: “Reagan’s anti-statism” is doomed to be “reabsorbed, together with the most blatant propagandist attitudes in foreign politics”.27 Only the fragmentation of the Democratic Party in “a serious crisis of purpose and unity”28, and “the management of an enormous flux of public expenditures”,29 would award Reagan a re-election in 1984. Paggi’s interpretative framework contrasts the vitality of a progressive civil society to the conservatism of politics. He positions on the one side the reflexive middle class grown during 1968, which represented “the spinal cord of the rejection of war” and pushed for “a number of freedom and lifestyle struggles”30; on the other, the Democratic Party, considered to be in disarray, and a phenomenon devoid of political specificity like Reaganism. The latter is defined in February 1985 as a “mix of identity and innovation,

 Müller,, Contesting democracy, 204.  Leonardo Paggi, “Il Pci e i problemi nuovi dell’Occidente”, Rinascita, February 12, 1982, pp. 19–20. 27  Leonardo Paggi, “Un anno di Reagan”, Rinascita, December 18, 1981, 43–4. 28  Leonardo Paggi, “Usa, lo svantaggio dei democratici”, Rinascita, June 30, 1984, 2. 29  Leonardo Paggi, “Se la forza Usa si schiera per il dialogo”, Rinascita, July 28, 1984, 26. 30  Leonardo Paggi, “Reaganismo e mutamenti nella società”, Rinascita, October 27, 1984, 25. 25 26

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traditionalism and open and very unscrupulous experimentation”.31 Only in the summer 1986, at the end of his collaboration with “Rinascita” and almost at the same time that I comunisti italiani e il riformismo—a harsh critique of the PCI’s policies during the national solidarity governments (1976–1979)32—is published, does Paggi update his description of Reagan’s America. The Republican Party’s success is now explained through its capability to represent the social demands of “middle and upper class in the south and west of the country”. Reagan therefore acts in accordance with “a process of reorganization of the civil society in a very selective direction, determined by the growth accumulated in the sixties and early seventies”.33 It is the symptom of a rethinking, echoed in the essays written by the communist intellectual. In his introduction to the volume Americanismo e riformismo, written at the end of the 1980s, Paggi acknowledges the worth of comparative historiographic frameworks, among which he locates in particular the teachings of Marc Bloch. He also believes that the vocation of history is to grasp differences in time and space, a principle familiar to the first generation of the “Annales” and especially to Lucien Febvre. The aim of the volume is to emphasize the diversity between American and European history.34 The American predicament loses therefore the quality of exemplariness it had at the end of the 1970s, when Paggi had described the United States as the laboratory of trends deemed to spread to the rest of the western world. At the time Reagan consolidates his presidency, Paggi, who has never acknowledged any ideological depth to his strategy, seems to react by portraying the American reality as an exception, incompatible with European history.

13.2   PCI’s Economists and the Reagan Presidency Reaganism develops in different fields—the critique of distension; the consolidation of a right that is against the extension of civil rights and in favor of law and order in justice policies; the spread of liberal dogmas; the question of governability; and the claims to the primacy of executive power. The pages of Rinascita pay, however, peculiar attention to 31  Leonardo Paggi, “Primo, secondo, terzo mondo vi propongo il mio modello”, Rinascita, February 23, 1985, 27. 32  Paggi, D’Angelillo, I comunisti italiani, 106–17. 33  Leonardo Paggi, “Effetti di un profondo mutamento”, Rinascita, June 7, 1986, 35. 34  Paggi, Americanismo e riformismo, VII–XI.

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Reaganism’s culture and political economy. It is mainly Riccardo Parboni and Pier Carlo Padoan who engage themselves to these themes. Parboni (1945–1988), who graduated with Federico Caffè, was lecturer of Political Economy at Modena University, Faculty of Economics and Commerce, from 1976 to 1987. In these years he stands out for his prolific scientific production and is renowned in Italy and abroad for the paradigm of the global economic conflict. This perspective converses with Immanuel Wallerstein and Giovanni Arrighi’s studies on capitalism’s global development. The Italian economist can be considered their fully fledged collaborator. From world-systems theory he derives the idea that capitalism has nowadays become a world-economy divided between core, semi-periphery, and periphery areas. Specific of Parboni is instead the hypothesis that this world-economy is characterized by the conflict between two central macro areas, competing for the primacy on global markets: on the one hand, the Nippo-American area, hegemonized by the United States; on the other hand, a pan-European area, which should be driven by western European countries, but which clearly lacks any political subjectivity. It is a clash between two models of society: the first, marked by “social and economic relations […] more than elsewhere regulated by the market”; the second constituted by “countries accustomed to the welfare state and to public interventionism and countries with a socialist structure”.35 The starting point of the conflict are Richard Nixon’s choices in monetary politics (August 15, 1971): the era of stable exchange rates inaugurated by Bretton Woods is closed, and a new phase of international economic relations starts, in which “a coordinated expansion at international level is not feasible”.36 Rinascita is one of the platforms where Parboni expounds and discusses the global economic conflict paradigm. During a roundtable with Samir Amin and Giovanni Arrighi, hosted by the communist journal on November 4, 1983, the economist articulates how the global economic conflict is the product of capitalism’s global extension, which has set off the competition between the United States and Western Europe.37 The rationale of “the idea of Europe”, he argues on March 16, 1984, “lies in the deepening of the world economic crisis and in the disastrous condition 35  Riccardo Parboni, “Se la Cee scopre l’Ursoopa”, Politica ed Economia, no. 6 (June 1987), now in Riccardo Parboni, 15, 19. 36  Parboni, “Il materialismo storico e la crisi mondiale”, 32–3. 37  “Protagonisti o comparse nel gioco dei blocchi?”, Rinascita, November 4, 1983, 21.

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of international economic relations”.38 The reasons why Europe can compete for world hegemony are entrenched in a pessimistic diagnosis of the American economy in the 1980s, strongly marked by the widening of social gaps. The expansion of poorly remunerated and guaranteed sectors such as “restaurant industry” and “domestic services” is not adequately counterbalanced by an expansion of “advanced services” in which “the amount of capital per worker is very high”39 to the disadvantage of employment. Moreover, the neoliberal policies of Reagan’s administration have made the country “debt-ridden”, with “both internal and external” debt. The defeat of Reaganism, therefore, would not even allow the United States to have “a space of maneuver to negotiate a respectable retreat”.40 The collapse of Wall Street in the fall of 1987 would shatter the “neoliberal ideology”, revealing by contrast the efficiency of European countries in which a mixed economy is at work.41 Parboni imputes to Reagan a liberist and anti-egalitarian attitude, to be blamed for his national and international political moves. Reaganism’s economic rationale is therefore clear. It aspires to sacrifice the well-­ established sectors of American capitalism, exposing them to the competition of emerging Asian economies in the manufacturing sector. The aim is to avoid retaliations to “the United States’ exports in the advanced sectors, in which Reagan places all his eggs for a long-term renovation of the American economy”.42 Moreover, “Reagan’s America” is considered the laboratory for a renewed polarization of wealth: “the vulnerable sectors, burdened by continuous competition with the army of the unemployed, employed in low-income jobs, often in services, declassed to precariousness and instability; and the middle-upper class, employed in the technical-­ organizational posts in the industry and services, where they earn good incomes and constitute the market proper”.43 Reagan’s economic policies, therefore, “have favored the rich through the cut of tax rates and have

 Riccardo Parboni, “Ma l’Europa conviene un po’ a tutti”, Rinascita, March 16, 1984, 23.  Riccardo Parboni, “Il dollaro e l’economia. La contraddizione americana”, Rinascita, February 23, 1985, 29. 40  Riccardo Parboni, “A chi serve agitare lo spettro del ‘29’”, Rinascita, October 11, 1986, 29. 41  Riccardo Parboni, “L’economia mondo a soqquadro”, Rinascita, October 31, 1987, 6. 42  Parboni, “Le strategia economiche internazionali”, 222. 43  Parboni, “Il materialismo storico”, 57. 38

39

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burdened the poor with the cuts to several social expenditure categories”.44 Such deliberations have a chain effect on the entire capitalist world-­ economy, characterized after the 1970s by the cleavage between a world bourgeoisie, constituted by a “few thousand people” owning “the large part of the world means of production”,45 and a potential bloc of billions of people, momentarily lacking a political subjectivity. Parboni’s hypothesis is that within the global economic conflict, the pan-European area could represent the political subjectivity of reference for such a bloc impoverished by neoliberalism—a reference that could provide a model of development alternative to the North American one. Incidentally, this picture of international economic relations, despite grasping some of the implications of the emerging globalization (in particular the polarization of wealth, the loss of protection for waged work, and the rise of low skilled tertiary jobs),46 underestimates the revolutionary implications of Information and Communications Technology on the economic conditions and lifestyle of western societies. Padoan (1950–), who graduated in Economics at the Sapienza University of Rome, becomes a respected voice within the economic debate in the PCI after the publication of a challenging essay in Critica marxista in 1975. This essay addresses the failure of Keynesianism, foreshadowed by the rise of inflation and by the instability of capitalism that Keynesians had hoped to contain through countercyclical measures to support income and employment levels. Arguing that Keynesianism had failed under an increasing wage pressure, Padoan pictured the future of international economic relations as a two-player game between capitalism and socialism.47 There is no need to say which of the two a PCI economist would prefer in the 1970s. However, in the 1980s Padoan changes his position, crossing over from Marxism to economic theories adhering to the aspirations of the European reformist left. The analysis of Reagan’s impact on international economic relations is one of the pivotal factors to define the economist’s new orientation. In the following decades and alongside his academic career, Padoan will engage in intense periods of collaboration with center-left governments in Italy, occupying top  Parboni, “Il dollaro e l’economia italiana”, 50.  Parboni, “Il materialismo storico”, 56. 46  Eley, Forging Democracy, 386. 47  Pier Carlo Padoan, “Il fallimento del pensiero keynesiano”, Critica marxista 13, no. 1, (January–February 1975): 147–76. 44 45

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positions in institutions such as the World Bank, the European Commission, the European Central Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. Padoan’s description of international economic relations has some aspects in common with the one provided by Parboni. Padoan also believes that Nixon’s management of monetary policies represents the starting point of a new periodization of world history and considers the economic conflict within the west “a constant datum, although with different nuances, of the past decade”,48 that is, since the end of the system regulated by Bretton Woods. However, while Parboni deems economic conflict inevitable and he often seems to wish that Europe could take charge of it, Padoan argues for cooperation mechanisms that dismantle the conflict alimented by the United States, and in particular by the Republican Party. Reagan’s unilateral economic policies have forced “the nationalist logic, and therefore inevitably conflictual”, on that of “cooperation”; “communitarian Europe”, far from involving itself into a global economic conflict, has the task of restoring the shattered balance, repairing the “faults caused by the grievous intersection of mounting nationalism” with “market forces left unleashed”.49 Moreover, differently from Parboni, Padoan does not think that the United States’ economic development in the 1980s is fragile. The impressive gross domestic product growth recorded in 1983 is considered the consequence of choices which would have long-term effects, such as, in particular, “the process of industrial restructuring and concentration” and the “strong push to the armaments policy”, which have determined “a noteworthy spread of new technology within the American industry”.50 Thanks to these choices, the United States’ economy would be attractive again for European investments and capital; protectionist policies and trade conflict would cease to represent convincing options. It is thus clear how, according to Padoan, the global economic conflict cannot be fought by Europe, not only because international economic cooperation is considered a more fruitful policy, but also because there is no European political actor able to engage in such conflict. Therefore, European countries and the European Union’s institutions are invited to bring the United States back to the track of negotiation 48   Pier Carlo Padoan, “Perché Reagan non vuole la cooperazione internazionale”, Rinascita, July 9, 1982, 30–1. 49  Pier Carlo Padoan, “Gioco senza regole”, Rinascita, September 17, 1982, 21–2. 50  Pier Carlo Padoan, “Il riarmo aiuta la ripresa”, Rinascita, September 30, 1983, 20–1.

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of international economic policies, restoring the regulatory role of institutions such as the International Monetary Fund. In Padoan’s analysis, Reagan’s America is therefore the destabilizing factor of a world economy which could develop by reducing the frictions caused by the anarchy of market forces. It is impossible to ignore the differences between Parboni and Padoan’s interpretations. However, the two economists share the same attitude when they assess the coherence between aims and practice in Reagan’s presidency—both agreeing that the former is dangerous and the latter wrong; such analysis is instead hardly detectable in Paggi’s analysis of Reaganism. According to the two authors, Reagan’s aims are to consolidate American hegemony in international economic relations and to protect the medium-large American bourgeoisie. So Reagan aspires to achieve these aims through a liberalism mitigated by investments in the defense sector; monetary policies that promote American interests in technologically advanced sectors, while the less advanced are negatively affected by the strengthening of the dollar; and fiscal policies which favor higher incomes. The major difference between the two economists is less the diagnosis of Reaganism than the political response that should be given to the United States’ strategy: a conflictual one according to Parboni, a cooperative one in the opinion of Padoan.

13.3   Reaganism as Fortuity or Causality? Reagan’s political intentionality is probably the main issue discussed among communist intellectuals, and perhaps the only one about which a serious debate develops. Among these intellectuals, Paggi is the one who is less willing to concede an ideological character to Reaganism; this emerges clearly in Paggi’s hesitation to recognize Reagan as expression of a new right, and in his intention to consider Reagan’s strategy almost fortuitous. The cleavage of right/left does not sit comfortably within the communist culture, more used to reasoning through a number of “-isms”. For example, the broad use of the word Fascism in the communist vocabulary proves a reticence to use the term right to define authoritarian, conservatory, or reactionary political phenomena. In January 1986, Napolitano will be the first national leader of the PCI to introduce the democratic changeover among the aims of the party, a formula which implies a politi-

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cal bipolar dialectic between right and left.51 Only in the latter half of the 1980s, when the PCI pursues the objective of leaving communism by negotiating with the European left, does the term “right” come to be associated with Reagan more frequently. On April 25, 1987, Rinascita devotes one issue of Il Contemporaneo, its cultural section, to the “Post-Reagan”. The issue hosts several contributions about the United States’ political system, which are far from agreeing on a univocal interpretation. Guido Neppi Modona, jurist and tenured professor at the University of Turin, explains how Reagan has moved “towards the center” during his second term, therefore confirming the end of “what has been defined the ‘ideological’ administration of Reagan’s era”.52 Maurizio Vaudagna, lecturer of American History at the University of Bologna, underlines instead how Reaganism’s success lies in the transformation that it has triggered in the Democratic Party. It has been responsible for reorienting toward the right the party’s political agenda, directed “to the huge American middle class” and responsive to “some of the values promoted by neoconservatives”, especially “the critique towards the gargantuan nature […] of the Welfare State” and the tribute “to meritocracy, private economic growth, limited taxation, high military budget and foreign aid”.53 Among the most frequent contributors on American issues, now, Sergio Fabbrini stands out: researcher at the Faculty of Sociology, University of Trento, he reinstates in several instances the historical value of Reagan’s presidency and underlines its role in shifting the United States’ politics toward the right.54 In passing, precisely from the pages of the PCI’s weekly Paggi had argued against Fabbrini in 1984, accusing the latter’s views of endowing Reaganism with a “system of coherence and correspondences much more consistent than reality could allow one to imagine”.55 Reaganism’s political peculiarity is now acknowledged by Rinascita, which bestows it with a precise connotation: Reagan is the conscious and intentional protagonist of western democracies’ shift toward the right. The pioneers of this perspective are to be  Napolitano, Dal Pci al socialismo europeo, 219–20.  Guido Neppi Modona, “Salvate la Casa Bianca”, Rinascita, April 25, 1987, 20. 53  Maurizio Vaudagna, “New Deal, ma non troppo”, Rinascita, April 25, 1987, 26–7. 54  Sergio Fabbrini, “Dukakis e Jackson: un partito che cambia in corsa”, Rinascita, April 16, 1988, 22–3. 55  Leonardo Paggi, “Reaganismo e mutamenti nella società”, Rinascita, October 27, 1984, p. 25. The reference is to S. Fabbrini, “Il reaganismo tra governo e regime”, Il Mulino 34, no. 4, (April 1984): 546–76. 51 52

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found among the PCI’s economists who classified Reagan as right-wing from the early months of his presidency,56 albeit limiting their analysis to his economic outlook, in which they located the source of Reagan’s national and international politics.

13.4   The American Mirror: Italian Communists Beyond Marxism Reagan’s America reflects Italian communist culture in the 1980s, revealing its intrinsic tensions in a decade in which political and cultural alternatives aiming at breaking with Marxism become more visible. Among the three intellectuals we have written about, only Riccardo Parboni remains firmly positioned within the doctrine; he repeatedly claims his choice to interpret capitalism’s globalization through the tools of historical materialism, however much influenced by Arrighi and Wallerstein’s world-systems theory. Loyal to Marxism, it is his conviction that on the one hand history develops as “a succession of conflicts with a purely economic motivation” and on the other capitalism is deemed to expand to “the whole world economy”,57 before reaching the tipping point of its own contradictions. The specificity in Parboni’s Marxism emerges especially when it is compared to the Keynesian paradigm, the main non-Marxist economic theory that the author engages with. Parboni observes that the two approaches (Marxism and Keynesianism) share the view that capitalism is a system characterized by cyclical crises. However, if Keynesianism longs for regulatory tools to avoid the collapse of capitalism, for Parboni, coherently with Marxism, the hopes for mechanisms of cooperation between different economic world areas are contradicted by the free market’s logics. Capitalism can enjoy only temporary moments of stabilization because the expansion of this economic model to a global level makes its contradictions and criticalities more severe—and Parboni blames Marx for underestimating this possibility. Concentration of capital, increasing class polarization and divide, delocalization, and the selfish pursuit of corporate interests are therefore features of international economic relations within a liberal regime. Reagan’s unilateralism is not taken as an exception, but rather as the spirit of the capitalist market. Moreover, the global economic conflict 56  Mariano D’Antonio, “Come Reagan smantella lo Stato sociale”, Rinascita, February 20, 1981, 30. 57  Graziani, “Rileggendo Riccardo Parboni”, 8, 10–1.

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always emerges against a background where capitalism is overcome, and not regulated. In fact, in the proactive parts of his essays, Parboni often expresses his preference for a global government of the world economy that intervenes on the accumulation of capital and establishes a global system of mixed economy, modeled on the one realized in Europe after the end of the Second World War.58 Paggi seems to give up on Marxism’s analytical tools and rather to appreciate the new ecologist and pacifist tendencies of the American and European left. He is polemical against representatives of American Marxism, for example, precisely for the privileged role that they still assign to class conflict in the 1980s.59 In the constructive part of Paggi’s reflection, highly educated classes form the basis for an essentially post-­ materialist left, concerned with the quality of development, struggles for freedom, and for a change of lifestyle. Exploitation, a theme which is central to Parboni’s reflections, seems to fade away in Paggi’s writing, although from Reagan onward the inequality gap within countries with advanced capitalism starts to widen. Intellectuals and politicians who Paggi converses with, through his writing throughout the decade, finally, generally do not fit into the communist milieu and rather belong to the social-­ democratic left in Europe and to the democratic left in the United States. Echoes of Marxism and of the communist culture seem even feebler in the intellectual development of Padoan, which unfolds within the disciplinary sector of International political economy during the 1980s. His approach to this topic is not neutral. Padoan, indeed, is a convinced advocate of international economic cooperation, which he tackles specifically from the angle of European economic integration. The recourse to cooperation is motivated by utilitarian reasons: cooperative attitudes avoid the international market competition turning into conflict and allow ­preservation of mechanisms of control of political conflict that facilitated western democracies’ consolidation after the Second World War. Reducing economic conflicts and providing the conditions for the stability of international economic choices have the secondary aim of facilitating economic growth; this is functional to a primary aim, the consolidation of democratic systems, unachievable without a balance between the stability of the currency markets and the development of the  Parboni, “Il dollaro e l’economia mondiale”, 96.  Leonardo Paggi, “Reaganismo e mutamenti nella società”, Rinascita, October 27, 1984, 25. 58 59

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real economy. This stance is informed by frameworks such as political economy of growth and Keynesianism, paradigms which aim at the regularization of an unstable economic system such as capitalism. Within these frameworks, institutions are not bestowed with the task of representing the exclusive interest of one of two social classes in conflict, as Marxism theorizes. Neither is the class conflict dynamic extended to international economic relations, where a regulated economic competition, potentially fruitful for the growth of all main national actors, is auspicated. Padoan sees conflict (social as well as international) the main systemic risk of capitalism, and thinks it is to be avoided by applying conditions and rules within a cooperative system, such as the European Economic Community. The heritage of communist culture is detectable in the idea that, pushed by economy and the market, the trend toward the globalization of politics is irreversible. The creation of a united Europe is considered, for example, a stage in this process; nationalism attached to Reagan’s presidency looks instead an anachronistic and dangerous abnormity. However, the direction of economic and political globalization is framed in ways that are no longer familiar to communism. Padoan is instrumental to the introduction of issues typical of European left reformism in communist economic culture. In this milieu, the instability of the American currency and the unilateralism of American economic policies are perceived as some of the main reasons to accelerate European unification. This, in turn, is seen as instrumental to lead the Atlantic partner to cooperation. The bedrock of the European Union is therefore seen as lying in international financial stability and in a collaborative competition with the United States60 which aims at the conjoined growth of the two main areas of world capitalism. Some of these instances, and in particular emphasis on the stability of prices and currencies, are not new to the right sections within the PCI, already since the 1970s. During the national solidarity  governments, this wing had supported the adoption of ­anti-­inflationary policies and for the containment of upward wage pressure. These moves had been made coherently with the aspiration to overcome capitalism, albeit at the cost of theoretical flights of fancy; in the 1980s, however, this aim has completely vanished. Padoan’s economic thought is therefore in sync with the cultural and political battle led by Giorgio Napolitano, aimed at guiding the PCI toward European socialism

 See Eichengreen, Exorbitant Privilege, pp. 73–87.

60

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and to make it receptive to themes such as social market economy and democratic changeover. With the exception of Parboni, who is however an isolated figure in the landscape of communist culture, the American mirror reflects the adoption of a worldview that no longer takes seriously into consideration the possibility of overcoming capitalism. Disillusionment toward Marx’s thought is rife among PCI intellectuals; their interpretive tools are now tuned to the culture of the European and American left, of which they reproduce some differentiations. They also share their generic ambition for a democracy that does not believe in the possibility of a new economic and social model, alternative to capitalism, but is rather content with the selective redistribution of benefits within the model that already exists. The images of Reagan’s America that we have been reviewing so far are a testimony of a shift: communist intellectuals moved from Marxism to a theory of a democracy without further specifications, basically the philosophy of history to which, with different nuances, the post-communist left will refer in Italy after 1991.

Bibliography Chiarotto, Francesca. Operazione Gramsci: alla conquista degli intellettuali nell’Italia del dopoguerra. Milano: Mondadori, 2011. Corradi, Cristina. Storia dei marxismi in Italia. Roma: Manifestolibri, 2005. Eichengreen, Barry. Exorbitant Privilege. The Rise and Fall of the Dollar. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011. Eley, Geoffrey. Forging Democracy. The History of the Left in Europe, 1850–2000. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. Fabbrini, Sergio, “Il reaganismo tra governo e regime”, Il Mulino 34, no. 4, (April 1984): 546–76. Graziani, Augusto. “Rileggendo Riccardo Parboni”. In Riccardo Parboni (1945–1988). In memoriam, 8–11. Modena: Università degli Studi di Modena, 1990. Harvey, David. A Brief History of Neoliberalism, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. Izzo, Francesca. “I tre convegni gramsciani”. In Il “lavoro culturale” edited by Fiamma Lussana e Albertina Vittoria, 217–38. Roma: Carocci, 2000. Mangoni, Luisa. Pensare i libri. La casa editrice Einaudi dagli anni trenta agli anni sessanta. Torino: Einaudi, 1999. Müller, Jan-Werner. Contesting democracy. Political Ideas in Twentieth-Century Europe. Yale: Yale University Press, 2011.

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Napolitano, Giorgio. Dal Pci al socialismo europeo. Un’autobiografia politica. Roma-Bari: Laterza (2005, 2008). Padoan, Pier Carlo “Il fallimento del pensiero keynesiano”, Critica marxista 13, no. 1, (January–February 1975): 147–76. Paggi, Leonardo. Antonio Gramsci e il moderno principe. Roma: Editori Riuniti, 1970. Paggi, Leonardo. “Introduzione”. in Max Adler, Il socialismo e gli intellettuali, 9–134. Bari: De Donato, 1974. Paggi, Leonardo, D’Angelillo, Massimo. I comunisti italiani e il riformismo. Un confronto con le socialdemocrazie europee. Torino: Einaudi, 1986. Paggi, Leonardo. Americanismo e riformismo. La socialdemocrazia europea nell’economia mondiale aperta. Torino: Einaudi, 1989. Paggi, Leonardo. Il popolo dei morti. La Repubblica italiana nata dalla guerra (1940–1946). Bologna: Il Mulino, 2009. Panvini, Guido. “Gli intellettuali comunisti di fronte alla crisi”. In Gli intellettuali nella crisi della repubblica edited by Ermanno Taviani, Giuseppe Vacca, 113–48. Roma: Viella, 2016. Parboni, Riccardo. (1987) “Il dollaro e l’economia mondiale”. In Il dollaro e l’economia italiana, edited by Augusto Graziani, 31–115. Bologna: Il Mulino, 1987. Parboni, Riccardo. “Le strategie economiche internazionali degli Stati Uniti e l’Europa occidentale”. In L’Europa e l’economia-politica del sistema-mondo, edited by Riccardo Parboni, Immanuel Wallerstein, 209–36. Milano: FrancoAngeli, 1987. Parboni, Riccardo. “Il materialismo storico e la crisi mondiale”. In Dinamiche della crisi mondiale, edited by Riccardo Parboni, 9–63. Roma: Editori Riuniti, 1988. Parboni, Riccardo. “Se la Cee scopre l’Ursoopa”. In Riccardo Parboni (1945–1988). In memoriam, 15–19. Università degli Studi di Modena, Modena, 1990. Schlesinger, Arthur. The vital center: the politics of freedom. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1949. Sorgonà, Gregorio. “La proposta storiografica di Franco De Felice”. In Franco De Felice. Il presente come storia, edited by Gregorio Sorgonà, Ermanno Taviani, 11–193. Roma: Carocci, 2016. Vittoria, Albertina. Togliatti e gli intellettuali. La politica culturale dei comunisti italiani (1944–1964). Roma: Carocci, 2014.

Index1

A Acanfora, Paolo, 9n20 Acone, Andrea, 221n8 Aga Rossi, Elena, 11n27, 180n7 Algren, Nelson, 36 Aliberti, Giovanni, 106 Alicata, Mario, 192n45, 201, 202n13, 203, 203n14, 203n16 Álvarez del Vayo, Julio, 199n1 Amat Maíz, Antonio, 210 Amato, Giuliano, 165 Amendola, Giorgio, 255 Amirante, Luigi, 79, 84n82 Andreatta, Beniamino, 9, 21, 153–171 Andreotti, Giulio, 164 Andreu i Abelló, Josep, 208n41 Anselmi, Paolo, 226 Antonicelli, Franco, 35, 43, 44, 183 Antonielli, Sergio, 202n12 Aramini, Donatello, 13, 14, 19 Árbenz Guzmán Jacobo, 120

Ardia, Danilo, 10n23, 179n3 Arendt, Hannah, 63, 65, 159 Arfè, Gaetano, 195 Armari, Pietro, 76n43 Aron, Raymond, 2n6, 19n35, 42n35, 58, 63, 71, 71n12 Artoni, Roberto, 173 Attal, Frédéric, 3n7, 77n49, 85 B Baccianini, Mario, 229n33 Baffi, Paolo, 104n41, 163 Baget Bozzo, Gianni, 249 Bagnato, Bruna, 193n49 Bailey, Leon, 18n34 Bair, Deirdre, 36n17 Balducci, Ernesto, 121, 121n20, 127 Baldussi, Renato, 220, 220n6 Balkin, Jack M., 7n17 Banfi, Antonio, 34, 36

 Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes.

1

© The Author(s) 2019 A. Tarquini, A. Guiso (eds.), Italian Intellectuals and International Politics, 1945–1992, Italian and Italian American Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-24938-0

275

276 

INDEX

Banfi, Arialdo, 205n29 Bange, Oliver, 148n27 Barbagallo, Francesco, 23, 25 Barredo Cerezo Mino, 118 Barrès, Maurice, 183 Barrera i Costa, Heribert, 208, 208n41 Bartolomei Maria Cristina, 116 Basso, Lelio, 117, 122, 126n31 Becherucci, Andrea, 83n74 Bell, Daniel, 7n17 Bello, Francesco, 72n16 Ben Gurion, David, 186–188 Benavente Toribio de, 117 Benedict XV, Pope, 131, 143 Benzoni, Alberto, 10n23, 179n3, 218n1 Beria d’Argentine, Adolfo, 203n15 Berlin, Isaiah, 63, 66, 77, 77n47 Berlinguer, Enrico, 21n38, 238, 239, 256, 257 Bernardini, Giovanni, 86n89 Berta, Giuseppe, 158n15, 172 Berti Arnoaldi, Ugo, 79n61, 87 Bertinotti, Fausto, 247 Bettazzi, Luigi, 125, 126 Bialer, Uri, 186n21, 196 Bimbi, Linda, 117 Bobbio, Norberto, 35, 37, 38, 45, 46 Bodei, Remo, 23 Boff, Clodomiro, 117 Boff, Leonardo, 116 Bonaccini, Aldo, 240, 244 Bonazzi, Tiziano, 74n29, 84n78, 87 Bondy, François, 63 Bonfreschi, Lucia, 2n5, 2n6, 23, 71n13, 87 Bongiovanni, Bruno, 2n3, 11n27 Bonhoeffer, Dietrich, 161 Borghesi, Massimo, 132n2, 133n6, 150 Borruso, Paolo, 218n1, 230 Botha, Pieter Willem, 229

Brady, Anne Marie, 35n12, 48 Bravo, Anna, 181n10, 196 Bresciani, Marco, 13, 14, 19, 52n1, 53n2, 54n5 Brighi, Elisabetta, 19n35, 79n60 Brunelli, Lucio, 132n2 Buchanan, Tom, 37n24, 48 Buonanno, Emilia, 223, 223n14 Buttiglione, Rocco, 133n5, 134n13, 150 C Cacace, Paolo, 193n49, 197 Caffi, Andrea, 54, 54n5, 64, 65 Calamandrei, Franco, 43 Calamandrei, Piero, 35, 39, 42, 43, 46, 47 Calchi Novati, Giampaolo, 192, 192n47, 193n48, 218n2, 226, 226n24 Calderone, Franco, 223n13, 231 Cama, Giampiero, 164n33, 172 Campi, Alessandro, 19n35, 23 Camus, Albert, 34, 58, 63, 219 Canavero, Alfredo, 148n27 Canova, Pietro, 117, 202n11, 202n13 Cantoni, Remo, 203n14 Caracciolo, Nicola, 221, 222n10 Cardenal, Ernesto, 116, 117n8 Carli, Guido, 10, 21, 91–105, 155, 155n6, 162, 164 Carrillo, Santiago, 199n1, 205, 207 Carter, Jimmy, 103, 259n17, 260 Casadei, Bernardino, 143n20 Cassola, Carlo, 35, 38, 39 Castellano, Danilo, 134n12 Castro, Fidel, 226 Caute, David, 2n4, 31n1, 48 Cavazza, Fabio Luca, 69n1, 72n16, 82, 83n74 Caviglia, Daniele, 10, 155n7 Cazzola, Giuliano, 247

 INDEX 

Ceci, Giovanni Mario, 9, 145n23 Ceci, Giuseppe, 132n2, 150 Ceci, Lucia, 128 Cedroni, Lorella, 132n2, 150 Céline, Louis-Férdinand, 183 Cerchia, Giovanni, 180n5, 196 Césaire, Aimé, 224 Cessi, Roberto, 201n8 Chabod, Federico, 19 Charle, Christophe, 3n7 Chen, Jian, 35n13, 48 Chianta, Carmelina C., 18n34, 24 Chiaromonte, Nicola, 39, 53–55, 53n2, 54n5, 58, 59, 61–66 Chierici, Maurizio, 126n32 Ciampi, Carlo Azeglio, 163, 164, 166 Ciglioni, Laura, 13, 14, 19 Ciliga, Ante, 55 Cirese, Antonio Maria, 221n9, 231 Ciuffoletti, Zeffiro, 178n1, 196 Claudín, Fernando, 207, 207n35 Cohen Solal, Annie, 36n15 Colarizi, Simona, 97n19, 106, 225n21, 231 Coleman, Peter, 40n32, 48 Colombo, Arturo, 74n29, 88 Colombo, Emilio, 94, 99 Colozza, Roberto, 54n3, 67 Columbus, Christopher, 113 Comblin, Joseph, 121n20 Compagna, Francesco, 69n1 Contessi, Pier Luigi, 69n1 Coralluzzo, Valter, 193n49, 196 Cornudella i Barberà, Joan, 208 Cossutta, Armando, 202 Covili, Barbara, 70n4, 88 Craveri, Piero, 9n20, 24, 97n19, 106, 154n4, 155n6, 155n7, 173 Craxi, Bettino, 218n1, 225, 227, 228, 239 Craxi, Vittorio, 228, 228n30, 230 Croce, Benedetto, 34, 149

277

Cuminetti, Mario, 116, 121n20 Cuozzo, Francesco, 241, 243, 250 Cywinski, Bohdam, 249 D D’Adda, Carlo, 156n8, 173 D’Orsi, Angelo, 4n11, 24 Dallin, David J., 46n46, 48 De Beauvoir, Simone, 34, 36 De Gasperi, Alcide, 8, 9n20, 33, 40, 134, 139, 141, 149 De Gaulle, Charles, 81, 136, 149 De Giuseppe, Massimo, 9 De Luca, Stefano, 19n35, 23 De Luna, Giovanni, 32n3, 48 de Pauw Cornelius Franciscus, 122 De Piaz, Camillo, 116 De Rosa, Gabriele, 187 Debenedetti, Giacomo, 181 Degl’Innocenti, Maurizio, 178n1 Degli Esposti, Gian Luigi, 69n1 Del Boca, Angelo, 227n27, 228n30 Del Noce, Augusto, 9, 19, 131–150 Del Pero, Mario, 9n20, 14, 75n35, 86, 86n89 Dell’Era, Tommaso, 134n13, 150 Dessì, Giovanni, 75n34, 88 Dewey, John, 71 Di Nolfo, Ennio, 10n23, 24, 179n3, 179n4, 196, 218n1, 231 Di Vittorio, Giuseppe, 237 Dikötter, Frank, 37n21, 47n49, 49 Diop, Alioune, 224 Domenach, Jean-Luc, 38n27, 49 Donno, Antonio, 189n33 Donno, Michele, 178n2 Dossetti, Giuseppe, 8, 119, 156 Drumont, Edouard, 183 Dulles, John Foster, 139 Dussels, Enrique, 127, 127n33 Dyson, Kenneth, 22n40, 24

278 

INDEX

E Eagleton, T., 7n17, 24 Einaudi, Giulio, 203n14 Einaudi, Luigi, 160 Eisenhower, Dwight D., 75, 189, 194 Elizondo, Virgilio, 116 Ellacuría, Ignacio, 116 Emanuelli, Enrico, 35 Evola, Julius, 16 Eytan, Walter, 186n22, 196 F Fabbrini, Sergio, 154n4, 268, 268n54 Faber, Gianluigi, 223n15, 231 Fanfani, Amintore, 33, 97n18, 193 Fanon, Frantz, 218 Fasanaro, Laura, 148n27 Favretto, Ilaria, 218n1 Fazio, Antonio, 98n23, 106 Fejtö, François, 63 Feltrinelli, Giangiacomo, 205 Fenizi, Luciano, 229n33, 230 Fenoaltea, Giorgio, 188, 188n30, 192n46, 220, 220n5 Ferrandi, Giuseppe, 4n11 Ferrara, Maurizio, 187n25, 196 Ferrari, Massimo, 71n11 Ferrata, Giansiro, 203n14 Flora, Francesco, 34 Flores, Marcello, 181n9 Foa, Vittorio, 237, 250 Forlenza, Rosario, 132n1 Formigoni, Guido, 1n1, 8n18, 9n20, 82n71, 148n27, 154n1 Forte, Francesco, 76n45 Fortini, Franco, 35, 38, 39, 44, 45, 184, 202n13, 203n14 Freeden, Michael, 7n17, 24 Friedman, Georges, 55 Furet, François, 31n1, 49, 52n1

G Gaddafi, Muammar, 229, 229n33, 229n34 Gaeta, Franco, 3n8, 24 Galeano, Eduardo, 118 Gallas, Alberto, 116 Galli della Loggia, Ernesto, 43n40 Galli, Giorgio, 75n37, 77n47, 79, 81, 81n67, 81n68, 83n74, 84, 84n79, 84n80, 85, 85n83, 85n85, 85n86 Garaudy, Roger, 122n22 Garín, Eugenio, 201n8 Garosci, Aldo, 53–55, 57–64, 66, 183 Gaspar, Sandor, 241 Gentile, Emilio, 208n39 Gentili, Dino, 41 Gentili, Sandro, 4n11, 26 Gentiloni Silveri, Umberto, 72n15 Gerbi, Antonello, 122 Gervasoni, Marco, 178n1 Ghiringhelli, Antonio, 202n12 Gienow-Hetch, C.E.J., 2n4 Gierek, Edward, 242 Gilman, Nils, 14n28, 24 Gil-Robles, José María, 209 Ginsborg, Paul, 97n19 Ginzburg, Natalia, 183 Giolitti, Antonio, 97n18, 205, 226n24 Giordano, Renato, 69n1 Giovagnoli, Agostino, 82n71, 148n27 Girardi, Giulio, 122–127, 122n22, 126n31, 126n32 Giscard d’Estaing, Valéry, 103 Giugni, Gino, 69n1 Gleason, Abbott, 32n5, 49 Gomulka, Wladyslaw, 242 Gordon, Robert S.C., 181n10, 182n13 Gozzano, Francesco, 222 Graglia, Piero S., 21n38, 82n70, 83n73, 83n74

 INDEX 

Grassi, Paolo, 202n12 Greco, Rossella, 185n18 Gremion, Pierre, 40n32 Gresh, Alan, 186n22 Grimau García, Julián, 205, 205n28 Gritti, Roberto, 218n1 Gromiko, Andrej, 186 Gronchi, Giovanni, 41, 193 Grossi, Gianaldo, 223 Gualtieri, Roberto, 154n4, 180n5 Guevara Ernesto, “Che”, 119, 122n22 Guillen, Robert, 36 Guillén Vicente Rafael (Subcomandante Marcos), 121 Guiso, Andrea, 9, 180n7, 185n18 Gutiérrez, Gustavo, 119 H Halévy, Elie, 44, 55 Hall, Ian, 18n32 Hallstein, Walter, 99n25 Hegel Georg Wilhelm Friedrick, 122 Held, David, 72n14 Herling, Gustaw, 63 Heywood, A., 7n17 Hixson, Walter L., 2n4 Hollander, Paul, 31n1 Hu, Feng, 38, 39 I Ianari, Vittorio, 193n50 Ingrao, Pietro, 190n40, 255, 256 Iurlano, Giuliana, 70n4 J Jalla, Daniele, 181n10 Jaruzelski, Wojciech, 246, 249 Jaspers, Karl, 63 Jenkins, Roy, 103

Jennings, Jeremy, 21n37 John Paul II, see Wojtyla, Karol Johnson, Lindon, 94n11 Judt, Tony, 22n41 K Kalci, Giovanni, 118 Kaldor, Nicholas, 157 Kant, Immanuel, 80 Kennan, George F., 75 Kennedy, John Fitzgerald, 75, 76 Kenyatta, Jomo, 221, 221n9 Khrushchev, Nikita S., 52, 58–61 Kissinger, Henry A., 143 Knight, K., 7n17 Koestler, Arthur, 58, 60, 63 L La Malfa, Ugo, 97, 98 La Pira, Giorgio, 193 Lacorne, Denis, 22n41 Lama, Luciano, 239, 247 Lanaro, Silvio, 97n19 Lancellotti, Carlo, 132n1 Landolfi, Antonio, 218n1 Las Casas, Bartolomé de, 125 Latham, Michael E., 14n28, 25 Leffler, Melvyn P., 24 Lenin, Vladimir Ilich, 58, 59, 61, 66, 145 Leo XIII, Pope, 149 Leonardi, Silvio, 22n40 Letta, Enrico, 157n11, 173 Levi, Abramo, 116 Levi, Carlo, 47 Levi, Primo, 182, 182n13 Levis Sullam, Simon, 181n9 Libertini, Lucio, 220n7 Lill, Rudolph, 3n8 Lizzadri, Libero, 194n52

279

280 

INDEX

Lizzani, Carlo, 35 Lo Cascio, Paola, 11, 206n32, 213n61 Lo Martire, Carlo Maria, 227n28 Lombardini, Siro, 157 London, Artur, 187n24 López, Mario, 115 Ludlow, Piers, 154n2, 173 Luzzatto, Lucio, 220n7 M Maccaferri, Marzia, 2n5, 70n4, 78n56, 80 MacDonald, 186 Machiavelli, Niccolò, 80 Maglio, Manuela, 189n33 Magno, Michele, 248, 250 Magrini, Liliana, 224 Major, Patrick, 2n4 Malaparte, Curzio, 47, 181 Malgeri, Francesco, 97n19 Malraux, André, 55 Mammarella, Giuseppe, 97n19, 179n4, 193n49 Mancini, Federico, 69n1 Mandela, Nelson, 229 Mangoni, Luisa, 2n3, 4n11 Mannheim, Karl, 18 Mao Zedong, 84 Marchi, Michele, 86n89 Marianetti, Agostino, 239, 240, 245, 248n42, 249 Marie, Jean Jacques, 221n8 Marjolin, Robert, 99 Marshall, George C., 178 Martelli, Adriana, 205, 205n30 Martín Santos, Luís, 210 Martino, Gaetano, 41, 191, 191n43, 192 Martinoli, Gino, 203n15 Marx, Karl, 145, 184, 269, 272 Masina, Ettore, 116 Matard Bonucci, Anne-Marie, 181n9 Mattei, Enrico, 41, 193

Mattera, Paolo, 178n1 Matteucci, Nicola, 69n1, 70n7, 70n8, 71n10, 74, 80, 80n63, 80n64, 83, 83n73, 83n74, 84 Mattioli, Raffaele, 202n12, 207 Maurras, Charles, 183 Mazzini, Giuseppe, 42 Mazzolari, Primo, 120 McIlwain, Charles H., 74 Meir, Golda, 186 Melis, Antonio, 117 Menchú Tum, Rigoberta, 112 Méndez Arceo, Sergio, 125 Meneguzzi Rostagni, Carla, 40n33, 49 Menghistu, Hailè Mariàm, 227 Menichella, Donato, 92, 93 Mercadante, Francesco, 143n20 Merleau Ponty, Maurice, 34 Meroni, Giancarlo, 244–246, 250 Militello, Giacinto, 239, 244, 245 Minella, Angiola, 205n30 Mitter, Rana, 2n4 Monnerot, Jules, 58 Montale, Eugenio, 202n12 Montesquieu, baron de La Brède et de, 74 Montini, Giovanni Battista (Paul VI), 8 Monzali, Luciano, 16n30 Morandi, Rodolfo, 188, 188n30 Morelli, Umberto, 80n63 Morghenthau, Hans J., 75 Moro, Aldo, 82n71, 97n18, 98, 169 Moro, Renato, 8n18 Mosse, George, 3, 3n8 Musatti, Cesare, 35, 42 Musavi, Yoweri, 228 Mussolini, Benito, 5, 51 N Nardi, Isabella, 4n11 Nasser, Gamal Abdel, 13, 189–192, 191n42, 195, 219

 INDEX 

Nathan Rogers, Ernesto, 202n12 Nenni, Pietro, 10n23, 35, 41, 71, 97n18, 98, 178, 179n3, 187n26, 188n30, 191, 192, 192n44, 205, 218n1 Nicolosi, Gerardo, 25 Niebuhr, Reinhold, 19n35, 75, 161 Nixon, Richard, 20, 263, 266 Nuti, Leopoldo, 72n16, 75n38, 77n50, 148n27, 193n50 Nyerere, Julius, 228 O Oberti, Armando, 125n29 Orlandi, Silvano, 115 Orsina, Giovanni, 70n4 Ory, Pascal, 36n19 Osgood, Kenneth, 2n5 Ossola, Rinaldo, 104n41 P Pajetta, Gian Carlo, 192, 205n29, 225 Palermo, Mario, 205n29, 205n30 Pandolfi, Filippo, 104n41 Paoli, Arturo, 114, 126 Paolini, Edmondo, 80n63 Parlato, Giuseppe, 16n31 Paronetto, Sergio, 119 Parri, Ferruccio, 35, 42 Pastorelli, Pietro, 193n49 Pavan, Ilaria, 181n9, 182n11, 182n12 Pedrazzi, Luigi, 69n1, 70n5, 70n7, 74, 75, 76n39, 78n56, 78n57, 83, 83n74 Pedrone, Aldo, 120, 121n19 Peirone, Federico, 229n34 Peluffo, Paolo, 105 Pérez Esquivel, Adolfo, 115 Perfetti, Francesco, 3n8 Pertici, Roberto, 84n78 Pesetti, Lucio, 10n23, 179n3

281

Petracchi, Giorgio, 148n27 Petrucciani, Stefano, 72n14 Peyretti, Enrico, 116 Piccardi, Leopoldo, 34, 34n8, 35 Pierini, Franco, 225, 225n22 Pillitteri, Paolo, 227, 227n29 Pinto, Carmine, 10n22 Piovene, Guido, 202n12 Pipitone, Daniele, 178n2, 183n14 Pius XI (Pope), 8 Pius XII (Pope), 139, 141, 149 Polese Remaggi, Luca, 13, 15, 36n18, 70n8, 74n29, 84n78 Poliakov, Léon, 186n20, 186n23, 187n24 Poma de Ayala, Felipe Huamán, 117 Pombeni, Paolo, 8n19, 156n9 Pons, Silvio, 11n27, 56n6, 180n7, 238n6, 238n7, 238n8 Posner, Richard A., 21n37 Prandi, Alfonso, 73n19, 74n28, 76n46, 78n54 Preda, Daniela, 80n63, 83n74 Proaño, Leonidas, 119, 121n20 Prodi, Paolo, 119 Prodi, Romano, 70n5, 157, 166 Prosperi, Mario, 223 Provedoni, Bruto, 189n34 Puente Lutteroth, María Alicia, 122 Pujol i Soley, Jordi, 209 Q Quadrio Curzio, Alberto, 157n10 Quagliariello, Gaetano, 22n41, 70n4 Quartapelle, Lia, 218n2 R Raimondi, Ezio, 69n1, 80n63 Reagan, Ronald, 12, 20, 229, 250, 255, 260–272 Ribeiro, Nancy, 116

282 

INDEX

Riccardi, Luca, 190n36, 192n45, 193n51 Richard, Pablo, 121n20 Righi, Maria Luisa, 191n42 Rizzi, Armido, 112, 112n1, 113, 117 Roasio, Antonio, 205n29 Robinson, Joan, 157 Roccucci, Adriano, 173 Rodari, Gianni, 182, 185 Rognoni, Luigi, 202n12 Romagnoli, Tullia, 205n29 Romero y Galdamez, Óscar Arnulfo, 115 Romero, Federico, 173 Roosevelt, Franklin D., 14, 75 Rosenboim, Or, 19n35, 79n60 Rossanda, Rossana, 11, 199–213 Rosselli, Carlo, 54, 55, 61, 64 Rossi, Salvatore, 163n20, 173 Rossi-Doria, Anna, 182n12 Rotondi, Claudia, 157n10 Rousset, David, 36 Rucker, Laurent, 187n25 Ruiz García, Samuel, 121, 125, 126, 126n32 Ruiz-Giménez, Joaquín, 209, 209n48 S Sabbatucci, Giovanni, 2n3, 70n3, 178n1 Saccenti, Mario, 69n1 Sacco, Giuseppe, 225, 226n23, 229n33 Sade, marquis de (byname of Donatien-Alphonse-François, Comte de Sade), 144 Salsano, Francesco, 157n13 Salvi, Maurizio, 224n18 Samarani, Guido, 40n33 Santese, Gianmarco, 190n36, 190n40, 191n42, 192n46 Santucci, Antonio, 69n1, 79n61 Saraceno, Pasquale, 91 Saragat, Giuseppe, 82, 178

Sartre, Jean Paul, 36, 42n35, 182–184, 219 Schiavulli, Antonio, 4n11 Schmidt, Helmut, 103 Schulz-Forberg, Hagen, 22n40 Schumpeter, Joseph A., 71 Schwarz, Guri, 182n12 Scirocco, Giovanni, 10n23, 179n3, 202n12 Scoppola, Pietro, 97n19 Scroccu, Gianluca, 12, 13, 226n24 Segni, Antonio, 192 Semprún, Jorge (Sánchez, Federico), 207 Senghor, Léopold Sédar, 224 Serge, Victor, 55, 59 Serventi Longhi, Enrico, 12 Siad Barre, Mohammed, 227 Silone, Ignazio, 59, 205 Silva, Francesco, 158n15 Sirinelli, Jean-François, 36n19 Solé i Barberà, Josep, 208n41 Sorgonà, Gregorio, 12, 22 Sounders, Frances Stonor, 2n4 Sowell, Thomas, 21n37 Spinelli, Altiero, 21n38, 74, 75, 75n37, 76n39, 77n47, 77n48, 79–83, 81n69, 82n70, 82n71, 83n73, 83n74, 205 Spiri, Andrea, 225n21 Spirito, Ugo, 47 Spriano, Paolo, 205 Stalin, Josif, 52, 56–62, 66, 72, 201 Steiner, Albe, 203n14 Stråth, Bo, 22n40 Sturzo, Luigi, 7 Sullam, Victor B., 74, 74n30, 75, 75n37 Sylos Labini, Paolo, 226, 226n24 T Taddei, Francesca, 178n2 Tamburrano, Giuseppe, 97n19, 221n8

 INDEX 

Tarantino, Antonio, 143n20 Tarquini, Alessandra, 12 Taviani, Ermanno, 70n8, 145n23 Tega, Walter, 79n61 Telò, Mario, 21n40 Teodori, Massimo, 69n2, 74n29 Terracini, Umberto, 205, 205n29 Testoni Binetti, Saffo, 74n29, 84n78 Thomassen, Bjørn, 132n1 Thompson, John B., 7n17 Tito (Broz Josip), 189 Titta, Armando, 72n18, 73n19 Tobia, Bruno, 3n8 Togliatti, Palmiro, 11, 12, 180, 191, 200, 200n3, 201, 201n8, 204, 236, 237, 256, 257 Tognoni, Gianni, 117, 118 Tolosa, Ángel, 115 Toscano, Mario, 180n8, 182n12 Tosi, Luciano, 82n71, 148n27 Traniello, Francesco, 8n18 Traverso, Enzo, 181n9, 184n16 Treccani, Ernesto, 35 Trentin, Bruno, 237, 239 Trombadori, Antonello, 35 Tunnermann, Carlos, 115 Turco, Luigi, 79n61 Turoldo, David Maria, 116, 126 U Uboldi, Raffaello, 219n4, 221n8 Ungari, Andrea, 16n30 Uri, Bialer, 186n21 V Vacca, Giuseppe, 70n8, 145n23 Valente, Augusto, 225, 225n19

283

Valiani, Leo, 53–55, 57, 59–63, 66 Valsecchi, Franco, 3n8 Van Miert, Karel, 166 Varsori, Antonio, 96n14, 97n19, 154n3, 163n32 Vasconi, Luciano, 222n12, 229n33 Vecchio, Giorgio, 148n27 Venece, Antonio, 82n70 Venturi, Antonello, 67 Venturi, Franco, 53–57, 59–64, 66 Vidal, Dominique, 186n22 Vidali, Vittorio, 205n29 Vidotto, Vittorio, 2n3, 70n3 Vignolo, Mino, 225, 225n20 Villaume, Poul, 148n27 Vittorelli, Paolo, 205n29, 222n12 Vittoria, Albertina, 180n6, 201n8 Vittorini, Elio, 203n14, 205 Vivarelli, Umberto, 116 Voulgaris, Yannis, 97n19 W Walesa, Lech, 119, 245 Westad, Odd Arne, 43n39 Wieviorka, Annette, 181n10 Winock, Michel, 36n19, 42n35 Wistrich, Robert S., 182n12 Wittfogel, Karl A., 46, 46n47 Wojtyla, Karol, 249 Z Zanuso, Marco, 202n12 Zaslavski, Victor, 11n27, 180n7 Zhang, Shu Guang, 35n14 Zhou, Enlai, 35, 41 Zucaro, Domenico, 179n3