speech Chigiano July 6, 2008
The memory of the victims of Nazi massacres that took place as these scenarios in the spring of 1944 coincides with the 60th of the Republican Constitution.
This, however, should prompt reflection rather than celebration: our budgets and is a time of soul-searching. The authoritative cries of alarm from several parties are thrown on the state of our democratic life require a strict reflection - on the characters that the settlers wanted to give the Italian institutions born of the liberation struggle - Focus condition true of our civic life and the actual quality of democratic practice in our country.
What alarmed many is, I think, the risk of a final separation between active citizens and the exercise of political freedom and the consequent depletion of democratic practice reduced to a mere procedure. Alternatively or better in this aging phenomenon of drying up the democratic perceived risk of a drift and populist plebiscite. Sclerosis of political life, in fact, would set up a framework for social and cultural environment of passivity, loss of autonomy and civil liability, that is precisely the lack of the preconditions that make democracy possible understood as power by the people to make collective decisions by the sum of free individual choices of all citizens.
Before proceeding with this reasoning, but let me spend a thing to Emilio Ferretti, the commander of "Iron". Last year he was here to participate in this celebration itself: it was his last public engagement since the days immediately after he was struck by the evil that has taken him to death. On 21 July a ceremony was held in Ancona on the first anniversary of his death. But I think it is right, and have done well Pantanetti Presidents and Kings to take this opportunity to remember today. Who was
Iron? Born in 1923 into a family-fascist - the father is a driver fired for political reasons by the regime -. Ancona shipyard worker joined the underground Communist Party and imprisoned after a demonstration for the release of anti-fascists after July 25 '43. after September 8, enters the resistance, organizing and directing the GAP of the capital before and after organizing a partisan group in the mountains (the group "Iron"), which operates between tracks and the Near San Mote. After the liberation continues its military commitment (should be parachuted behind enemy lines in the area of \u200b\u200bBolzano, but the war ends on the eve of the mission) returned to Ancona held numerous political offices, nell'Anpi of which he became provincial secretary in the PCI and the CGIL. Following assume various positions in the provincial administration and then federmezzadri Ancona where he became alderman in the council Boris. He later served as Regional President of the PNA.
In his biography, like that of many other partisans, he perceives a continuity of approach between the resistance and the subsequent participation in the political and civic engagement. On the occasions when I got to work on his side have always been impressed by both the determination of both the elegant composure with which we face every situation. In that serene determination there was, of course, the safety of those who have dealt with many other tests, but also, I think, the awareness of the nature of the commitment to democratic development that does not permit excesses, but rather requires the perseverance of the work of long breath, the commitment that is renewed daily tasks even in the seemingly most ordinary and humble, because the freedom and democracy to win back every day in their everyday practice.
short, participation in the partisan struggle, but, paradoxically, I would say even more in political and civic republican, Ferretti has personified the collective effort to make effective popular participation in the life of institutions, inescapable condition for a genuine democratic development . If it is true - Calamandrei as he wrote - that freedom has a flavor and a charm that ends up winning over even those who have fought, however, democracy is an extremely fragile institutional framework, in no way intended to develop inexorably and necessarily linear accretive.
therefore be wrong to underestimate the risks that occur in our present.
In fact, the institutions do not live in a vacuum tire, indifferent and immune to changes in historical conditions and social arrangements, economic and cultural.
constituents had in mind the link between democracy and social arrangements, as evidenced by the wording of Article 3 of the Charter Costitutzionale, where in the first paragraph, we affirm the equal dignity and equality before the law for all citizens regardless of sex, race, language, religion, political opinion, personal and social conditions, while in the second paragraph relies on the Republic the task of removing obstacles to economic and social order that limit the freedom and equality and prevent the effective participation in the political, economic and social development of the country.
The Constitution, therefore, considered not only as a fact the existence of differences in social and economic, but also believes that such differences may affect the democratic conditions, becoming obstacles for freedom and equality in the first comma.Intervenendo consecrated in the debate in the classroom, Lelio Basso and Amintore Fanfani, even on the political positions are so different, better explain this principle. Fanfani, in particular, declared that if the French Revolution of '89 had said the legal equality of citizens of one State, the experience of the social life of the last century had shown that this simple statement is not sufficient to carry out this program .
We could say that through Article 3 of our Constitution comes alive in all the richness of its implications for the concept of isonomia which was the basis of life of Greek poleis, the which does not only mean, as we usually think, equality before the law but also equality through law. Without a certain degree of equality among citizens, in fact, do not guarantee freedom: why the State, through the law, has this task. The same classical liberal thought, would not contradict to a certain level of equality that give effect to freedom. If it is true that freedom is first of all freedom of choice for individual purposes, it implies the possibility to obtain the resources necessary to realize those ends, otherwise the restriction of all liberties. And then the unequal distribution of resources, which was so few that they were no, make empty freedom. So the policy of social rights that give equal opportunities to the worker and the son of a professional, is not inconsistent with the liberal principle, but it is required. Similarly, it was so important to ensure social justice, combating insecurity, exclusion, promoting social inclusion.
that equality and freedom are the conditions for genuine democratic life say it also fathers of the oldest existing democracy, American. In particular, the Jeffersonian tradition of pursuing the ideal of a community made up of individuals responsible, aware and therefore able to govern themselves because a) economically subordinate b) socially emancipated and self-aware; c) cultured and intellectually active participants in public debate. Not surprisingly, contrasting the American situation (or perhaps his idealization) the condition of the working classes in Europe, the democratic leaders were used to lament not so much poverty, the exclusion "from civic life, the world of culture from all over as it stimulates curiosity intellettualee amplifies the spiritual horizons (...) seen by America, the working classes in Europe did not live in misery, but in a virtual slavery. "(C. Lasch, The Revolt of the elites) is no coincidence that Henry Adams say one of the characters in his novel: "Democracy means that the masses have risen to a level of intelligence higher than before. Our entire civilization is to this end. "(Cited by C. Lasch)
does not see the constitutional principles and democratic life of the understanding of the early decades of Republican efforts to translate this same democratic project in the concrete reality of Italy exit by war and fascist dictatorship (and thus marked by delays and known by the backwardness of its national history, with all the burden represented by the narrow class of the new state and the consequent alienation of the peasant masses and Catholic, the inadequacies civilians and trends sovversivistiche of its middle classes, and finally the weight of the fascist dictatorship and its insertion experiment passivizzante and reactionary of the masses in the structure of the totalitarian state). The effort that the mass political organizations and trade unions came for emancipating the working classes by submission (we have not taught the peasant to take his hat off in front of the master, in the words of Victor) and the sterile rebels to gain awareness of their rights and the maturity of a democratic practice that sees social conflict in a factor of civil integration, strengthening democracy and allowed the country an extraordinary development and civil society.
What is the situation today? Many things have changed, especially in the collective consciousness and social practice. The crisis and the collapse of the party system has overwhelmed many hopes and many achievements. But not everything can be explained by the subjective weaknesses of the Italian case, because similar phenomena can be observed in many other countries. It would be unwise, for example, ignore the massive restructuring of relations of power between power and knowledge in recent decades and the influence that this has had on political power and the ruler who formally holds: the people.
Consider for example the economic sphere: "When money talks everyone is forced to listen, writes an American sociologist. A single figure to measure the extent of the problem: of the 100 largest economic entities in the world 51 are corporations and 49 national states: General Motors, for example, with a turnover of 176 billion dollars above 27 nation states. In this respect, an essay appeared in The Economist noted that the 2 nd undertakings because of their command over resources have be more political weight of individual citizens (and) political equality is challenged by an excess of wealth after which more money means more political power. " It may be surprising that in this situation there is a climb to the government policy on the part of the business world, and consequently the citizen feels helpless, and then induced to desert an area where feels irrelevant.
I think not, especially since the recent years we have witnessed a gradual discrediting the value and effectiveness of collective action. The means of mass communication, just read what he writes in this regard such as a keen observer as Z. Bauman, there are increasingly offering an individual approach to the solution of problemisocio-economic effect of the blame on the political level and make all those persons who can not find their solution as they did but their mass media models. I quote a single figure to give the measure of this process after the Second World War in capitalist countries there was a union member every three employees, now there one every 11. In addition, the decline of public discourse: democracy alive if there is an intensive exchange of views, but for this to occur, you must first words that are used with integrity, but also that there is a gap in excessive their disposal: a few words, a few ideas. in fact, is the only language that is equal - writes Don Milani - who knows how to express themselves and is equal to the mean expression of others "that's why a school is a condition of egalitarian democracy. Otherwise the debate is replaced by the formation of two poles: the class of speakers and that of cheering, and most importantly, instead of being a real debate, this exchange that allows us to share ideas and experiences rising from the level of mere opinions that points of view arising from random and partial impressions, becomes a soliloquy in which everyone is pleased to present its doxa (as it is shared by most: maybe we do not live in the age surveys?) despairing that we can build a shared truth. In this sense it is tempting to make words only means of advertising and propaganda.
From this set of phenomena, I fear, is a strong incentive to wear the words of their value as instruments of understanding and communication and public discourse in particular, discouraging and even well away from participation.
I stop here to list this set of phenomena, but it could go on and on, for example considering the negative effect that the progressive depletion of elected assemblies as places in which it manifests in a plastic representation of the will of the sovereign and democratic political decision.
Taken together, these phenomena do not only help to weaken the relationship between the people and the state. And then to expand the space for populism, which in my view is essentially the contrast between organic and elite people, between people and institutions. In this sense populism could be indifferent to the distinction between right and left, because his true nature is to arouse in people an inferiority complex and therefore of revenge against all those powers in any way purport to restrict and regulate the drives popular. This is why populism has always needed a scapegoat to explain how the enemy and to fight the charge: it may be from time to time the intellectual, the bureaucrat, the judge, the politician, of course. Etc. populism is an infringement of the democratic principle, which tends to make the people was not to oppose each other in an organic way. In this sense populism exploits the lack of democracy of a sort, and the heightens increasing its influence in this way as plastically shows the crisis of European institutions that have sprung up almost programmatically with the aim to do without the people, and therefore are more vulnerable to the criticism of other populist to be functional only for an elite (the Eurocrats, in fact).
Unfortunately, populism, and we consider this nothing to the analysis of Tocqueville, by its nature tends to overwhelm the limits of the rule of law, to deny the very foundation of the separation of powers that can temper the pressures that may originate in some moments of the democratic sovereign. How is positioned in the Republican born of resistance, in which democracy is associated with the establishment that is a set of rules and procedures that define so overriding a policy decision.
The phenomena of crisis in many European countries facing the challenges of globalization and in particular the historical highlight of a multicultural and multiethnic society, depend largely on these trends. The speech is particularly appropriate for our country, unfortunately.
The solution of these problems is not easy nor at hand, but it is also clear in its contents: the democracy will win his challenge only if you reorganize and resume the path of promoting active and conscious participation of the people to life public.
If you do not succeed in this, unfortunately, I fear will be worth for us the model represented by Aristophanes's comedy "The Knights", where you see the salcicciaio Agoracrito who is persuaded to run for leadership of the city precisely because of what we would call defects (ignorance, vulgarity and cheek) that the Board is given is in fact continue to do what he usually does: "shuffles along with public affairs and bags of all kinds, and to win always the people with words blandiscilo well cooked. Everything else you've got the demagogue. Item obscure origins obscene, vulgar. Do you have everything it takes to govern. "
Agoracrito We could say that the exact opposite of the ideal of responsibility and excellence that drove many young people to take the road by the rebels for freedom.
not seem to escape the sphere of abstract morality, but I think the face of these challenges is first and foremost necessary to recover the ethics office with all the value it has for the formation of socially responsible individuals, that individuals - as Bruno Bettelheim writes - who have a sense of identity, the conviction that only people capable of deep and lasting relationships with other people and therefore accountable for their decisions and able to take them. At the opposite pole is the blob that is the basis of the totalitarian regimes of the last century, dominated by demagogues to turn need of mass-men. Democracy, in fact, proclaims the equality but does not tend approval, the conformist mediocrity, but promotes the autonomy and 'originality.
For each of us count as food for the journey I hope the words with which Max Weber concludes his discourse on science as a profession, "yearn and wait is not enough, we will act in another way: we will put ourselves in our work and fulfill the daily task, in our quality of men and in our work. This is simple and easy when everyone has found and followed the demon who holds the threads of his life. "
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