My political faith by Ignazio Silone

Submitted by cathy n on 25 October, 2006 - 2:06

(January 1956)

I do not adhere to any system of philosophy, to any ideology, or to any orthodoxy. I think that all the ideological systems inherited from the last centuries, like the society that produced them, are in crisis at present — which does not mean that they do not contain some partial truth. I think that this has been the lot also of Marxism, in all of its variants. All metaphysics has lost its self-evidency.

In 1931 I left the Italian Communist Party, having firmly decided to keep far away from political parties for the rest of my life, and to continue the struggle alone, as a writer and an independent socialist. I remained faithful to that aim until 1941, when I yielded to the vigorous insistence of some friends, so that at least for the duration of the war I might help the underground organisation of Italian socialism that was about to be absorbed by the Stalinists, with Nenni as accomplice.

The recollection of this period gives me the opportunity to set down the significance I attributed to the formula of the “Third Front” which I had already pointed to in an interview with Clement Greenberg that appeared in the Partisan Review (Autumn 1939) and in another with Jean-Germain Tricot that appeared in Novelles Litteraires (Paris, 26 August, 1939). Having adhered to socialism in the midst of the First World War, at the age of 17, attracted to it by the Zimmerwald Manifesto, my problem was this: could one assume the same attitude toward the Second World War? I tried to formulate the answer in 13 points which I called “Theses on the Third Front”. The first three points give a general idea of it, and they are simply:

“1. The Italian socialists affirm that the present war, besides being like the war of 1914-18 an imperialist and capitalist war to corner raw materials and markets, bears very grave consequences for the internal regime of every country, and on its outcome will depend to a considerable degree the future situation of humanity and in particular of the working classes.

“2. The attitude of the Italian socialists towards the present war is therefore dominated by their anti-fascist position, and by their firm conviction that democratic liberties constitute very useful premises for all future progress by humanity.

“3. The decisive front on which fascism can be halted and destroyed is the home front of each country. Only on this third front can the social and political problems from which fascism has sprung be resolved. The only adversary capable of defeating fascism on the third front is socialism. The military defeat of the fascist powers must be considered only as a prelude to the decisive struggles which will take place on the third front. The democratic character of the powers presently at war against the fascist sates is neither homogenous nor unalterable. The state of war, especially if prolonged can also modify in a totalitarian direction the internal structure of the democratic states. The Italian socialists are therefore determined to safeguard liberty of criticism and autonomy at all times even against the democratic governments. The politics of the Italian socialists takes its inspiration solely from the interests and ideals of the Italian and international working class…”

Of the points that followed, the most important were those on anti-colonialism and on the condemnation in advance of any division of the world into spheres of influence. These theses were accepted by the foreign centre of Italian socialism, and served as a guide for our action during the war. The quotation above should clarify: first in what sense we had departed from the position of Zimmerwald; second, in what way our support of the war was conditioned. This distinction recurs later under the new conditions created in European socialism by the formation of military blocs and by power politics.

When the war was over, with the defeat of fascism, my withdrawal from practical politics was delayed by the necessity of preventing the Communist Party from capturing Italian socialism. The objective was partly realised by us, but under quite confused and contradictory positions.

As compared with the past, our political life is now radically transformed. The general insecurity pushes individuals towards mass organisations. Small groups can still have some important inside mass organisations: isolated their function can be of a cultural nature at most.

On 13 October 1950 the leadership of the PSU approved a long statement on the policy “For Peace and Democracy.”

“… each difficult conjuncture, in the face of any threat of conflict, we socialists will therefore always be for recourse to negotiations, mediation, arbitration and any other democratic procedure that may preserve peace and permit the solution of international problems in accordance with justice. But in order to be able to fulfil our peace-making function without misunderstandings, we feel the duty to make very clear to all that we do not intend in any way to compromise on the defence of democratic institutions or on resistance to all armed aggressions.

The Communist Party is at present going through a serious political and organisation crisis, specially among the workers and intellectuals; to a lesser degree among the peasants but even there are clear symptoms of disaffection. The little groups of ex-Communist deviations of various tendencies in Italy we have at least five) have lived until now in expectation of the Stalinist thaw that would bring the still-absent worker masses into their ranks. But the crisis of the Communist Party has already assumed grave forms and this mass influx to the groups of ex-Communists is not taking place.

Why? The explanation lies in the social and ideological composition of the Communist Party and in particular the dynamism of each stratum that forms a part of it. I want only to recall that the Communist Party is an amalgam in which, around the Bolshevik nucleus, are grouped the most diverse and heterogeneous elements: revolutionary peasants, free-thinking intellectuals, nationalist ex-partisans, vaguely socialist workers etc. The tearing away of all these very diverse elements cannot, however, take place in a single direction.

In my opinion an intensification of the crisis in the CP will be of use to all parties except the small groups of ex-Communists, who will continue to tear themselves apart in their impotence and blame fantastic scapegoats for their own sterility. They are daily ridiculed, slandered and threatened by the Stalinist bureaucracy and they think to take revenge by using the same methods themselves. Having read a collection of truculent and acid phrases directed against opponents in the pamphlets of Lenin and Trotsky, they have ended up believing that this is the essence of revolutionary thought. Thus ones sees excellent men grow old corroded by anger, their precious energies wasted.

[On] the orientation of the Italian Committee for cultural Freedom, of which I am one of the supporters, I have to clarify this last point too.

Writers and artists of all liberal Italian tendencies make up the organisation. Four-fifths of the activities of this organisation is devoted to the defence of cultural freedom in Italy, which is endangered by the remnants of fascism, by the clerical right, and by a part of the state apparatus. We are in fact convinced that the duty of democrats is, above all, the concern themselves with liberty in their own country. But within the limits of our possibilities we try, above all in our publications to make Italian intellectuals aware of the dangers that menace us on the international plane.

On this point also, however, I want to make things clear: we reject the sophism of equidistance [This idea refers to equidistance from the two world blocs]. In the first national assembly of our organisation on 18 January 1953 a declaration was adopted in which one could read as follows.

“It would be an error to judge our open and irreconcilable opposition to totalitarian regimes of any kind and our critical vigilance over the imperfections and contingent tendencies that exist in the democratic regimes as a position of equidistance. In reality, in totalitarian regimes we condemn that political structure which does not permit the least expression for the individuals and classes that suffer under it, while in democratic countries we consider ourselves responsible citizens.”

Without taking back the approval I gave this formulation at that time, I would now be more cautious in affirming that in totalitarian countries the oppressed are not able to protest: the facts of 17 June in East German and the Vorkuta strikes have demonstrated the contrary. For the liberation of oppressed countries, I put my hopes in revolution and not in war.

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