Something interesting happened this week to Altiero Spinelli (1907-1986), one of the founding fathers of the European Union. He was remembered. By European leaders, no less. But, as often happens when people are remembered, forgetting played an important part in the commemoration.
It all happened at a mini-summit in Italy. Prime Minister Matteo Renzi hosted France’s François Hollande and Germany’s Angela Merkel, three leaders facing important, testing electoral appointments over the coming year. In the wake of Brexit and facing domestic unrest over immigration and (in Italy and France) the economy, they promised that the EU will be ‘refounded’ on better security and real economic prospects for the young.
Of course, they had to make a reference to the ‘Ventotene Manifesto’ – the manifesto ‘for a free and united Europe’ written largely by Spinelli (with a contribution by Ernesto Rossi) in 1941, while he was a political prisoner in Mussolini’s Italy on the island of Ventotene.
The first piece of forgetting can be found in every international news report I came across. Spinelli was described as an ‘anti-fascist’ activist. True. But he was more than that. He was a communist. Somehow, that has fallen off the radar.
Pedants might retort that Spinelli might have entered Mussolini’s jails (he had toured a few) as a communist but, by 1941, he had broken with Italy’s communist party over Joseph Stalin’s purges. In fact, this break soured his relations with many fellow prisoners.
Yes, but as late as 1979, when Spinelli contested the first European Parliament elections, he ran on the Italian communist party list – as an ‘independent’ within that list, admittedly.
Anyway, my point is not about labels. It’s not about anti-communism, either. Readers hoping for a rant against the crypto-Soviet foundations of the EU will need to look elsewhere. By the time the Ventotene Manifesto was discussed more widely, immediately the war had ended, it was already attracting attention from progressive thinkers from the political centre, such as Emmanuel Mounier, a critical figure for centre-left Christian Democrats.
Spinelli stands in judgement over all Europeans today. Most obviously, over right-wing nationalism
The point is about what informed the manifesto. Like another Italian communist, Antonio Gramsci, Spinelli used his time in prison to reflect systematically on the writings of Marx and Hegel, to understand both the nature of human dignity and the conditions of freedom.
With Spinelli, the result was a short document that consisted of a dramatic statement of what was wrong with fascism, why it had come to seem persuasive and what was to be done after the war should fascism be defeated.
In 1941, whether fascism would be defeated was unclear. But Spinelli was keen to emphasise that being anti-fascist was not enough. Simply defeating fascism, only for the anti-fascist forces to be dispersed soon after, was a recipe for ensuring that yet another war would soon come along to engulf Europe. There had to be a vision for reform.
Hence why it’s so important to remember that Spinelli was not simply an ‘anti-fascist’. He himself had a specific ‘revolutionary’ (his word) set of goals, which were to undo the political conditions that had placed military and elite interests before the interests of the general populace and, especially, the underprivileged.
He had written thus: “In order to respond to our needs, the European revolution must be socialist, that is, its goal must be the emancipation of the working classes and the creation of more humane conditions for them.”
However, he was quick to clarify that ‘socialism’ did not mean wholesale nationalisation of the economy under State control, which, the manifesto states, “leads to a regime where the entire population is subservient to a restricted class of bureaucrats who run the economy”.
I wonder whether it isn’t that sentence that has prompted the ‘photoshopping’ of Spinelli’s political profile.
It reads just like the caricature of the European Commission by today’s Europhobes and could prompt sly smiles among anyone who bothered to listen to the promise to relaunch Europe.
But the dangerous sentence might have been another that follows in hot pursuit:
“The truly fundamental principle of socialism… is the principle which states that, far from dominating man, economic forces, like the forces of nature, should be subject to man, guided and controlled by him in the most rational way, so that the broadest strata of the population will not become their victims.”
It was written 75 years ago and, yet, it could have well been written today as a critique of our time.
The Ventotene Manifesto has been referred to several times this week but it has remained a closed document. A pity indeed. Broadly speaking, its analysis of what led to the rise of authoritarianism in Europe eight decades ago stands in judgement not just over Spinelli’s generation. It judges us too.
The manifesto delineates how the progress made in winning social rights at the beginning of the 20th century were reversed by the 1930s. Democracy had deteriorated into sectional vested interests, giving scope for an authoritarian State to arise and claim to represent ‘national unity’.
But something happened to ‘national unity’ in the process. The State stopped being the guardian of civic rights and became the master of its citizens. It paid only lip service to civic rights. This suited powerful economic interests that resented economic democratisation.
In the meantime, “the nation has become a divine entity, an organism which must only consider its own existence, its own development, without the least regard for the damage that others may suffer from this”.
Spinelli stands in judgement over all Europeans today. Most obviously, over right-wing nationalism. Almost as obviously, over those who do not combat it with enough strategic intelligence and, ultimately, go along with the conditions that served to make it flourish.
However, his analytical intelligence – his ability to analyse the driving forces of conflict and then to propose solutions – stand in stark contrast to the anodyne statements about ‘more Europe’ that we hear today.
Of course, it’s also a far more different world from his. His manifesto came (partially) to fruition during a period which represents the largest period of productivity growth in the western world (coming to an end roughly 40 years ago). That period may well be impossible to reproduce for today’s leaders.
They also have to lead a Europe that is much less compact and cohesive than the western European community he lived in.
But his manifesto is testament to a mind ready to grapple with the big picture in concrete ways. Its political appetite to tackle challenges is contagious. We should praise Spinelli less and read him more.
ranierfsadni@europe.com