THE VENTOTENE MANIFESTO AND THE FEDERALIST IDEA
- ALTIERO SPINELLI -

Presentation by Lorenzo Rilasciati

Biography

Ø Altiero Spinelli (1907-1986) promoted the foundation of the Movimento Federalista Europeo (European Federalist Movement) on 27-28th August 1943 in Milan.
Ø He had joined the Italian Communist Party, and participated in the clandestine struggle against fascism.
Ø Arrested in 1927, he spent ten years in prison and six in confinement.
Ø During his confinement at Ventotene, he studied the texts of Anglo-Saxon federalists, which led him to abandon communism and embrace federalism.
Ø Along with Ernesto Rossi and Eugenio Colorni, he drew up the Ventotene Manifesto in 1941.
Ø Spinelli soon realised that the battle for the European federation required the creation of a new type of political organisation, immune to national fetishes and the limitations of traditional ideologies.
Ø In the early fifties, Spinelli toward the Italian government proved decisive in making the European constituent question the central issue in the intergovernmental negotiations for the creation of the European Defence Community (EDC).
Ø An ad hoc Assembly (the enlarged assembly of the ECSC) was given the task of drawing up the statute of the European Political Community, the political body to be charged with controlling the European army.
Ø The Assembly fulfilled its mandate by drawing up a constitution text, but its work was frustrated by France's refusal to ratify the EDC in 1954.
Ø In the sixties, he was nominated a member of the EEC's Executive Commission.
Ø From 1976 to 1986 he was a member of the European Parliament, becoming President of its Institutional Commission in 1984.
Ø He started a constitutional campaign promoting in the new directly elected European Parliament the elaboration of a Draft Treaty establishing the European Union (approved by a huge majority on 14th February 1984).
Ø This initiative was blocked and shelved by the national governments, which in 1985 passed the less ambitious Single European Act.
Ø This nevertheless marked the entrance of the European Parliament onto the European scene as a new political actor in the process of democratising the Community's institutions.
Ø Spinelli died in Rome on 23rd May 1986.

WHY SPINELLI'S WORK AND IDEAS ARE IMPORTANT?

ü Spinelli's attitude differed from that of federalists before him, who limited themselves to denouncing the historical crisis of the nation-state and setting the achievement of the European federation at some indeterminate future time. ü Such federalists. unlike Spinelli. had not set themselves the objective of drawing up a precise plan of action ü Spinelli, on the other hand, convinced that following the Second World War the European federation would become the concrete objective of political struggle, realised that an opportunity had opened up for the federalist struggle. ü Spinelli therefore unhesitatingly denounced the limits of the functionalist approach to European unification, and the Europeanists' illusion of being able to achieve federation without the states renouncing their national sovereignty.ü In contrast to the community method followed by Jean Monnet, Spinelli opposed the constituent method, conscious of the fact that if on the one hand it was necessary to make the states accept a treaty according to which they declared themselves ready to cede a part of their sovereignty in favour of a supranational government, on the other hand it was necessary for the European people to participate in defining a constitution that established the form and responsibilities of this new union between the states.

THE VENTOTENE MANIFESTO

Ø The Ventotene Manisfesto is divided in three sections:
1. The crisis of modern civilization;
2. Post-war task. European unity;
3. Post-war duties. Reform of society.

1. THE CRISIS OF MODERN CIVILIZATION

Basic Principles

I. The principle of freedom: man must not be a mere instrument to be used by others but an autonomous centre of life.
II. The equal right of all nations to organize themselves into independent States has been established.

ü The ideology of national independence was a powerful stimulus to progress:
(a) It helped overcome narrow-minded parochialism and created a much wider feeling of solidarity against foreign oppression;
(b) It eliminated many obstacles hindering the free movement of people and goods.
(c) Within the territory of each new State, it brought the institutions and systems of the more advanced societies to more backward ones.

Crisis

ü The seeds of capitalist imperialism totalitarian States have grown up and world wars have been unleashed.
ü The nation is no longer viewed as the historical product of co-existence between men who see their State as being the most effective means of organizing collective life within the context of all human society.
ü 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.
ü The absolute sovereignty of national States has led to the desire of each of them to dominate.
ü From being the guardian of citizens' freedom, the State has been turned into a master of vassals bound into servitude, and has all the powers it needs to achieve the maximum war-efficiency.
ü Totalitarian States are precisely those which have unified all their forces in the most coherent way, by implementing the greatest possible degree of centralization and autarky.

Basic Principle

The equal right of all citizens to participate in the process of determining the State's will. A political organization of this kind made it possible to correct or at least to minimize many of the most strident injustices inherited from previous regimes.

Crisis:

ü Freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, and the steady extension of suffrage, made it increasingly difficult to defend old privileges, while maintaining a representative system of government.
ü Even the privileged classes who agreed with equality in political rights, could not accept the fact that the underprivileged could use it to achieve a de facto equality that would have created a very real freedom with a very concrete content.
ü When the threat became all too serious at the end of the First World War, it was only natural that these privileged classes should have warmly welcomed and supported the rise of dictatorships that removed their adversaries legislative weapons.
ü All economic improvements made in a dictatorships regime are always solely dictated by military needs which have merged with the reactionary aspirations of the privileged classes in giving rise to and consolidating totalitarian States.

Basic Principle

The permanent value of the spirit of criticism has been asserted against authoritarian dogmatism. Everything that is affirmed must prove its worth or disappear. The greatest achievements of human society in every field are due to the scientific method that lies behind this unfettered approach.

Crisis:

ü The spiritual freedom has not survived the crisis created by totalitarian States. New dogmas to be accepted as articles of faith or simply hypocritically are advancing in all fields of knowledge.
ü The social ethic of freedom and equality has itself been undermined.
ü Men are no longer considered free citizens who can use the State to achieve collective goals.
ü Men are, instead, servants of the State, which decides what their goals must be, and the will of those who hold power becomes the will of the State.
ü Men are no longer subjects with civil rights, but are instead arranged hierarchically and are expected to obey their superiors without argument, the hierarchy culminating in a suitably deified leader.

The salvation of our civilization is entrusted to the progressive forces of the society:(a) the enlightened groups of the working classes;(b) sharpest members of the intellectual classes;(c) who, with an innate sense of dignity, will not bend one inch when faced with the humiliation of servitude

2. POST-WAR TASKS. EUROPEAN UNITY

Basic assumption

ü Germany's defeat would not automatically lead to the reorganization of Europe in accordance with our ideal of civilization.
In the brief, intense period of general crisis the most privileged classes in the old national systems will attempt, by underhand or violent methods, to dampen the wave of internationalist feelings and passions and will ostentatiously begin to reconstruct the old State institutions.

How to reach an European Unity?

ü No Democrats because they are suitable leaders only in times of ordinary administration, when the overall population is convinced of the validity of the basic institutions and believe that any amendment should be restricted to relatively secondary matters.
ü No Communists because they have recognized the difficulty of obtaining a sufficient following to assure victory so that they have turned themselves into a rigidly disciplined movement, exploiting the Russian myth in order to organize the workers, but which does not accept orders from them and uses them in all kinds of political manoeuverings.
This attitude makes the Communists, during revolutionary crises, more efficient than the democrats. But their ability to maintain the workers as far removed from the other revolutionary forces as they can, by preaching that their "real" revolution is yet to come, turns them into a sectarian element that weakens the sum of the progressive forces at the decisive moment.
ü New Revolutionary movement.
A real revolutionary movement must arise from among those who have been bold enough to criticize the old political approaches and it must be able to collaborate with democratic and with communist forces; and generally with all those who work for the break-up of totalitarianism, without, however, becoming ensnared by the political practices of any of these

Objectives of the revolutionary movement

1. Definitive abolition of the division of Europe into national, sovereign States. The collapse of the majority of the States on the continent under the German steam-roller has already given the people of Europe a common destiny.
2. Organization of the United States of Europe, which can only be based on the republican constitution of federated countries.

Why do we need USE?

1. To guarantee peace, unity and freedom in Europe.
2. To avoid the hegemony of some Countries against others.
3. To overtake the concept and the role of organizations like the League of Nations: they claimed to guarantee international law without a military force capable of imposing its decisions and respecting the absolute sovereignty of the member States.
4. Because the principle of non intervention turned out to be absurd: every population was supposed to be left free to choose the despotic government it thought best, in other words virtually assuming that the constitution of each individual States was not a question of vital interest for all the other European nations.

Which will be the features of the USE

1. An European armed service instead of national armies;
2. Tools that will break decisively economic autarkies, the backbone of totalitarian regimes;
3. Means to see that its deliberations for the maintenance of common order are executed in the individual federal sates, while each State will retain the autonomy it needs for a plastic articulation and development of political life according to the particular characteristics of the various peoples.

3. POST-WAR DUTIES. REFORM OF SOCIETY

Basic assumption

ü The European revolution must be socialist: its goal must be the emancipation of the working classes and the creation of more humane conditions for them.

How to reach an European Socialist revolution?

ü Private property must be abolished, limited, corrected, or extended according to the circumstances and not according to any dogmatic principle:
(a) Monopolistic activities cannot be left in the hands of private ownership;
(b) Nationalization must certainly be introduced on a vast scale, without regard for acquired rights;
(c) Agrarian reform which will increase the number of owners enormously by giving land to those who actually farm it and an industrial reform which will extend workers' ownership in non-nationalized sectors, through co-operative adventures, employee profit-sharing, and so on.
ü The young need to be assisted with all the measures needed to reduce the gap between the starting positions in the struggle to survive to a minimum:
(a) State schools ought to provide a real chance for those who deserve it to continue their studies to the highest level, instead of restricting these opportunities to wealthy students;
(b) State schools should train the number of students which corresponds to the market requirements, so that average salaries will be roughly equal for all the professional categories, regardless of the differing rates of remuneration within each category according to individual skills.
ü The almost unlimited potential of modern technology to mass produce essential goods guarantees, with relatively low social costs, that everyone can have food, lodging, clothing and the minimum of comfort needed to preserve a sense of human dignity.
ü The working classes must not be left to the mercy of the economic policies of monopolistic trade unions but:
(a) they must be free to choose their own trusted representatives when collectively establishing the conditions under which they will agree to work, and ;
(b) the State must give them the legal means to guarantee the proper implementation of the terms agreed to.