A Civil War (142 page)

The
resistenti
's relationship with politics did not end with their tie with the parties and their coalition in the CLNs.
¹
The Resistance was in fact one of those moments in which politics figured as a tendentially all-engaging commitment – not in the sense that everything was seen, essentially, as being political, but in that many important needs aspired, in the eagerness to fulfil them, to take a political form and at the same time to go beyond politics in the name of the profound significance attributed to a future intensely desired. This attitude, which met with some resistance, bore with it many ambiguities; but, to use the language of current debate, it was the opposite both of the ‘autonomy of politics' and of ‘political exchange': in no way did political action occupy a separate sphere; nor did it figure only in the column of costs and sacrifices, but already in the credit column of benefits.
²
In the Resistance the relationship between politics, seen as a choice of ends and values and the means of practising them, and morality, was thus central, because the widening of the field open to moral judgment could not but involve politics first and foremost.

A partisan concentration camp survivor gratefully recalls a comrade because ‘he was a man who without saying a word taught you the ABC of life. That was called political activity.'
³

The technique and exercise of power were not therefore seen as the be-all and end-all of political action. Politics acquired once again a utopian function contemporaneously with its fundamental commitment to the here and now. It was precisely those who most aspired to concreteness to whom an only apparently backward passage from science to utopia seemed indispensable.
⁴
Reticence about instrumental politicisation, which even Ferruccio Parri had displayed
initially,
⁵
and the desire to give pride of place to the armed struggle in order to avoid being accused of indulging in party politics,
⁶
could both lead to a reductive vision of politics. But there existed, as both the basis and development of the initial decision to resist, a way of being political in which the deep convictions and inclinations of individuals and the contexts in which they operated found expression. A perfect example of this is the episode recounted in the form of a fable by Roberto Battaglia. It had to be decided whether to arrest a collaborationist industrialist, and if so whether to condemn him to death. On the first point the Communist was of the view that, as far as possible, the individual should be blackmailed and exploited for information, and only then arrested. The Christian Democrat agreed, but added that collaborationism was rife in Italy and that it would be unjust to make one person pay for everyone – and that, in any case, if arrested, the individual would have to be sent behind the lines to be given a regular trial by the Allied or Italian authorities. The Actionist considered that it would be a moral wrong exceeding other considerations to let an arms profiteer go free, and thus that one should proceed with his immediate arrest. When this occurred, the Communist claimed that the ransom offered by the family should be accepted, though without taking any account of it at the trial to which the industrialist had in any case to be subjected: that way he would simply have been made to give back ‘at least in part, what he had stolen'. The Christian Democrat declared himself unqualified to speak, but asked the others to bear in mind the family conditions of the accused: ‘There is already quite enough grief in Italy without adding to it with a ruthless act of repression.' The Actionist expressed the conviction that there was grave and clear proof justifying the death sentence, and objected to the Communist that ‘the task of partisans is to see that justice is done; but in no way can one exploit the grief of an innocent family'. Battaglia's comment (and he should be identified with the Actionist) is that the views expressed on that occasion ‘can throw more light on the nature of the Italian parties than any statement … of their programmes'.
⁷

These basic character studies did not necessarily coincide with formal adhesion to parties, given that in situations like that of the Resistance ‘the very
concept of adhesion to a party represents … something infinitely more demanding but, at the same time, more elastic from the merely formal point of view than any sort of regular “membership” '.
⁸

Here the writer is mainly thinking about the Communist Party; but an Actionist gives a similar description of the non-pedagogic but maieutic politicisation that occurred in the GL bands by means of few words and many actions, in order to bring to light in the consciousness of each individual the ‘ideals', the ‘political motives', the ‘historical reasons for the struggle' that were ‘in the air' and ‘in the very reality surrounding the partisan'.
⁹
A sober description of how, for that matter, politics gained ground in its own particular way in the Osoppo brigades is given by Galliano Fogar, intent on squeezing all the positive juices out of the much acclaimed apolitical character of those formations.
¹⁰

There was a widespread conviction that politics constituted a duty. It was as if, having turned away from the state that had failed, morality was seeking a way of redefining its public dimension. A Garibaldi news-sheet announced that a worker, a priest and a soldier had found that they all agreed that one had a duty to participate in political life if one wished to avoid scourges such as Nazi-Fascism repeating themselves.
¹¹
There was some truth behind this instrumental unitary rhetoric. Addressing the ‘Piedmontese workers of the land', an Action Party leaflet urged them to concern themselves actively with politics: ‘It is time to convince ourselves that politics is a dirty business only when it is in the hands of shady politico profiteers, as it was during the Fascist regime'.
¹²

The partisans sought a way out of vulgar, trumpeting Fascist pan-politicism not along the road that was to be the fortune of the ‘Uomo Qualunque' movement, and would be successfully taken by the Christian Democrats as well, but in vindicating the morality of politics and denouncing the fact that, beneath its rhetoric, Fascism had prospered from the depoliticisation of the Italians.
¹³
In a letter written to his friends before he was arrested, Giacomo Ulivi put his finger on the fundamental contradiction that had, ultimately, marked the message transmitted by Fascism: that politics is a dirty business and, at the same time, a business reserved for specialists: ‘We have copped out', wrote Ulivi, and here are
the results, now that in political life we have been ‘shunted aside by events. It's here that we're to blame.'
¹⁴
Equally unsparing about the Italians having placed their welfare in the charge of others is a Liberal pamphlet that concludes: ‘They have given this sloth a new name:
gerarchia
.'
¹⁵

‘Accusa agli onesti' was the title of a leaflet of the Christian Democratic Movement of Modena; and the accusation was that ‘serious, honest and able men' had kept away from politics ‘on the basis of the old and anti-democratic mentality that the decent man, the serious person, ought not to interest himself in politics'. This stance was all the more remarkable for the fact that, coming from Catholics, the meanness of the ‘selfish personal and family circle' was denounced: this was the only way to account for the fact – the essential point in the argument – that, in the absence of honest men, so many good-for-nothings had ended up among the partisans.
¹⁶
A Liberal newspaper traced the Italians' lack of interest in politics back ‘to the years immediately preceding the advent of Fascism, which had in fact been engendered by that lack of interest. This was certainly historically false, if we consider the fervour of the
biennio rosso
, but, besides helping the Liberals to disassociate themselves from the responsibilities of the ruling class to which they intended to re-associate themselves, it was nevertheless a contribution to stances in favour of political engagement.
¹⁷
The Actionist Giorgio Diena wrote: not ‘save us from the state!', but ‘let us all be politicians!'
¹⁸
Clearly expressed, in some of these exhortations, is the anxiety to have done with selfishness and the invitation to ensure that it did not triumph at the very moment of deliverance.
¹⁹
On this score, even the fiery polemics against
attesismo
acquire a significance that goes beyond the mere incitement to fight. The aim now was to shake the Italians out of their atavistic inferiority, soaked in sloth. A medical student, a fine and active fellow, who declared that he had no political opinions, received this answer from Emanuele Artom: ‘I wouldn't get that kind of answer from a young Russian or American of your age.'

In his impassioned apologia for political commitment, Artom draws a contrast between the workers who, ‘driven by need, have concerned themselves in these years with political problems and have matured', and the ‘foolish bourgeois
youths … intellectually lazy and morally sceptical'.
²⁰
But it was not just a question of economic drives. Fascism's depoliticising of people made words like the following particularly true: ‘There is a sadness in the worker for whom the only medicine is political action'.
²¹
‘Comrade worker, listen!' was the title of an article in
Avanti!
which, in tones rather similar to those of Edmondo De Amicis, explained to the workers that it was not true that politics was a mug's game.
²²
There were great expectations, also, in the parallel peasants' movements of the South,
²³
for ‘political answers' to the great questions emerging from Italian society.
²⁴