The word equivalence breaks in Dictionary politics Western film with the American and French revolutions. The first article of Declaration of Human and Civil Rights Adopted by the Paris National Assembly in 1789, it states: “Men are born and remain free and equal in rights; Therefore, social differences can only be based on the common good.” Essentially, the principle of equality consisted in the recognition that all citizens were equal before the law, regardless of differences in wealth and social status, and represented the material substratum of liberty, which could not exist without equality.
However, in the years that followed, some representatives of the democratic movement, and of the movement in particular, made an appearance Philip Buonarroti And Gracchus Babeuforganize a conspiracy against the conservative government that had prevailed with the revolution of 9 Thermidor that had put an end to terror in the name of a radical Communist-style conception of egalitarianism.
For the conspirators, equality remained formal unless private property, which was the genetic origin of inequality, was abolished. “Property boundaries are torn up,” it said Manifesto of the same – Let all goods be restored to a single common heritage, and the fatherland – the only woman, the sweetest mother of all – provide her beloved and free children with food, education and work alike.” In these few lines some principles have been formulated, that would characterize all communist movements from Marx to Lenin in the following century: the nationalization of property was the prerequisite for everyone being able to dispose of the commons equally. If we add that the Manifesto theorized the need for a period of dictatorship for the revolutionary minority that had taken power, the extraordinary modernity of Babeuf’s and Buonarroti’s thinking becomes clear.
As expected, the conspiracy ended badly, with Babeuf guillotined and many other conspirators exiled, but he launched a concept that would endure to this day and is a harbinger of many contradictions: Political liberties are not sufficient to establish equality unless they are backed by social justice, that is, through institutions and laws that combat the inequalities created in society by the differences in income and wealth generated by economic systems. Taking this concept to extremes was widespread in socialist movements up until World War II, leading to a negative polarization between liberty and equality, as if the former were not just a useless tinsel in workers’ struggles against exploitation and injustice, but a row of empty formalisms and false principles used by power to oppress the workers. Freedom for Marx It is an abstract idea, the basis of alienation because it hides from the workers the materiality of their unjust social position. The equality created by the communist revolution, which abolished property, deprived and nationalized the means of production, also established a new idea of freedom that denied the formalities of the rule of law but prioritized labor and participation in building the socialist center .
Hence the idea that until the advent of the totalitarianisms had a strong following that the struggle for freedom, for civil rights or for democracy was not among the interests of the workers, who only had to focus on the struggle for equality, which they could only achieve in the new socialist state. The clash between Amberone of the leading leaders of the German Social Democracy e Lenin At the beginning of the 20th century it was about: For Lenin, democracy and freedom were expressions of the false consciousness that prevented the workers’ movement from carrying out the revolution, while for Bernstein they were instead an integral part of the struggle for social justice, without which they would have increasingly slipped into an authoritarian universe. And that is exactly what happened in the Bolshevik USSR or in Maoist China: the forcible realization of an egalitarian society and the creation of an authoritarian state intended as an instrument to protect it against its external and internal enemies produced exactly the opposite: one Society of subjects of a powerful and oppressive bureaucracy without liberty and without equality.
The failure of communism forced us to reconsider equality as an integral part of the rule of law. And in 1931 the time had come Charles Rosselli In his pamphlet Liberal Socialism, he sought to break through the wall of rigid polarity between liberty and equality when he wrote: ‘Socialism, understood as the ideal of liberty not for the few but for the majority, is not only not incompatible with the Liberalism, but it is also it.” theoretically its logical conclusion, practically and historically the continuation. Marxism, and by Marxism we must mean a strictly deterministic view of history, has led to the workers’ movement suffering the initiative of the opponent and suffering an unprecedented defeat socialism, understood in its essential aspect, is the progressive realization among men of the idea of liberty and justice: an innate idea lying at the bottom of every human being, more or less buried by the incrustations of the centuries; progressive efforts to give all human beings equal opportunity to live the life that alone deserves the name and to free them from the slavery to matter and material needs that still dominate most people today; Opportunity to develop their personality freely, in a constant struggle for improvement against primitive and bestial instincts and against the corruption of a civilization too prey to the demon of success and money.
It comes from that painful reflection born in exile anti fascist and in close confrontation with the communist movement, the belief that the future of equality lies in freedom, but also that the future of freedom cannot exist without equality. An ideal path was shown, which not only made the start-up possible reformismbut also to give the welfare state an ideal basis.
As a scholar of contemporary history, he taught at the Universities of Bologna, Turin and Milan. He was a visiting professor at Brown University (Providence RI) and at UCLA (University of California) in Berkeley. He was scientific director and then vice president of the Ferruccio Parri National Institute. He is President of REFAT, the international network for the study of fascism, authoritarianism, totalitarianism and democratic transitions, and the PER Foundation – Progress, Europe, Reforms. His latest release is Why fascism won. 1914-1924. Story of a Decade, Milan, Le Monnier, 2022.
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Alberto DeBernardi