CORRADO MALANDRINO

Fermenti europeisti e federalisti tra guerra mondiale e primo dopoguerra

N. 147

Summary - It is a rooted prejudice the opinion that in the tradition of the socialist-democratic thought (meaning the last term in a wide sense inclusive of liberal socialism) there has been no room, at least till recent years, for a serious and continuative reflection of a federalist and European type. As a matter of fact, if it is true that the chief interests of every political force or single socialist thinker was and is turned firstly to the solution of problem relating to social justice - with a certain undervaluation of the peculiar juridical-institutional aspects -, nevertheless it appears today as much proved that, from the first post-war period, the same crisis of the European civilization and of the liberal institutions led also many socialists to think openly in federalist and European terms. This was the case of Enrico Bignami, editor of the review "Coenobium", of Claudio Treves, and acquired - perhaps in a not systematic way - influences and stimuli coming in equal measure from the German and Austrian social-democratic world and from Anglo-American and Italian liberal-progressist environments. For these people the talk on the pursuit of European peace was interlaced with the establishment of a federal order.

The occasion from which stemmed the debate was offered at first by the endeavour of some socialist parties, already in 1915 (Zimmerwald), to neutralize the war at its early stage, then, in 1917-1919, by the proposal of President Woodrow Wilson to found a League of Nations as a first step towards the European Federation, and then towards the universal federal State. The discussion on these topics involved also personages like Gaetano Salvemini, Piero Gobetti, Angelo Crespi, who represented a political area between liberalism and socialism, and liberal-progressist exponents like Luigi Einaudi, Attilio Cabiati and Giovanni Agnelli. Whilst these latter advanced some reserve about the weakness of t the confederal character of the future League of Nations, the socialists saw in the French and English instrumentaljty of the proposal, in the presence of a discriminating will in respect of the defeated countries and of the Soviet Union, the fundamental cause of the impossibility for the future League to perform the tasks of the recomposition of a European and international frame, pacific unitary and federal.