New Political Commitments for Federalists

Lucio Levi

The great revolutionary transformations, marking the milestones of mankind’s progress in history, have never been promoted by the established powers. These powers try to rule the new course of events with old mental and ideological schemes and with the old instruments of power. Revolutionary change, which creates new institutions and higher forms of political coexistence, has always been the result of the storming into the political scene of new social forces. These forces provide a vehicle for new cultures, new values and new political institutions. While the political parties have lost their attraction force and their former capability for mobilisation, no longer succeeding in motivating commitment from young people, all over the world a non-governmental movement has grown. This expresses itself outside traditional channels and political representation, and is the expression of a new dimension of political participation. It operates at all levels of political life (but more efficiently in local communities and at the international level, where the limits of the established powers are more serious) in the sectors of peace, human rights, international justice, aid to development, environment, cultural goods, education, health, and so on.

The decline of the political parties is a consequence of the crisis of the sovereign state. Faced with the globalisation of social, economic and political life, national power is a standpoint that obscures reality as it is and prevents the mastering of it. Political parties are prisoners of the national states: like boats in a stormy sea, they find themselves in the trough of the wave, where they cannot see the horizon. Choked inside the tight limits of national states, the process of political decision making is reduced to the control of secondary aspects of political life and loses any meaningful relation with the real processes. Here lies the main root of the decadence of the moral and intellectual quality of the ruling class. When, in the debate among political parties, the great goals, those which make it possible to think of the future, are gone, politics deteriorates progressively in a mere power play which keeps at a distance the most dynamic and vital energies in society. The political parties represent for this reason politics without a future.

On the other hand, movements in civil society are expressions of a commitment that, for intense and various meanings, is not inferior to that which once characterised active participation in the political parties. Mostly the international NGOs have addressed the great problems on which the future of mankind depends, and have contributed in a decisive way to form a world public opinion. They have acquired the role of recognised counterparts of governments inside international organisations and diplomatic conferences. Even if they have only advisory powers, they exert a real influence on world politics, as is shown, for instance, by the role played by the peace movement in the decision to dismantle the Euro-missiles, and by the role played by the human rights movement in the formation of the ICC. Their limit lies in that they have a sectorial perspective: each movement deals with one single problem. They are an expression of civil society, that is, that pre-political area of social life which is the ground where individual interests assert themselves and clash, but which does not produce those mediating mechanisms between interests from which the need originates to promote the common weal. The civil society movements represent therefore the future without politics.

In spite of their present decline, parties will still be necessary in the future as a means to orient public opinion, to promote syntheses among expectations coming from civil society and to propose political initiatives. However, in order to continue to fulfil these tasks, they will have to undergo a process of radical transformation. First of all, they will have to gain an international dimension, if they want to be able to meet the challenges which will determine the future of mankind. But this will become possible only when supranational democratic institutions have formed, in which sovereign States are reduced to the level of member-States of Federations of regional dimensions, and later on, of the World Federation. Secondly, political parties will have to open themselves to outside reality, accepting the contribution of civil society movements. Party Congresses will become the meeting point between these movements and the occasion for a confrontation over general political prospects, and the electoral programme will be the moment of synthesis among various social instances that will come together in the political parties. To sum up, the civil society movements can be seen as a stage of a process which, at the beginning, has an exclusively social character, but tends to increase its political significance and ultimately leads to the formation of supranational parties and governments.

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Let us now consider the real and potential relation between non-governmental international organisations and organised federalism. The commitment of non-governmental organisations to peace, environment protection, international justice and human rights defence are the expression of an active engagement similar to that of federalists. They are the most genuine manifestation of the world unification movement and of the necessity, largely felt by young people, to deal with the great dramas of mankind. They are at present a varied mass of small and large groups, linked by a common situation (globalisation). It is a movement dragged by the current leading toward world unification, but lacking the instruments to rule this process. It is not yet aware of its institutional objectives, nor has it worked out a political strategy. It occupies the political scene and by now it has acquired the role of interlocutor between governments. To the extent that it interprets new needs, and is the leading actor of a process tending to redefine the subjects and roles of political life, it is the vanguard of international democracy. It is the embryo of the new revolutionary subject.

The great world conferences which, beginning with the Rio Conference in 1992 on Environment and Development, have followed one another in the last years, have shown which are the two potential subjects that will promote the world unification process. On the one hand there are governments, which are the expression of the diplomatic dimension of the process. They are able to start the process, but not to bring it to conclusion, because they think of world unification in terms of collaboration among sovereign States. On the other hand there are the civil society movements, which represent the democratic aspect of the process. When they become aware of their political objectives and join together, they will turn into what could be rightly called the movement for peace and international democracy.

What characterises the federalist position with respect to the other two is that it questions State sovereignty, whilst both governments and the peace movement are prisoners of the culture of the past and think of the solution of world problems in terms of international co-operation, that is co-operation among sovereign States. This position may be defined as mundialism. There is a clear similarity between mundialism and europeanism, the historical force that supported the European unification movement. And as we distinguished three forms of europeanism, it is possible to do the same with mundialism: diffused mundialism is the attitude favourable to world unification spread out in the public opinion; organised mundialism is formed by civil society organisations of world-oriented inspiration as a whole; and organisable mundialism is that part of public opinion and of civil society movements that may be influenced by the mundialist movement. The historic task that the World Federalist Movement must accomplish is to bring a federalist awareness to the peace movement and to lead it towards the strengthening and democratisation of the UN.

But federalist movements will be able to pursue this objective only if they achieve the unification of their organisations, more precisely unification between the two largest federalist organisations: the UEF (with its youth organisation, JEF) and the WFM. This unification process began with the adherence to the WFM of the MFE, the Italian chapter of the UEF, in 1994, and of the JEF in 1995. This was followed by the Montreux joint meeting of UEF and WFM in 1997, and the association of the UEF to the WFM in 1999.

The contribution that European federalism can give to this unification process consists in the theoretical and strategic experience of a movement that has been able to defeat the principle of the absolute sovereignty of the nation-state. This victory, even though not fully achieved, is due to the political and organisational autonomy that the European federalists have been able to keep in every circumstance and to the choice of regional unification, conceived as a stage on the way to World Federation, that should be intended as a Federation of Federations as large as entire regions of the world.

On the other hand the contribution of world federalism lies in having inspired thinking and action in favour of the idea that only a World Federation will represent the ultimate goal of federalist commitment. But the great merit of the WFM is that it identified coalition building among NGOs as the way to exercise leadership in civil society movements, in order to make them aware of the means (that is to say the institutions) which mankind needs to attain peace and international democracy and justice.

Precisely because they are active in the two largest federalist organisations, the European and world federalists have great responsibilities. Their association is vital, because we must combat new enemies: the forces of fragmentation, which are the most recent reincarnation of the old demon of nationalism. The two movements must face the challenges of the new epoch together. They cannot continue to be the guiding forces of organised federalism without being involved in problems which concern all federalists. The time is ripe to plan the stages of a process of unification. First of all, unity means effectiveness. Unity is synonymous with strength. In the second place, unity means credibility. It is in fact up to us to achieve what we ask of the governments: to unite, to create a democratic supranational organisation. The goal that the unification of federalists has to pursue is the creation of a strong world federalist political actor, capable of establishing the necessary principles of action to mobilise the crucial forces in building a democratic government for the world. This must become a reference and initiative point for those civil society movements which have chosen a commitment at global level. In other terms the objective of the federalist strategy is to transform mundialism into federalism.

The events that led to the institution of the ICC showed the WFM’s capacity to place itself at the head of approximately 300 NGOs, on this basis conditioning and influencing the proceedings of a world diplomatic conference. It is not exaggerating to state that the ICC would not have been instituted without the vast movement of public opinion that expressed itself in the Rome Conference through the NGOs.

The lesson to be learned from this fact is that only a great coalition of forces of popular inspiration can break the resistance of the governments. The democratisation of the UN, conceived as a stage on the way to the world Federation, seems to be the common objective on which the peace movement and the federalist movement can converge.