• The Federalist Files
• File 1: What Federalism is
• File 2: What a Federal State is
• File 3: The Simple Guide to the Federal Idea by Stephen Woodard
• File 4: Altiero Spinelli - His Life and Work
• File 5: The Ventotene Manifesto by Altiero Spinelli
• File 6: Jean Monnet - His Life and Work
• File 7: Winston Churchill's speech to the academic Youth

Welcome to Federalist Section of the Young European Federalists!

In these pages you will get a thorough explanation of what Federalism is, and what it stands for, as well as a description of the life and works of Altiero Spinelli and Jean Monnet, the gurus of the Federalist movement!

We trust that you will find these pages helpful to understand what JEF has always worked for, and the vision of Europe towards which we aspire!

The Foundation of the United States of America and the Birth of Federalism

Since ancient times there have been various attempts by different states to create unions. But it was in North America, with the Philadelphia Convention of 1787, that history's first federal constitution was realised. It was the result of a compromise between those who wanted to unite into a single state, and those who sought to preserve the absolute sovereignty of, the thirteen colonies that had just won independence from the mother country. The federal constitution represented a happy compromise because, as Alexander Hamilton immediately recognised, it allowed for the spread of representative government over an area composed of many states, thus realising unity through diversity. Under the federation, the people were represented in the House of Representatives, while the states could defend their specific interests in the Senate. The federal government was competent for the common matters of foreign and commercial policy: all other competencies were reserved to the states.

As a result of the federal union, American citizens were able to experience notable economic development, and above all to avoid the conflicts and wars which continued to afflict the great European powers, and all those countries, such as those in South America, which having won independence failed to achieve political unity.


Federalism, Cosmopolitanism and Nationalism

In the same years that the American colonies were embarking down the road to independence and union, the philosopher Immanuel Kant was arguing that since states live in a condition of anarchy, like individuals in their natural state, warfare and not the law was the only means to which they could ultimately resort to gain justice. There would therefore be no true international law as long as states did not abandon their present condition of unlimited freedom and accept a common federal constitution, that is a government which had sufficient powers to ensure universal peace and the independence of each member state.

The cosmopolitan value of federalism, which is implicit in the American constitution and explicit in Kant's political thought, was however immediately stifled by the overwhelming rise of nationalism. The historical conditions for the development of federalism as a universal project were not existent at that time. The French Revolution asserted the model of the sovereign nation-state that is centralised and closed within secure borders, which was universally adopted.

The nation-state stifles local autonomy and ethnic minorities. Nationalism conceives of relations between states as between powers which assert their own interests by force of arms and which claim the absolute loyalty of their citizens, even to the extent of the supreme sacrifice of one's life. Nationalism is the political culture of the division of the human race, it teaches the hatred of foreigners and exalts and justifies violence.

Nationalism is the political ideology that led Europe and the world into the tragic episodes of nazi-fascism and total war.


European Federalism

In the course of the resistance, there began to form spontaneously in all the European countries - in prisons, in places of confinement or in clandestinity - opposition groups which proposed to rebuild a pacified Europe, with no more racial hatred or borders. The idea of the European federation, which during the 19th century had been considered a noble ideal, became instead a concrete political project. The Ventotene Manifesto (1941) set out the "dividing line between progress and reaction" between those who regard a European federation to be the primary objective of the political struggle, and those who continue to think that the values of liberty, freedom and social justice can be pursued within the nation-state. It was for this reason that the Movimento Federalista Europeo was founded in Italy.

In the post-war period, European governments were no longer able on their own to guarantee their citizens either economic independence or security. European unity increasingly seemed the only reasonable option, and federalist action became possible.

From 1950 on, thanks to the courageous initiatives of Jean Monnet and Altiero Spinelli, European governments set out, even if only gradually, on the road to political unity. Today, after many years of struggle, defeats and successes, the European federalists must face the final decisive battle. Following the end of the cold war, Europe has now reached a crucial choice: either federal unity, so as to build an increasingly interdependent world that is peaceful and capable of solidarity, or a return to the divisions, nationalisms and evils of the past.


Federalism and the Traditional Ideologies

The experience of the federalist movements, which were, and continue to be, fully autonomous of the national parties, demonstrates that federalism is an ideology which fosters a new kind of political behaviour. As Mario Albertini has argued, federalism is an "active political thought" which contains a value aspect, that of universal peace, as defined in Kant's political thought; a structural aspect, namely the theory of the federal state; and a socio- historical aspect, the stage of development corresponding to a pluralistic society that is open to interdependent relations.

Federalism has a critical relationship toward the traditional ideologies. Federalism does not set itself up against liberalism, democracy and socialism. However, it does affirm that the great values of freedom, political equality and social justice can not be valid only for the citizens of one nation-state. By accepting such a limitation, the traditional ideologies have implicitly subordinated their ideals to raison d'etat, even to the point of nakedly betraying, as during the First and Second World Wars, the international solidarity which united liberals, democrats and socialists of all countries.

Only through federalism can the values of liberalism, democracy and socialism be affirmed in a world without frontiers.


The Two Polarities of Federalism

Federalism extends between two ideal polarities, cosmopolitanism and communitarianism.

The national dimension of the state is now inadequate not only for tackling the great problems of our time whose scope is global, but also for guaranteeing citizens effective participation in the life of the state and the effective land and urban planning. Particularly in Europe, where the integration process has reached a very advanced stage, it is clear that the nation-state must cede responsibilities both upward (to the European government) and downward (to smaller territorial communities, such as the regions and districts).

Federalism enables relations between different territorial communities to be organised democratically, from the lower levels, such as the districts, to ever higher levels, such as the regional, national and continental ones. Ultimately, through the union of different continental federations, it is possible to conceive of a democratic world government. The sub-division of powers for the various levels of government must respect the principles of subsidiarity, because problems should be resolved at a higher level only when it is impossible to tackle them satisfactorily at a lower level that is closer to citizens; and territorial solidarity, because the citizens of richer and more well-off territorial communities should share in the poorer territorial communities' efforts to achieve a higher level of prosperity. However, the struggle by local communities to gain greater autonomy risks, in the current European situation that is still balanced between unity and division, turning into tragedy, when claims to independence are combined with micro-nationalism, as the case of Yugoslavia demonstrates. An aspiration to autonomy is progressive only if it recognises the political priority of overcoming the national dimension of political life, because as long as peoples are forced to regulate international relations by force of arms, the reasons that in the past have caused the centralisation and bureaucratisation of the state will survive.

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FACTFILE - BOX 1
A. Hamilton
The Evils of Division

To look for a continuation of harmony between a number of independent unconnected sovereignties situated in the same neighbourhood, would be to disregard the uniform course of human events and to set at defiance the accumulated experience of ages.
-- The Federalist, 1788

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FACTFILE - BOX 2
I. Kant
Federalism and Peace

Peace cannot be attained without a federation of peoples, in which even the weakest member can look for its rights and security not to its own power or adjudication, but to this great confederation, to the united power and the adjudication of the collective will.
-- Idea of a Universal History on a Cosmopolitan Plan, 1784

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FACTFILE - BOX 3
P.J. Proudhon
Nation-States and Centralism

National sentiment is in inverse proportion to the extension of the state. As the latter gradually incorporates new territories there is a progressive denaturalisation. This will be one of the causes of the dissolution of the state. Nationality restricts sentiments and genius. Agglomeration broadens them. The French nation is currently composed of at least twenty distinct nations and their character, observed in the people and in the peasants, is still strongly defined... The Frenchman is a being of convention, he does not exist. That which it pleases us to represent in novels, in plays, in caricatures, be it soldier or cook, barber or travelling salesman, is a joke. Such a large nation can only hold itself together by force. The standing army serves above all for this. Take this support away from the administration and from the central police and France falls into federalism. The local attractions prevail.
-- France et Rhine, 1867

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FACTFILE - BOX 4
M. Albertini
Federalism, Traditional Ideologies and Internationalism

The history of European federalism is nothing more than that of the manifestation of the contradiction between the affirmation of democracy in the national context, and its negation in the international context. This is equivalent to saying that European federalism, starting from the French Revolution, is an aspect of European history, a much broader aspect than it is often thought to be (even if imprecise, like all historical tendencies that have not yet reached maturity), in which, alongside an adventure of thought begun philosophically by Kant, lies the slow unfurling of the universal element of the great revolutionary waves. These are liberalism, for what concerns the rights of citizens; democracy, for what concerns the rights of peoples; and socialism, for what concerns the socio-economic rights of the peoples.

These three great ideologies, which have gradually furnished the nationstate with democratic and social content, have de facto, from the very beginning, contained an element of federalism, even though the awareness of this has been undermined by the theoretical confusion of federalism with its opposite, internationalism, which entrusts rulers rather than the people with the solution of international problems.
-- The Historical and Cultural Roots of European Federalism, 1973

History
The birth of the federal state coincides with the foundation, in 1787, of the American Federation. The text of the Constitution of the United States of America, approved by the Philadelphia Convention, 17th September 1787, in fact represents the first historical example of a federal constitution. The Constitution of 1787 was actually a compromise between the positions of those who wanted to create a unitary state among the thirteen former British colonies, and those who wanted to maintain a confederation which would not call into question the states' sovereignty. Through this constitution was born a form of state that was able to reconcile the unity needed to prevent conflicts arising among the old British colonies and to guarantee their external security, with the autonomy necessary to safeguard their liberty. It was a form of state that, as Alexander Hamilton noted, "far from implying an abolition of the State governments, makes them constituent parts of the national sovereignty, by allowing them them a direct representation in the Senate, and leaves in their possession certain exclusive and very important portions of sovereign power. This fully corresponds, in every rational import of the terms, with the idea of a federal government" (The Federalist, N. IX).

In the 20th century the federal model subsequently spread around the world (with the exception in Europe of Switzerland, which became a federation during the 19th century), especially to the countries of the Commonwealth (such as Australia, Canada and India). In Europe, apart from Switzerland, Germany also adopted a federal constitution after the Second World War; as did Brazil in Latin America and Nigeria in Africa.


What Federal State Is
The principal characteristic of federal state is the fact that in it, in addition to the functional division between legislative, executive and judicial powers, there exists a territorial division of powers between the various levels of government which are simultaneously independent and coordinated. In existing federal states, there are essentially two specified levels of government: the federal state and the member states. However over recent years there has developed a very strong demand, particularly in western Europe, to organise also the member states on the basis of federal institutions, and hence to recognise all the local communities, from districts to towns, cities and regions, as autonomous levels of power. Unlike unitary states, the central government in federal states possesses only the minimum number of competencies and necessary powers to guarantee the political and economic unity of the federation, while the other levels possess full capacity for self-government in all other spheres. In its own sphere no government level must be subordinate to the level above.

This constitutional balance is also reflected in the composition of legislative power, which is characterised by a particular type of bicameralism. Taking the example of existing federal states, one branch of parliament represents the people of the federation in measure proportional to the number of electors, while the other is composed of representatives of the states. In order to be passed, laws must have both the support of a majority of the representatives of the people of the federation, and of a majority of the member states. Where multiple levels of government exist, this type of bicameralism needs to be reproduced at every level.

In order to guarantee the division of powers between central and local government, this must not only be sanctioned by a written constitution, but also protected by an autonomous power that is able to annul any legislative and administrative provisions which do not conform to the constitution, and that gives judgements in the final instance when conflicts over the division of powers arise. This power is the judiciary, which bases its own independence on the very existence of the various levels of government (each of which has an interest in protecting the independence of the judiciary with respect to the other levels) and which can therefore guarantee the primacy of the constitution by imposing respect for it on all organs of the federal state.

Finally, so that no government level is subordinate to the others in the sphere of its own competences, it is necessary that each level has sufficient resources available to carry out the functions assigned to it by the constitution. All government levels must therefore have the power to levy taxes in order to finance their own services and policies. Fiscal federalism examines the ways and means by which fiscal activity among the various levels of the federation's government can be co-ordinated.

 
Federal State and Confederation
The feature which differentiates the federal state from the confederation is the existence of a true common power which, on the one hand is able to regulate relations between the states on a legal basis and to abolish the need to resort to force in conflicts or disputes and, on the other hand, has direct power over individual citizens, who join together to form it democratically. The confederation is not a state, but a collection of sovereign states that regulate their mutual relationships, which in the final instance are based on force, and that maintain an exclusive power over their citizens. In the confederation the confederal level is subordinate and dependent for its functioning on the states which make it up. The confederation is based on the principle of the representation of the states, not of the citizens, and in fact give the vote to the states alone, in this way excluding the people from decisions which concern inter-state relations.

The right of veto, which is always provided for in confederations and which can paralyse all common actions, imposing the will of a single state on the majority, is the symbol of the absolute sovereignty that is maintained by states which establish a confederation.


The Federal State as a New Form of International Organisation
Thanks to the mechanism of dividing democratic representation and hence thanks to the co-existence of the principle of the unity of the political community with that of the independence of its parts, the federal state is able to reconcile the advantages of small size, which enables individuals to participate directly in the process of forming political decisions, with the advantages of large size, which is needed for security and economic development.

Hamilton defined the essential characteristic of this institutional innovation as the enlargement of the orbit of democratic government from a single state to a union of states, that is, the possibility of unifying different national communities and of achieving political participation over an unlimited territorial area. This means that the federal state is not only a new form of government but also a new form of international organisation, the only one which is fully capable of realising peace, because it removes from the states the power to make war, by transforming international relations of force into relations based on law. By allowing citizens to participate democratically in forming the power which regulates relations between states, federal institutions realise international democracy.

The federal state can achieve its full realisation only through a world federation, whereas its historical manifestations have so far been imperfect and unstable. The need, in a situation of international anarchy, even for federal states to maximise the power of the state has in fact generated strong incentives for centralisation, as shown by the case of the United States following the First World War, when its substantial isolation came to an end. Only by achieving federal institutions at all levels, up to the world level, will international anarchy be brought to an end by transforming international relations into legal relations among equals; raison d'etat will be abolished and politics will no longer be at the service of the power of the states, but at the service of the common good of the human race.

 
The European Union
The world federation undoubtedly represents a long term objective; however it is the only perspective in which it is conceivable to provide a positive and democratic response to growing global interdependence, which has already transformed the world into a community of destiny, and to the crisis of the nation-states, which are by now clearly inadequate for tackling the great challenges the world faces (whether economic, political, ecological, or even social and cultural). This explains why in all areas of the world integration processes are under way (such as the European Union, NAFTA, Mercosur, the Andean Pact, ASEAN, the CIS, the African Regional Unions, etc.) which, if they are further developed, can only have a federal outcome. Europe is the continent where this process is most advanced and where therefore there is the greatest awareness of the revolutionary significance of the transformation under way. The European federation will represent the first example in history of the overcoming of the national dimension of the state, and constitutes a unification model for all regions of the world. On the basis of great continental federal unions it will one day be possible radically to reform the UN, and to create a true democratic world government.

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FACTFILE - BOX 1
K.C. Wheare
What Federal Government Is

What then is federalism? Its essence consists, I think, in this: that in a federal system, the functions of government are divided in such a way that the relationship between the legislature which has authority over the whole territory and those legislatures which have authority over parts of the territory is not the relationship of superior to subordinates... but a relationship of co-ordinate partners in the governmental process. In a federal government there is a division of governmental functions between one authority, usually called the federal government, which has power to regulate certain matters for the whole territory, and a collection of authorities, usually called state governments, which have power to regulate certain other matters for the component parts of the territory. This division, as has been said, is made in a particular way. First, the actual allocation of functions between federal and state governments cannot be altered either by the federal government acting alone or by the state governments acting alone and, secondly, the exercise by the federal governments of its allotted functions cannot be controlled by the state governments or vice versa. Federal government means therefore a division of functions between co-ordinate authorities, authorities which are in no way subordinate one to another either in the extent or in the exercise of their allotted functions.
-- What Federal Government Is, 1943

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FACTFILE - BOX 2
I. Kant
Peace as a Presupposition of Democracy

The problem of establishing a perfect civil constitution is subordinate to the problem of a law-governed external relationship with other states, and cannot be solved without solving the latter.
-- Idea for a Universal History on a Cosmopolitan Plan, 1784.

(from Ventotene, Federalism and Politics, The Ventotene Papers of the Altiero Spinelli Institute for Federalist Studies, Ventotene, 1995)
The History of the Federal Idea in Brief
The need to link separate distinct political communities in order to achieve common objectives is an ancient one. Various leagues for specific purposes were created normally for short, identifiable periods of time with a clear objective such as military protection. Some of the better known examples are alliances of Greek city states or mediaeval Italian towns.

More permanent unions were not easily created. First of the modern era would include Switzerland, followed by the Netherlands (the United Provinces) but they were originally very loose unions with weak central authorities.

The United States made the key breakthrough. The states originally formed a loose relationship with weak central government (the Confederation). They replaced this system with a new constitution in 1789 creating the modern United States and defining federalism in its current sense. The arguments in favour of ratifying the federal constitution were made by Hamilton, Madison and Jay in The Federalist Papers, still one of the basic texts of federalist thought.

Following the American experience, federalism - albeit of a parliamentary rather than presidential kind - was used throughout the 19th century in the British Empire as an attempt to hold colonial territories together. Attempts were also made to reshape the Empire itself as an Imperial Federation (I 880s to 1920s). These ambitions came to nothing but the principles of these imperial federalists, particularly Lord Lothian, inspired others. After the First World War the thinking of the imperial federalists turned increasingly toward creating an Atlantic or English-speaking union. Their writings were influential in developing a federalist movement, Federal Union, in Britain between 1938-1940.

Federal Union was primarily concerned with European unity. This organisation had a major impact in the debate in London, both on the British government which proposed an Anglo-French Union and on European governments in exile. One of us most far reaching consequences was that some of the publications of its leading figures found their way to the island of Ventotene where they inspired Altiero Spinelli, confined on the island by the fascist regime, to become a federalist, to write the Ventotene Manifesto and to lead the post-war campaign for a European federal union.

Other Europeans had come to federalism by other means. In the late 18th century, both Saint Simon and Kant had seen the need to unite Europe to achieve peace. De Tocqueville brought the US federal experience into European thought particularly in Germany and France. Proudhon developed federalist thought as a decentralised alternative to the centralisation of the nation state and inspired a theory of social federalism known as integral federalism which won many converts in the 1930s. The work of Coudenhove-Kalergi, a constitutional federalist, lead to the creation of Pan-Europa and to the Briand project for European Federal Union in 1930.

Jean Monnet was influenced by his experience of the failure of League of Nations, his work for the allies in two world wars, his reading of The Federalist Papers and living in London in 1940. Winston Churchill had been aware of plans for imperial federation, had welcomed the Briand project and had endorsed plans for an Anglo-French Union in 1940. He crucially helped launch moves towards European union in a speech in , calling for the creation of a "kind of United States of Europe". These forces came together in the post war period to forge a broad European federalist Movement. This movement split in the late 1950s over attitudes to the European Community but reunited in the early l970s to campaign for its reform. Other federalists have focused primarily on the need for world government.


The Origins of the Term Federal
The word came into English via French from Latin. Foederatus means "bound by treaty" deriving from foedus: treaty and fidere: to trust.

The earliest recorded use of the word in English was by religious 17th century puritans who spoke of "federal theology" meaning a covenant between God and the settlers in America. By late 17th and early I 18th centuries the use of the word had evolved to include agreements between states. By 1721, for example, the term "federation" was being used as meaning a "united league".


Key Characteristics of a Federal Union
The key characteristics of a federal union bringing together independent states are as follows:

1. Rule of Law: Anarchic relations between them are replaced by the rule of law which is guaranteed by common institutions. The law of the union is therefore superior to the law of its member states in the fields defined by its constitution.

2. Law enforcement: To ensure the rule of law these common institutions include law-enforcement bodies such as an Executive and Courts which have independent law-enforcement powers and responsibilities.

3. Applicability: The law of the union is applicable both to its member states and crucially to its individual citizens living within its borders.

4. Independent legislative & policy-making institutions: These common institutions have their own independent legislative process which is distinct from those of the member states. Their laws do not require ratification in the parliaments of its member states.

5. Democracy: The common institutions, as well as those of the member states, are democratic.

6. Constitutionally defined responsibilities: The common institutions are asked to implement common policies where problems are shared in order that these problems may be addressed jointly, but no more. Other levels of government would do everything else. The areas to be addressed in common would normally include commercial policy, monetary union, and security issues. Other policy areas could also be included. The constitution of the union would set down these powers.


Diverse Experience of Federal Union
Some of the earliest unions were of small states binding together for mutual protection. This was the case with the Greek city states and, more durably, Switzerland and the Netherlands.

Many federal states on the world scene are the result of smaller individual states, often towards the end of a colonial regime which organised them separately, coming together to find security and prosperity together. The United States, Canada, Australia and to an extent India are examples of this phenomenon. Some federal states are the result of a decentralisation of power within a state previously created. In this sense, to federate means to decentralise power to important regions or smaller areas of local government. This decentralisation is written into a constitution and these areas of decision-making, once relinquished, can only be recovered by the central state authorities by means of a constitutional amendment. Examples of this are the Federal Republic of Germany, Belgium and to an extent Spain. It is possible to identify basic features of a federal constitution but there is no single model. The constitutions of federal unions are a spectrum: the responsibilities of the different levels of government vary; the nature of their institutions differ; they do not all represent the member states the same way; they have different powers of taxation; some are presidential, others parliamentary; some are very decentralised; some are increasingly centralised. Federal constitutions also evolve with use: some federal unions retain strong decentralised features (Switzerland), others become increasingly decentralised (Belgium), and others become more centralised (USA).

The European Union is following an entirely unprecedented path. Whilst similar in some respects to the some of the examples above, it is in other ways profoundly different. A new kind of federal union is being created where established states, many with long histories, are trying work together in shared institutions which are democratic and effective to ensure peace between them and to provide the strength to face shared problems together.


Early Origins of the Federal Idea: the Historic Problem
Federalism developed as a response to the ancient question of how to link separate political communities together in order to pursue effectively objectives unobtainable alone, but without submerging their own identities. The most pressing of these aims were normally to overthrow an oppressor or to defend against a larger aggressor. Attempts were made to form leagues in Greece, particularly in the 3rd and 4th centuries, and in mediaeval Italy, for example, but these tended to be short-lived.

Two of the more permanent alliances were Switzerland and the United Provinces (the Netherlands).


Switzerland
One of the earliest successful attempts to create something more durable was the founding, in 1291, of a union of the "Waldstätte" - three forest cantons. This was a perpetual alliance: for the settlement of disagreements among themselves by arbitration; for the punishment of crime; for resort to law rather than to violence; for mutual defence.

It grew rapidly in the 14th century and was powerful by the mid 15th century. It had the "values of federalism rather than institutions" and was reformed by a new constitution in 1848 which was inspired by the American model.

The Netherlands: The United Provinces By the Union of Utrecht of 23rd January 1579, the provinces of the low countries, in order to resist Spanish control, united on a "perpetual" basis "for all time as if they were a single province". They resolved to act together in foreign affairs. Decisions on war and taxation required a unanimous vote. Some of these provinces (more or less the provinces now geographically in modern Belgium) were absorbed by Philip II's Spain and effectively left the union. The remaining seven United Provinces declared their independence of Spain in 1581. Their union had a central government, the States-General, but this was very much subordinate to the provinces, among which Holland was dominant. It had the power to carry out the war of independence but had no right of taxation except import/export duties.

This Dutch experience produced one of the earliest federalist thinkers. Johannes Althusius, (1557-1638) a Calvinist, discussed the uniting of towns and provinces in Politica published in 1603 and revised in 1610 & 1614.
 

The Federalist Breakthrough: the United States of America
There were various attempts to unite the English colonies in America prior to the War of Independence.
 

New England Confederation: United Colonies of New England
The first of these attempts was the United Colonies of New England in 1643 to protect against Indians and to settle disputes amongst colonies. It brought together Massachusetts, Connecticut, Plymouth, and New Haven. It had a body of 8 representative commissioners. Its main weakness was that Massachusetts, with 15,000 out 23,000 of its population, had only 2 of the commissioners. Within five years this state was asking for another. This made any effective action impossible. In 1652, for example, when England went to war with the United Provinces, Massachusetts opposed an offensive war in America against the New Netherlands, thereby making common action unworkable. The association went into decline after 1665 and died by 1684. Its legacy was important however. John Quincy Adams, one time US President wrote "the New England Confederation of 1643 was the model and prototype of the North American Confederacy of 1774".


William Penn's Plan
Around 1696-97, William Penn proposed a federal-type union amongst the colonies with deputies in a General Assembly. His plan gave little detail on how decisions would be enforced, however. Two Representatives for each often states would meet once every two years in a Congress chaired by a Commissioner sent by the King. His objective was to protect colonial liberties from the English government. The Congress would hear matters of complaint between the provinces, debt chasing, justice, trade, and defence against public enemies. The King's High Commissioner would be Chief Commander of the colonial army in time of war.

Benjamin Franklin & the Albany Plan A meeting of Commissioners from various colonies met in July 1754 following instructions from the British Board of Trade. Benjamin Franklin launched the idea of a colonial Union which was adopted by Commissioners. Franklin's plan involved the creation of a Grand Council as follows:

The Council would have the power to make laws, levy general duties and taxes, and to organise defence. The Council would meet once a year. Its 48 representatives would be elected by the colonial assemblies once every three years. The number of state representatives would vary between 2 & 7, depending on money contributed. The Council would be presided over by a President-General appointed by the crown. Although supported by the Commissioners, it went beyond public opinion and was rejected by the colonial assemblies. Somewhat ironically, on the rejection of this scheme, the English Parliament decided instead to tax the colonies directly to provide for their defence.


The Articles of Confederation
The confederation formed during the War of Independence was a weak union of the states. Each state had the same number of representatives which met in the Congress. There was no effective Executive. As a result tension amongst the states grew, particularly over trade issues, and states failed to provide their contributions to the common budget for common services such as defence.

The Annapolis Convention Madison urged the Virginia state legislature to invite stales to meet in Annapolis "to consider how far a uniform system in their commercial relations may be necessary to their common interest and permanent harmony." This Convention failed. Only 12 delegates from 5 states attended. But it called for a new convention: to deliberate on all measures necessary to cement the union of the states and promote their permanent tranquillity and security"'; to assemble on the second Monday in May of the following year [1787] in Philadelphia".
 

The Philadelphia Convention
At Philadelphia the delegates in the convention agreed oil Madison's analysis of their common problems but disagreed about the solution. Some had vested interests in the status quo. Others had t belief that republican government, i.e. free and democratic, could only be secured in a small state and that any larger state must inevitably become imperial and tyrannical.

The constitution of the USA was therefore, somewhat ironically, simply a compromise between two groups of supporters of unitary state. Men like Washington, Hamilton and Madison wanted to replace the several states with a strong national government and others, like Patrick Henry, wanted to defend the rights of the states. Their thinking on unitary government was shaped by their own experience of British politics They knew the rights of representative assemblies which the colonies had used and they had an understanding of the British constitution This under standing was influenced by the explanations of Montesquieu who had tried to describe how it worked A single figure the King was in charge of the Executive; a representative House of Commons and a more senior House of Lords formed the legislature; and a separation of powers between the Executive, Legislature and Judiciary was imposed. These features were used as the basic format of the US constitution.

 
The Compromise: the Birth of the First Federal Union
The compromise between the supporters of a national government and a loose league of states involved characteristics of both systems: a President, a Court and a House elected by the people for the supporters of national government, the limitation of powers together with a powerful Senate based on equal representation of the states for the supporters of states' rights.

On completion James Madison could only describe the new constitution, which does not mention the word federal, as partly national, partly federal as the document had some characteristics of both. After this point though the term federal shed its previous meaning as a league and was redefined to give it its modern meaning. The supporters of the new constitution seized the word federal to describe the new arrangement in order to emphasise the decentralised nature of the union rather calling it national which would have done the reverse.

So the new constitution made the key break-through in empowering this league to be the first to overcome its institutional deficit, i.e. the union had the powers to match its responsibilities. Although much remained from the Articles of Confederation, the new text made the changes necessary to define a new system of government. Perhaps above all others, it linked the union's institutions to its people: the direct applicability of its laws to the individual and the accountability of its central government to the individual. As Tocqueville would write over forty years later: "This constitution, "which at first glance one is tempted to confuse with previous federal constitutions, in fact rests on an entirely new theory, a theory that should be hailed as one of the great discoveries of political science of our time. In America, the Union's subjects are not states but private citizens. Former federal governments had to confront whole peoples, the Union confronts individuals It does not borrow its powers, but draws them from within. It has its Own administrators, courts, officers of justice and army".

It is worth noting incidentally that this compromise almost went too far for many and almost failed to be ratified, with close votes in several states:

Massachusetts: 187-168 New Hampshire: 57-46 Virginia: 89-79 New York: 30-27 North Carolina and Rhode Island actually voted against.

It was for the purpose of winning support in New York that Hamilton, Madison and Jay wrote The Federalist Papers as a series of short tracts subsequently collated together. It is worth noting that the constitution of the USA has since changed in its operation becoming more centralised, as the result of formal amendments and changes in the environment in which it is used:

the civil war in the 1860s nationalised US politics, for example: instead of referring to the United States as they it became common to say it; in the early 20th century the Senate ceased to be appointed by the states' assemblies but became directly elected; income tax was introduced which substantially increased the potential powers of the central government.

These changes in attitude and Constitution led to new powers being placed in the hands of the central government during the twentieth century by specific crises and policy decisions such as the depression and the subsequent New Deal, two world wars and the Great Society programme of the 1960s.
 

Early Federalist Thought in Europe
Many had argued that the states of Europe should unite to keep the peace amongst them such as, for example, King George of Podebrad, King Henry of Navarre and his minister Sully. Essentially they had in mind a league of monarchies to keep the peace and defend Christendom against external threat from primarily the Turks.

In the eighteenth century the idea started to grow in political substance. This process was boosted by the American experience. For example, in 1779 Saint Simon wrote: "Europe would be better organised if all its nations, though each ruled by its own Parliament, recognised the supremacy of a general Parliament; standing above all the governments and invested with the power to decide on their disputes."

After the French Revolution European thinking on federalism focused on two concerns: first how to unite Europe's states for peace and secondly how to avoid the dangers and threats of centralised governments.

As a consequence of these differing viewpoints, for the subsequent history of federalism there are three strands of federalism to be followed:

Constitutional federalism: Anglo-Saxon thinking Constitutional federalism: Continental European thinking Social or integral federalism

There were many links between them, particularly in the early 19th century. All three would come together in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War before the integral federalists largely left the European federalist movement, which remained a movement of a united constitutional federalist.

Federalism in Opposition to the Jacobin state

One of the earliest references to federalism in Europe appears in 1793 during the French Revolution when Robespierre condemned attacks on the state as "la guerre civil et le fédéralisme". Federalism had become a rallying point for opponents of the centralisation of the Jacobin regime leading some regions to reject the power of the Jacobin National Assembly. The federalists were brutally suppressed.
 

Kant - Peace and Decentralisation
Kant touched on both of these themes of peace and opposition to centralised states in his 1795 essay On Perpetual Peace:

"Federalism, from the Latin word 'foedus', means contract, pact, treaty or convention; it implies an agreement, thanks to which one or more heads of the family, one or more local communities, one or more groups of communities or States commit in equality themselves and each other to reach one or more particular objectives; the achievement of these objectives belongs exclusively and particularly to the delegates of the federation.

In substance, the federal system is the opposite of administrative centralism, a system which characterises... the unitarian democracies.... In a federation, the competences of the central authority are limited. ... On the contrary, in the centralised governments, the competences of the supreme authority multiply, become larger and more direct, and the supreme organ is finally empowered to intervene in the affairs of the region, the community and each individual citizen. From this derives the oppression of centralism, under which disappear not only the regional and communities' liberties, but also those of the individual and of the nation."
 

Social Federalism
Winkelbech, 15 years before Proudhon, discovered the social potentials of federalism. Winkelbech regarded federalism as a kind of social organisation with basic units as nineteenth century versions of mediaeval guilds. As a consequence, decisions would be the result of consultation, conciliation and consensus.

Winkelbech inspired Constantin Frantz. He argued that for people to act in a federal manner meant that they were able to decide on joint action without losing individuality. Constantin Frantz wrote that "Federalism allows its elements to administer themselves" and enthused about social federalism rather than its constitutional form.

Proudhon developed federalist thought as a decentralised alternative to the centralisation of the nation state in his book Du principe fédératif. He too was interested in the social aspects of federalism and in its application to local communities and groups. This thinking inspired personalism in 1930s and developed into the integral federalism of Alexandre Marc, Denis de Rougement, and, to a lesser extent, Henri Brugmans. Integral federalism was opposed to both individualist philosophies and collectivist philosophies. Every individual was a Person free and responsible. Self-administration in local communities such as neighbourhood and workplaces would be the basis of this social federalism.

Constitutional Federalism: Continental European Thought

During the 19th century

Madame de Stäel suggested that federalism represented the next stage of representative government. Benjamin Constant in Principles of Politics (1815) wrote about "new federalism" as a system in which communes and provinces would control their own affairs leaving only matters of general concern to central government. He left the constitutional means unclear. The American federal experience was brought to the fore in Europe following the publication of De Tocqueville's book De la Démocracie en Amerique.Others focused exclusively on the constitutional version of federalism.

In Italy Mazzini, immediately after founding Giovine Italia, founded Giovine Europa to advocate European unity. He believed that if nationality was organised, supranationality must be as well. Carlo Cattaneo opposed the nation-state and supported European unity. He sought to transform the Habsburg empire into a democratic federal union on the US model and also argued that "we shall never have peace until we founded the United States of Europe."

In France, inspired by Victor Hugo, the International League for Peace & Freedom had been founded with a magazine Les Etats Unis d'Europe. Somewhat oddly it became a champion of the idea of the League of Nations in 1917.

In Germany, Bismarck used tactical support for a version of federalism to strengthen the central bodies of the state. Many federalists were opposed to centralised rule but were out of step with public opinion. Bismarck was in fact able to use public opinion to centralise the state, by backing the popular Reichstag, rather than the elitist and remote Bundesrat. Prussia dominated anyway. Ironically, Bismarck came to see the benefits of federalism as a means of controlling nationalism too late after his loss of power.
 

After World War One
In the post-war period, particularly as enthusiasm for the League of Nations waned, the idea of uniting Europe in a federal union was reasserted.

Sir Max Waechter, a German born British industrialist, had taken up the federalist cause in 1909. In 1924 he published How to Abolish War: the United States of Europe in which he wrote: "Europe is gradually losing its position in the world. My starting point is the absolute impossibility of Europe being able to hold its own against American competition". Japan, he wrote, "may soon become one of Europe's most formidable rivals in the field of trade and technology". Waechter saw European federation as being based on a common market and founded the European Unity League to advance these ideas but it never really became a going concern.

Count Coudenhove-Kalergi launched Pan-Europa (1926) to campaign for a European federal union. His work would influence three key events:

the French Prime Minister Briand's plan for such a European union in 1930; Winston Churchill's speech in Zurich in 1946; the European Movement's support for a European Assembly in the 1940s.

Briand in a speech to the League of Nations produced a vague plan in a diplomatic overture to Germany for European unity in 1929. He had been interested in the possibilities of European union for several years and had been in contact with Coudenhove-Kalergi since 1927. Indeed he had asked the French Ambassador to report on the first Pan-Europa meeting in 1926 and had agreed subsequently to stand as honorary President of the French section. He acted on his beliefs for practical reasons in 1929 in order to meet certain political and above all economic needs such as responding to US protectionism. His speech to the League on 5th September 1929 was vague. He argued in favour of "organising Europe". It was May 1930 before he published his Memorandum on the Organisation of a System of European Federal Union by which time any momentum had been lost. Several states had by then taken positions either indifferent or hostile to the idea. The result was that the European members of the League of Nations formed a Committee of Enquiry into European Union but this was little more than a face-saving device.

The idea of a European federal union, nonetheless, inspired many others in this period. Edouard Herriot, for example, wrote The United States of Europe (1931). Many others argued this case: Luigi Einaudi, Giovanni Agnelli, Andrea Cabiati, Maurice Renoult, Bertrand de Jouvenel, Roger Manuel, Herman Kranold, Sobei Mgoi, Edo Fimmen.

Although these ideas were in the background, the birth of modern European federalism had to a large extent different and somewhat paradoxical origins: the belief in federalism in the British Empire.

Constitutional Federalism: The Anglo-Saxon School

Background

Following the American experience, the British became increasingly interested in the federal idea during the 19th century.

John Stuart Mill in On Liberty put federalism in the context of individual's struggle for freedom against authority. Federalism offered the advantage of being a dispersal of power. Edward E. Freeman wrote a history of Federal Government in Greece & Italy published in 1863. Seeley wrote that federal union is the "most efficacious and the most congenial of all the checks on centralised oppression of minorities".

By the late 19th century, work on American federalism and federal solutions to British imperial and other international problems was becoming substantial. In the second half of the century more academic research was being undertaken into federalism and the American constitutional experience. Writers such as Freeman, James Bryce, Lord Acton, John Morley, John Dymond, Charles Donald Farquharson, Brooke Foss Westcott were looking at problems of war and peace.


British Imperial federalism
This takes two forms:

the need to unite certain colonial territories, and the need to retain the unity of the Empire.

uniting Colonial territories Many adjacent colonial territories were linked to Britain but not to each other. This was the case in America prior to the War of Independence and it was the case in Canada and Australia too.
 

Canada
The first proposal to unite British North America was made by Chief Justice Smith in 1791 and it was reiterated by Lord Durham during his 1838 mission to investigate the possibility of linking the two Canadas -upper & lower (roughly speaking modem Ontario and Quebec). Following the Quebec Conference of 10th October 1864 and the consequent British North America Act of 1867, a federation was established.


Australia
Progress in uniting the Australian territories was painfully slow. It was first proposed in 1847 to unite the four separate Australian territories in a federal union as the various states were imposing hostile tariffs on each other. The debate continued throughout the 1850s and 1860s. At an inter-colonial conference in 1883 a federal Council with legislative but no executive powers was proposed. The British Parliament did in fact pass an Australasian Federal Council Act in 1885 but this was not implemented. A National Convention which met in Sydney in March 1891 wrote a constitution, but the state legislatures did not ratify it. They did however eventually pass legislation to enable directly-elected persons to meet in a convention which took place in 1897. This broke the deadlock. In 1898 a bill was put to the popular vote, subsequently revised, then sent to London for approval. This was given by Parliament on 3 July 1900. Australia was born on 1st January 1901.


South Africa
In South Africa discussion about federating the country in the aftermath of the war between the British and the Boers failed, but the consequences of this debate were important.

The British leader in South Africa, Lord Milner, assembled a group of young men, known as the Kindergarten, to work on the proposals to federate South Africa. This group included Philip Kerr, later to become Lord Lothian.


Ireland
The idea of devolving power to Ireland, to reconcile its people to membership of the United Kingdom, was discussed frequently during the 19th and early 20th centuries. It was first taken up by Daniel O'Connell in the 1830s and picked up by William Sharman Crawford in 1839 and the 1 840s. Isaac Butt argued in the 1 870s that federalism was required as "only an application of the general principle of freedom, which maintains local privileges against the despotism of central power".

Between the 1880s and 1920 various schemes for 'home rule' for Ireland were discussed. Some involved Scotland, England and Wales ('home rule all round'). Some were even endorsed by the House of Commons. They all failed as, at different times, the nationalists thought they did not go far enough, the unionists felt they went too far, some did not want Ireland to be treated differently from Scotland and Wales, and others argued that the Scots and Welsh showed no dissatisfaction with the status quo. The issue of Irish representation in the UK Parliament was never resolved; no solution achieved a consensus support.

 
India
Lothian, who knew India well from visits, became attracted to idea of all-India federation. He was a delegate to the important 1931 Round Table Conference and became Under Secretary at the India Office. A federal plan, put on the statute book but never implemented, was influential on the post-independence constitution.


Imperial Federation
It was against the background of interest in federation and the debates over federating various colonial territories that thinking about federating the Empire took place. This occurred in two waves.

Firstly, the Imperial Federation League was launched on 29 July 1884 to "secure by Federation the permanent unity of the Empire". It was supported by many senior and prominent British and colonial statesmen, but it collapsed in December 1893 following the rejection of a detailed federal plan by Gladstone's government.

Secondly, members of Lord Milner's Kindergarten including Philip Kerr (subsequently Lord Lothian), Lionel Curtis, Leopold Amery, FS Oliver (biographer of Hamilton), and Edward Grigg formed around 1909-10 The Round Table whose aim was the "organic unity" of the Empire. This avoided specific plans and stuck to arguing for the principle. This effort was reinforced by discussion in Britain about abandoning free trade and creating a protected, united imperial economy. But history was moving away from them. The white colonial territories were gaining in self-governing responsibilities with "Dominion Status". They saw no need to support an imperial federation. After the First World War the idea faded, and the Statute of Westminster of 1931 killed it once and for all.But the significance of the principles of imperial federation lay in the diverted efforts of their supporters after its collapse. They turned their attention to other applications of federalism.


Imperial Federalists Become International Federalists
Lord Lothian' 5 thinking moved on from imperial federation to international federation, primarily amongst English-speaking countries. He had picked up on some of the late 19th century British imperial federalists such as WT Stead who believed in the wider applicability of federalism. Stead had, for example, written that "as an empire we must federate or perish" but he had also published a book: The United States of Europe on the Eve of the Parliament of Peace in 1899 (The Hague Peace Conference was the Parliament of Peace be had in mind). By 1915 Lothian was arguing for "an organic union of the world". Lord Lothian gave a lecture in Williamstown USA in August 1922, entitled The Prevention of War; on the need for federalism to end the anarchy prevailing in international relations. He developed this theme in Pacifism is not Enough, nor Patriotism Either, the Burge Memorial Lecture, on 28 May 1935.
 

Federal Union
Three young men from Oxford, Charles Kimber, Derek Rawnsley, and Patrick Ransome, felt desperately that the threat of world war could be averted if the states of Europe united. Kimber and Rawnsley had initially known nothing about federalism but believed that a European league with a supranational parliament, law enforcement capability and common defence was required to maintain the peace. When they approached Ransome, it was he who understood that what they sought was in fact a federal Europe. To this end they began in 1938 to seek help from others to establish an effective campaign. They contacted Lothian and Curtis who helped introduce them to others including the Astors, Beveridge, Bevin, Morrison, Robbins and Sinclair. Lothian wrote Federal Union's first substantial pamphlet, The Ending of Armageddon "War is inherent in the relations between sovereign states. For when agreement falls the only instrument by which the sovereign state can defend its existence and its rights or promote its ends, legitimate or illegitimate, is by a resort to force A second consequence of this anarchy of sovereignties is that every state is inevitably driven to sacrifice the rights and independence of its own citizens in order to increase its own strength in the struggle for existence. ... A third consequence of sovereignty is its effect in producing poverty, unemployment, social frustration and despair. Sovereignty inevitably leads to economic nationalism, whereby each state tries to be self-supporting, promotes the interests of its own nation regardless of the economic interests of other nations and erects ever-increasing interferences with international trade, migration and the movement of capital.

The only final remedy for this supreme and catastrophic evil of our time is a federal union of the peoples so that while every nation is completely self-governing in its own internal affairs all the people are united into a single Commonwealth for their common affairs.

The Americans, confronted with the problem of uniting states which, in separating from Great Britain, had already established their own sovereignty, discovered the federal principle whereby the powers and functions of government were divided between states and commonwealth. This discovery made possible the development of a system of federal union which combined complete state autonomy with democratically controlled reign of law on a continental scale.

The task today is to create a constitutional construction which represents a step beyond the present federations of states or provinces, to bring into being a federal union of nations which will give free play to national differences and feelings and at the same time organically unite all their inhabitants under constitutional law which itself will end war, preserve liberty and make prosperity secure. The essence of federal union is to unite the peoples under a government of laws and principle rather than of men. Differences existed however. Kimber, Rawnsley and Ransome were above all interested in European union whilst Lothian and Curtis were attracted to Atlantic federation, particularly as expressed in a hook by Clarence Streit, Union Now!, published in 1939. This argued for the creation of a union of 15 democracies which would include a common citizenship, a defence force, a tariff-free market, a currcncy, and a postal system. Lothian himself had supported European federation in an article in Christian Science Monitor in 1938, but did not think Britain should be part of it.

The membership of Federal Union rose by 1940 to 10,000 with 227 branches and important Council meetings. It launched a research body called the Federal Union Research institute which continues to exist to this day as the Federal Trust for Education and Research. It won the support of The Times, Guardian, and New Statesman, and created a broad establishment consensus in favour of federal union. It was the background to Churchill's offer of an indissoluble union with France in 1940 about which Churchill's Assistant Private Secretary, Sir John Colville wrote: "We had before us the bridge to a new world, the first elements of European or even world federation."

The Birth of Modern European Federalism

Altiero Spinelli and the Ventotene Manifesto

Altiero Spinelli was sent by the fascists into internal exile on Ventotene in July 1939. Spinelli had broken with the Communists in 1937 and had been thinking about the problems of democracy when he came across work by Einaudi criticising the League of Nations and arguing for European federation. It was as a result of this enquiry that he became a federalist as he writes in his memoirs: "When asked by Rossi, who, as a Professor of Economics, had been authorised to correspond with him a long time before, Einaudi sent him two or three little books on English federalist literature which flourished at the end of the thirties thanks to Lord Lothian' 5 efforts. Apart from Lionel Robbins's book The Economic Causes of War, which I translated and which was published by Einaudi, I do not remember either the titles or the authors of other books. But their analysis of the political and economic perversion to which nationalism leads and their reasoned presentation of the federalist alternative have remained in my mind to this day as a revelation. Since I was seeking clarity and precision of thought, my attention was not attracted by the contorted and hardly coherent ideological federalism of the Proudhonian or Mazzinian type, which throve in France or in Italy, but by the clean, precise and anti-doctrinaire thought of the English federalists... who proposed to transplant into Europe the great America political experience."

As a result of this revelation, Spinelli wrote, with Ernesto Rossi, the Ventotene Manifesto as a call for a new Europe after the war. The Manifesto was smuggled out to Rome in 1941. Walter Lipgens, the historian of post-war European unity, describes how it caused "a considerable stir in the many opposition groups during the following months and became one of the basic documents of the European federalist movement". These federalists in the resistance movements started organising federalist meetings from about 1943 onwards and together with representatives of Federal Union were the principal creators of the European Union of Federalists (EUF or later UEF) in 1947 and the Young European Federalists (JEF) in 1948. Initially these movements were broad, uniting supporters of both integral (social) and constitutional federalism and supporters of European and world federal unions.

In the event the integral federalists gave way to the constitutionalists and the world federalists created their own organisations.
 

Winston Churchill Propels the idea of European Unity Forward
Winston Churchill had long supported European unity as a way of ending Europe's decline. He had, for example, supported the Briand plan for "European Federal Union" in 1930 writing in the Saturday Evening Post of 15th February 1930: "The mass of Europe, once united, once federalised or partly federalised, once continentally self-conscious, would constitute an organism beyond compare ... We see nothing but good and hope in a richer, freer, more contented European commonalty".

In 1939 he had advocated a supra-national peace keeping force in Europe. In 1940 he proposed an indissoluble union with France. Between 1942 and 1944 he had spoken several times of the need to unite post war Europe under a "Council of Europe" with power to enforce its decisions. In July 1945, in an address to both houses of the Belgian Parliament, he said: "I see no reason why, under the guardianship of a world organisation, there should not arise the United States of Europe, which will unify this Continent in a manner never known since the fall of the Roman Empire, and within which all its peoples may dwell together in prosperity, injustice and in peace".

It was in a series of speeches and articles between 1946 and 1948 that he articulated in more detail his vision The starting point for this was a speech given in Zurich on 19th September 1946 In this speech Churchill stated the objective as follows it is to re create the European family or as much of it as we can, and provide it with a structure under which it can dwell in peace, in safety and in freedom We must build a kind of United States of Europe."

He went on to call for a Europe based on a partnership between France and Germany" The impact of the Zurich speech was enormous. In the words of Lipgens, "then suddenly, in the last week of September 1946, almost exactly a year after the subject had been despondently abandoned, the idea of a United States of Europe again hit the headlines on account of a single speech by a famous man, and politicians in office found themselves obliged, or able, to take notice of it once more That this plea for European unity "was not a cry in the wilderness from some unknown member of the European resistance, but came from of the 'Big Three' leaders of the victorious coalition" reinvigorated the movement for European unity. It lead to the creation of the European Movement as a broad church, rallying all organisations, including the federalists, in support of European unity. It first success was in calling for the creation of the Council of Europe. This proved, however, a disappointment and lead to federalist ambitions being furthered by another body.

Jean Monnet and the First Supra-national Communities: a Federalist Bridgehead
Jean Monnet had seen the Council of Europe fail to live up to federalist expectations. He decided that the way forward was to take a specific need and to design a solution with the institutional power to meet the need. In effect this meant using federalist principles to create a supranational body. This approach, often described as functionalist, is frequently contrasted with the federalist which wanted a full blown federal constitution at once. In fact the main difference was the speed and methodology rather than the objective. Monnet persuaded Robert Schuman, Foreign Minister of France, to launch a new initiative to create a supra-national organisation to deal with the problems of the European coal and steel industries and the necessary revival of German industrial power. In the words of the Schuman Declaration of 9th May 1950 proposing the idea: 'The pooling of coal and steel production should immediately provide for the setting up of common foundations for economic development as a first step in the federation of Europe... By pooling basic production and by instituting a new High Authority, whose decisions will bind France, Germany and other member countries, this proposal will lead to the realisation of the first concrete foundation of a European federation indispensable to the preservation of peace".

To advance this idea, on 20th June 1950 France convened an intergovernmental conference (ICC) chaired by Monnet. For Monnet the key was not to burden the new organisation "with the shortcomings of traditional intergovernmental agencies: insistence on unanimity; national financial contributions; and executive subordinate to national representatives."

Once the European Coal and Steel Community was agreed, ratified and launched, Monnet described the breakthrough as follows:

"According to the methods of the past, even when the European states have been convinced of the necessity of a common action, even when they have set up an international organisation, they have kept their full sovereignty. Thus the international organisation can neither decide, nor execute, but only address recommendations to the States... Today, on the contrary, six Parliaments have decided after mature deliberation and by massive majorities, to create the first European Community which merges a part of the national sovereignties and submits them to the common interest. Within the limits of competence confirmed by the treaty, the High Authority has received from the six states the mandate to take, in complete independence, decisions which are immediately in force on the whole of their territory. It is in a direct relationship with all firms. It obtains financial resources, not by contributions from states, but from levies imposed directly or indirectly on production... It is responsible, not to the states, but to a European Assembly... The members of the Assembly are not bound by any national mandate ... The Assembly controls our action. It has the power to withdraw its confidence from us. It is the first European Assembly endowed with sovereign powers. The acts of the High Authority are changeable in the courts... not before national tribunals, but before a European tribunal, the Court of Justice".

Spinelli was working with Monnet at the time and helped him prepare the speech when this was said on 10th August 1952. In short they had created an organisation in which: "The sovereign powers delegated to common institutions are exercised by a set of bodies which are the first European federal structures. There is a system of balance and control which ensures democratic control of all decisions".


Federalist Directions for the Communities: the Contribution of Spinelli
It is not the purpose of this paper to describe the history of the European Communities and Union but we should note two further initiatives in which Altiero Spinelli played a major role in shaping the Community system.
 

European Defence Community
This was suggested by Monnet to the French Prime Minister Réné Pleven. It was to be a method of incorporating Germany into a European defence system. Its weakness was that it did not provide for democratic political control. Spinelli proposed in a memorandum to the Italian Prime Minister de Gasperi: that an assembly write a charter for a European Political Community. This was agreed by Government leaders who inserted provision for this in article 38 in the EDC treaty. In 1952 they went further by asking the Parliamentary Assembly of the European Coal and Steel Community to propose the creation of ~ federal or confederal structure founded on the principle of the separation of powers and including, in particular, a bicameral representative system". The enlarged ECSC assembly, called the Ad Hoc assembly, approved a text on 10th March 1953. It provided for a European government responsible to a directly elected Parliament, a senate of national parliamentary representatives, plus a Council of Ministers, a 12 person Executive Council, and a President of the Executive Council elected by the senate who would be able to choose others and dismiss them. The EDC Treaty was ratified by 4 member states and would have been ratified by Italy had not the French Assembly rejected it by 319 to 264 against. The EPC project then also fell by the wayside.

Instead the European Economic Community was formed. The federalist movements split over attitudes to the Community: should they seek to reform it or should they reject it? It was not until the 1970s that the federalists re-united
 

Draft Treaty on European Union
Spinelli then began work on perhaps his most significant project. The Heads of Government had agreed in 1975 to direct elections to the European Parliament for the first time in accordance with the Treaty of Rome. Spinelli had always felt such an assembly should write a constitution for Europe. He was elected to the first new Parliament in 1979 where he set to work. The result was the Draft Treaty on European Union, approved in 1984 in the European Parliament by a large majority. The Heads of Government felt obliged to respond. As a consequence they decided, in Milan in 1985 with many thousands of federalist demonstrating outside, to convene the first significant IGC since the l950s. The conclusion of the ICC was the Single European Act. It was not as radical as the Draft Treaty but it reintroduced majority voting in the Council of Ministers, enhanced the status of the European Parliament, established the programme to complete the single market by 1992. and improved methods of foreign policy cooperation. Above all it reopened the debate about Europe's structural future and lead the way to the Treaty on European Union (the Maastricht Treaty) in 1991 and the scheduling of the 1996 IGC.
 

The Future
With the implementation of the Maastricht Treaty Europe is close to completing its federal union. The process should in fact be completed by the establishment of a European monetary union as foreseen by this Treaty, and the reforms envisaged by many: i.e. the democratic reform of the Union's institutions, and the development of common foreign policies particularly in the field of defense. Once this is done a constitution linking all the components should be written and the Union will need to be enlarged to include many new members from all of Europe.

But the conclusion of this process is not inevitable. Europe has come a long way but the fact that the end of this process is in sight does not mean it is certain to be completed. It is to achieve this that the federalist movement must continue to work.

 
A Short Biography
Altiero Spinelli (1907-1986) promoted the foundation of the Movimento Federalista Europeo (European Federalist Movement) on 27-28th August 1943 in Milan. He had joined the Italian Communist Party at a very early age, and participated in the clandestine struggle against fascism. Arrested in 1927, he spent ten years in prison and six in confinement. During his confinement at Ventotene, he studied the texts of Anglo-Saxon federalists, which led him to abandon communism and embrace federalism. Along with Ernesto Rossi and Eugenio Colorni, he drew up the Ventotene Manifesto in 1941.

Spinelli soon realised that the battle for the European federation required the creation of anew type of political organisation, immune to national fetishes and the limitations of traditional ideologies.

In the early fifties, the campaigning of Spinelli and the MFE 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). It was thanks to this campaigning that the 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. 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. Despite this setback, between 1954 and 1960 Spinelli and the MFE re-launched the federalist struggle, working to mobilise the by then widespread Europeanism into a growing popular protest (the Congress of the European People) directed against the very legitimacy of the nation-states.

After abandoning the MFE in the sixties, he was nominated a member of the EEC's Executive Commission in 1970. From 1976 to 1986 he was a member of the European Parliament, becoming President of its Institutional Commission in 1984. It was in the European Parliament that Spinelli had a second opportunity to start a constitutional campaign. promoting in the now directly elected European Parliament the elaboration of a Draft Treaty establishing the European Union (approved by a huge majority on 14th February 1984). This initiative was blocked and shelved by the national governments, which in 1985 passed the less ambitious Single European Act. 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.

Spinelli died in Rome on 23rd May 1986.
 

Spinelli's Work and Federalism as a New Political Behaviour
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. Such federalists. unlike Spinelli. had not set themselves the objective of drawing up a precise plan of action and had not renounced being involved first and foremost in liberal, socialist or democratic struggles. 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. 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. From the outset he aimed to exploit the contradictions which emerged when the various national policies were pooled at the international level. 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. In 1984 Spinelli succeeded in bringing the entire European Parliament round to this position, which he had defended and maintained throughout his life.

This same Parliament is now called on to complete the constituent battle started by Spinelli.

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The Ventotene Manifesto
"The dividing line between progressive and reactionary parties no longer coincides with the formal lines of more or less democracy', or the pursuit of more or less socialism, but the division falls along a very new and substantial line: those who conceive the essential purpose and goal of struggle as being the ancient one, the conquest of national political power, and who, albeit involuntarily, play' into the hands of reactionary forces, letting the incandescent lava of popular passions set in the old moulds, and thus allowing old absurdities to arise once again, and those who see the main purpose as the creation of a solid international State, who will direct popular forces towards this goal, and who, even if they were to win national power, would use it first and foremost as an instrument for achieving international unity."

For a Free and United Europe - A Draft Manifesto, Ventotene, 1941

Spinelli, the MFE and De Gasperi
'Our encounter with De Gasperi was not easy. When we began to form our little movement, with its uncompromising stance and commitment to battle, since Sforza, Minister for Foreign Affairs, and De Gasperi had an anti-nationalist attitude, we tried to make contact with them. In 1950 we made, in agreement with federalists in other countries as well, a campaign in the form of a petition, in which we asked our governments, and in particular we asked our Italian government, to take an initiative to make a federal pact with the other countries. We prepared the text of the petition on which to collect signatures, and then looked for a few authoritative signatories whose support would facilitate the collection. One of the first steps which we had to think of was De Gasperi. De Gasperi received us, read this text and said that, yes, he was prepared to support it on condition that we changed that over abstract formula a little: we should have to say that we invited the Italian government to take an initiative to promote peace in Europe.

At this we said that our movement arose precisely in contrast to this way of looking at things, this kind of European politics, and that therefore, we would not comply. And so we parted coldly: he saying that in that case he was not interested in the matter, and we finding ourselves in a rather difficult situation, because we were starting out with the head of government in this hostile situation. However we decided to go ahead anyway. And in the course of a year we gathered half a million signatures and at the end, in 1951, we held a large demonstration at the Elisée, in Rome, attended by Einaudi, President of the Republic - Einaudi was the one who had always supported us silently -and, as guest speakers, there were also Sforza and De Gasperi. (...) Then we had De Gasperi's first declaration in our favour, because he too signed the petition and he declared that the Italian government would accept this undertaking and act accordingly. Well, I must say that De Gasperi was true to this undertaking and there was a great initiative of the Italian government.

This man, De Gasperi, who was basically a moderate, did so in no mean revolutionary spirit, conquering resistance in Italy, in the Italian administration, and conquering resistance in the other countries.

From a Radio Interview, 1985

The Constituent Power of the European Parliament
"This exclusive political right of the European Parliament, unwritten but valid because founded on solid democratic custom, must be resolutely claimed by Parliament against every, attempt to transfer the drafting to wise men, to diplomats, to ministers or others. If the European Parliament gives way on this point, if it accepts that its work has only been preparatory, destined to be remanipulated by others, it reduces itself to the level of little more than a talking shop, and spontaneously renounces its status as representative of the citizens of the Community, i.e. it denies the very aim for which the elections have taken place. Many voices will be raised against this claim of the European Parliament -of that we may be certain - but let it understand that this position cannot be abandoned without the entire front-line of its battle for the Union collapsing."

Speech given to the European University Institute of Florence, 13th June 1983.

The Work to Be Completed
"You have all read the novel by Hemingway about an old fisherman who, after catching the largest fish of his life, tries to bring it ashore. But sharks devour it little by little, and when he arrives in port, all that remains is the fish-bone.

When it votes in a few minutes, Parliament will have captured the biggest fish of its life, but it will have to bring it ashore, because there will always be sharks trying to devour it. Let us try not to come back to port with only a fish-bone."

Address to European Parliament, 14th September 1983.

"Having reached the end of one chapter and at the beginning of a new chapter which will probably be completed by others, and reflecting on the work which I have tried to do here, I must say that, if the ideas contained in this text and in the resolution had not existed in the minds of the great majority of this Parliament, I would never have succeeded in putting them there. Like Socrates, I have limited myself to practising the maieutic art. I have been the obstetrician who helped Parliament give birth to this child. Now we must make it live.

Address to European Parliament, 14th February 1984.
 

The Birth of the MFE (1943)
We rejected the project discussed by some, of establishing a simple centre of study and of diffusion of ideas. We definitively dropped the idea of a federalist party, realising that the attempt to set it up and win ,for it a significant place alongside the democratic parties which we had seen rise from their ashes with unexpected and vigorous continuity would in all probability be fruitless and would in any case stop us gathering under one banner all the consensus that certainly existed in every political force. The need to compete with other parties would have obliged us to give a complete manifesto for national government, and would inevitably have distracted us therefore from our chosen priority of concentrating on building Europe. We would therefore be a movement which would rally all those prepared to fight for the federation, and hence open to members of the various anti fascist parties which were forming, but determined to remain autonomous of the same."

Come ho tentato di diventare saggio - La goccia e la roccia (How I Tried to Become Wise - The Drop and the Rock), 1987

TOWARDS A FREE AND UNITED EUROPE
A draft manifesto

I - The crisis of modern civilization
Modern civilization has taken the principle of freedom as its basis, a principle which holds that man must not be a mere instrument to be used by others but an autonomous centre of life. With this code at hand, all those aspects of society that have not respected this principle have been placed on trial, a great historical trial. 1. The equal right of all nations to organize themselves into independent States has been established. Every people, defined by its ethnic, geographical, linguistic and historical characteristics, was expected to find the instrument best suited to its needs within a State organization created according to its own specific concept of political life, and with no outside intervention. The ideology of national independence was a powerful stimulus to progress. It helped overcome narrow-minded parochialism and created a much wider feeling of solidarity against foreign oppression. It eliminated many obstacles hindering the free movement of people and goods. Within the territory of each new State, it brought the institutions and systems of the more advanced societies to more backward ones. But with this ideology came the seeds of capitalist imperialism which our own generation has seen mushroom to the point where totalitarian States have grown up and world wars have been unleashed.

Thus the nation is no longer viewed as the historical product of co-existence between men who, as the result of a lengthy historical process, have acquired greater unity in their customs and aspirations and who see their State as being the most effective means of organizing collective life within the context of all human society. Rather 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. The absolute sovereignty of national States has led to the desire of each of them to dominate, since each feels threatened by the strength of the others, and considers that its "living space" should include increasingly vast territories that give it the right to free movement and provide self-sustenance without needing to rely on others. This desire to dominate cannot be placated except by the hegemony of the strongest State over all the others.

As a consequence of this, 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. Even during peacetime, considered to be pauses during which to prepare for subsequent, inevitable wars, the will of the military class now holds sway over the will of the civilian class in many countries, making it increasingly difficult to operate free political systems. Schools, science, production, administrative bodies are mainly directed towards increasing military strength. Women are considered merely as producers of soldiers and are rewarded with the same criteria as prolific cattle. From the very earliest age, children are taught to handle weapons and hate foreigners. Individual freedom is reduced to nothing since everyone is part of the military establishment and constantly called on to serve in the armed forces. Repeated wars force men to abandon families, jobs, property, and even lay down their lives for goals, the value of which no one really understands. It takes just a few days to destroy the results of decades of common effort to increase the general well-being.

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. They have thus shown themselves to be the bodies most suited to the current international environment. It only needs one nation to take one step towards more accentuated totalitarianism for the others to follow suit, dragged down the same groove by their will to survive.

2. The equal right of all citizens to participate in the process of determining the State's will is well-established. This process should have been the synthesis of the freely expressed and changing economic and ideological needs of all social classes. 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. But 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. Bit by bit the penniless learned to use these instruments to fight for the rights acquired by the privileged classes. Taxes on unearned income and inheritances, higher taxes levied on larger incomes, tax exemptions for low incomes and essential goods, free public schooling, greater social security spending, land reforms, inspection of factories and manufacturing plants were all achievements that threatened the privileged classes in their well-fortified citadels.

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. 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 legalislative weapons.

Moreover, the creation of huge industrial, banking conglomerates and trades unions respresenting whole armies of workers gave rise to forces (unions, employers and financiers) lobbying the government to give them the policies which most clearly favoured their particular interests. This threatened to dissolve the State into countless economic fiefdoms, each bitterly opposed to the others. Liberal and democratic systems increasingly lost their prestige by becoming the tools that these groups will always resort to in order to exploit all of society even more. In this way, the conviction grew up that only a totalitarian State, in which individual liberties were abolished, could somehow resolve the conflicts of interest that existing political institutions were unable to control.

Subsequently, in fact, totalitarian regimes consolidated the position of the various social categories at the levels they had gradually achieved. By using the police to control every aspect of each citizen's life, and by violently silencing all dissenting voices, these regimes barred all legal possibility of further correction in the state of affairs. This consolidated the existence of a thoroughly parassitic class of absentee landowners and rentiers who contribute to social productivity only by cutting the coupons off their bonds. It consolidated the position of monopoly holders and the chain stores who exploit the consumers and cause small savers money to vanish. It consolidated the plutocrats hidden behind the scenes who pull the politicians' strings and run the State machine for their own, exclusive advantage, under the guise of higher national interests. The colossal fortunes of a very few people have been preserved, as has the poverty of the masses, excluded from the enjoyment of the fruits of modern culture. In others words an economic regime has substantially been preserved in which material resources and labour, which ought to be directed to the satisfaction of fundamental needs for the development of essential human energies, are instead channelled towards the satisfaction of the most futile wishes of those capable of paying the highest prices. It is an economic regime in which, through the right of inheritance, the power of money is perpetuated in the same class, and is transformed into a privilege that in no way corresponds to the social value of the services actually rendered. The field of proletarian possibilities is so restricted that workers are often forced to accept exploitation by anyone who offers a job in order to make a living.

In order to keep the working classes immobilized and subjugated, the trade unions, once free organizations of struggle, run by individuals who enjoyed the trust of their members, have been turned into institutions for police surveillance run by employees chosen by the ruling class and responsible only to them. Where improvements are made in this economic regime, they 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.

3. 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. But this 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.

Although nobody knows what a race is, and the most elementary understanding of history brings home the absurdity of the statement, physiologists are asked to believe, demonstrate and even persuade us that people belong to a chosen race, merely because imperialism needs this myth to stir the masses to hate and pride. The most self-evident concepts of economic science have to be treated as anathema so as to enable autarchic policy, trade balance and other old chestnuts of mercantilism to be presented as extraordinary discoveries of our times. Because of the economic interdependence of the entire world, the living space required by any people which wants to maintain a living standard consistent with modern civilization can only be the entire world. But the pseudo-science of geopolitics has been created in an attempt to prove the soundness of theories about living space and to provide a theoretical cloak to the imperialist desire to dominate.

Essential historical facts are falsified, in the interests of the ruling classes. Libraries and bookshops are purged of all works not considered to be orthodox. The shadows of obscurantism once more threaten to suffocate the human spirit. The social ethic of freedom and equality has itself been undermined. Men are no longer considered free citizens who can use the State to achieve collective goals. They 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. 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 regime based on castes is reborn from its own ashes, as bullying as it was before.

After triumphing in a series of countries, this reactionary, totalitarian civilization, has finally found in Nazi Germany the power considered strong enough to take the last step. After meticulous preparation, boldly and unscrupulously exploiting the rivalries, egoism and stupidity of others, dragging in its path other European vassal States, primarily Italy, and allying itself with Japan, which follows the very same goals in Asia, Nazi Germany has launched itself on the task of crushing other countries. Its victory would mean the definitive consolidation of totalitarianism in the world. All its characteristics would be exasperated to the utmost degree, and progressive forces would be condemned for many years to the role of simple negative opposition.

The traditional arrogance and intransigence of the German military classes can give us an idea of the nature of their dominance after victory in war. The victorious Germans might even concede a façade of generosity towards other European peoples, formally respecting their territories and their political institutions, and thus be able to command while at the same time satisfying the false patriotric sentiments of those who count the colour of the flag flying at the country's borders and the nationality of prominent politicians as being the major considerations and who fail to appreciate the significance of power relationships and the real content of the State's institutions. However camouflaged, the reality is always the same: a new division of humanity into Spartans and Helots.

Even a compromise solution between the two warring sides would be one more step forward for totalitarianism. All those countries which managed to escape Germany's grasp would be forced to adopt the very same forms of political organization to be adequately prepared for the contituation of hostilities.

But while Hitler's Germany has managed to chop down the smaller States one by one, this has forced increasingly powerful forces to join battle. The courageous fighting spirit of Great Britain, even at that most critical moment when it was left to face the enemy alone, had the effect that the Germans came up against the brave resistence of the Russian Army, and gave America the time it needed to mobilize its endless productive resources. This struggle against German imperialism is closely linked to the Chinese people's struggles against Japanese imperialism.

Huge masses of men and wealth are already drawn up against totalitarian powers whose strength has already reached its peak and can now only gradually consume itself. The forces that oppose them have, on the other hand, already survived the worst and their strength is increasing.

With every day that passes, the war the allies are fighting rekindles the yearning for freedom, even in those countries which were subjected to violence and who lost their way as result of the blow they received. It has even rekindled this yearning among the peoples in the Axis countries who realize they have been dragged down into a desperate situation, simply to satisfy their rulers' lust for power.

The slow process which led huge masses of men to be meekly shaped by the new regime, who adjusted to it and even contributed to its consolidation, has been halted and the reverse process has started. All the progressive forces, can be found in this huge wave, which is slowly gathering momentum: the most enlightened groups of the working classes who have not let themselves be swayed, either by terror or by flattery, from their ambition to achieve a better standard of living, the sharpest members of the intellectual classes, offended by the degradation to which intelligence is subjected, entrepreneurs who, wanting to undertake new initiatives, want to free themselves of the trappings of bureaucracy and national autarky, that bog down all their efforts, and, finally, all those who, with an innate sense of dignity, will not bend one inch when faced with the humiliation of servitude.

Today, the salvation of our civilization is entrusted to these forces.
 

II - Post-war tasks. European unity
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 (when the States will lie broken, when the masses will be anxiously waiting for a new message, like molten matter, burning, and easily shaped into new moulds capable of accommodating the guidance of serious internationalist minded men), 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. Most probably, the British leaders, perhaps in agreement with the Americans, will try to push things in this direction, in order to restore balance-of-power politics, in the apparent immediate interests of their empires.

All the reactionary forces can feel the house is creaking around them and are now trying to save their skins: the conservative forces, the administrators of the major institutions of the nation States, the top-ranking officers in the armed forces including, where they still exist, the monarchies, the monopoly capitalist groups whose profits are linked to the fortunes of States, the big landowners and the ecclesiastical hierarchy, whose parassitical income is only guaranteed in a stable, conservative society and, in their wake, the countless band of people who depend on them or who are simply blinded by their traditional power. If the house were to collapse, they would suddenly be deprived of all the privileges they have enjoyed up to now, and would be exposed to the assault of the progressive forces.

The Revolutionary Situation: old and new trends.

The fall of the totalitarian regimes will, in the feelings of entire populations, mean the coming of "freedom"; all restrictions will disappear and, automatically,very wide freedom of speech and assembly will reign supreme. It will be the triumph of democratic beliefs. These tendencies have countless shades and nuances, stretching from very conservative liberalism to socialism and anarchy. These beliefs place their trust in the "spontaneous generation" of events and institutions and the absolute goodness of drives originating among the grass roots. They do not want to force the hand of "history", or "the people", or "the proletariat", or whatever other name they give their God. They hope for the end of dictatorships, conceiving this as restoring the people's unsupressible right to self-determination. Their crowning dream is a constituent assembly, elected by the broadest suffrage, which scrupulously respects the rights of the electors, who must decide upon the constitution they want. If the population is immature, the constitution will not be a good one, but to amend it will be possible only through constant efforts of persuasion. Democrats do not refrain from violence on principle but wish to use it only when the majority is convinced it is indispensable, little more, that is, than an almost superfluous "dot" over an "i". 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. During revolutionary times, when institutions are not simply to be administered but created, democratic procedures fail miserably. The pitiful impotence of democrats in the Russian, German, Spanish revolutions are the three most recent examples. In these situations, once the old State apparatus had fallen away, along with its laws and its administration, popular assemblies and delegations immediately spring up in which all the progressive socialist forces converge and agitate, either hiding behind the ancient régime, or scorning it. The population does have some fundamental needs to satisfy, but it does not know precisely what it wants and what must be done. A thousand bells ring in its ears. With its millions of minds, it cannot orientate itself, and breaks up into a number of tendencies, currents and factions, all struggling with one another.

At the very moment when the greatest decisiveness and boldness is needed, democrats lose their way, not having the backing of spontaneous popular approval, but rather a gloomy tumult of passions. They think it their duty to form a consensus and they represent themselves as exhortatory preachers, where instead there is a need for leaders who know just what they want. They miss chances favorable to the consolidation of a new regime by attempting to make bodies, which need longer preparation and which are more suited to periods of relative tranquillity, work immediately. They give their adversaries the weapons they need to overthrow them. In their thousand tendencies, they do not represent a will for renewal, but vain and very confused ambitions found in minds that, by becoming paralyzed, actually prepare the terrain for the growth of the reaction. Democratic political methods are a dead weight during revolutionary crises.

As the democrats wear down their initial popularity as assertors of freedom by their endless polemic, and in the absence of any serious political and social revolution, the pre-totalitarian political institutions would inevitably be reconstituted, and the struggle would again develop along the lines of the old class opposition.

The principle whereby the class struggle is the condition to which all political problems are reduced, has become the fundamental guideline of factory workers in particular, and gave consistency to their politics for as long as the fundamental institutions were not questioned. But this approach becomes an instrument which isolates the proletariat, when the need to transform the entire social organization becomes paramount. The workers, educated in the class system, cannot see beyond the demands of their particular class or even their professional category and fail to concern themselves with how their interests link up with those of other social classes. Or they aspire to a unilateral dictatorship of the proletariat in order to achieve the utopistic collectivization of all the material means of producttion, indicated by centuries of propaganda as the panacea for all evils. This policy attracts no class other than the workers, who thus deprive the other progressive forces of their support, or alternatively leaves them at the mercy of the reaction which skilfully organizes them so as to break up the proletarian movement. Among the various proletarian tendencies, followers of class politics and collectivist ideals, the Communists have recognized the difficulty of obtaining a sufficient following to assure victory so that, unlike the other popular parties, 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. Beside this, their absolute dependence upon the Russian State, which has repeatedly used them in pursuing its national policies, prevents this Party from undertaking political activity with any continuity. They always need to hide behind a Karoly, a Blum, a Negrin, only to fall headlong into ruin with the democratic puppets they used, since power is achieved and maintained, not simply through cunning but with the ability to respond fully and viably to the needs of modern society.

If tomorrow the struggle were to remain restricted within the traditional national boundaries, it would be very difficult to avoid the old contradictions. The nation States, in fact, have so deeply planned their respective economies, that the main question would soon be which group of economic interests, i.e., which class, should be in control of the plan. The progressive front would be quickly shattered in the brawl between economic classes and categories. The most probable result would be that the reactionaries would benefit more than anyone else.

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. The reactionary forces have capable men and officers who have been trained to command and who will fight tenaciously to preserve their supremacy. In moments of dire need, they know just how to disguise their true nature, saying they stand by freedom, peace, general well-being and the poorer classes.

Already in the past we have seen how they wormed their way into popular movements, paralyzing, deflecting and altering them into precisely the opposite of what they are. They will certainly be the most dangerous force to be faced.

The point they will seek to exploit is the restoration of the nation State. Thus they will be able to latch on to what is, by far the most widespread of popular feelings, so deeply offended by recent events and so easily manipulated to reactionary ends: to patriotic feeling. In this way they can also hope to confound their adversaries' ideas more easily, since for the popular masses, the only political experience acquired to date has been within the national context. It is, therefore, fairly easy to channel them and their more shortsighted leaders towards the reconstruction of the States destroyed in the storm.

If this end is achieved, the forces of reaction will have won. In appearance, these States might well be democratic and socialist on a large scale. It would only be a question of time before power fell into the hands of the reactionaries. National jealousies would be revived, and State would again seek to fulfil its requirements in its armed strength. In a more or less brief space of time the most important duty would be to convert populations into armies. Generals would again command, the monopoly holders would again draw profits from autarchies, the bureaucracy would continue to swell, the priests would keep the masses docile. All the initial achievements would shrivel into nothing, faced with the need to prepare for war once more.

The question which must be resolved first, failing which progress is no more than mere appearance, is the 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: either they will all submit to Hitler's dominion, or, after his fall, they will all enter a revolutionary crisis and will not find themselves separated by, and entrenched in, solid State structures. Feelings today are already far more disposed than they were in the past to accept a federal reorganization of Europe. The harsh experience of recent decades has opened the eyes even of those who refused to see, and has matured many circumstances favourable to our ideal.

All reasonable men recognize that it is impossible to maintain a balance of power among European States with militarist Germany enjoying equal conditions with other countries, nor can Germany be broken up into pieces or held on a chain once it is conquered. We have seen a demonstration that no country within Europe can stay on the sidelines while the others battle: declarations of neutrality and non-agression pacts come to nought. The uselessness, even harmfulness, of organizations like the League of Nations has been demonstrated: they claimed to guarantee international law without a military force capable of imposing its decisions and respecting the absolute sovereignty of the member States. 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. The multiple problems which poison international life on the continent have proved to be insoluble: tracing boundaries through areas inhabited by mixed populations, defence of alien minorities, seaports for landlocked countries, the Balkan Question, the Irish problem, and so on. All matters which would find easy solutions in the European Federation, just as corresponding problems, suffered by the small States which became part of a vaster national unity, lost their harshness as they were turned into problems of relationships between various provinces.

Moreover, the end of the sense of security inspired and created by an unassailable Great Britain, which led Britain to Errore. L'origine riferimento non è stata trovata., the dissolution of the French army and the disintegration of the French Republic itself at the first serious collision with the German forces (which, it is to be hoped, will have lessened the chauvinistic attitude of absolute Gallic superiority), and in particular the awareness of the risk of total enslavement are all circumstances that will favour the constitution of a federal regime, which will bring an end to the current anarchy. Furthermore, it is easier to find a basis of agreement for a European arrangement of colonial possessions since England has accepted the principle of India's independence and since France has potentially lost its entire empire in recognizing its defeat.

To all of this must be added the disappearance of some of the most important dynasties, and the fragility of the basis which sustains the ones that survive. It must be taken into account that these dynasties, by considering the various countries as their own traditional appanage, together with the powerful interests backing them, represented a serious obstacle to the rational organization of the United States of Europe, which can only be based on the republican constitution of federated countries. And, once the horizon of the old Continent is superseded, and all the peoples who make up humanity are included in a single design, it will have to be recognized that the European Federation is the only conceivable guarantee ensuring that relationships with American and Asiatic peoples will work on the basis of peaceful co-operation, writing for a more distant future when the political unity of the entire world will become possible.

Therefore, the dividing line between progressive and reactionary parties no longer coincides with the formal lines of more or less democracy, or the pursuit of more or less socialism, but the division falls along a very new and substantial line: those who conceive the essential purpose and goal of struggle as being the ancient one, the conquest of national political power , and who, although involuntarily, play into the hands of reactionary forces, letting the incandescent lava of popular passions set in the old moulds, and thus allowing old absurdities to arise once again, and those who see the main purpose as the creation of a solid international State, who will direct popular forces towards this goal, and who, even if they were to win national power, would use it first and foremost as an instrument for achieving international unity.

With propaganda and action, seeking to establish in every possible way the agreements and links among the individual movements which are certainly in the process of being formed in the various countries, the foundation must be built now for a movement that knows how to mobilize all forces for the birth of the new organism which will be the grandest creation, and the newest, that has occurred in Europe for centuries; in order to constitute a steady federal State, that will have at its disposal a European armed service instead of national armies; that will break decisively economic autarkies, the backbone of totalitarian regimes; that will have sufficient 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.

If a sufficient number of men in the main European countries understand this, then victory will soon fall into their hands, since both circumstances and opinion will be favourable to their efforts. They will have before them parties and factions that have already been disqualified by the disasterous experience of the last twenty years. Since it will be the moment for new action, it will also be the moment for new men: the MOVEMENT FOR A FREE AND UNITED EUROPE.

III - Postwar duties. Reform of society
A free and united Europe is the necessary premise to the strengthening of modern civilization as regards which the totalitarian era is only a temporary setback. As soon as this era ends the historical process of struggle against social inequalities and privileges will be restored in full. All the old conservative institutions that have hindered this process will either have collapsed or will be teetering on the verge of collapse. The crisis in these institutions must be boldly and decisively exploited.

In order to respond to our needs, the Europen revolution must be socialist, i.e. its goal must be the emancipation of the working classes and the creation of more humane conditions for them. The guiding light in determining what steps need to be taken, however, cannot simply be the utterly doctrinaire principle whereby private ownership of the material means of production must in principle be abolished and only temporarily tolerated when dispensing with it entirely. Wholesale nationalization of the economy under State control was the first, utopian form taken by the working classes' concept of their freedom from the yoke of capitalism. But when this State control is achieved, it does not produce the desired results but leads to a regime where the entire population is subservient to a restricted class of bureaucrats who run the economy.

The truly fundamental principle of socialism, vis-à-vis which general collectivization was no more than a hurried and erroneous inference, is the principle which states that, far from dominating man, economic forces, like the forces of nature, should be subject to man, guided and controlled by him in the most rational way, so that the broadest strata of the population will not become their victims. The huge forces of progress that spring from individual interests, must not be extinguished by the grey dullness of routine. Otherwise, the same insoluble problem will arise: how to stimulate the spirit of initiative using salary differentials and other provisions of the same kind. The forces of progress must be extolled and extended, by giving them increasing opportunities for development and employment. At the same time, the tracks guiding these forces towards objectives of greatest benefit for all society must be strengthened and perfected.

Private property must be abolished, limited, corrected, or extended according to the circumstances and not according to any dogmatic principle. This guiding principle is a natural feature in the process of forming a European economic life freed from the nightmares of militarism or national bureaucratism. Rational solutions must replace irrational ones, even in the working class consciousness. With a view to indicating the content of this principle in greater detail, we emphasize the following points while stressing the need to assess the appropriateness of every point in the programme and means of achieving them in relationship to the indispensable premise of European unity:

a) Enterprises with a necessarily monopolistic activity, and in a position to exploit consumers, cannot be left in the hands of private ownership: for example, electricity companies or industries of vital interest to the community which require protective duties, subsidies, preferential orders etc. if they are to survive (the most visible example of this kind of industry so far in Italy is the steel industry); and enterprises which, owing to the amount of capital invested, the number of workers employed, and the significance of the sector involved can blackmail various State bodies, forcing them to adopt the policies most beneficial to themselves (for example, the mining industries, large banks, large weapons manufacturers). In this field, nationalization must certainly be introduced on a vast scale, without regard for acquired rights.

b) Private property and inheritance legislation in the past was so drawn up as to permit the accumulation of wealth in the hands of a few, privileged members of society. In a revolutionary crisis this wealth must be distributed in an egalitarian way thereby eliminating the parassitic classes and giving the workers the means of production they need to improve their economic standing and achieve greater independence. We are thus proposing an 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.

c) 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. In particular, 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 oportunities to wealthy students. In each branch of study leading to training in different crafts and the various liberal and scientific professions, 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.

d) 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. Human solidarity towards those who fall in the economic struggle ought not, therefore, to be manifested with humiliating forms of charity that produce the very same evils they seek to remedy but ought to consist in a series of measures which unconditionally, and regardless of whether a person is able to work or not, guarantee a decent standard of living for all without lessening the stimulus to work and save. In this way, no-one will be forced any longer to accept enslaving work contracts because of their poverty.

e) Working class freedom can only be achieved when the conditions described have been fulfilled. The working classes must not be left to the mercy of the economic policies of monopolistic trade unions who simply apply the overpowering methods characteristic, above all, of great capital to the shopfloor. The workers must once again be free to choose their own trusted representatives when collectively establishing the conditions under which they will agree to work, and the State must give them the legal means to guarantee the proper implementation of the terms agreed to. But all monopolistic tendencies can be fought effectively once these social changes have been fulfilled.

These are the changes needed both to create very broad-based support around the new instututional system from a large number of citizens willing to defend its survival and to stamp freedom and a strong sense of social solidarity onto political life in a very marked way. Political freedom with these foundations will not just have a formal meaning but a real meaning for all since citizens will be independent, and will be sufficiently informed as to be able to exert continuous and effective control over the ruling class.

It would be superfluous to dwell at length on constitutional institutions, not knowing at this stage, or being able to foresee, the circumstances under which they will be drawn up and will have to operate. We can do no more than repeat what everyone knows regarding the need for representative bodies, the process of developing legislation, the independence of the courts (which will replace the present system) safeguarding impartial application of legislation and the freedom of the press and right of assembly guaranteeing informed public opinion and the possibility for all citizens to participate effectively in the State's life. Only two issues require further and deeper definition because of their particular significance for our country at this moment: the relationship between Church and State and the nature of political representation.

a) The Treaty which concluded the Vatican's alliance with Fascism in Italy must be abolished so that the purely lay character of the State can be asserted and so that the supremacy of the State in civil matters can be unequivocably established. All religious faiths are to be equally respected, but the State must no longer have earmark funds for religion.

b) The house of cards that Fascism built with its corporativism will collapse together with the other aspects of the totalitarian State. There are those who believe that material for the new constitutional order can be salvaged from this wreck. We disagree. In totalitarian States, the corporative chambers are the crowning hoax of police control over the workers. Even if the corporative chambers were a sincere expression of the will of the various categories of producers, the representative bodies of the various professional categories could never be qualified to handle questions of general policy. In more specifically economic matters, they would become bodies for the accumulation of power and privilege among the categories with the strongest trade union representation. The unions will have broad collaborative functions with State bodies which are appointed to resolve problems directly involving these unions, but they should have absolutely no legislative power, since this would create a kind of feudal anarchy in the economic life of the country, leading to renewed political despotism. Many of those who were ingenuously attracted by the myth of corporativism, can and should be attracted by the job of renewing structures. But they must realize the absurdity of the solution they vaguely desire. Corporativism can only be concretely expressed in the form it was given by totalitarian States regimenting the workers beneath officials who monitored everything they did in the interests of the ruling class The revolutionary party cannot be amateurishly improvised at the decisive moment, but must begin to be formed at least as regards its central political attitude, its upper echelons, the basic directives for action. It must not be a heterogeneous mass of tendencies, united merely negatively and temporarily, i.e. united by their anti-Fascist past and the mere expectation of the fall of the totalitarian regime, in which all and sundry are ready to go their own separate ways once this goal has been reached. The revolutionary party, on the contrary, knows that only at this stage will it its real work begin. It must therefore be made up of men who agree on the main issues for the future.

Its methodical propaganda must penetrate everywhere there are people oppressed by the present regime. Taking as its starting point the problem which is the source of greatest suffering to individuals and classes, it must show how this problem is linked to other problems, and what the real solution will be. But from this gradually increasing circle of sympathizers, it must pick out and recruit into the organisation only those who have identified and accepted the European revolution as the main goal in their lives, who carry out the necessary work with strict discipline day in day out, carefully checking up on its continuous and effective safety, even in the most dangerously illegal situations. These recruits will be the solid network that will give consistency to the more ephemeral sphere of the sympathizers.

While overlooking no occasion or sector in which to spread its cause, it must be active first and foremost in those environments which are most significant as centres for the circulation of ideas and recruiting of combative men. It must be particularly active vis-à-vis the working class and intellectuals, the two social groups most sensitive, in the present situation, and most decisive for tomorrow's world. The first group is the one which least gave in to the totalitarian rod and which will the quickest to reorganize its ranks. The intellectuals, particularly the younger intellectuals, are the group which feels most spiritually suffocated and disgusted with the current despotism. Bit by bit other social groups will gradually be drawn into the general movement.

Any movement which fails in its duty to ally these forces, is condemned to sterility. Because if the movement is made up of intellectuals alone, it will lack the strength to crush reactionary resistence, and it will distrust and be distrusted by the working class and even though inspired by democratic sentiment, when faced with difficulties it will be liable to shift its position, as regard the mobilisation of other classes, against the workers, and thus restoring Fascism. If, instead, the movement is backed only by the proletariat, it will be deprived of the clarity of thought which only intellectuals can give and which is so vital in identifying new paths and new duties: the movement would be a prisoner of the old class structure, looking on everyone as a potential enemy, and will slither towards the doctrinaire Communist solution.

During the revolutionary crisis, this movement will have the task of organizing and guiding progressive forces, using all the popular bodies which form spontaneously, incandescent melting pots in which the revolutionary masses are mixed, not for the creation of plebiscites, but rather waiting to be guided. It derives its vision and certainty of what must be done from the knowledge that it represents the deepest needs of modern society and not from any previous recognition by popular will, as yet inexistant. In this way it issues the basic guidelines of the new order, the first social discipline directed to the unformed masses. By this dictatorship of the revolutionary party a new State will be formed, and around this State new, genuine democracy will grow.

There are no grounds for fearing that such a revolutionary regime will develop into renewed despotism. This arises only when the tendency has been to shape a servile society. But if the revolutionary party continues resolutely from the very outset to create the conditions required for individual freedom whereby every citizen can really participate in the State's life, which will evolve, despite secondary political crises, towards increasing understanding and acceptance of the new order by all - hence towards an increasing possibility of working effectively and creating free political institutions.

The time has now come to get rid of these old cumbersome burdens and to be ready for whatever turns up, usually so different from what was expected, to get rid of the inept among the old and create new energies among the young. Today, in an effort to begin shaping the outlines of the future, those who have understood the reasons for the current crisis in European civilization, and who have therefore inherited the ideals of movements dedicated to raising the dignity humanity, which were shipwrecked either on their inability to understand the goal to be pursued or on the means by which to achieve it have begun to meet and seek each other.

The road to pursue is neither easy nor certain. But it must be followed and it will be!

A Short Biography
For a man such as Jean Monnet (1888-1979), who understood from his earliest political experiences that, "reflection can not be separated from action", the salient facts of his life aiso represent an important guide to his philosophy and his way of conducting politics. After spending his youth helping his father inthe Cognac business,Monnet set himself at the outbreak of the First World War, in an effort to make himself useful, the "formidable problem" of organising supplies, which the Allies were unable to resolve and which could have compromised the outcome of the conflict. Having worked out the solution, namely joint planning by France and yngland he managed to obtain an audience with the President of the Council, Viviani, and convince him of the validity of his proposal. Monnet was sent to London, where he set up an Aug10-French pool that co-ordinated the acquisition and transport of supplies.

At the end of hostilities, due to his brilliant achievements, Monnet was nominated deputy to the secretary-general of the League of Nations. Monnet began his new mission with great enthusiasm. He felt, as did many of his contemporaries, that this new internationai organisation would be able to impose itself, "by its moral force, by appealing to public opinion and thanks to customs which would ultimately prevail". But he was soon forced to recognise that the League of Nations was simply unable to achieve the goals of peace and harmony which it had set itself. Decisions could only be taken unanimously.

Commenting on his experience Monnet remarked that, "the veto is the profound cause and at the same time the symbol of the impossibility of overcoming national egoism". Neither a common will nor a common good could be achieved on this basis. In 1923, therefore, he resigned his post and returned to occupy himself with the family business. At the beginning of the Second World War, Monnet was once again sent to London to organise the common administration of the Allies' resources. Here, in June 1940, while the French army was being overwhelmed by Nazi troops, Monnet conceived a most audacious initiative which could have changed the entire course of the Second World War. He proposed a project for immediate federal union between France and Great Britain to Churchill and De Gaulle, who accepted it. The joint communiqué reads as follows; 'The two governments declare that in future France and Great Britain will no longer be two nations but a single Anglo-French Union. The constitution of the Union will entail common organisations for defence, foreign policy and economic affairs... The two Parliaments will be officially united". However this desperate attempt to prevent the defeat of France fail because the French political class was already resigned to surrender.

Monnet thus decided to go to the United States in order to work on the Victory Program, convinced that America could fulfil a role as "the great arsenal of democracy". The economist Keynes was to say at the end of conflict that through his co-ordinating Monnet had probably shortened the Second World War by one year. In 1943, in Algiers, he joined the National Liberation Committee, "Free France", in which he collaborated with De Gaulle to organise the resistance in exile. During a meeting on 5th August 1943, Monnet declared to the Committee: "here will be no peace in Europe, if the states are reconstituted on the basis of national sovereignty... The countries of Europe are too small to guarantee their peoples the necessary prosperity and social development. The European states must constitute themselves into a federation..."

Immediately after liberation Monnet proposed a "global plan for modernisation and economic development" to the French government. Appointed Planning Commissioner, he carried out essential work for the reconstruction of the French economy. It was from this position that, in 1949, Monnet realised that the friction between Germany and France for control of the Ruhr, the important coal and steel region, was rising to dangerous levels, presaging a possible return to hostilities as had happened after the First World War. The solution to this state of affairs could not however be the federation, because France, proud of its so-recently recovered sovereignty, rejected it. For this reason Monnet, together with a few collaborators, drafted a revolutionan proposal: to pool, under the control of a European government, Franco-German coal and steel resources. The Monnet Memorandum to foreign minister Schuman states: "Bv pooling basic production and the establishment of a new High Authority, whose decisions will be binding on France, Germany and the countries that join them, this proposal will lay the first concrete foundations of a European federation, which is indispensable to the maintenance of peace". Schuman accepted the proposal and, in agreement with Adenauer, rendered it public on 9th May 1950. One year later, with the Treaty of Paris, six countries (France, Germany, Italy, Belgium, Holland and Luxembourg) founded the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC). So began the Franco-German pacification which today still represents the profound sentiment underpinning the process of European unification.

In 1955, after the serious crisis provoked by France's refusal to ratify the European Defence Community (EDC), Monnet founded the Action Committee for the United States of Europe through which, until his death, he tirelessly called on the European political class not to abandon the path of European unity.

Gradualism and constitutionalism
The strategy indicated by Monnet for constructing European unity can be termed the gradualist, or functionalist, method. The ECSC proposal represents the model, which subsequently inspired a large number of variants. Monnet felt there was only one way out of the impasse between France and Germany: "with a concrete and resolute action on a limited but decisive point, which provokes a fundamental change on this point and progressively modifies the actual terms of the problem as a whole" (Memorandum of 3rd May 1950). The creation of the ECSC did indeed bring about the results envisaged by Monnet. With Franco-German pacification, all aspects of the European problem were modified. There was a shift away from confrontation and the threat of a resurgence of power politics, toward the politics of cooperation, and over time it even became possible, through timely initiatives, to develop the seeds of democratic power contained in the ECSC project.

Initially Altiero Spinelli and the federalists criticised Monnet's functionalist approach, because it allowed confederal features of European politics, by which the governments retained a power of veto, to exist alongside supranational aspects. The pooling of certain sectors in reality masked the fact that governments were unwilling to cede sovereignty, which remained intact at the national level for the fundamental sectors of the currency and defence. In contrast to the functionalist method, Spinelli proposed the constituent method as the only democratic way to build a Europe of the people with the involvement of the people themselves. However, the long hard struggles to renderthe European Comniunity democratic have convinced the federalists of the complementary nature of the gradualist and constituent methods. As long as the framework of international politics remains favourable to the European unification process, everv institutional reform which favours unitv reinforces the position of the pro-European forces and enables more advanced forms of struggle. This is the case with monetary union, which is provided for in the Maastricht Treary. and which, if realised without a democratic European government, will expose crucial contradictions. Only through a democratic constitution which clearly defines the powers. responsibilities and rights of citizens, will European institutions cease to be considered by public opinion as the bureaucratic Europe of governments, and finally become the democratic Europe of citizens.

In short, while Monnet's gradualist method made it possible to start the process of European unification, Spinelli's constituent method is indispensable in order to bring it to completion.

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The Greatness of Jean Monnet
Monnet was never the leader of a government, a party, an administration, or an organised force; and when he found himself at the head of an organisation (the French Planning Commissariat, and the European Coal and Steel Community), they were organisations that he himself had created, and which he managed for as long as they remained in a "nascent state". Precisein for this reason his case is worthy of meditation. Jt is usually held that one man alone is reduced to impotence in our organised and complex world, even as regards knowledge (this is why the foundations of morality, which rest on nothing but individuals, are shaky)...

Without Monnet's action there would be no Community. Over the years, months anddays before its arrival, there was not a hint or a trace ofsuch a project to address the issue in question (what role West German) was to be given in the Atlantic system) among the parties, their deliberative and executive bodies, the government ministries or the governments themselves. The project was Monnets. and the action of securing its acceptance by the governments was Monnet's (to Schuman and Adenauer belongs the credit, which in political terms was immense, of having immediately accepted Monnet's proposals. These are the facts, and their significance is clear. Monnet created the Community, and the Communitv conditioned European and world politics. This means that for the last twenty five years , the great historical forces have followed or opposed a course of affairs that was established in part by one man alone, Jean Monnet.

M. Albertini, Il Federalista, 1977
 

Politics According to Jean Monnet: Man of Action and Man of Power
What I undertook in every important phase of my life proceeded from one choice and one alone, and this limitation to a single goal has preserved me from the temptations of variety and also from the taste for power with its many facets.

This is how I am made, and could not be otherwise. But I also believe that some things demand to be treated this way to obtain a result. This rule does not apply to those who must occupy themselves with all the affairs of state, since they have to consider all problems asa whole. This other attitude of mind, which is necessary to the politician, contains in itself the limits of his power over things. If he were dominated by a single idea, he would no longer be available for others, which however are also included in his duty; inversely, by dedicating himself to all, he risks losing that chance to act which is unique. Finding myself faced with this dilemma, I realised that I had better things to do than to try to exert power myself.

I realised moreover that in order to accede to this position I would have had to force myself For the politician, the objective of every instant is to be in government, and there to be the first.

I have known no great politician who was not strongly' egocentric, and for good reason: if he were not so, he would never have imposed his image and his persona. I could not have been this way, not that I was modest, but one cannot concentrate on one thing and on oneself. And this thing has always been the same for me: to make all men work together, to show them that beyond their divergences or over and above frontiers, thev have a common interest. If competition was lively around power, it was practically zero in the domain in which I wanted to act, that of preparing for the future, which by definition is not illuminated bv the lights of current affairs. Sin ce I did not bother the politicians, I could count on their support. Moreover, whereas it takes a long time to reach power, it takes very little to explain to those who have arrived there how to get out of present difficulties: it is a language which they are glad to listen to at the critical moment. At that moment, when they' are short of ideas, they are glad to accept yours, so long as they can claim the credit. Since the risks are theirs, they need the laurels. In my work. one has to forget about laurels. Whatever others may say about it, I have no liking for the shade, but if it is only at the price of self-effacement that I can conclude matters, well, in that case 1 choose the shade.

J. Monnet, Memoires, 1976.

Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen,

I am honoured today by being received in your ancient university and by the adress which had been given to me on your behalf and which I greatly value. I wish to speak to you to-day about the tragedy of Europe. This noble continent, comprising on the whole the fairest and the most cultivated regions of the earth, enjoying a temperate and equable climate, is the home of all the great parent races of the western world. It is the fountain of Christian faith and Christian ethics. It is the origin of most of the culture, the arts, philosophy and science both of ancient and modern time. If Europe were once united in the sharing of its common inheritance, there would be no limit to the happiness, to the prosperity and the glory which its three or four million people would enjoy. Yet it is from Europe that have sprung that series of frightful nationalistic quarrels, originated by the Teutonic nations in their rise to power, which we have seen in this twentieth century and even in our own lifetime, wreck the peace and mar the prospects of all mankind.

And what is the plight to which Europe has been reduced? Some of the smaller States have indeed made a good recovery, but over wide areas a vast quivering mass of tormented, hungry, care-worn and bewildered human beings gape at the ruins of their cities and their homes, and scan the dark horizons for the approach of some new peril, tyranny or terror. Among the victors there is a babel of voices; among the vanquished the sullen silence of despair. That is all that Europeans, grouped in so many ancient states and nations, that is all that the Germanic races have got by tearing each other to pieces and spreading havoc far and wide. Indeed but for the fact that the great Republic across the Atlantic Ocean has at length realised that the ruin or enslavement of Europe would involve their own fate as well, and has stretched out hands of succour and of guidance, but for that the Dark Ages would have returned in all their cruelty and squalor. Gentlemen, they may still return.

Yet all the while there is a remedy which, if it were generally and spontaneously adopted by the great majority of people in many lands, would as if by a miracle transform the whole scene, and would in a few years make all Europe, or the greater part of it, as free and as happy as Switzerland is to-day. What is this sovereign remedy? It is to re-create the European Family, or as much of it as we can, and to provide it with a structure under which it can dwell in peace, in safety and in freedom. We must build a kind of United States of Europe. In this way only will hundreds of millions of toilers be able to regain the simple joys and hopes which make life worth living. The process is simple. All that is needed is the resolve of hundreds of millions of men and women to do right instead of wrong and to gain as their reward blessing instead of cursing.

Much work, Ladies and Gentlemen, has been done upon this task by the exertions of the Pan-European Union which owes so much to Count Coudenhove-Kalergi and which commanded the services of the famous French patriot and statesman Aristide Briand. There is also that immense body of doctrine and procedure, which was brought into being amid high hopes after the first world war. I mean the League of Nations. The League of Nations did not fail because of its principles or conceptions. It failed because these principles were deserted by those States who had brought it into being. It failed because the governments of those days feared to face the facts, and act while time remained. This disaster must not be repeated. There is therefore much knowledge and material with which to build; and also bitter dear bought experience to stir the builders.

I was very glad to read in the newspapers two days ago that my friend President Truman had expressed his interest and sympathy with this great design. There is no reason why a regional organization of Europe should in any way conflict with the world organization of the United Nations. On the contrary, I believe that the larger synthesis will only survive if it is founded upon coherent natural groupings. There is already a natural grouping in the western hemisphere. We British have our own Commonwealth of Nations. These do not weaken, on the contrary they strengthen, the world organization. They are in fact its main support. And why should there not be a European group which could give a sense of enlarged patriotism and common citizenship to the distracted peoples of this turbulent and mighty continent? And why should it not take its rightful place with other great groupings and help to shape the onward destinies of men? In order that this should be accomplished there must be an act of faith in which millions of families speaking many languages must consciously take part.

We all know that the two world wars through which we have passed arose out of the vain passion of a newly-united Germany to play the dominating part in the world. In this last struggle crimes and massacres have been committed for which there is no parallel since the invasion of the Mongols in the fourteenth century and no equal at any time in human history. The guilty must be punished. Germany must be deprived of the power to rearm and make another aggressive war. But when all this has been done, as it will be done, as it is being done, then there must be an end to retribution. There must be what Mr. Gladstone many years ago called "a blessed act of oblivion". We must all turn our backs upon the horrors of the past. We must look to the future. We cannot afford to drag forward across the years that are to come the hatreds and revenges which have sprung from the injuries of the past. If Europe is to be saved from infinite misery, and indeed from final doom, there must be this act of faith in the European Family and this act of oblivion against all the crimes and follies of the past. Can the free peoples of Europe rise to the height of these resolves of the soul and of the instincts of the spirit of man? If they can, the wrongs and injuries which have been inflicted will have been washed away on all sides by the miseries which have been endured. Is there any need for further floods of agony? Is the only lesson of history to be that mankind is unteachable? Let there be justice, mercy and freedom. The peoples have only to will it, and all will achieve their hearts' desire.

I am now going to say something that will astonish you. The first step in the re-creation of the European Family must be a partnership between France and Germany. In this way only can France recover the moral and cultural leadership of Europe. There can be no revival of Europe without a spiritually great France and a spiritually great Germany. The structure of the United States of Europe, if well and truly built, will be such as to make the material strength of a single state less important. Small nations will count as much as large ones and gain their honour by their contribution to the common cause. The ancient states and principalities of Germany, freely joined together for mutual convenience in a federal system, might take their individual places among the United States of Europe. I shall not try to make a detailed programme for hundreds of millions of people who want to be happy and free, prosperous and safe, who wish to enjoy the four freedoms of which the great President Roosevelt spoke, and live in accordance with the principles embodied in the Atlantic Charter. If this is their wish, if this is the wish of the Europeans in so many lands, they have only to say so, and means can certainly be found, and machinery erected, to carry that wish to full fruition.

But I must give you a warning. Time may be short. At present there is a breathing-space. The cannons have ceased firing. The fighting has stopped; but the dangers have not stopped. If we are to form the United States of Europe, or whatever name it may take, we must begin now.

In these present days we dwell strangely and precariously under the shield, and I will even say protection, of the atomic bomb. The atomic bomb is still only in the hands of a state and nation which we know will never use it except in the cause of right and freedom. But it may well be that in a few years this awful agency of destruction will be widespread and the catastrophe following from its use by several warring nations will not only bring to an end all that we call civilisation, but may possibly desintegrate the globe itself.

I must now sum up the propositions which are before you. Our constant aim must be to build and fortify the strength of the United Nations Organization. Under and within that world concept we must re-create the European Family in a regional structure called, it may be, the United States of Europe. And the first practical step would be to form a Council of Europe. If at first all the States of Europe are not wiliing or able to join the Union, we must nevertheless proceed to assemble and combine those who will and those who can. The salvation of the common people of every race and of every land from war or servitude must be established on solid foundations and must be guarded by the readiness of all men and women to die rather than submit to tyranny. In all this urgent work, France and Germany must take the lead together. Great Britain, the British Commonwealth of Nations, mighty America and I trust Soviet Russia-for then indeed all would be well-must be the friends and sponsors of the new Europe and must champion its right to live and shine.

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