Year XLIV, 2002, Number 3, Page 157
Mario Albertini in the History of Federalist Thought
JOHN PINDER
It is a great honour to be invited to give this address in honour of Mario Albertini, a man who did so much for us federalists, for Europe and for mankind. This honour is particularly significant for me because he, like Altiero Spinelli, made the thought of the British federalist school of the 1930s and early 1940s, together with that of the American founding fathers, the basis of his own federalist thought. Albertini explained that while the thinking founded on the British source gave an answer to the question “why create the European federation?” that founded on the American source answered the question of “how to create it?”;[1] and it seems to me that as regards the question “what form of federation?” the source for Albertini, as for the British, was the Constitution of the United States of America.
The question that I wish to address today is “how did Albertini’s thinking develop these two federalist traditions?” The general response is that Albertini was the major exponent of Hamiltonian thought in the second half of the twentieth century as well as creator of the Italian federalist school. He was, however, not just an exponent but also an innovator, often in a way that illuminated the thinking of other schools, sometimes in an interestingly divergent manner.
What Form of Federation.
For Albertini, as for Spinelli and for the British school, the central question was the transformation of absolutely sovereign states into federated states within a federal state. For them, the federalism of Althusius or of Proudhon, seen by Albertini as “a technique… for the decentralisation of political power”,[2] was not of much importance. Albertini indicated that Proudhon “remained, in his conception of the state, an anarchist”, though he also called him a remarkable prophet, “who foresaw what the tragic limits of national democracy would be, should it not find its correctives in local democracy and European democracy”. Albertini also affirmed that federalism requires “the creation of spheres of democratic government located at every level of concretely manifested human relations”.[3] But he concentrated his thought on the creation of a federation of sovereign states, essential to guarantee peace among them.
While the writers of the British school had given a classical exposition of the form of such a federation, Albertini provided the best exposition of the second half of the twentieth century.[4] Both, however, while following the principal elements of the American constitution, preferred the European system of a parliamentary executive to the American presidential system. Albertini underlined the merit of a “government responsible to the European Parliament… as the source of democratic control of the activity of the Union”.[5]
Albertini also enriched federalist thought with his analysis of the relationship between nation and state.[6] For Albertini, the nation-state, with its arrogance, damages the life of the citizens, constraining economic production and producing war.[7] Its defects are also manifested in the “contradiction between the achievement of democracy in the national framework and its negation in the international framework”, which also makes both liberalism and socialism impotent at the national level.[8] The nation-state should be replaced by a plurinational federal state; the European federation would be “a people of nations, a federal people” instead of “a national people”; and federalism foresees a structure of democratic plurinational states right up to the world level.[9] The thinking of the British school on this subject was similar, but Albertini’ s analysis was more refined.
In the thirties, the British school advocated federalism as a general remedy against war. World federation was the logical solution, but realisable only in the long term. Many supported Clarence Streit’s proposal for a federation of fifteen democracies, including the United States, to prevent a war provoked by the Axis. But isolationist America was not available for this and in 1939 the leaders of the British school decided to base their thinking on the idea of a federation of European democracies, pending the accession of the fascist states after they returned to democracy. This was naturally the starting point for Albertini who, after the refusal of the United Kingdom to participate in the European Community, foresaw, to begin with, “a European federation which will include at least the six countries that have assumed the leadership of the process of unification”, and then its “gradual expansion to the whole of Europe”.[10] When the UK entered the Community, he added that it is necessary “to wait until membership of the Community bears fruit”.[11] We are still waiting for all this fruit to be harvested, and hoping for the best.
Kenneth Wheare cited “similarity of political institutions” among the member states as a condition for the establishment of a federation.[12] Albertini was more precise, affirming the necessity, in both the federation and its states, of “the attribution of sovereignty to the people in the framework of the representative system of government, with the possibility of dual representation through the dual citizenship of each voter”.[13] This condition has become particularly relevant as regards the new democracies that are candidates of accession to the Union, and remains a crucial problem for world federation.
Why Federation.
In 1937 Lionel Robbins’s Economic Planning and International Order was published, analysing why an international federation was essential for the good government of an international economy. In 1939, in The Economic Causes of War, he explained why the cause of war was not capitalism, but national sovereignty, and concluded with a passionate appeal for a European federation.[14] Albertini noted that these books were the most important federalist sources for Spinelli when confined in Ventotene.[15]
For post-war British federalists, as for Robbins in 1939, peace was the aim of federalism. For Albertini too, the aim was peace: federalism’s “particular value” and “supreme goal”.[16] But the complexity of Albertini’s thinking was sometimes concealed by the simplicity of his formulations. He had followed Lord Lothian in defining peace, not as “the mere fact that war is not being waged”, but as “the organisation of power that transforms power relationships between states into relationships based truly and properly on law”.[17] By 1981, Albertini recognised that “with the struggle for European unification the first forms of political Europe have been achieved together with the end of military rivalry between the old nation-states of Western Europe”.[18] That is to say, for relations among these states that objective had been attained, while for some states of Eastern Europe, and above all for the world as a whole, it would remain the supreme objective.
For the citizens of the Union of today, other objectives have become more salient. Albertini cited from the manifesto of Ventotene the affirmation that the issue as to who controls the “planning” of the economy is the “central question”:[19] the same question as Robbins had posed in 1937. Albertini also identified other values essential for contemporary federalism: ecological security;[20] the rejection of hegemony (c.f. the preoccupations of Carlo Cattaneo and of the American founding fathers);[21] and democracy in the nation-states, which is being increasingly constricted by their interdependence.[22] These elements, it seems to me, are necessary in order to explain federalist values to citizens of the Union today, whereas those in some states of Central and Eastern Europe will still see peace as the outstanding objective.
World Federation.
In his book The Price of Peace, published in 1945, Beveridge explained that national sovereignty is the cause of war, and its renunciation in a world federation the way to abolish it.[23] Although he recognised that this was a distant aim and that meanwhile only a confederation could be realised at the global level, this book was my introduction to federalism as the response to the terrible experience of the war. After Hiroshima and Nagasaki, world federation seemed an urgent necessity to millions of people, among whom about half a million bought Emery Reves’s The Anatomy of Peace.[24]
World federalist movements flourished, above all in the anglo-saxon countries and Japan; political leaders like former prime minister Clement Attlee became supporters; and a world federalist literature was developing. But the climate of the Cold War discouraged most supporters and this field was almost abandoned by federalist thought.
Albertini was an exception. He was more consistent, more tenacious, more resolute than others, in confronting the facts of power and their consequences. For him, “the risk of destruction of mankind” by the atomic bomb was “absolutely unacceptable”.[25] But he recognised, like Beveridge, that the conditions for creating the world federation were not present. The struggle for a constituent assembly, fundamental for his doctrine with respect to European federation, was not yet practicable. So his strategy for world federation was similar to that of the anglo-saxons: “the strengthening of UN”, together with other “intermediate goals” in the “process of transcending the exclusive nation-states”, which had “already reached a very advanced stage” in the European Community.[26] Typical of his federalist thought was the emphasis on federalist militants: on the need “to build up… a world political vanguard” to work for the creation of world federation.[27]
How to Create the Federation.
Albertini and the British federalists were generally in agreement about the what and the why of federation. But their ideas differed on how to create it.
The British sought to influence their government to adopt a federalist policy: in the thirties and forties to initiate the establishment of a federation, and later to support the building of pre-federal elements into the institutions and powers of the Community. Albertini’s fundamental principles were, instead, the constituent assembly and the separation of the federalists from the struggle for national political power.
Spinelli wrote that in the period from 1945 to 1954, he had “worked on the hypothesis that the leading moderate European ministers… would set about constructing the federation”:[28] a method quite similar to that of the British federalists. Then, after the failure in 1954 of the project for a European Political Community, he founded the Congress of the European People and launched the campaign to initiate a constituent assembly, creating “a growing popular protest… directed against the very legitimacy of the nation-states”.[29] When it became evident to Spinelli that the campaign was not having the success he desired, he conceived the proposal that the federalists should gain power in an increasing number of important towns, as the basis for a subsequent campaign. Albertini was unable to accept this idea, which contradicted his fundamental federalist principles; and the Movimento federalista europeo agreed with him. Spinelli, vexed, wrote in his diary that for Albertini, “to try to prepare the event (of the final struggle) was squalid opportunism, it was necessary to prepare oneself for the event”.[30] Spinelli was a brilliant politician with the capacity to conceive and conduct campaigns of action, culminating in the remarkable success of his final campaign to create the European Parliament’s Draft Treaty to establish the European Union. He was not constrained by fixed roles; and his tendency to initiate “new courses”, or strategies, caused too many difficulties for a movement such as the MFE. Albertini was absolutely convinced of the necessity to respect certain fundamental principles, which he did with exceptional consistency and tenacity. These characteristics were crucial for his place in the history of federalist thought, enabling him not only to develop his own intellectual oeuvre, but also to found the Italian school of Hamiltonian federalism.
One cause of the difference between Albertini and the British was his form of historical thinking, where he followed Weber’s method according to which, in his words, “there is no historical knowledge without specific theoretical frames of reference within which to arrange the facts and arrive at their significance (‘ideal types’)”, though “the elaboration of theory should be pursued only up to and not beyond the point at which it renders historical knowledge possible, because beyond that point it becomes the presumption of substituting theoretical knowledge… for historical knowledge”.[31] The British empirical tradition does not lack the capacity to develop theories, as witness liberalism and Darwinian evolution. But the development of theory may come earlier in the weberian tradition and its adaptation to the facts later; and perhaps this difference between their ways of thinking was a cause of the differences between the approaches of Albertini and the British.
The Development of the European Community and of Albertini’s Thought.
Although the British developed their democracy through a reformist process, without a constituent assembly, the idea of such an assembly was acceptable to many. In 1948, R.W.G. Mackay, a leading federalist member of parliament, obtained the support of a third of all MPs for a resolution proposing a European constituent assembly.[32] But while for British federalists a reformist process of preparation would also be seen as useful and the European Coal and Steel Community a valid point of departure, in 1961 the point of departure for Albertini remained only “giving constituent power to the European people… all or nothing”; it was necessary to “refuse any power… until all of it can be obtained”; the solution of the Community “inspired by so-called functionalism (the bright idea of making Europe by bits and pieces) was bad” and Economic Communities were “empty words”.[33]
But as a good Weberian he was ready to adapt the theory to the facts, and by 1966 he wrote that the ECSC had established “a de facto unity… solid enough to be able to support the beginning of a true and proper economic integration”, which “was a fundamental fact for the life of Europe”;[34] and a year later he wrote that “European integration represents the process of overcoming the contradictions between the scale of the problems and the size of the nation-states”. Thus “the facts of European integration” threaten exclusive national powers, “creating at the same time, through a de facto unity, a de facto European power”, which the federalists can exploit politically.[35] In the same essay he identified the transfer of control of the army, the currency and part of the revenue of the national governments to a European government as crucial elements in the transfer of sovereignty;[36] and in 1971, considering the prospect of direct elections to the European Parliament, he wrote that such a situation could be regarded as “pre-constitutional because where there is direct intervention of the parties and citizens, there is also the tendency towards the formation of a constitutional order”.[37] It is interesting, even moving, to observe how, while the British, in their different situation, neglected the idea of the constituent, Albertini was modifying his theory in the light of the facts, that is of the success of the European Community. This led him to make a very important contribution to federalist thought: a synthesis of Spinelli’s approach with that of Monnet.
Towards a Synthesis Between Spinellism and Monnetism.
His ideas on money itself provide another example of this development of his thought. In 1968, he had written that “there is no common market without a common currency, nor common currency without common government, so the point of departure is the common government”.[38] But four years later he concluded that monetary union could “push the political forces onto an inclined plane” because, engaging on a project that implies a political power, it can happen that they end up “finding themselves, like it or not, obliged to create one”. In the monetary field, steps forward would be possible “of an institutional character, tangible and European, for example in the direction indicated by Triffin”, i.e. a currency reserve system, which would have been “mistaken” by the political class “for a stage on the way to the creation of a European currency”; and one could therefore foresee “a slippery passage towards a situation that could be called a ‘creeping constituent’ .”[39]
Albertini was “preparing the event”, even if not in a way approved by Spinelli, whose project at that time was different and who wrote in his diary that Albertini had reduced the MFE to “foolish followers of Werner”, whose report had proposed stages towards economic and monetary union.[40] But the reconciliation between Albertini and Spinelli was no longer far off, thanks to the approach of the direct elections and Spinelli’s great project of the Draft Treaty for European Union.
Already in 1973 Albertini, in his analysis of monetary union, identified the direct elections as a decisive point “because it concerns the very source of the formation of a democratic public will”.[41] So the elections to the European Parliament would be one of the keys, together with the currency and the army, to the transfer of sovereignty. In 1976, the European Council decided on the elections and Spinelli embarked on his fifth and final “new course”.[42] Albertini observed that “the political phase — by definition constituent — of the process of European integration has begun”. Thus he had concluded that the Community would be the basis of the European federation, by means of “single constituent acts that reinforce the constitutional degree of the process, making further constituent acts possible and so on”, and that “only with an initial form of European state (to be established by an ad hoc constituent act) can one launch the process of the formation of the European state, so to speak definitively”: i.e. it is necessary to accept “the paradox of creating a state in order to create the state”. He made the Community’s role in this process explicit, in the “gradual construction, by steps according to the degree of union achieved, of a European political and administrative organisation”: a process that “one can in theory consider complete only when the initial European state (with sovereignty over money, but not in the field of defence), has been transformed into the definitive European state, with all the powers required to act as a normal federal government”.[43]
Thus Albertini’s Weberian journey had led him to a fruitful synthesis between Spinellism and Monnetism. This was, in his words, “the idea of exploiting the possibilities of functionalism to achieve constitutionalism”, because “European unification is a process of integration… which is closely linked to a process of constructing institutions which, from time to time, become necessary…”[44] So he was ready to explain in theoretical terms Spinelli’ s crowning achievement: the European Parliament’s Draft Treaty on European Union.
From the Draft Treaty to the Laeken Convention.
Albertini observed that the Draft Treaty was realistic, because it proposed “only the institutional minimum to found the European decisions on the consent of the citizens”. “The greatest merit of the Draft” lay in the fact that “it entrusted the European Parliament with a) the legislative power,” together (as in the present co-decision procedure) with the Council of Ministers, which, “in this respect, would have a role similar to a federal Senate”, and b) “the power deriving from the parliamentary control over the Commission, which would begin to take on the form of a European government”. The Draft was “reasonable”, because “only when the Union has demonstrated its capacity to function properly will it be possible to have the large majority to give the Union sovereignty in the field of foreign policy and defence as well”.[45] Thus the Draft was, in his earlier words, a proposal for “creating a state in order to create the state”.
Spinelli’s political genius, manifested in the Draft Treaty, was the cause not only of the reconciliation between him and Albertini, but also of the completion of the development of a most important element in Albertini’s political thought: the relationship between the political action and philosophy of Monnet and those of Spinelli. It is tragic that Spinelli died believing that the Draft Treaty had failed because the Single Act was a “dead mouse”. Albertini, however, survived until really significant consequences had become evident. In his document published in L’Unità europea in December 1990, he was able to affirm that, “barring catastrophes”, the power over monetary policy would be transferred to the European level, and that it was therefore necessary to adapt the decision-taking mechanism accordingly, “making the Community function like a federation in the sphere where there is already, in prospect, a European power (the economic and monetary field including its international implications) and like a confederation in the sphere within which there is no such power nor will be for an indefinite period (defence)”. Then he referred to the Parliament’s “Treaty-constitution” and to a “natural evolution of the institutions (the European Council as collegial president of the community or Union, the Council of Ministers as house of the states, the Commission as government responsible to the European Parliament, the European Parliament as the source of democratic control of the activity of the Union and as holder, together with the Council, of the legislative power)”.[46]
One can record a significant progress of this “natural evolution” during the nineties. The procedure of qualified majority has become applicable to over 80 per cent of the Council’s legislative acts; the Parliament now co-decides with the Council over half of the laws and of the budget; the Commission’s responsibility to the Parliament has been resoundingly demonstrated. The Community does not yet function “like a federation in the sphere where there is already a European power”, that is mainly in the economic and monetary fields; but the Laeken Convention opens the door to completion of the process of creating it.
The question is no longer whether there can be a document called a constitution, which now appears to be acceptable to the British government as well as others. The crucial question is whether the institutions will be properly federal, completing their evolution foreseen by Albertini, including co-decision and majority voting for all legislative decisions, together with the Commission, like a government within the field of Community competence, being fully responsible to the Parliament.
This federalist struggle has not become less arduous, because the supporters of the intergovernmentalist doctrine include, it seems, not only the British, Danish and Swedish, but also the French and even the Italian governments. It is necessary to persuade the citizens and the political classes, and finally the governments, that an intergovernmental constitution would be both ineffective and undemocratic. Thanks to the life’s work of Spinelli and Albertini, together with the contributions of so many others, the MFE is surely ready to confront this challenge, as regards the Italian citizens, political class and, crucially, government.
Albertini and His Place in the History of Federalist Thought.
I hope I have given some indication of the rich, broad, deep and erudite contribution of Mario Albertini to the federalist thought of his age.
Perhaps it has been the subjective choice of a British federalist, to have underlined the particular importance of Albertini’s synthesis of the approaches of the two great federalists of the second half of the twentieth century: Jean Monnet and Altiero Spinelli.
In addition to his personal body of work, Albertini contributed to federalist thinking as the founder of the modern Italian school. At the same time, after Spinelli had founded, inspired and guided the MFE with his unique charisma, Albertini constructed and sustained the Movement which was capable of organising the great demonstration of some half a million people in Milan in June 1984 demanding the European Council’s support for Spinelli’s Draft Treaty and, five years later, of obtaining the assent of 88 per cent of Italian voters in the referendum on a constituent mandate for the European Parliament. How and why was one man able to ensure the achievement of all these different things? Perhaps the impression of a “non-participant observer” could be of interest.
Albertini emphasised in his writings both reason and will.[47] He practised and inspired them both, with the stress on reason for his intellectual work and on will as President of the Movement; and he placed both at the service of his profound faith in federalism as the essential priority for the welfare and the survival of mankind. He expressed this attitude in a way too little known outside the MFE, underlining that people are needed “who make the contradiction between facts and values a personal question”, in a context in which “the disparity between what is and what should be is enormous”.[48]
Albertini dedicated his own life to the task of resolving this contradiction and had the capacity to persuade others to do the same. He was an inspiring orator and, although his writings were sometimes complicated, was also able to formulate in simple terms inspiring visions, for example that “federation… has created very wise institutions, capable of transmitting to many generations a powerful experience of diversity in unity, of liberty, of peace”; that “only politics, and only in its highest form, can resolve the problems of international relations”; and that the world political vanguard is needed “for the great world task of the construction of peace”.[49]
Fundamental to his ability to inspire others was his faith in the value of each one of them, with the belief that each had both the capacity and the responsibility to make his or her own contribution.[50] His ideas on the various contributions of different people and organisations were part of his own contribution to federalist thought. There was room for those who accepted federalism passively and for “occasional”, ad hoc leaders. But his passion was for the hard core of militants, for whom the contradiction between facts and values was the primordial motive of their work. He had a special message for intellectuals: that it is necessary for them to go “out into the open… to complement politics as the art of the possible — politics in a narrow sense — with politics in a broad sense, that is the art of making possible that which is not yet possible”.[51] For them — for you — the emphasis was on will as well as on reason. In May 1956 Spinelli wrote in his diary: “I have mentioned to Albertini the idea of constituting a ‘European federalist order.’ Is it a good idea?”[52] Spinelli was a great innovator with remarkable power of intuition. Albertini had the qualities to do that: sincerity, integrity, courage, consistency, devotion. It seems to me that he did indeed create a kind of federalist order. His work was a continuous process of construction; and now you, his colleagues and friends, have the responsibility of carrying on this great work without him, not just as a monument of erudition and exceptional commitment, but as a living tradition that you must continue to develop. As for me, although I do not agree with all his ideas, I have such sympathy for his work and conviction of its importance that I am engaged, with the help of the Istituto Altiero Spinelli, on an anthology in English of his writings, in order that these ideas should be better known to a readership that reads, not Italian, but the language that Albertini designated, in the first issue of Il Federalista also published in English, as the universal language that is required in the field of politics.[53] I hope that this anthology will not only be useful for federalists who read English but not Italian, but also for a just recognition of the contribution of Albertini in the history of federalist thought.[54]
It gives me great pleasure, in conclusion, to express my admiration and gratitude for the life of Mario Albertini, and for his exemplary devotion to our supreme cause of federalism. In Shakespeare’s incomparable words, “he was a man, take him for all in all, (we) shall not look upon his like again”.
[1] For example Mario Albertini, “L’unificazione europea e il potere costituente” (1986), in Nazionalismo e Federalismo, Bologna, Il Mulino, 1999, pp. 302, 304. (Many of Albertini’s writings have been reprinted, and the original sources given, in two anthologies: Nazionalismo e Federalismo and Una rivoluzione pacifica. Dalle nazioni all’Europa, to which the first citation of each essay below refers. In each reference, the date of the original essay is given in brackets after its title, in order to help readers to appreciate the context and to trace the chronological development of his thought).
[2] M. Albertini, “Il Risorgimento e l’unità europea” (1961), in Lo Stato nazionale, Bologna, Il Mulino,1997, p. 184.
[3] M. Albertini, “La federazione” (1963) and “Le radici storiche e culturali del federalismo europeo” (1973), in Nazionalismo e Federalismo, cit., pp. 99, 128, 114.
[4] “La Federazione”, ibid.
[5] M. Albertini, “Moneta europea e Unione politica” (1990), in Una rivoluzione pacifica. Dalle nazioni all’Europa, Bologna, Il Mulino, 1999, p. 323.
[6] M. Albertini, Lo Stato nazionale, Bologna, Il Mulino, 1997, containing a reprint of the previous editions of 1960 and 1980.
[7] M. Albertini, “The Nation, Ideological Fetish of Our Time” (1960), in The Federalist, XXXII, 1990, p. 83.
[8] M. Albertini, “Le radici storiche” (1973), cit., pp. 126-7; “L’integrazione europea, elementi per un inquadramento storico” (1965), in Nazionalismo e Federalismo, cit., p. 235; Quest-ce que le fédéralisme? Receuil de textes choisis et annotés, Paris, Société Européenne d’Etudes et d’Informations, 1963, p. 32.
[9] M. Albertini, “For a Regulated Use for National and Supranational Terminology” (1961), in The Federalist, XXXV, 1993, p. 191.
[10] M. Albertini, “The Strategy of the Struggle for Europe” (1966), in The Federalist, XXXVIII, p. 53.
[11] M. Albertini, “Il problema monetario e il problema politico europeo” (1973), in Una rivoluzione pacifica, cit., p. 185.
[12] K.C. Wheare, Federal Government, London, Oxford University Press, 1951 (1st edn 1946), p. 37.
[13] M. Albertini, “L’unificazione europea e il potere costituente” (1986), in Nazionalismo e Federalismo, cit., p. 296.
[14] L. Robbins, Economic Planning and International Order, London, Macmillan, 1937, and The Economic Causes of War, London, Jonathan Cape, 1939.
[15] See M. Albertini, “L’unificazione europea” (1986), cit., p. 302. See also John Pinder (ed.), Altiero Spinelli and the British Federalists: Writings by Beveridge, Robbins and Spinelli 1937-1943, London, Federal Trust, 1998, p. 46.
[16] M. Albertini, Quest-ce que le fédéralisme? (1963), cit., p. 32; “War Culture and Peace Culture”, in The Federalist, XXVI, 1984, no. 2, p. 9.
[17] M. Albertini, “ Le radici storiche” (1984), cit., p. 114; Lord Lothian (Philip Kerr), Pacifism is not Enough, nor Patriotism Either, London, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1935, p. 7, reprinted with a preface by Sir William Beveridge, 1941, and in John Pinder and Andrea Bosco (eds), Pacifism is not Enough: Collected Lectures and Speeches of Lord Lothian (Philip Kerr), London, Lothian Foundation Press, 1990, p. 221.
[18] M. Albertini, “La pace come obiettivo supremo della lotta politica” (1981), in Nazionalisrno e Federalismo, cit., p. 151.
[19] M. Albertini, “L’unificazione europea” (1986), cit., p. 304.
[20] M. Albertini, “War Culture and Peace Culture” (1984), cit., p. 18.
[21] M. Albertini, “Le radici storiche” (1973), cit., p. 140.
[22] M. Albertini, “The Strategy of the Struggle for Europe” (1966), cit., pp. 57-58.
[23] W. Beveridge, The Price of Peace, London, Pilot Press, 1945.
[24] E. Reves, The Anatomy of Peace, New York, Harper, 1945; London, Allen & Unwin, 1946; Harmondsworth, Penguin Books, 1947.
[25] M. Albertini, “La pace come obiettivo supremo della lotta politica” (1981), cit., p. 184.
[26] M. Albertini, “Towards a World Government”, in The Federalist, XXVI (1984) (first English-language issue), n. 1, pp. 5-6.
[28] A. Spinelli, Come ho tentato di diventare saggio. La goccia e la roccia, ed. by Edmondo Paolini, Bologna, Il Mulino, 1987, p. 18.
[29] Loc. cit.
[30] A. Spinelli, Diario europeo, I, 1949-1969, ed. by Edmondo Paolini, Bologna, Il Mulino, 1989, p. 417.
[31] M. Albertini, “L’unificazione europea e il potere costituente” (1986), cit., pp. 293-4.
[32] R. Mayne and J. Pinder, Federal Union: The Pioneers - A History of Federal Union, Basingstoke, Macmillan, p. 96.
[33] Mario Albertini, “Four Commonplaces and a Conclusion on the European Summit”, in The Federalist, XXXIII (1991), no. 2, pp. 156, 157, 158, 161; original version in Il Federalista, III (1961).
[34] M. Albertini, “L’integrazione europea, elementi per un inquadramento storico” (1965), cit., pp. 249-50.
[35] M. Albertini, “The Strategy of the Struggle for Europe” (1966), cit., pp. 62, 64.
[37] M. Albertini, “Il Parlamento europeo. Profilo storico, giuridico e politico” (1971), in Una rivoluzione pacifica, cit., p. 216.
[38] M. Albertini, “L’aspetto di potere della programmazione europea” (1968), in Nazionalismo e Federalismo, cit., p. 262.
[39] M. Albertini, “Il problema monetario” (1973), cit., pp. 184, 187, 191.
[40] A. Spinelli, Diario europeo, III, 1976-1986, p. 186.
[41] M. Albertini, “Il problema monetario” (1973), cit., p. 192.
[42] A. Spinelli, La goccia e la roccia, cit., p. 18.
[43] M. Albertini, “Elezione europea, governo europeo e Stato europeo” (1976), in Una rivoluzione pacifica, cit., pp. 223, 225, 226.
[44] Mario Albertini, “Europe on the Threshold of Union”, in The Federalist, XXVIII (1986), no. 1, pp. 25, 27.
[46] “Moneta europea e unione politica. Un documento del Presidente Albertini in vista del Consiglio europeo di dicembre” (1990), in L’Unità europea, n. 202, dicembre 1990, p. 20.
[47] For example, M. Albertini “Towards a World Government”, cit., p. 7.
[48] M. Albertini, “The Strategy of the Struggle for Europe” (1966), cit., p. 72; “Le radici storiche” (1973), cit., p. 136.
[49] M. Albertini, “La federazione” (1963), cit., p. 100; “L’integrazione europea” (1965), cit., p. 252; “Towards a World Government”, cit., p. 8.
[50] M. Albertini, “The Strategy of the Struggle for Europe” (1966), cit., p. 59.
[51] M. Albertini, “Il Parlamento europeo” (1971), cit., p. 204.
[52] A. Spinelli, Diario europeo, I, 1948-1969, cit., p. 297.
[53] M. Albertini, “Towards a World Government”, cit., p. 4.
[54] I have not so far mentioned a living Italian federalist, because it would not be fair to single out any among so many who have done significant things for contemporary federalism. But in this particular context it would be unjust not to mention Roberto Castaldi, who has initiated the idea of the anthology and proposed for it a selection of Albertini’s writings (which have also provided a major part of the material on which this essay is based); and I wish to thank him for making many linguistic corrections to my original Italian text for this article. I should also explain that there are some slight differences from that text, where matters that are well known to Italian readers may not be known to readers of this English translation.
