RE-PUBLICIZE

Ventotene Manifesto (1941) – Full Text

III. Post War Duties – The Reform of Society

Private property must be abolished, limited, corrected, extended: instance by instance, however, not dogmatically according to principle. This guideline is easily inserted into the forces of forming a   European economic life freed from the nightmares of militarism or national bureaucracy. The rational solution must be used in place of the irrational, in the consciousness of the working classes as well. In an effort to describe in greater detail the content of this guideline, while pointing out that the convenience of each point of the programme, and the way it is to be effected, must always be judged in relationship to the premise by now accepted as indispensable:

European unity, we would like to emphasize the following aspects:

(a) Those enterprises which conduct a necessarily monopolistic activity, and that are therefore in the condition to exploit the mass of consumers, must no longer be left in the hands of private ownership; the electricity industries, for example, or those industries which must be maintained for the common good but that, in order to survive, need customs protection, subsidies, preferential orders, etc. (the most visible example of this kind in Italy is the steel industry); those enterprises which, for the size of the capital investment and the number of employed workers, or for the importance of the sector involved, can blackmail various state organs, imposing upon them policies that would be advantageous to themselves (for example, the mining industries, banking institutes, arms manufacturers). In this field, nationalization must undoubtedly take place on a vast scale, bearing in no regard acquired rights.