OMNICRACY

Aldo Capitini, who was born in Perugia in 1899, had never been actively involved in politics until 1924, the year in which he won a scholarship for the "Scuola Normale Superiore " in Pisa.

Capitini arrived at this institute in the autumn of 1924, graduated in literature in 1928, became assistant to Momigliano in 1929, and in 1930 was employed by the institute as Secretary, a post from which he was dismissed at the end of 1932 for refusing to become a card-carrying member of the Fascist Party.

At the end of the twenties, the "Normale", despite being directed by Giovanni Gentile, was a melting pot of ideas for freedom and antifascism.

Together with other antifascists at the institute, Capitini started organising clandestine opposition groups and after the concordat, together with his friend Baglietto, began to diffuse new principles of nonviolent religious life.

In January 1933 Capitini was forced to leave Pisa and retired to his paternal home in Perugia, where he eked out a poor living on private lessons until the end of World War II.

During this period he was active in contacting and organizing antifascist groups in many different parts of Italy, was twice sent to prison and devoted himself more and more to the study of philosophy in order to "put into place the justifications for opposing fascism and for the construction of independent religious life".

In contrast to the daily exaltation of violence and of war under fascist rule, which went unopposed by many intellectuals and catholics, he took from Gandhi -as he wrote later- the idea of nonviolent opposition based on non-collaboration; from St. Francis of Assisi, the return to the original christian values; and from modern thinking, that which he called the most serene application of the principles of liberty, equality and fraternity.

In his clandestine antifascist activity the conviction matured of making religion the principal element of his fight for freedom, as Gandhi had done in India.

Capitini is among the first in western culture to reflect on Gandhi's ideas, on the link that exists between religion and politics, when nonviolent action unifies the means and the ends of the struggle.

Gandhi is the real role model for this "free religious man", the great example that enlightened him from the start. He took from Gandhi the awareness that the choice of a religious life meant leading a public life and fighting for change in the world using the loftiest and most visible tool for both religion and politics: nonviolence.

Capitini's opposition to fascism called for an ethical-religious foundation upon which to construct those values fundamental for freedom and social justice; hence the foundation of the Liberal-Socialist movement in 1937. Many antifascists representing different political viewpoints adhered to this movement: for example, Calogero, Binni, Bobbio, Ingrao, La Malfa. However, in 1943 there was a firm crackdown by the police, some members were imprisoned, Capitini among them, and the movement came under the guidance of those who wished to change it into a political party. When, in July 1943 it adhered to Il Partito d'azione, Capitini, who was against such a move, found himself on his own. He never became a member of any political party, and remained a "liberal-socialist", " left wing independent" and "free religious".

In his criticism of the idea of joining Il Partito d'azione, Capitini launched the idea of working as a group for the creation and the function of "centres", i.e. free associations at territorial level, open to all, with the task of giving information on the problems of local administration; holding open debates to put forward possible solutions; offering their results to local politicians and administrators in order to help in their decision-making; and checking their implementation.

It was one of the first times that the concept and the term "centres" was taken by Capitini out of its original religious meaning -a person who opens up to others with moral choices - and given a political meaning.

In those years, the forties, the beginning of what he called a "socio-political idea" of nonviolence, i.e. omnicracy - power for all - began to take shape and substance, and Capitini's public life moved ever more knowingly towards its construction.

Convinced of the urgency of creating a wide base of participation at grass-roots level and in order to give impetus, as he said, to the reborn democracy, Capitini, hardly a month after the liberation in July 1944, invented the C.O.S. in Perugia (Centres for Social Orientation), which were free, periodical assemblies, open to all, for information about and discussion on both local and more general problems.

Thus took form in one city the idea that he had in vain tried to put into practice with liberal-socialists all over Italy.

After a successful reception in Perugia, the C.O.S. mushroomed in many other large and small cities in central Italy. They survived till 1948 and then floundered in the deep incomprehension of left wing parties, faithful to their schemes for the conquest of power, and in the tiredness on the part of administrators, who were recalcitrant in the face of strict control by those they administered.

Having survived the greatest blood bath in human history, the leaders and the intellectuals of the left did not give the slightest consideration to the words written and spoken by Aldo Capitini on the nonviolent reconstruction of society.

From his book "Italia nonviolenta" of 1949 till his death in 1968, Capitini wrote numerous other books and articles dedicated to nonviolence, to peace, to conscientious objection. He founded the centre for nonviolence in Perugia; promoted the Vegetarian Society, the East-West conferences, the first Italian Peace March from Perugia to Assisi on 24th September 1961 from which the Italian Consultation for Peace was founded, as well as the Nonviolent Movement for Peace, which is still active.

After his experiences with the C.O.S. and the peace marches, throughout the sixties Capitini continued his work on deepening theoretical aspects and spreading nonviolent ideas and "power for all".

Besides the many books on the subject, the theme of direct democracy is dealt with in pedagogical and religious texts; in the hundreds of articles written for newspapers, magazines and in the periodicals he founded; in many of the "Lettere di religione", in the "Giornale della scuola" published after an idea by Don Milani; in "Azione nonviolenta"; in the monthly "Il Potere di Tutti" which was published from 1964 to 1968.

Amongst his many fields of activity he writes," an area, more closely-linked to prophecy and religious apostolate, is that of social transformation. So, having refused every political office offered to me, I bent politics, and my deep interest in it, in such a way that it became the foundation of my work for direct democracy, power for all or omnicracy ( as I call it) ".

Capitini's idea is to build a free, socialist society, refuting and transforming the present one with a new kind of nonviolent revolution that does away with old political schemes, respects the inviolable link between means and ends, involves everyone in the struggle, and neither destroys nor oppresses adversaries. "Maximum socialism", he wrote," but with the religious addendum to promote it, constitute it and defend it with the techniques of nonviolence."

Nonviolence for the construction of a free, socialist state was a new and hitherto unheard of proposal for the Italian cultural and political scene, so much so that it was soon isolated from current debate, and still is.

Omnicracy, the aim of nonviolent social revolution, contrasts and substitutes the old centralism by decentralising power with a maximum diffusion of centres and associations.

Without exclusion, all citizens will be able to participate in the management and control of power through their assemblies, together with the force of public opinion.

(OMNICRAZIA , in "Il Potere di Tutti" page 92 )

Among the ethical and political mainstays of a nonviolent socialist state, Capitini naturally placed working for world unity, refutation of war, education in peace.

The nonviolent choices for peace and justice present themselves as the most practical ones for the solution of international problems such as the fight for disarmament, for national and civil rights, against misery, for the construction of solidarity between people, nations and states.

UN sources often remind us that today for the first time in history we have the resources to guarantee health, food and education for all.

The shortcoming is in the management of these resources.

To reduce armaments expenditure, to cancel the debt of the Third World states, to take away from the powerful the exclusive control of fixing prices for primary resources, to give technological resources to developing countries for the growth of their economy and culture, to plan international exchanges and aid programs between rich and poor countries, to give the UN the means of solving local conflict and ethnic wars, to work together to save the environment are all within the reach of humanity.

The resolute refusal of violent solutions; the isolation of countries, groups and individuals who practice violence; the support for countries, groups and individuals who practice the techniques of nonviolence; international mobilization of public opinion, as requested by Capitini, are within our grasp.

Capitini did not delude himself about our capacity to build, here and now, a nonviolent society whose power was for all; however he exhorted us to search together for the religious, social and political tension necessary for the solution of today's contradictions, to refuse all intolerance, to contrast all violence, and to work together in order to put into practice the highest human values.