An Interview With lgnazio Silane
Editor's Note: While he was in Europe last summer, Clement
Greenberg spent an afternoon with lgnazio Silone in Zurich, Switz–
erland. The following article was later written out by Silone, based
on Greenberg's notes of the conversation
and
his own recollections.
It
has
been translated from the French by Nancy and Dwight
Macdonald.
In the event of a war between Italy and France, which country
would you favor?
Tunisia.
What do you mean?
The world is now divided into two great fronts: one composed
of the conservatives, that is, of the democracies and other partisans
of collective security; the other composed of the revisionists or
fascists. Neither of these two fronts is capable of assuring peace
or of solving the economic and political problems now confronting
the world. Real peace depends today on the rapidity with which a
third front is created, on the rapidity with which revolutionary
workers all over the world regain their political autonomy and
resume the struggle to overthrow capitalism. This third front did
once actually exist in the form of a revolutionary Russia and of
militant workers' parties elsewhere, but at present it exists only
in potentiality.
Do you, as an anti-fascist, look forward to,
and
favor, a war
as the quickest means of overthrowing the present regime in Italy?
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