AN INTERVIEW WITH IGNAZ/0 SILONE
23
Personally, I do not share the opinions of many of my fellow
political emigres. A "liberty" brought to Italy and Germany by
foreign armies would be nothing less than disastrous. However, I
do not deny that it would be easier to create revolutionary situa–
tions
in
Italy and Germany during a war, but these situations
would have to be exploited by Italian and German revolutionaries
themselves, and by no one else.
What, in the light of their relations to political parties, do
you think should be the role of revolutionary writers in the present
situation?
Although untill930 I was a member of the Central Commit–
tee of the Italian Communist Party, at present I do not belong to
any political organisation. I do, however, consider myself an anti–
fascist partisan in the civil war that is now being waged more or
less throughout the world. As an anti.fascist partisan, I believe that
the true function of the revolutionary writer today is to herald and,
so to speak, to represent in its ideal state that third front to which I
just referred. This means that the revolutionary writer must risk
isolation. For example, there are many writers who have only a
superficial understanding of the questions involved in the "col–
lective security" policy, precisely because they believe the Stalin–
ist parties to represent truly the interests of the masses and pre–
cisely because they fear the isolation that would result from a
break with Stalinism. But today it is necessary to have the courage
to stand alone, to risk hearing oneself called Fascist Agent, Hitler
spy, and so forth, and to persist nevertheless in one's course. The
third front, existing as yet only in an ideal state, must be kept pure
as an ideal. And for that too, courage is required.
The reactionary trend of our epoch is shown precisely by the
absence of such a "third front." They try to force on us the
dilemma: status quo or regression? Most of the progressive forces
have already accepted this Hobson's choice. They are content to
struggle to preserve the existing order, lest they fall under the
fascist yoke.
One thing I must make clear at the outset: I think it would be
a serious mistake to put bourgeois democracy and fascism on the
eame level, in view of the great difference between these two forms
