This text appeared in 1958 on "Risorgimento" that, during the first decades of the Constitution, had initiated an investigation. It was later published in the same year, the Bulletin of the University of Turin.
When we speak of democracy, we are not referring only to a set of institutions, but also indicates a general conception of life. In the democracy we are committed not only as citizens with certain rights and certain duties, but also as men who must incorporate a way to live and deal with themselves and with others. How
political system, modern democracy is founded on the recognition and guarantees of freedom under three aspects: civil liberty, political liberty and social liberty. To civil liberty means the right, by giving each citizen to make personal decisions without interference by public authorities in those fields of economic and spiritual life, within which explains, expresses, enhances the personality of each . Through political freedom, which is the right to participate directly or indirectly in the formation of laws, it is recognized to citizens the power to contribute to the political choices that determine the orientation of the government, and to discuss and perhaps change the policy choices made by others, so that political power loses the odious character of oppression from above. In addition, we are now convinced that civil liberty and freedom Policy names are vain if they are not complemented by social freedom, which alone can give citizens a real power and not only abstract or formal, and they can meet their basic needs and to develop their natural abilities.
These three freedoms are the expression of a complete conception of life and history, the highest and most humanly rich conception of life and history that men have created over the centuries. Behind the civil liberty is the recognition of man as a person, and thus the principle that only just society is one in which state power has limits and well-established barriers, and abuse of power can be lawful, that is, through legal, rejected, and there is dominated by the spirit of dialogue, the method of persuasion against all forms of dogmatism of ideas, of bigotry, oppression spiritual, physical and moral violence. Behind the political freedom is the idea of \u200b\u200bfundamental equality of men in front of political power, the principle that before the task of governing, which is essential for the survival and development of human society, there are elected and reprobate, governors and governed by purpose, powerful and uncontrolled servants resigned, the lower classes and upper classes, but all may be, from time to time, rulers or ruled, and to each other and the second alternate events, interests, ideologies. Finally, upon social freedom is the principle, and later appeared hard, but not reject them, that men count must count, not for what they have, but for what they do, and work, not ownership, the actual contribution that everyone can give according to their capacity for social development, and not the possession that each has merit or not to an extent proportionate to the merits, is the dignity of man in civil society.
A democracy needs, of course, appropriate institutions, but does not live where these institutions are not fueled by strong principles. Where the principles that inspired the institutions lose force in people's minds, even the institutions decay, become, first, empty skeletons, then the first impact and risk of ending up in dust. If today there is a problem of democracy in Italy, it is more a problem of principles and institutions. Ten years after the promulgation of the constitution, we can say that the main institutions for the functioning of a democratic state there. But we can say with equal confidence that the principles of democracy have become a living part of our costume? I can not express any apprehension on this point.
The path of democracy is not an easy path. For this we must be constantly vigilant, not resign ourselves to the worst, but even indulge in a quiet confidence inevitably arise in the progress of humanity. Today we do not believe, as they believed the Liberal Democrats, the Socialists at the beginning of the century, that democracy is a fatal path. I belong to the generation that has learned from the European Resistance as the sum of suffering was necessary for Europe to return to civilian life. The difference between my generation and that of our fathers is that they were democratic optimism. We are, we must be more democratic in alarm.
Norberto Bobbio
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