The Politics of Life and Death

Abstract

On 21 April 1978, the day after the arrival of Communiqué no. 7, the Socialist daily Avanti announced that Moro’s life had to be saved, that ‘principles must be at the service of men, not men at the service of abstract principles’.¹ The PSI Directorate, though ruling out an exchange of prisoners on grounds of both principle and practicality, stated its dissatisfaction with what it called

a sort of prejudicial and absolute immobilism … that goes so far as to exclude even the search for a reasonable and legitimate possibility. Between the extremes of giving in to blackmail and prejudicial refusal, other paths may exist, which, in diverse forms, diverse democratic states have not hesitated to explore. That that be done in the dramatic circumstances that have occurred is the firm request of the Socialist Party.²

This statement seemed a not-so-thinly-veiled critique of the DC, though it remained unclear what the Socialists had in mind as an alternative, as that other path to explore.