The speech was delivered by Piero reproduced in Calamandrei Frescoes of the Humane Society of the salon January 26, 1955 at the inauguration of a series of seven lectures on the Italian Constitution organized by a group of university students and to explain in an accessible medium to all moral and legal principles that are the basis of our social life.
Article 34 says: "The able and deserving students, even without financial resources, have the right to attain the highest levels of education." Eh! And if you do not have the means? So in our constitution there is an article that is the most important of all creation, the most challenging for us that we are declining, but especially to you young people who have the future in front of you. Says:
"It 's the duty of the Republic to remove obstacles to economic and social nature which constrain the freedom and equality of citizens, prevent the full development of the human person and the effective participation of all workers in the political, economic and social development of the country. "
E 'task of removing the obstacles that impede the full development of the human person and then give work to everybody, give a fair wage to all, to a school at all, allow all men the dignity of man. Only when this is achieved, we can truly say that the formula contained in art. first-"Italy is a democratic republic founded on work "- correspond to reality. Because until there is this possibility for each man to work and study and draw on their work safely with the means to live as a man, not only for our Republic will not be able to call based on the work, but can not be call not democratic because a democracy in which there is in fact this equality, in which there is only an equality of law, democracy is a mere formality, not a democracy in which all citizens are given the opportunity to really contribute to life society, to bring their best contribution, in which all spiritual forces of all citizens are made to contribute to this process, this continuous progress of society.
And then you understand from this that our constitution is in part a reality, but only in part, is a reality. Part of it is still a program, an ideal, a hope, a commitment to work to do. How much work you have to be done! How much work lies before you!
E 'has rightly been said that constitutions are also some controversy in the articles of the constitutions that there is always cold even if disguised by the wording of the provisions, a polemic. This controversy is usually a polemic against the past, against the recent past, the regime fell from which it came out of the new regime.
If you read the part of the constitution that refers to relations civil political rights of freedom, you constantly hear the argument against what was the situation before the Republic, when all of these freedoms, which are currently listed and solemnly reaffirm, were systematically disregarded. Then, in the controversy of the rights of man and citizen with the past.
But there is a part of our constitution which is a polemic against the present, against the present society. Because when the art. 3 says, "It 's the duty of the Republic to remove those obstacles of an economic and social prevent the full development of the human person recognizes that these obstacles there are in fact today and that we must remove them. It gives a view, the constitution, a controversial opinion, an adverse opinion against the current social order, that must change through this instrument of legality, gradual transformation, the constitution has made available to Italian citizens. But a constitution is no property which has defined a fixed point, it is a constitution that opens the way to the future. Not to say revolutionary, because for revolution in everyday language means something that subverts violently, but it is up for renewal, progressive, aiming the transformation of this society n it can happen that, even when there are legal and political freedoms are made useless by the inequalities of economic impossibility for many people to be citizens and to realize that within them there is a spiritual flame that if was developed in an economic compensation system, it could also contribute to the progress of society. So, the argument against this that we live in and commitment to do what is
us to transform this situation. But, you see, the constitution is not a machine that once set in motion goes without saying. The constitution is a piece of paper and dropped it does not move. Why you should move every day in the fuel lose, you put in the commitment, spirit, the will to keep these promises, his responsibility. That is one of the offenses that are made to the constitution is the indifference to politics, political indifference-that is not here, thankfully, in this audience, but often in large groups of young people-a disease of young people. "Politics is an ugly thing," "I care policy" when I make this speech, I always reminded of that old little story, that someone you know, two of those emigrants, two farmers, who traversed the ocean on a rickety ship. One of these farmers slept in the hold and the other was on the bridge and noticed that there was a large storm with high waves and the ship swayed: So this farmer afraid to question a sailor: "But are we in danger?" and that says: "If he continues this sea, the ship sank in half an hour." Then he runs into the hold to wake up his partner and says, "Beppe, Beppe, Beppe, if it continues this sea, the ship sank in half an hour." What he says: "What do I care, it's not mine!". This is the indifferentisno policy. 'S so beautiful, it's so easy: freedom there. We live under the freedom, there other things to do than to take an interest in politics. And I know too! The world is so beautiful, there are many beautiful things to see and enjoy, as well as involved in politics. Politics is not a pleasant thing. But freedom is like air: you realize what it's worth when it begins to fail, when you hear that sense of asphyxiation men of my generation have felt for twenty years, and I hope you, young people, you'll never hear, and I hope you will not find you never feel this sense of anxiety, because you hope you manage to create the conditions for this sense of anxiety do not have to never try, remembering that each day we must take care about freedom, making its contribution to political life. The constitution, you see, is the statement written in these articles, from the literary point of view that are not beautiful, but it is the solemn affirmation of social solidarity, human solidarity, of common fate, that if he goes to the bottom, go to background for all this ship. And 'the paper of their own freedom, the paper for each of us the dignity of man. I remember the first elections after the fall of fascism, June 2, 1946, a people who for twenty-five years had not enjoyed the civil and political liberties, the first time I went to the polls after a period of horrors-the chaos, civil war, fights wars, fires. I remember-I was in Florence, the same happened here, these lines of people in front of the covered sections, disciplined and happy because they had the feeling of having found their own dignity, that given the vote, bring your own review for this help to create This review of the community, this being the masters of us, their country, our country, our country, our land, we have our destiny, the destiny of our country.
So, you young people to have to give up your spirit, your youth, bring it to life, like what you hear, put in the way community spirit, civic awareness, to realize-this is one of the joys of life-to realize that everyone in the world is not just that we are more, that we are part of a whole, within the limits of Italy and the world. Now you see, I have little else to say-in this constitution, do we hear the comment in the next conference is in all our history, our whole past. All our pains, our tragedies, our glories are all resulted in these articles. And learn to understand, we feel behind these articles of distant voices. When I read in art. 2, "the fulfillment of the mandatory duties of political solidarity, economic and social" or when I read, in art. 11, "Italy repudiates war as an instrument of aggression against the freedom of other peoples," the Italian homeland homelands through the tall, I say, but this is Mazzini, or when I read, in art. 8, "all religious confessions are equally free before the law," but this is Cavour, when I read, in art. 5, "the Republic one and indivisible, recognizes and promotes local autonomy," but this is Cattaneo, or when, art. 52, I read, about the armed forces, "the ordering of the armed forces on the democratic spirit of the Republic" army of people, but Garibaldi is this, and when I read,
art. 27, "is not permitted the death penalty," but this, or students from Milan, and Beccaria. Large distant voices, big names away. But there are also humble names, recent entries. How much blood and how much pain to get to this constitution! Behind every article of this constitution, or young, you have to see young people like you, who fell in battle, shot, hanged, tortured, starved to death in concentration camps, died in Russia, died in Africa, died on the streets of Milan, the streets of Florence, who gave their lives for freedom and justice could be written on this card. So when I said that this a card is dead, no, not a dead paper, this is a will, a will of a hundred thousand deaths. If you want to go on pilgrimage to the birthplace of our Constitution, go to the partisans in the mountains where they fell, in prisons where they were imprisoned in camps where they were hanged. Wherever an Italian died to redeem the freedom and dignity, go there, or young, with the thought that there was born our constitution.
Celebrate Today, after one hundred fifty years of history, a united Italy, it has a meaning purely commemorative. He wants, instead, to remind the Italians of the characters, the events also the deaths of all kinds, the shadows but the lights that have long characterized our past. Mind you along to a certain point, since we live in a continent where France and England have made their process of national unification a few centuries ago and we were the first only in relation to neighboring Germany that created a unitary state few years later. 
Discourse on the Constitution of Piero Calamandrei 
