The US Constitution starts with a Preamble:
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
followed by Article 1:
All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives.
British people do away with grandiloquence and have no single constitutional law. Unlike the French, whose current Constitution starts with an even loftier Preamble:
The French people solemnly proclaim their commitment to human rights and the principles of national sovereignty as defined by the Declaration of 1789, confirmed and complemented by the Preamble to the 1946 Constitution and the rights and duties set out in the Charter for the Environment 2004.
Under these principles and that of self-determination of peoples, the Republic offers to overseas territories that express the will to adhere to them new institutions founded on the common ideal of liberty, equality and fraternity and conceived with a view to their democratic evolution.
and moves on to a grand Article 1:
France is an indivisible, secular, democratic and social. It guarantees equality before the law for all citizens without distinction of origin, race or religion. It shall respect all beliefs. His organization is decentralized.
The law favors the equal access of women and men to electoral mandates and elective offices, as well as professional and social responsibilities.
Not to be outdone, the Preamble of the Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany, recites:
Conscious of their responsibility before God and man, inspired by the determination to promote world peace as an equal partner in a united Europe, the German people, in the exercise of their constituent power, have adopted this Basic Law. Germans in the Länder of Baden-Württemberg, Bavaria, Berlin, Brandenburg, Bremen, Hamburg, Hesse, Lower Saxony, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, North Rhine-Westphalia, Rhineland-Palatinate, Saarland, Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, Schleswig-Holstein and Thuringia have achieved the unity and freedom of Germany in free self-determination. This Basic Law thus applies to the entire German people.
and Article 1 proclaims:
Human dignity shall be inviolable. To respect and protect it shall be the duty of all state authority.
The German people therefore acknowledge inviolable and inalienable human rights as the basis of every community, of peace and of justice in the world.
The following basic rights shall bind the legislature, the executive and the judiciary as directly applicable law.
What about Italy? What do the Italian people solemnly proclaim? Justice, Liberty, Welfare? What are their supreme goals? Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité? What is our Constitution founded on? God and man, human dignity? None of that. Italy is founded on labour.
On what?
Yes, labour. Article 1 of the Italian Constitution (no mucking about with preambles) says:
Italy is a democratic Republic founded on labour.
Sovereignty belongs to the people and is exercised by the people in the forms and within the limits of the Constitution.
What a weird choice. There are many good things that can be said about the virtues of labour, but not that it is a universal principle, an ultimate aspiration or a noble ideal. So what on earth did the Italian constituents have in mind? There is a simple explanation. After the fall of the Fascist regime and the end of the war, the new Italian Parliament was dominated by Christian Democrats, Socialists and Communists, who together held more than three quarters of the seats in the Constituent Assembly. The adopted formulation was proposed as a compromise by the Christian Democrats, after the Socialists and Communists’ proposal – ‘Italy is a democratic workers’ Republic’ – had been turned down by twelve votes!
Like many to follow, it was a botched conciliation. What can ‘founded on labour’ possibly mean? Italian constitutionalists are not short of valiant explanations, centred on labour’s unquestioned ethical value. But any attempt to elevate it to a founding principle is ultimately an artifice.
A reasonable constitutional goal is full employment, as well expressed by Article 4:
The Republic recognises the right of all citizens to work and shall promote such conditions as will make this right effective.
Every citizen has the duty, according to capability and choice, to perform an activity or function that contributes to the material or spiritual progress of society.
But when combined with Article 1, a legitimate goal has often been transformed into an unreasonable demand – to be given a job or to hold on to one, no strings attached.
A workers’ Republic was not a great idea. But a Republic founded on labour means nothing – or anything you like.
