ly floundering from summit to summit , looking for a way out , without a vision of the whole , or rather without any vision at all , I have discovered in many young people an idea that can be expressed in the same terms in which it was put by Spinelli in 1957 :
The project for a European federation was not a fine ideal to pay tribute to and then move on to something else ; it was an objective for which we had to act immediately , people of our generation . This was not an invitation to dream , but an invitation to work .
I also discovered that they share another of Spinelli ’ s essential ideas on the nature of « his » Federation :
It is not presented as an ideology , it does not aim to depict an existing power in one way or another […] it is a sober proposal to create a democratic European power , at the heart of which ideologies may well develop , if people find them to be necessary , but it is very different from them […] the recognition of diversity and of the brotherhood of the national experiences of European peoples , in the midst of whose languages , writers and thinkers we have been living for years without ever feeling closer to them if they are Italians , or more distant if they are foreigners .
The Manifesto was the meeting point between Spinelli and Rossi ’ s complementary ideas . Spinelli expressed his interest in the freedom of the individual and of society but he also implied that this struggle could not stop at the borders where socialism was being built . Rossi criticized capitalism , trade unionism , communism and its project of « eradicating poverty » by grafting a piece of communist economic constitution into a market economy . The conversion to democracy had led Spinelli to realize that political action
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