parties and the cosmopolitan origin of forces of liberal inspiration . He knew that these parties were now accustomed to addressing every problem on the tacit assumption that the national state did exist . They considered international problems as foreign policy issues which could only be resolved through diplomatic actions and agreements between the various governments .
Yet he was convinced that the ideal of a European federation –« a prelude to a world federation » – would emerge at the end of the war as an attainable goal , « almost at hand », and that « forces from all social classes » would express their interest in it . Spinelli was opposed to using diplomatic channels , preferring what is called in the Manifesto the revolutionary ‘ people ’ s movement ’: once certain events have occurred , it would be virtually impossible to go back to the previous situation .
Although they were confined on the island of Ventotene , Spinelli , Rossi and Colorni succeeded in analyzing with the utmost clarity the state of the war in 1941 . They predicted the defeat of German imperialism and totalitarian powers ; on the other hand , they did not predict that Europeans would not remain their own masters in the search for their future . But Europe had ceased to be at the center of the world , and they would be heavily conditioned by powers outside Europe : Soviet imperialism in the East and the hegemony of the USA in the West .
Thus the road taken by the new democracies born after the war was not aimed at the elimination of national sovereignty but at reinstating the national States , albeit within the limits and framework of the process of community integration , which began with the “ small Europe ” of Six countries , following the functionalist model conceived by Jean Monnet in which the objective of creating a federal State was replaced with a new goal of supranationality .
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