Freedom Comes First: Freedom as the Stakes of Social Conflict

Bruno Trentin was born on December 9, 1926 in Cèdon de Pavie, France, where his father Silvio and family had gone into exile after Mussolini's 'fascistissime' laws. He attended school first in Auch and then in Toulouse. His mother tongue was French. In 1941, at the age of fifteen, he formed with other classmates from his high school the GIF (Groupe Insurrectional Français) of anarchist tendencies, which carried out protest actions against Nazi-Fascism, for which he was arrested in December 1942. In early September 1943 he accompanied, with his brother Giorgio and mother, his father to Italy, and after September 8 he followed his father in organizing the first Resistance movement in Veneto. Together with him he attends, on November 9, 1943, the inauguration of the academic year at the University of Padua by Rector Concetto Marchesi. On November 19 they are both imprisoned for a few weeks. After his father's death on March 12, 1944, Bruno participates in the Resistance in the Treviso area and then from October 1944 un)l the Libera)on under the orders of Leo Valiani in Milan, where he directs the Gap of "Giustizia e Libertà" and becomes commander of the partisan brigade "Rosselli," which plays a decisive role in the days of the insurrection. After the war he participated, as national delegate of the youth organization of the Ac)on Party, in congresses and conventions in various European countries. At the invitation of Gaetano Salvemini, he attends Harvard University in the United States. In 1949 he graduated in law from the University of Padua, with a thesis entitled "Judgment of equity in commercial relations, with particular reference to the doctrine of the Supreme Court of the United States," supervisor Enrico Opocher, assistant to Norberto Bobbio.At the end of 1949 he joined the Study Office of the CGIL then headed by Vittorio Foa, where he worked closely with Giuseppe Di Vittorio, general secretary of the CGIL. The following year he joined the Italian Communist Party. In 1958 he was deputy secretary of the CGIL. From 1960 to 1973 he was a city councilor in Rome, while in 1963 he was elected deputy. At the end of his parliamentary term he did not run again, due to in- compatibility between union and parliamentary positions. From 1962 to 1977 he is secretary of the Federation of Metalworkers' Employees (FIOM). During this period, he is among the main architects of the Councils of Factory Delegates, new forms of collective representation in the workplace, in place of the old internal commissions. He is also a staunch supporter of the unitary organization of the Metalworkers' Federation (FLM).General secretary of CGIL from 1988 to 1994, he promoted its profound programmatic renewal, which landed on the 'union of rights' and a full alignment with Jacques Delors' political and social Europe.A member of the National Economic and Labor Council (CNEL), he has headed the CGIL program office since 1994. From 2001 to 2004 he is chairman of the Project Commission of the Democrats of the Left. From 1999 to 2004 he is a Member of the European Parliament for the Democrats of the Left.He died in Rome on August 23, 2007, following the severe head injury suffered a year earlier from a bicycle fall.

• Preface. The Principle of Freedom (Nadia Urbinati).- Introductory Essay. Bruno Trentin between France, Italy, the United States, and Europe. From the Resistance to the failure of the European Constitution (1926-2007) (Sante Cruciani).- Freedom Comes First (Bruno Trentin).- Bruno Trentin's Intellectual Laboratory (2001–2006) (Bruno Trentin).- The ‘Left’ in a Stress Test. In Memory of Bruno Trentin (Axel Honneth).- Being Socialists in the 21st Century (Giovanni Mari).- Freedom at Work, In the Life and Thought of Bruno Trentin (Alain Supiot).