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Forenza 2015
Forenza 2015
Eleonora Forenza
To cite this article: Eleonora Forenza (2015) From Splits to Unification? On the Recent
History of the Italian Radical Left, Socialism and Democracy, 29:3, 93-103, DOI:
10.1080/08854300.2015.1103954
Article views: 19
Download by: [University of Nebraska, Lincoln] Date: 30 December 2015, At: 01:00
Socialism and Democracy, 2015
Vol. 29, No. 3, 93 103, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/08854300.2015.1103954
Eleonora Forenza
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After the dramatic days in Genoa (July 19 21, 2001), where the
global justice movement underwent a heavy repression, in November
2002 in Florence, during the first European Social Forum, a million
people demostrated for the idea that another Europe is possible.
Two years later, on the heels of this "movement of movements and
with the initiative of the PRC, the Party of the European Left (PEL)
was founded in Rome. The PEL consists of political forces of the left
from much of Europe. Shortly afterwards, Fausto Bertinotti, then sec-
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retary of the PRC, pushed for the formation of the Italian Section of
the European left with the aim of innovating the nature of the party
to provide more organic links with the various sectors of Italian acti-
vism (environmentalist, feminist, housing rights movement, etc.).
The Italian lefts Europeanism has much deeper roots, however. It
is enough to mention the Eurocommunist ideas of Enrico Berlinguer
(national secretary of the Italian Communist Party [PCI] until 1984),
who called for a Europe neither anti-Soviet nor anti-American,1 or
even the relationship that the secretary of the PCI built with Altiero
Spinelli (founding father of the idea of a federal Europe), who was
elected to the European Parliament as an independent candidate on
the PCI list.
Despite this longstanding European orientation, however
(expressed even in Gramscis idea of creating a a European political sub-
jectivity), one of the main tasks of the Italian radical left today is to take
on a national-popular dimension. This challenge has been a constant since
the breakup of the PCI, the largest Western communist party, after 1989.
The debates within the Italian radical left take place, however, in a
context of mass depoliticization, which is quite different from what is
happening in other southern European countries.
The Italian scene is thus marked by a strong push toward social
passivity (passivizzazione) that results from a process of Americanization
of the political and media system which is decidedly more pervasive
than in other European countries a process that in many ways has
its roots in the years of the dissolution of the PCI.
months after the end of the PCI and the birth of the Democratic Party of
the Left (Partito democratico della sinistra [PDS]), Occhetto backed the
proposal to transform the electoral law from proportional represen-
tation to majoritarian. The passage to a majoritatian electoral system
was central to the transition from the first to the so-called second
republic; it would insulate the political-institutional system from
social conflict. Representation of labor and of the subaltern classes
was increasingly marginalized in the political system, in which how
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the radical and communist left from the Italian Parliament for the first
time.4
The years of the majoritarian voting system are the years of Berlus-
conism, of a political confrontation that did not question neoliberal
recipes whether from the center-right or the center-left, and reduced
itself to a clash between pro- and anti-Berlusconi forces, marginalizing
social issues, while conflicts of interest and corruption took center
stage. Berlusconism caused a profound change in the political, mass
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media, and cultural systems, and even in common sense. Politics, sub-
sumed by the private Berlusconian media empire,5 was transformed
into spectacle and theatre, with Berlusconi as the sole man in
command, with his ideology of competitiveness and simplistic logic
of winners versus losers. This transformation, which laid the foun-
dation for the Americanization of Italian society, represents the
triumph of the ideology of post-ideology (that is, the neoliberal con-
ception of the world) and ties Berlusconism to Renzism.
4. Even during that division which happened after the result of the troubled PRC con-
gress in Chianciano in 2008 the topic of government was resolved and interlaced
with different interpretations of the topic of innovation: on one hand, the refounda-
tion of the left and on the other the communist refoundation.
5. Berlusconi is the owner of three private television channels.
98 Socialism and Democracy
Liberta (SEL) and the PD, and the failure of the PD to form a govern-
ment. For a few hours, Italy found itself simultaneously without a
Prime Minister and the President of the Republic, without a Chief of
Police, and without a Pope (following Ratzingers resignation).6 After
Enrico Lettas brief period in power, Matteo Renzis government of
action began. It pushed for greater job insecurity (the Jobs Act), a
business-oriented reform of education, cuts to public administration,
and a project to reform the Constitution and the electoral system. In
short, cuts to democracy and social rights.
What were the social consequences of these measures? Useful data
for comparing the situation in Italy before 2008 with the current scen-
ario can be found in the OECD Employment Outlook 2015. 7 The unem-
ployment rate went up from 6 percent in 2007 to 12.4 percent in May
2015 (1.3 points above average in the Eurozone). Even more dramatic
is youth unemployment: from 19.6 percent in 2007 to 41.9 percent in
2015. According to the SVIMEZ 2015 report,8 this maintains or even
aggravates inequality between the North and South of Italy, in terms
of GDP, investments, and employment. According to the Italian
National Institute of Statistics (Istat), gender inequality in employment
has also grown.9
In sum, the crisis and austerity measures in Italy, together with the
rest of Europe, have led to increasing the gap between rich and poor,
redistributing wealth from the bottom to the top. In Italy, this hap-
pened with more severity and slower recovery, in the context of
growing depoliticization, almost complete absence of mass social con-
flict, and widespread anti-political movements. And so, as the crisis
went on, with the increase of inequality and absence of social mobiliz-
ation, the protest vote grew enormously more against the rotten
6. The Vaticans influence over Italian politics has always been very strong. This has
been a structural feature of the political system since the founding of the Italian State.
7. http://www.oecd.org/els/oecd-employment-outlook-19991266.htm
8. http://www.svimez.info/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=335&
lang=it
9. http://www.istat.it/en/files/2014/10/07-lavoro.pdf
Eleonora Forenza 99
political classes than against the austerity policies themseves. The Five
Star Movement, launched in 2009 by the comedian Beppe Grillo,
defined itself as neither right-wing nor left-wing (even though in
the European Parliament, it is part of the ultra-conservative English
group Farage) and polemicized principally against corruption of the
caste. In the 2013 elections, the Five Star Movement was the first
party with more than 25 percent of the votes, thanks to a combination
of Grillos leadership and populism, and the role of the internet in orga-
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10. Lega Nord is an extreme right and xenophobic party which, in the European Parlia-
ment, is in the same politcal group as the Front National of France.
11. [In English in the original]
12. Rosi Braidotti, In metamorfosi. Verso una toeria materialistica del divenire (Milan: Feltri-
nelli, 2003).
100 Socialism and Democracy
become the motor for social mobilization and for the transformation of
common sense. In 2002, massive mobilization to defend the statute of
workers rights (passed in 1970) drew 3 million demonstrators in
Rome. At the beginning of 2003, there was an almost equally large
protest against the impending war in Iraq.
Whereas in 1998 the PRC had chosen to break with the Prodi
government and practice building a social alternative, in 2006, it
chose once again to be an alternative in government, in alliance
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with the PD, on the basis of the idea that the power of the move-
ments could influence the action of the government. The results
were disastrous. After two years of failed governing experience
and a consensual divorce with the PD (which was at this point
explicitly a party with a majoritarian vocation), the catastrophe
of the 2008 elections arrived: the Rainbow Left got only 3.08
percent of the vote, not reaching the 4 percent electoral threshold.
Various factors contributed to this outcome: the failure of attempts
to influence government action (due to the limited political weight
not only of the PRC, but also of the movements, which by then
were wearing thin); recourse to the lesser-evil argument to beat Ber-
lusconi, despite the wide electoral advantage of the center-right over
the radical left; disappearance of the hammer and the sickle
(symbol of the PRC) from the electoral ballot; and the general fragi-
lity of the alliance constituting the Rainbow Left. In summary, after
the rainbow, there began the downpour: a dramatic debate was
created in the PRC and the entire radical left that would produce
lacerations and fragmentations a disaster from which the Italian
left has not yet recovered.
In 2008, the PRC held an extraordinary congress at Chianciano,
spurred in part by recognition that the Rainbow Left project had
been a step toward dissolution of the party. Once again in the history
of the Italian left, the rhetorical call for innovation is used to overcome
references to Marxism and to the communist horizon. The Chianciano
congress saw a sharp conflict between, on one hand, the PRC thesis of a
social alternative (building up the lefts social base) and, on the other,
the idea of a governing left, which was favored by most of the out-
going leadership. The analogies to the 1989 debate are many, but this
time, contrary to predictions, the congress decided by a slight margin
not to dissolve the party, to continue with the project of communist
refoundation, and to present a radical alternative to the PD. Paolo
Ferrero was elected as party secretary to lead in implementing these
decisions.
Eleonora Forenza 101
throughout the country, account for its 20-year survival, despite the
reduced number of its members and supporters.14
Subsequent to the 2008 defeat, Nichi Vendola, then President of the
regional Government of Puglia, charged the PRC with having a minor-
itarian political culture linked to the past and unable to meet the chal-
lenge of governing. In 2009, he led the split from PRC of what would
become Sinistra Ecologia e Liberta (SEL), which would bring together
exponents of the PdCI, Green party, and a few others coming from the
left Democrats. Strategically allied with the PD, the SEL applied to join
the Party of European Socialists, but soon afterward suspended its
application following a congress on the eve of the 2014 European
elections because of its negative coalition experience with the PD
in Italia Bene Comune. After a phase of oscillations and contradictions,
the SEL switched its European link from the Socialists to the European
United Left (GUE/NGL).
After a poor performance in the years between 2009 and 2011, the
left attempted to do good, a common good. A widespread mobiliz-
ation of common-goods movements highlighted the need to defend
the the commons and public services from privatization, commodi-
fication, and the dismantling of welfare. The mass mobilizations
began with the defense of public education, against cuts and the priva-
tization of schools and universities, for which Berlusconis Minister of
Education proposed a devastating reform that was approved in 2010.
University researchers joined book blocks15 by students in the
Onda (the student movement of those years), occupying the univer-
sities (even the roofs of university buildings) for weeks. On December
14 2010, when Berlusconi obtained gained approval of his program
through a confidence-vote tinged with corruption, a student
13. This is the title of Paolo Favillis history of the PRC: In direzione ostinata e contraria.
Per una storia di Rifondazione comunista (Rome: DeriveApprodi, 2011); see also Raul
Mordenti, Non e che linizio. Ventanni di Rifondazione comunista (Milan: Edizioni
Punto Rosso, 2011); Su la testa, November 2011.
14. PRC membership data: 71,203 in 2008; 23,529 in 2013; 19,712 in 2014.
15. [In English in the original]
102 Socialism and Democracy
left based not on the logic of governability but on its opposite, on the
capacity to promote widespread participation, conflict, self-govern-
ment, and social solidarity.
Of course, it is difficult to build a unified process in the absence of
social conflict and mass politicization. Precisely for this reason, the uni-
fication process should begin by reconnecting the social and the politi-
cal, recomposing the social bloc, and becoming a social, political, and
cultural coalition. It is therefore fundamental that practicing left-wing
politics depends on doing socially useful work, being able to construct
forms of mutualism and social solidarity: building society as a form of
practicing politics. Promoting a unifying process will in fact require
combining the various ways of practicing politics (militancy, social
activism, and cultural associationism) in a form of democratic partici-
pation. It will also require the use of the internet to connect people,
while not replacing real struggle with virtual consensus.
The challenge is to understand the formation of a political force as
the building of widespread political strength, to see the taking of power
neither as a seizure of the Winter Palace nor within the neo-author-
itarian logic of governance, but as construction of power shared by
everyone, and connecting emancipatory practices and theories of per-
sonal and political transformation, as feminism teaches. The construc-
tion of the radical left in Italy requires the formation of a new common
sense. It must be simultaneously a process of individuation and of col-
lective political subjectivization: a molecular revolution that becomes,
at the same time, a revolution in the West.