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This article analyzes Italy's politics of memory in the age of presentism, a "regime of historicity" that posits a kind of eternal present that corresponds with a neoliberal ethos that naturalizes the current political-economic order. Drawing on mnemonic hegemonic theory, it examines how the loss of a utopian dimension and our problematic relationship with the future influence Italy's flawed relationship with its past. The article focuses on Francesco Piccolo's Il desiderio di essere come tutti (2013), a novel that interweaves autobiography, cultural and historical commentary, and a narrative analysis of the developments of the Italian left from the years (1972-1984) when Enrico Berlinguer was the secretary of the Italian Communist Party (PCI) to the last Berlusconi government (2008-2011). Drawing on the work of Reinhart Koselleck, François Hartog, Enzo Traverso, and others, the article outlines a sociocultural analysis of presentism and of the feeling of "stuckness" that pervades our political conjuncture. Building on this theoretical framework, it then analyzes how Il desiderio di essere come tutti represents the disappearance of the Italian left's horizon of expectation. By working through the historical defeat of the communist left, Piccolo's novel gives us an insight into the causes and effects of presentism in Italian society. This enables me to clarify what I mean by "forgetting the future," and explore how the exhaustion of a particular hope of sociopolitical transformation bears upon Italy's politics of memory. Ultimately, this article aims to open a conversation on whether it is possible to fight multidimensional forgetting in a time in which neoliberal rationality has penetrated every human sphere, remaking the subject and dismantling the social in the process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the last forty years, there has been a mounting societal shift towards post-materialist values in all countries adhering to the democratic tradition. This has fuelled demand for increasingly personalized content, reflected in political and electoral preferences that, shaped by new agencies of socialization, have gradually distanced themselves from former loyalties. The political supply has been reorganized as a result. The old mass parties have morphed into the so-called catch all party and the more recent variations of the professional-electoral party, forced to drum up votes however it can, chiefly by concocting new issues to compensate for the weakening of traditional subcultures and the fact that the social groups and classes that were the mainstay of twentieth-century parties have now exited the scene. In Italy, this process has led to a political system that is – to say the least – fragmented and unstable. Taken as a whole, the Italian left is even harder pressed than other European lefts, though they too have shown themselves incapable in recent years of sensing the changing pulse and adapting to the new milieu and how it will affect the left's legacy in terms of the industrial conflict between capital and labour. This is a cleavage that has marked the platforms of liberal-democratic political systems and the form that parties accordingly take even more than it has affected their value content. The Italian left's perennially upwelling legacy has thus prevented it from retooling for a changing society and formulating policies that can build a solid voter base by interpreting the expectations of the more moderate portions of the electorate who, though sceptical about the centre-right coalition, harbour even greater doubts concerning the centre-left's ability to actually govern. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On September 25, 2022, the Italian left faced a significant electoral setback as the centre-right coalition, led by Giorgia Meloni, secured a remarkable electoral win. Historically, the left had been represented by major parties like the Italian Communist Party (P.C.I.) and the Italian Socialist Party (P.S.I.). Their demise in the 1990s, for various reasons, gave rise to new left-leaning 'umbrella' entities such as the Ulivo and the Democratic Party (P.D.). Despite some electoral successes by these newer groups, left-wing parties and coalitions have failed to dominate the Italian political scene in recent years. A decline in the definitive meaning of 'left' in Italian politics has led to a more fragmented left-wing. As traditional leftist ideologies have waned, some of the emerging left-leaning parties have faced criticism for prioritizing civil rights over socioeconomic issues. Articles in this special issue delve into different facets of the Italian left. Pasquino highlights the stagnation in the left's political culture since the cold war's conclusion, while Newell critiques the weakness of the P.D.'s party organization and ideology. Ventura analyses both the P.D.'s organizational challenges and its leadership decisions, whereas Musella emphasizes the P.D.'s shortcomings in updating communication strategies. Pasini, Fasano, and Cerruti dive into the evolving preferences of left-wing voters, while del Palacio touches upon the radical left's challenges. Mulè and Toso offer insights into the left's efforts in poverty alleviation. In summary, this special issue underlines the pressing need for the Italian left to refresh its ideologies and strategies to stay relevant and present a competitive alternative to conservative agendas in Italy's shifting political scene. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2018, Italy became the last of the E.U. member states to introduce a minimum income policy. Our work helps explain why Italy was a laggard in this field by investigating the role the Italian left played, historically, in the evolution of policies to combat poverty. This is a surprisingly neglected topic. We argue that until the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Italian left focused on labour-market insiders – that is, full-time core workers – and appeared largely unconcerned about the most vulnerable individuals, the outsiders, thus accepting the lack of policies to combat poverty. The policy status quo, however, dovetailed with a lively debate among left-wing intellectuals and politicians. This debate paved the way for several attempts by left-wing governments in the 1990s to implement a national pilot scheme (called the Reddito Minimo di Inserimento [R.M.I.]) along with local minimum income policies. The electoral success in 2013 of a new populist movement, the Five-star Movement (M.5.s.), campaigning on the flagship project of the Reddito di Cittadinanza (R.d.C.), fuelled the political debate on anti-poverty policies. This electoral 'threat' finally convinced the centre-left government under Paolo Gentiloni to establish in 2018 the Reddito di Inclusione, the first minimum income scheme in Italy. Our work demonstrates the importance of political variables, such as the structure and dynamics of party competition, in the fight against poverty. It also highlights the role of the Italian left as a political innovator in this field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article asks, 'What's left of the Italian left?' arguing that an answer to the question presupposes having the answer to four more specific questions, namely, what does the term 'left' mean? What parties belong to this category thus defined? What accounts for the parties' electoral decline since the end of the cold war? What, if anything, can be done to revive their fortunes? I argue that the terms 'left' and 'right' describe a spatial metaphor having to do with attitudes to equality. The electoral difficulties of the parties belonging to this category over the past thirty years can be explained by reference to three interlinked processes of long-term economic, social and political change that help account for the electoral decline of mainstream parties of the left in Western democracies in general in recent decades. In the context of globalization, a revival of the fortunes of the left in Italy appears to lie in the direction of an embrace of a social democratic ideology combined with a renewed emphasis on the principal of internationalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When assessing political violence and terrorism in recent Western European history, the case of Italy stands out. The 1970s—the anni di piombo or "lead years"—saw an incredible level of political violence, leading certain observers to openly speak about terrorist violence. However, violence continued to a lesser extent even in the 1980s. This article deals with leftist political violence in that period and argues that Maoism was one of its triggers/inspirations. The Italian case stands out also because these high levels of leftist political violence were not linked to nationalist grievances, as was the case in Ireland (IRA) or the Basque Country (ETA). Maoism pushed many on the Italian revolutionary Left to take up arms against the bourgeois state. They did not take Mao's proclamations of violence and revolution ("power comes from the barrel of the gun") abstractly. As China opposed Soviet peaceful coexistence on an international level, the Italian revolutionary Left opposed it on a national ground. The pervasiveness of this Maoist call to arms in Italy can be seen looking at the example of the "new" Red Brigades at the turn of the twenty-first century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the contribution the La Repubblica newspaper and its founder and editor-in-chief Eugenio Scalfari made to the debate on the 'European question'. In particular, it focuses on the role the newspaper played in the evolution of Europeanism on the Italian Left from 1984, the year when the second elections were held to the Strasbourg Parliament with universal suffrage and Enrico Berlinguer died, to 1992, covering the period when, as well as signature of the Maastricht treaty, the final act took place in the demise of Italy's 'Republic of the Parties'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main goal of my article is to analyze the origins of Italian Maoism – or, more precisely, the origins of the influence of Maoism and of Chinese Communism on the Italian left – from the early Fifties until 1966 (the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, which boosted the appeal of Maoism worldwide and triggered a new phase in its development), and to delineate a few conclusions on why and how Italian Maoism evolved and manifested as it did. The article assesses the alternative approaches to Communist China that originated in what would later become the New Left and which would evolve in Maoism per se. I argue that these alternative and radicalizing approaches were the product of disillusion with the traditional left. The first political-publishing projects that paid serious attention to China were the Quaderni rossi (founded by Raniero Panzieri, an intellectual linked with the Italian Socialist Party) and the Quaderni piacentini. In the early 1960s other political-publishing projects were launched. The Edizioni Oriente publishing house began the long work of disseminating Chinese documents and analyses. The first marxista-leninista (m-l) journals were also founded at this time, which will later evolve in a cluster of small parties and organizations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article analyses the influence of the Cuban Revolution and of Che on Lotta Continua (LC) - the main organisation of the Italian extra-parliamentary Left - from 1969 until 1974, through the pages of the newspaper Lotta continua. Che was a political and moral example for LC, which by 1974 went beyond myth and reached a balanced view on him. The issue of Che's relevance in present-day Italy is also assessed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The essay studies how public memory of Peppino Impastato, killed by the mafia in 1978 in Cinisi, near Palermo, has changed in the decades up to the present day. To do so, we will follow the biographical paths of four militants of Lotta continua, the political group in which Impastato was active until 1976, which was part of the vast and complex world of the Italian left outside the Communist Party. In particular, the focus will be on the way in which the public mourning for Impastato has been interlinked with the stratification of public discourse on the mafia and with the public rites linked to other victims of Sicilian organized crime.

The main aim of this paper is to examine, on the basis of relevant and so far unpublished documents from Belgrade archives, the stance of Yugoslav communists towards the Italian left after Yugoslavia's expulsion from the Cominform in 1948. Since the break up with the Cominform in the same time meant the termination of cooperation with the closest party until then - the Partito Comunista Italiano (PCI), Yugoslavia was very active in trying to win support of other Italian left-wing parties, movements or individuals. This required the widest possible basis for gathering all left-wing members into a broad spectrum which would encompass everybody, from communists to social democrats. The initial attempts to win the support of the Partito Socialista Italiano (PSI ) through the existing sympathies of its leaders did not give the expected results, because this party after some time took the same attitude as the PCI and the Cominform. In the same time they also failed to gain a stronghold with some other parties of the Italian left, like the Partito Socialista Unitario. The Yugoslav attempt to organize a so-called "progressive movement" in Italy, composed of various pro-Yugoslav party dropouts, also had a very modest effect. A bit more significant stronghold was obtained only after the emergence of the two pro-Yugoslav dissidents - Valdo Magnani and Aldo Cucchi - who withdrew from the PCI in 1951 and organized their own Movimento Lavoratori Italiani, which soon grew into the Unione Socialista Indipendente, both movements enjoying the Yugoslav support. After the reconciliation with the USSR, Yugoslavia resumed the relations with the leading Italian left-wing parties - in 1956 with the PCI and the next year, 1957, with the PSI. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Faced with the collapse of the Italian Communist Party (PCI) and Italy's both economic and political crisis in the 2000s and 2010s, many left-activists have mounted a rear-guard action trying to reassert the principles of the Resistance. However, rarely do debates concerning the legacy of the anti-fascist struggle acknowledge the variety of Resistance forces' social and political goals, far from it being a single patriotic movement. This article focuses on the experience of Bandiera Rossa, the largest partisan force in Rome during the German occupation, to argue that the Resistance involved both a struggle over postwar Italy and a battle to define a communist movement re-emerging after twenty years of Fascist repression. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although the Italian left was one of the largest popular movements for social change in Western Europe, at the end of the 1980s the Tuscan left-wing regional council imposed the construction of fenced camps for Romani immigrants supposedly in order to give Roma the possibility of developing their own traditional habits. By contextualizing the local political context within the post-1989 changes of left-wing politics vis-à-vis migrants in Italy, the paper discusses the rationale behind the construction of nomad camps. It examines the texts of the first two regional laws addressing Roma – passed in 1988 and 1995. It then compares that analysis with the ethnographic data collected in 2007 and 2008. In the conclusion it is put forward that the conditions of material and symbolic segregation that have been affecting Roma in Florence for more than twenty years are a consequence of specific culture-based strategies adopted by policy makers. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article has two aims: to explore the tensions and ambiguities in the response of the Italian Left to the challenges of immigration in the 1990s through the prism of Sandro Onofri's writing, published between 1991 and his premature death in 1999, and in doing so to offer an introduction to this lesser-known writer whose works offer a unique perspective on this very specific period. During the 1990s racial violence grew in Italy as mass immigration challenged perceptions of 'Italian-ness'. Onofri's writings seek to subsume racial attacks carried out in marginalized Italian communities into wider discourses of economic and social marginalization, denying the role of racism in Italy. This is expanded in his American writing, in which he uses the Native American reservations as a 'contact zone' in which to align Italian-ness in America and Italy with a past history of powerlessness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the wake of the collapse of 'really-existing' socialism and against a background of the growing influence of neo-liberal political thought, European socialist parties – and especially the former communist parties – have found it crucially important to reassert their liberal credentials. This explains the interest displayed by the Italian Left in liberal socialism, Dahrendorf 's New Liberalism and American liberalism, and especially in what is now called the 'Third Way'. In Italy, these developments have resulted in a genuine example of 'history's revenge'. The political ideas associated with the Action Party (PdA), which long played a Cinderella role in Italian politics and culture, have moved back to centre stage. This article examines how Italian leftist parties like the Democrats of the Left (DS) have been realigned to take into account the ideas of liberal socialism proposed by thinkers like Carlo Rosselli. It also explores how,since 1989, parties of the Italian Left have tried to appropriate the Actionist past and its mission, and why,after a long period of deliberate neglect, the Actionist agenda has again become the subject of lively debate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]