The Democratic Party has dropped ‘left’ from its nature – who will pick it up?

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To match a Prime Minister supported by a supermajority, with center-left and center-right allies supporting his government, and who invites everyone to put aside their respective identities for the common good, there is a new secretary of the PD, called to govern a party balkanized by factions, calling on them to put their differences aside and to work all together, for the same goal: for the good of the country.

In a political tandem, Draghi and Letta are thus pedaling in the same direction, from two different positions: one as the CEO and the other as the majority shareholder.

And, in the tandem, the PD is—as Letta confirms—a governmental party of the center, which fact determined the traits of the new secretary, hailed on Sunday by all those who forced Zingaretti to step aside.

Certainly, the Democratic Party is in need of a vigorous political restructuring and moral regeneration, which Letta expressed with the image of “soul and screwdriver.” But even though it has been rejuvenated, feminized, regenerated and restructured, it remains a party that is neither right-wing nor left-wing (despite the efforts to label it so, as we have read in some newspapers), conceived above all to govern.

And the sooner it makes peace with its nature as such, the sooner it will reconcile with its real destiny. The idealized push for a “great discussion table,” Zingaretti style, failed even before the resignation of the former secretary.

Let’s start over.

The left, a word that Letta never pronounced in his long speech to the party assembly (he used the term “radical” many times, which can be of any orientation), is something else.

And apart from the many good intentions of a general nature, he did not strike a blow against any of the limits of the policies implemented in recent years: from the Jobs Act (imposed by Renzi with arrogance and political violence against the CGIL) to the Libyan camps, all the way to institutional reforms. Enrico Berlinguer, whose name was also invoked by the new tenant of the PD leadership, has nothing to do with a party that has expunged the word “left” from its very name.

It is as clear as day that, in this moment of political and social turmoil, the left should rebuild its own field.

However, this condition is more necessary than ever, given the state of the various parties that are invoking it. Because, in theory, it would be a matter of cultivating a vast field, as large as the social archipelago that in recent years has seen the prominence of youth movements, feminist environmentalists, together with new subjectivities that have grown up with recurring work, both manual and intellectual.

Here is the raw material, bursting out and incandescent, for discovering a cosmopolitan movement capable of bringing much grist to the crumbling mill of the left.

However, it is necessary to be aware of the fact that building, here and now, a network with a structured and national-level coordination of the various experiences in the territories is a necessary condition. Because each association, movement or trend is its own and nothing more, and, in recent years—for too many now—none has never found the strength, the courage to give itself a form, an organization, thus paying the price of putting a lot of effort for very little gain.

As a result, our country is the only one in Europe that does not have a strong left-wing representation.

While in the PD there is the curse of factions and power, on the left there is the curse of fragmentation and the minoritarianism of the small group, of the “few but good,” of the endless sidestepping of the issues. The bell tolls for everyone.

Thus, one welcomes a PD that is leaving the affluent historical centers to try to return to the social peripheries, so that those who live and work in these abandoned places can have their voices heard and supported. But we also have to regenerate and reorganize ourselves, regarding our proposals and our people.

A few days ago, the young vice-president of Emilia Romagna, Elly Schlein, urged everyone to dare a “pirate” operation of reunification of the left front, against the divisions, at this time of maximum transformation determined by the pandemic and massive European funding, and urged a restart—not starting from the PD and from party as such, but from the network of movements.

I agree, that direction seems right to me. So if there is someone (or more people) doing some work underground in these fields, it is time for them to come out, to be seen.

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Originally published at https://ilmanifesto.it/un-nuovo-fronte-si-di-sinistra/ on 2021-03-16