The Stansbury Forum is proud to publish an analysis of the rise of the right in Italy by two leaders of the CGIL, the largest national Italian labor federation. This article is translated from the Italian original.

I. 

From the international point of view we have been witnessing for years a crisis of US hegemony. We have gone from the inability to form a coherent Western coalition to address the so-called war on terror imposed by the Bush Administration, to the financial crash of 2008, to the election of Trump as President: all unequivocal signs of a triple crisis, of international hegemony, of the financial system’s fragility, of the legitimacy of the traditional ruling classes. China, on the other hand, presents itself as a credible international competitor, despite continuing to suffer from a deficit in the attractiveness of its model of societal organization; a deficit that the effective management of the pandemic could – the conditional is a must – at least partially satisfy. 

What remains unclear is the outcome of the transition, in particular a) the willingness of the current hegemonic power (USA) to “undergo” the transition without resorting to all the weapons, even the most destructive, at its disposal and b) the capacity of the emerging power (China) to escape in turn from the temptation of unilateralism and to remain, as it has in truth done up to now, on the terrain of multilateralism. This will be the subject of the political battle by all governments and all peoples in the immediate future.

II. 

From a continental point of view, the process of European construction has never really recovered from the crisis of 2008 – 2012. In recent years we have entered a phase of relative stabilization, which, however, has not been able to stop Brexit (for the first time since the 60s integration loses pieces instead of adding them) and the widening of the cracks in the mercantilist and the basically hegemonic model imposed by Germany on other European nations. Even before the outbreak of the epidemic in Germany there was an alarming slump in investment, which threatened to drag down the weaker national economies, which were subordinate to the German-driven continental value chain. Also on this front, the pandemic had an acceleration effect on an already creaking mechanism.

If in 2008 – 2012 what held the EU together was the fear of the leap into the void and the loss of security, it is possible that in the 2020s, once the epidemic is over, there will be nothing left to lose, and not even the fear card can be played to hold together what remains of the dream of continental integration. 

III. 

Italy has never substantially emerged from the 2012 recession. Of the top 10 Italian companies measured in annual sales, 7 are publicly run. Big industry has outsourced to pursue favorable profits and taxation. Small and medium-sized enterprises, developed since the end of the 1970s as a response to the centrality assumed by labor conflict in the large factories and to the pressure exerted by the State on profits to finance the welfare system, has been exposed to the currents of a uncontrolled global market. Luxury and tourism industries are saved, while there is a low rate of value added in production. While the phenomenon of uneven territorial (“island”) development of the country is accentuated on a national basis, the question of underdevelopment in southern Italy is re-exploding in an even more pronounced and dramatic fashion. The pandemic has played the role of accelerator of dynamics already underway. 

IV. 

For more than a decade now we have been in a further phase of capitalist crisis. A crisis that concentrates wealth and centralizes command, which has redistributed the productive forces on a world basis and destroyed an important slice of the industrial framework in the West (and in particular in Italy), which has led to a substantial reorganization of work: diffusion of precarious forms of work and impoverishment of subordinate work and large segments of self-employment. The institutions have unloaded the 2007-2008 crisis onto society: they had managed – at the cost of draconian measures – to save themselves, a certain unity of the European political space, discharging tensions into the depths of society. By widening the income gaps in the working class, forming areas of underemployment as a safety valve for chunks of national capitalism that needed to reduce wages in order to stay afloat. This has happened a little everywhere, in Italy even more, for many reasons. Today this crisis rises from society to institutions, puts state apparatuses in crisis, reveals the real national interests behind the rhetoric of Europeanism as a salvation from nationalisms and opportunities for growth and solidarity, especially of those countries that basically have always used Europe for what they needed: a value chain functional to their own economy. In the crisis, the materiality of the power relations literally blows up the rhetoric that has concealed their disruptive scope. 

V. 

“Redemption” and “work” are two central concepts in a workers’ hymn written by Italian socialist Filippo Turati in 1886. Yet they are extremely current elements, perhaps because in many ways the present situation of work, its exploitation, its problems of inadequate representation, especially the lack of political representation are similar to the nineteenth century. For too long there has been no party in Italy that adequately represents Labor – in its concrete and contemporary articulations – starting from its material needs and interests. 

VI. 

Up to now, the work has been divided into two major segments: 1. the people of the Abyss, the Hell of precarious, poor, black market work and the gig economy and 2. “stable and guaranteed” work, incorporated and subsumed in the regressive company-territory block, that of hierarchical participation, of workers’ self- activation, of the factory-community (where conflict and autonomous representation of work is excluded), where the principle of collaboration, loyalty, sharing the values ​​of the company and the market is in force. 

How to reunite the people of the Abyss with the workers employed within the first circle of companies, that of permanent employment contracts, company benefits and welfare? How to reunite socially, as a union and politically those who live immersed in digital neo-Taylorism and those who live entangled in the pervasive Toyotism? This is the greatest political, anthropological and values challenge that a Left of radical transformation faces. An already complex and diversified reality that will have to deal now with scenarios further opened by the impact of the pandemic. 

VII. 

It is widely believed that the coronavirus pandemic will have significant repercussions on global economic scenarios. It will accelerate trends already underway such as the shortening of world production chains, will deeply question the cultural-tourist consumption sector as a driving force for capitalist accumulation, and will put at the center the role of the State as a lender and employer of last resort. The virus will impact the ways of organizing work. Among the many and sometimes unprecedented issues that the Covi19 emergency is posing for workers is the problem of remote work. Smart working would allow a more harmonious combination of work and private life, and, consequently, an increase in productivity. If a more or less imminent horizon of “governance” of the workforce focuses on the evaluation of results beyond the working time, very disturbing scenarios open up, which question both the “measure” of work and the keeping of the traditional division between working time and life time (already compromised or in fact made more fluid in many professions). Smart working, instead of agile and intelligent work, could in fact result in endless work. We are probably close to a paradigm shift, which must be dealt with, from a trade union and political point of view, by updating slogans – such as reducing working hours with equal wages – and tools. 

VIII. 

The discussion and confrontation with the Italian government on containment measures with respect to the spread of the coronavirus have revealed the fundamental importance of manual factory work in the production of wealth. The veil of propaganda on the “disappearance of the working class” deriving from the robotization and digitization of the economy collapses in the face of the same declarations by Confindustria (the main Italian Association of entrepreneurs), which claims the loss of 100 billion euros because manufacturing activities have been restricted to solely strictly necessary services. All this is the product of remote work and the productive decentralization of value chains and logistics itself, understood as an essential segment of the production cycle. In reality we already knew that worker labor (and non-factory manual labor) had not at all disappeared quantitatively even in post-Fordist economies, but now we have proof of how central and irreplaceable it is in the creation of value. There is always living labor at the bottom of the capitalist model of social production and reproduction It is necessary to start over from a new neo-laboristic representation of Work, its needs and interests, from its factory and artisan dimension, passing from manual non-factory labor, widening the perimeter to forms of juridically autonomous but economically dependent work: a social block that is in the field not only as trade union organization but also politically, as a guarantee of the founding value that the Italian Constitution recognizes as Work. 

IX. 

It is necessary to develop a point of view that contrasts the ideology of the end of history, reaffirming the historicity and therefore transformability of socio-economic formations; a point of view that reaffirms the usefulness also for the social and political initiative of an idea of different and better ​​society, as it is in the tradition of the Italian workers’ movement, communism, socialism, environmentalism, feminism and the emancipatory policies implemented by the movements in recent years. As the tradition of socialism teaches, it is necessary to reactivate millennial aspirations for redemption at the level of organization, struggles, demonstrations, widespread acculturation, emancipation from degradation and physical and moral brutalization. Because, if the perimeter that you allow yourself is only that of the varieties of possible capitalism, only the purest capitalism in its brutality will always appear on your watch. 

X. 

There is a lack of a political project that puts work at the center of any reconstruction’s hypothesis, and that counts on workers, young women and men, the precarious and widespread intellectuality as new recruits for the creation of new leadership groups that are up to the challenge. The Italian Left, in all its versions, has revealed itself in the course of the crisis not ready for the challenge. Both from the point of view of analysis and tools. 

XI. 

The moderate Left has failed because the framework within which its project was built, that of neoliberal governance, has failed. The constitutionalisation of the idea that within finally pacified societies there are no conflicts, but “problems” to which to give “technical” answers. The era is over of thinking that “real globalization” was – and would continue to be – a factor of progress for the society as a whole, and above all for a middle class that was seen as the expression of the creative sectors of finance and culture, which were regarded as the pivot of national life and as structurally capable of profiting from the opportunities of an increasingly open world market. The PD (Italian Democratic Party), therefore, presented itself to the citizens as a post-ideological, post-national and post-class party, which would have effectively guided the inclusion of Italy in the global village, while at the same time ensuring the maintenance of acceptable welfare levels for the working classes to resist the growing insecurity of their jobs. 

XII. 

The political and social forces defined in various ways as the radical Left, despite having immediately criticized the regressive traits of globalization, have failed to represent at the mass and popular level either a credible alternative or a useful accumulation of forces in a phase of long resistance. The mantra of autonomy (from the moderate Left) has been elevated to dogma, while every hegemonic tension and every push for social and institutional change has disappeared. 

XIII. 

Basic processes such as those above described are the basis of the strength and popular roots of xenophobic forces with traits directly dating back to fascism such as those of the Lega (Matteo Salvini) and Fratelli d’Italia (Giorgia Meloni). The latest opinion polls, for the first time give a plurality to a political force (Fratelli d’Italia) that has claimed roots in the experience of Italian fascism. The immediate cause of this right wing surge can be attributed to the crisis of the second Giuseppe Conte government which united together PD, Movimento 5 Stelle (5 Stars Movement), part of the left and Italia Viva, personal party of the former Prime Minister and former Secretary of the Democratic Party Matteo Renzi. 

The crisis caused by Renzi for that government (Conte 2), the most advanced possible, given the political and institutional situation, has led to a government of broad agreements chaired by the former President of the European Union Bank, Mario Draghi, with only the opposition of the right-wing party of Giorgia Meloni and left fringe groups. The wear and tear of the 5 Star Movement and the PD have produced three forces that, according to the voting polls, each amount to 20%, two of these are right-wingers (Fratelli d’Italia and Lega), who with the current electoral law could alone have the majority of seats in the Lower Chamber and in the Senate.  

Despite Matteo Renzi’s split, with the secretariat of Zingaretti of the PD, coming from the experience of the PCI (Italian Communist Party), much less with that of Enrico Letta, coming from the DC (Christian Democratic Party) and former Prime Minister, the PD failed to reconnect itself with the world of work and with the popular classes, assuming the trait of a substantially liberal/neoliberal force on the economic-social level defining itself positively, albeit with many contradictions, on the level of civil rights. A polarity that does not affect the consensus of the Right on the world of work and that gives it, albeit in words, the identity claim of the defense of the national interest. 

This is the opposite of what appears to be Biden’s orientation. Biden is aggressive in foreign policy, shows greater attention on the domestic level to give concrete answers to the world of work, especially with respect to the demand for social protection that has grown with the pandemic. 

In Italy, the lack of a significant experience on a mass level such as that represented by Bernie Sanders, capable of putting back into circulation the word socialism and the classic themes of social democratic experiences in northern Europe, consigns the political life of the country to an alternative/alternation between xenophobic and fascist Right and liberal center that completely cuts out the material needs of millions of male and female workers, handing them over to electoral abstention or voting on the Right.

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