The Italian left wing as we know it is dead. We do not admit this because it opens a void which daily politics do not acknowledge. We can still console ourselves with regional elections or with a noisy demonstration. But the representative left wing, the Oak now broken, the Daisy now withered, the Olive Tree now without its trunk, has disappeared from the scene. They are not an opposition and an alternative, they are not even an alternation, to use this jargon. They have reached a level of subaltern and bashfulness not only towards right wing politics but to its point of view and its mentality in the international and internal contest.
I do not think they are doing it for opportunism and that it is attributable to single representatives. Since 1989 they have lost their historical position and their references and they have shifted to the other side, with some loss of clarity. They want to go back to governing, although it seems improbable, and they think that this depends on their relationship with the leading groups and with the moderate opinion of the majority and the right wing. They consider their third of the electorate an encumbrance rather than their only available resource.

With a consensual Parliamentary vote the war has been forgotten. Not the war against Iraq but the American pre-emptive and permanent war. They use the UN as a formal shelter and do not see the scenario which has been created. This is also true of the Italian scenario, where confrontation is only for propaganda. It is not just one soul and a thousand voices as a manifesto says, the soul has been missing for a long time and now there is no credible political face. This is a fact not a polemic.
We put much faith in movements where the presence and spirit of the left wing are manifested. But they are not an adequate force even on an international scale. Our ideas, the way we behave, our words, are antiquated in respect of the dynamic of things, in respect of reality and prospects.

We do not need a shifting but a profound political change. There is a humanity divided in two, above and below the institutions. Two incompatible parts divided in the way they feel and are, but not yet ready to act. Nothing manichean but another boundary must be marked and an estrangement established in regards to the other side. The right and left wings are superficial, vanished formulas which do not mark this boundary.

Even our 'flags', which are peace and civil co-existence, cannot be an option amongst others, but must be an implicit principle which implicates a conception of the world and of daily existence. Not a flag and an ideal, but a way of life. If today’s dominating section of humanity returned to its origins, with all today’s modern prostheses, it would make the ruling and the lever of history the killing and the bondage of itself and others. We must abolish every contiguity with this irreconcilable side.

An 'International' is another superseded word which should also be abolished but to which we are attached. Not a formal organisation but a myriad of women and men whose nationality, race, faith, political formation and religion are not important. Individuals but not atoms, who meet and identify with each other almost by instinct and enter into a natural and harmonious understanding. In our microcosm we called each other comrades with spontaneity but in a circumscribed and jealous milieu. Now it is an area without boundaries. It need not win tomorrow but should operate every day and “invade the pitch”. Its aim is to re-invent life in an era which is being deprived of it in ways never seen before.