Demands for modernization

In this chapter, I shall consider the analytical frame developed in the foregoing chapters against the context of contemporary Italy. That country, with the vigour of its cultural and social development and the often dramatic display of the complexity of its political life, has attracted the attention of different observers, whether political, academic, or journalistic in intent. Government instability, innovative dynamism and recurrent economic recession, creative cultural life and terrorism, conservative elites and traditionally the strongest communist party in the West now caught in a profound identity change – these represent some of the characteristic problems of Italian society that make it an attractive object of investigation, and not the least so for those interested in analysing the crises and the transformation of social movements since the 1970s. In what follows, I want to participate in the discussion on the Italian case by proceeding to apply the theoretical hypotheses advanced in the previous chapters to an analysis of a concrete socio-political context. But in this, my analysis is not limited to a mere demonstration of the viability of an analytical framework; it, I believe, will moreover shed light on a general question that occupies the mind of the critical analyst today: What has become of the Left politics in our time?

Italy has witnessed the growth of antagonist movements in the situation of structural distortions of development and a blocked process of social and political modernization.