Paper short abstract:

This paper shows how a progressive disintegration of ‘class’ as the social-organizational paradigm through which sovereignty was practiced, has been a crucial factor in the structural re-organization of the Italian political universe, and of the diverse ideological forms that animate it.

Paper long abstract:

New movements have recently arisen in Italy around the claim of being 'neither left nor right'. Beppe Grillo's M5S, the so called 'Rakes Movement' and the fascist inspired 'Students Block' all base their activism on a strong opposition to EU politics, the effects of advanced capitalism and mostly on a thorough anti-establishment discourse. The paper shows how similar political idioms were deployed during the 1970s in the early years of the Italian economic crisis, de-industrialization and austerity. Groups like the so called 'Nazi-Maoists' or the 'Third Position' preached the fusion of left and right as part of a wider rebellion, of what they termed 'the people' against 'the state'. Like the contemporary movements referred to above, they denounced the connivance of all established parties with the interests of finance capital, and, in part as a result, saw themselves as dispossessed of any possibility of control over their own lives. Ultimately, this paper seeks to show how a progressive disintegration of 'class' as the social-organizational paradigm through which sovereignty was practiced and articulated into politics has been a crucial factor in the structural re-organization of the Italian political universe, and of the diverse ideological forms that animate it.