Before the strange defeat: epistemic ruptures and political debates on socialism, Europe and democracy in the Italian Left (late 1970s–early 1990s)

This article focuses on the epistemic ruptures and political debates concerning socialism, Europe and democracy within the Italian Left from the global crises of the 1970s to the Eastern European transitions of the early 1990s. It explores the networks and trajectories of socialists who didn’t identify with Bettino Craxi’s socialist government and often challenged it. Although they were sharp critics of the Soviet Union, they had different attitudes towards the Italian communists. Particular attention is paid to Vittorio Foa, Antonio Giolitti, Bruno Trentin, Luciano Cafagna and Giuliano Amato, who belonged to different generations and engaged with East–West European left-wing cultures. Throughout the 1980s they sought to critically evaluate end redefine the twentieth-century left-wing concepts. They questioned the myth of the historical significance of the working class, addressed the crises of the Fordist model, Soviet-style statism and welfare states, as well as developed hybrid ideas of socialism, liberalism, reformism and Europeanism. In their effort to ‘reinvent the Left’, they made often controversial interventions in the contested political space between socialists and communists. They challenged previous leftist traditions by contrasting ‘neoliberalism’ in this way, but their ideas did not coalesce into a coherent ‘third way’ vision – let alone full acceptance of ‘neoliberalism’. Foa, Giolitti and their interlocutors remained rooted in the horizon of socialism. These ideas continued to circulate well after the end of the Cold War and the sudden disappearance of the Socialist Party, as well as the ambiguous transformation of the Communist Party. In the aftermath of the transitions to the Eastern European post-communist regimes and the collapse of the Italian party system between 1989 and 1993, however, their ideas experienced a ‘strange defeat’.