Here I report my speech on Saturday, so that you can comment and criticize .... in the hope of many who still want a reconstructed left in Italy!
"It gives me great hope to know that the intuition of a unitary and plural left, drafted (and unfortunately wrecked) with the project of the Rainbow Left, who believed along with many others, you may finally have a its container of meaning and direction in terms of which method to go ...
At the birth of the Left here in the region, I have to express some thoughts with you, because that association not only become - a point of view organization - the prelude to a constituent phase and then maybe a new political entity, but also and above all - from a political standpoint theory - the push for a serious and critical reading of what it means, from my point of view, be left now before they do or say things to the left today.
I say this because the next step will be "the primary of ideas" (and then finally in the spotlight does not put the leadership or the political class, but the ideas and not cheap!) And then today I want to focus on a discussion of background , method ... in the sense that I will not go into the spheres of issues and policies (environment, labor, immigration, welfare were more or ...) but present only the theoretical tools, from my point of view, to be able to continue to feel "left" in a time when the loss seems to prevail.
1) ETHICS
First I put the question of ethics: I do believe in a post-industrial society as complex as ours, that ethics is the field that concerns the orientation of the basic choices, the whose objective is to improve not only the quality of life, but also the dignity of life of each of the inhabitants of this planet and my thoughts go especially to those who make more effort to live and now we live in a global crisis that will force you to put at the core of many of the struggles and difficulties in social reality, here as elsewhere ...
A new political entity must then be born with the knowledge that political life must be moralized, because it is subject to supervision by the true protagonist of the life of our society, namely the public and today, in our society, this view in some public way must be recreated ... Why?
Because on the one hand we are taken from the grip of a political
a) professionalized, because the political class is becoming more separate, more and more professionalized and that professionalism is not goes wrong, mind you, only that professionalism can not be something separate from the dynamics of society.
b) archaic, where the language of politics is one of the languages \u200b\u200bthat are most anachronistic and has nothing to do with the richness of the language we use in our daily lives or who use art and a certain type of literature ... the language delay is a major indicator: when the language of a particular sphere of society is set back from the social dynamic, well then there must be able to intervene ... and I hope we can do it all together, starting with a serious reflection on the need for replacement generation of the political class and the fact that a decrease in the people who decide to make policy in the parties and those parties in the decision-making.
c) and oligarchic precisely where the oligarchical model we see often powerless, which relies on surveys and a logic of pure achievement of consensus, as if it were the sale or exchange of a product, is now a model very common even on the left: look at reality television and to give its assent to the choices of the few who decide for all through the polls, the ballot box or referendum, it produces a democracy deficit. Went down the sites of policy making and the number of people participating in these places and orientation of common sense has as its protagonists increasingly the media and who has access to these and less those that the policy should be. For
the other hand we are instead taken from the grip of communication systems more and more, as it were, removed from democratic control, control of public opinion: in fact witnessing a "diminishing political nature of discourses of politics" and a " politicization of the non-political "(entertainment programs, shows, ..) which takes the place of politics radically changing the meanings and language: the politics becomes more declamatory and superficial increasingly distant from reality, while the non-political sense fills the lives of people / consumers, inventing fake realities.
Well, I believe that the public sphere should be recreated just like something in between these two poles and is subtracted from the grip at the bite of these two poles.
Talking about the centrality of ethics does not mean then to speak of "ethical state", which in many, even just to the right of us, they would like (and an example of all, the case Englaro, tells us how even a choice with a so delicate and personal profile can be unbearably declined in this sense): ethical state is a disaster, because the state must not have a function, say, ethics training, but should only give the tools to each of us to be able to guide the awareness of the centrality of secular state. I believe that the fundamental role of education, public education. I emphasize this because it is highly topical: will public education is essential for the reconstruction of public ethics.
finally talking of ethics means to me is talk of crisis of values, but also tell us that it is desertification of values, but rather a kind of fragmentation values \u200b\u200band ethical disorientation has been and remains a problems on the left hand with the end of ideological blocs, that somehow affords each of us of the areas of membership, and the resulting crisis of ideology we have witnessed a pluralization of values. These values \u200b\u200bare not only many, but is also often in conflict with each other. And then we have to say that this crisis of values \u200b\u200bis also a crisis of unity and homogeneity of the modern subject, which is no longer, say, a subject compact, self-referential, creating a unique identity so. But it is a person who lives within himself, the conflict between values. This is the key point: it lives inside. That is, the conflict is not only between us and Muslims or between us and so on and so forth, etc. ... No. The conflict of values \u200b\u200bis within each one of us (even on the left, for example, the conjugation between worker protection and environmental protection can no longer be a cause of division between operational and environmental identity, but must be able to rise to a synthesis necessary!) and therefore we have to ask the question of a new ethical consideration, that binds:
a) on one side to a more articulated vision of the subject (and society) and that of my point of view must meet the criterion of secularism above all, that is linked closely to the in connection with the world ... relational ethic! We must repeat that our identity is not substantially identical, static, as if to say "secured from source to end," but it is a dynamic identity that we, from time to time, we reconstruct biographically and that has to do with our capacity from time to time to choose, to choose one thing rather than another, to change, let us also contaminate the identities of others, other ...
b) and across a substantial questioning of our model development, to seek a political project, making it the center and the commons then the theme of the decline the only way to make sense of our being in relationship with the world, understood as a unique community of people and land as the mother of all the inhabitants of the planet ...
In all these directions and then want me to tell you how is very clear that the separation of ethics from politics will be for the common cause of disasters, and even more so for a left that wants to renew ...
2) Nonviolence
The second element that I want to offer to the debate is the current of historical necessity absolutely not afraid to open the political conflict, to raise a healthy democratic political discourse (sometimes in My brief experience in town I got the impression she's dead even in the dead center!), provided we are convinced of the need to practice large-scale exploration of effective methods of nonviolent struggle from those used by the working classes in the struggle between capital and labor, than those charged by Gandhi, Martin Luther King and many others in the struggle for independence of a people or the affirmation of basic human rights than those charged by many women's movements, to those charged by many citizens that of non-violence and civil disobedience did request tool to re-democratize our democracy ... and I think especially the movement in recent years, from the Social Forum in which I played for a long time or "No Tav", the "No Dal Molin", the 'wave' of today and many others ...
I believe that the power dynamic (which coincides with violent attitudes), so that the left part of the political class does not seem to be able to leave (and I continue to report to have suffered from my own constituency!) And deeply at odds with an ethical policy in the way I understand it, but I feel in good company with many of my teachers and many of my teachers: nonviolent activists and thinkers from many women in the feminist movement that accompanied
my political career ... I believe that the political struggle is not, by nature, closely related to the use of deceit or fraud or violence or otherwise linked to pure power dynamics, played on the exchange of favors. ... Instead, I believe that human beings, even when they act in groups and in conflict situations aimed, may be able to behave and react in a humane way, because I think they are influenced by the appeal to reason, empathy and nonviolent pressure. I believe that the history of relations between politics and ethics, from this point of view, is the story of the continuing attempt to moralize politics by creating situations and institutions that limit and reduce some so the use of violence and promote the tools of dialogue, compromise fair and peaceful resolution of conflicts. That humanity has not yet managed to overcome these violent methods to those of power, does not mean that another world is possible! I believe in the need to translate this policy into practice ethical tension!
3) THE GLOBAL-LOCAL CONNECTION
My political career has gone through the motions, from Genoa to Porto Alegre, from Florence to Vicenza, in observing and listening to the experiences of the peoples of Latin America, of 'Asia and Africa, of those thousands of people who come to our country running away from terrible situations, hunger, war and persecution. In listening to the movements of people who tell us that we, despite the economic crisis we are experiencing, the precariousness of a labor market increasingly savage and disrespectful of the rights and health of workers, even though banks and caste with which we live We are still part of that 20% of humanity living on 80% of available resources.
saying this I say that today a new left can not be separated from its political action consider local problems as being related to a global context : this is evident when it comes to immigration, climate, but it must be when we speak work, when we culture, development of the economic system, urban planning, when we plan the logistics, when we think about tourism in our area or when we think about education policy, university. And this not only because the total has been here for us as it is local, but also for the principle that has always inspired the left that is solidarity, which must cover not only our new poverty, but must always take account of existing and increasing poverty, even with our action in the room can help to increase or decrease.
4) PARTICIPATION
too often even our politics the left is filled with the participation not only mouth the word without knowing what it is or what it might really be, but also to exploit it for electoral purposes, without giving serious content and thus disqualifying a revolutionary concept rich in content.
speak of participation for me is to say that while this is not to make any consultation, negotiation or selective hearing of citizens, but it means opting for a radical, substantive, structural form, starting from the centrality be given to the territory as a living subject . This fact, in my imagination of participation is built on a complex set of relationships between:
1) natural (natural resources with related environmental issues)
2) built environment (the city, the facilities, the "landscape" produced by man) and
3) anthropic environment (the company established, culture, civil structure, knowledge of the people who live ...).
Here, I believe that the relationship between these three elements are indivisible penalty land degradation in pure "space" and if this report will not be put the center of the reconstruction methods that govern political action you never left plus the ability to regain the credibility that the left has lost in recent years! The same
participation also connects unequivocally the relationship between local and global. Why give birth to many movements and engine bottom-up participation at the local level and disseminate the practice is to give people the tools to cope with strong powers. Those powers that be in which decisions are not made based on democratic practices and in accordance with the purposes of a public good and that their lack of ethics of our ruling classes are often the weak point in order to achieve their own ends. How little is enough to buy a multi-national political elites in many poor countries and implement decisions that go exactly against the interests of citizens? Today means starting to make participation in local answers to global problems.
Many of you know me for my delegation to the budget participatory and in this sense I want to tell you that this form of city government - let's call for simplification of "co-decision between managers and managed" - responds to the necessity of already mentioned "re-democratize democracy," because it is the result of a sort of rethinking of the link between direct democracy and representative democracy, where participation is therefore a reconstruction of a common interest in understanding what is best to do for that area in terms of living conditions and living!
Finally, and taking some points that I highlighted, I want to tell you that from my point of view:
- left or we will make preferential options
1) for the moralization of politics
2) for non-violence in politics
3) for the participation
- or will not be able to build or public opinion or to make "choices part of "an authoritative or involve many more people who do not vote and that in the next we are going to build a whole would find important references."
