New Social Conflicts and the Crisis of Internationalism

This chapter analyzes how, in the period 1968–1969, both Italian and French Communists, in different forms, rely on a Popular-frontist perspective, of the alliance between all the democratic and revolutionary forces, aimed at conquering the national government. Although they remained the main subjects of the political and social opposition in Italy and France, they did not play this role in a context analogous to that of the Liberation and the first postwar period, when they held a substantial hegemony of the movements. From 1966–1967, in fact, the left was dominated by the activity of heterogeneous formations, which were created and strengthened in the social and cultural ferment determined by the development of neo-capitalism, decolonization, and the crisis of Stalinism. This phenomenon, which has completely new characteristics and is intended to grow, weakens the balance achieved through the recovery of the “frontist” paradigm.