"Una cosa di sinistra" (and class struggle). The book by Democrat Lorenzo Pacini

Do not be misled by the seemingly institutional presentation on 29 September ‘at’ Feltrinelli Duomo, as they say in Milan, nor by the progressive publisher (Ponte alle Grazie), which is, however, firmly embedded within a large holding company (Mauri Spagnol) with solid roots that are by no means ultra-proletarian. Make no mistake: “Una cosa di sinistra – come far tornare alla politica chi non ci crede più”, the book by 30-year-old Lorenzo Pacini—a Democratic Party councillor for the First Municipality in the Lombard capital and a long-standing self-nominated candidate for mayor for the centre-left ahead of future primaries—is exactly what it claims to be. A left-wing affair, but of the far-left variety – so far to the left that even Varoufakis would pale in comparison – and this is evident right from the epigraph: ‘Dedicated to those who do not give up, to those who do not believe in vain hope, but only in collective happiness’. And there is more. The book is a manifesto with a capital M, in the sense of Marx and Engels, who, across the centuries, echo like a footnote, and in a practical sense: on line ten, in fact, Pacini writes what he told the people of Milan a few months ago, before the unofficial candidate Mario Calabresi emerged from the realm of podcasts.

And so: “I wrote ‘Una Cosa di Sinistra’ to explain how we need to put people and their needs back at the heart of politics, and how we can do this now, starting from Milan. I am on the left because I believe in the well-being of the many over the privilege of the few. And because I believe that socialism will always be the only alternative to barbarism. I am on the left because I believe we can only be happy if everyone is happy. I am also a member of the PD, and I am standing as a candidate to become mayor of my city”. The programme of candidate Pacini – who has also, in the meantime, been interviewed by Vanity Fair – thus takes shape in all its purity (forget about car tax), after a summer spent handing out watermelons in deprived neighbourhoods sweltering in the heatwave. In Milan, according to an urban legend, the councillor—facing an unusually hot September and astonished by the premature disappearance of watermelons from supermarket shelves—went so far as to search for them outside the city limits, while the most mischievous among his followers joked about a possible plot by some supporter of the Democratic Party’s regional councillor Piefrancesco Majorino, the man who (in theory) was supposed to be the first to register for the primaries. Whether they failed to spot Pacini’s arrival at the Nazareno, or whether they simply prefer to leave Milan to the Milanese – primaries and all – the fact remains that the candidate’s manifesto leaves nothing to the imagination. It’s all about: redistribute, redistribute, redistribute; tax the rich, tax the rich, tax the rich. The first chapter ("I miliardari non sono un modello, ma il nemico") sets the tone: with a few billionaires who are a little less billionaire-like, so the argument goes, we’d be much better off, in this scenario of stagnant social mobility and a Left that doesn’t talk about money ("La sinistra deve parlare di soldi", as chapter two advises).

In fact: we’d be better off with a few fewer billionaires in the city, given that, as Pacini says, billionaires these days almost never bring investment, but almost always speculation, artificially inflating the property market – not to mention cryptocurrencies. It follows that, to get the social ladder moving again, we must ‘return to the class struggle’ (if you don’t believe it, read chapter four, ‘Lotta di classe intergenerazionale’). Moreover, the recipe for a “revolution in Milan” (and potentially beyond), in addition to the wealth tax, naturally, calls for “municipal socialism” grounded in widespread “mutualism” (in the very city of luxury), to address the “one and only real emergency: the social one” (migrant landings or Maranza need not be mentioned – that is the point). Meanwhile, Pacini adds that, in addition to beginning to discuss wealth, comrades should open their eyes: “The enemy of the people doesn’t arrive on a yacht, but in a private jet.”