We should have learnt long ago to think with two minds: the mind of the inevitable and that of the unpredictable. It is from this dual perspective that we should consider the spring of 2027, when the countries of Mediterranean Europe – Italy, Spain, France and Greece – will go to the polls.

We cannot be sure of anything when we consider the future course of the storm currently raging – not even that we will still be here in the spring of ’27, nor that the minimum conditions of civilisation required to hold political elections will still exist at that time. Russian and Ukrainian nationalism, Zionist Nazism and the Trumpist warmongering mafia are clenching the continent’s fate in a fist, whilst from within a black wave is rising and racists are preparing to deliver the coup de grâce in Germany and the United Kingdom.

But let us suppose that in a year’s time we are still here: in that case, in the Mediterranean region we must expect the possible triumph of a sinister form of idiocy, unless some unforeseen political innovation emerges – something of which the existing left is, evidently, incapable.

Given how the game is unfolding, and given the contenders facing off in it, I would say that the bleakest of prospects seems inevitable: accelerated rearmament, war, recession, a proliferation of racist attacks, deportations, and the collapse of social conditions. But whilst this may seem inevitable, someone must address the unpredictable.

How is this done? The psychoanalyst Paul Watzlawick and the anthropologist Gregory Bateson speak of paradoxical therapy for those situations in which it seems impossible to cure a pathology resistant to all treatment: a therapeutic approach that consists of redefining the field and altering its boundaries, of disregarding the rules of the game and of blurring identities: paradoxical pragmatics.

Watzlawick referred to this as “restructuring the field”, and this restructuring involves changing the premises and the meaning we attribute to words, and delineating an unexpected framework for action that allows us to escape the trap posed by the established rules.

Restructuring does not alter the concrete facts, but rather the meanings attributed to the situation, and in this way establishes a “new game”.

Let us try to apply this methodology of paradox to the specific context of the upcoming general election, in which a racist and warmongering right wing is preparing to take over the entire continent and put an end once and for all to any hope of a tolerable life. For the sake of democracy and society as a whole, the existing left should have the courage to declare its own extinction in order to give rise to an unprecedented form of emergency electoral front that unequivocally denounces war, racism and slavery.

On Life and Death

The European left, particularly in Italy, has contributed to the ongoing catastrophe: it has encouraged the privatisation of social services, handed migrants over to Libyan concentration camps, condoned the illegal employment of migrant workers, and supported policies of war. Why on earth should we vote for people like Marco Minniti, a democratic executioner who implements the very same policies as Matteo Salvini?

The left has lost all credibility and cannot be reformed; but a radical question now arises that demands political forms different from those the left can conceive of.

In fact, the problem is not a temporary one, but a structural one: the left could win when the conditions for workers’ unity existed. Ultra-liberal globalisation has destroyed this possibility forever: the liberalisation of the labour market has introduced constant competition amongst workers, and immigration has led to a fragmentation of labour that eliminates any bargaining power.

Migration is an unstoppable phenomenon, ethically justified because the poor in the South are poor as a consequence of European colonisation, and economically necessary to offset the ageing and shrinking population of the North. Nevertheless, it must be recognised that the integration of migrant labour has led to a breakdown of the labour front that cannot be repaired in the name of abstract solidarity. Migrant labour has led to a fall in wages, and the ethnic, linguistic and cultural stratification of the workforce has caused fragmentation as well as internal mistrust within the world of work. No political effort can counteract this profound collapse.

Consequently, the Left can no longer win …