Class Dealignment Has Devastated the Italian Left
In Italy, blue-collar industrial workers are abandoning the Left. As in other countries, they don’t represent the entire working class, but their loss of support should still deeply trouble the Italian left.
A construction worker in Milan, Italy, on October 2, 2023. (Emanuele Cremaschi / Getty Images)
“We defend workers better than the caviar left!” Campaigning for November’s regional elections in Emilia-Romagna and Umbria, Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni was sure to emphasize her party’s connection to ordinary people. She argued that her coalition is “rooted in the heart of society, far from VIP salons and the radical-chic left’s lobbies.” While TV panel shows might make it seem like the so-called “salon left” is influential — Meloni told her supporters — any politician visiting a street market will see how “the people” support her government.
This rhetoric is not new: Italy’s far-right politicians have often used it in their culture war against the Left. They portray themselves as defenders of a supposed traditionalist hardworking people who stand against an elite in its progressive ivory towers. This elite, in their narrative, ranges from the moderate center-left Democratic Party to far-left activists and squatted social centers. In this way, the Italian right developed its own language of class politics, defining it in terms of cultural preferences rather than relationship to production. Terms like “caviar left,” the “salon left,” “ZTL left” (referring to the pricey historic city centers where restricted traffic zones, or ZTL, are enforced), “Rolex communists,” and “radical-chic left” are widely popularized through far-right rhetoric, from Meloni to Lega leader Matteo Salvini. These expressions were so ingrained in their rise to power that they are now familiar in Italians’ everyday language.
This is, without doubt, propaganda. It is a calculated and effective narrative crafted by the far right to present itself as fresh and appealing, adopting the customs, language, and culture of everyday Italians, to appear as though they are “one of them.” This image, however, stands in stark contrast to the reality: Firstly, the current government enjoys excellent relations with Italy’s capitalist elite (and foreign counterparts as well, as Meloni’s friendly ties with Elon Musk indicates). Secondly, under Meloni’s government, the material conditions of Italy’s working class have continued to decline, along with the quality of public services that primarily benefit them, such as public transport and the health care system.
Yet, as is often the case with political narratives, no matter how much they exploit, distort, or alter facts, they are nonetheless rooted in them. Stripping away all the hypocrisy and misleading framing reveals a real and pressing issue: class dealignment. Simply put, this describes the growing tendency of working-class individuals to move away from a political alignment with the Left, despite its historical role as the political voice of this same class. If the Right has been able to develop a culture-based class narrative, this is precisely because left-wing class politics retreated.
This issue has sparked increasing attention and debate among the Left in various countries, from France to the United States. It gained renewed prominence during the recent US elections, where Donald Trump further expanded his support among low-income voters. As Jared Abbott aptly noted, class dealignment for the Left represents “the defining political challenge of our time.” In Italy, too, this is a major challenge: the Left has increasingly distanced itself from its historic working-class electoral base over the last decades, leaving a disoriented electorate that the Right has been partially able to win over.
However, this issue tends to receive little attention within Italy’s activist-left circles. Some are quick to deny this reality by focusing on minor segments of the working class that remain left-leaning — such as precarious knowledge workers, as we will see shortly — or by emphasizing specific instances of synergy between the militant left and radicalized factory workers. While these examples, like the case of the former GKN factory, are significant and commendable, they hardly reflect the broader national picture.
Others may not deny class dealignment outright, but they still consciously or unconsciously avoid engaging with it. This is likely because the Left’s disconnect from the working class has become a rallying point for the Right that successfully seized and framed it. It is no coincidence that, while the term “class dealignment” itself lacks an established equivalent in Italian language, right-leaning expressions describing this phenomenon are, as we have seen, not in short supply. This may have created a growing reluctance on the Left to engage with the topic, as it now evokes a narrative dominated by right-wing talking points and values.
Unsurprisingly, some figures with a leftist background have gradually shifted to the right precisely by internalizing this pervasive right-wing narrative. A prime example is Marco Rizzo, the former leader of a small Communist Party (one of multiple contenders for this name), who is now allied with minor far-right groups and ultraconservative Catholic figures, in the name of a supposed popular hostility toward the progressive elite.
The Left is right not to buy into the right-wing’s distorted narrative on class dealignment and to distance itself from those who did buy into it, such as Rizzo. However, this should not lead to the comfortable overlooking of class dealignment, simply because it has been popularized in a way that sounds right-wing. Even worse, it should not result in self-consoling denial based on praiseworthy but unrepresentative counterexamples.
In other words, while it is wise to avoid being trapped by the Right’s framing, the Italian left cannot afford to deny or ignore the problem altogether. Class dealignment is a real and pressing issue that demands strategic reflection from those on the Left who aim to build broad working-class support.
The Invisible Vote
A key element of this story that the Right consciously forgets, is that the working-class votes lost by the Left do not necessarily shift to the Right; more often, they result in abstention. For example, in the 2022 Italian general election, 49.4 percent of individuals with a “low” economic status (1 on a scale from 1 to 5) either did not vote or refused to make a choice (submitted a blank ballot), compared with only 27.5 percent among those with a “high” economic status (5 on the same scale). In the 2024 European elections in Italy, this nonvoting by those with low economic status reached an astonishing 75.7 percent. Rather than abandoning the “woke, elite-centered left” to rally behind the “concrete, people-centered right,” as their narrative suggests, low-income workers simply — and dramatically — abandoned politics altogether.
One of the great strengths of left-wing class politics was its ability to empower workers by fostering a forward-looking sense of class power. This was rooted in its success in achieving collective reforms that improved workers’ lives and in its capacity to build associations and organizations shaped by working-class life and its worldview. While the Left has largely lost this ability, it is not something the Right has succeeded in replicating, nor does it appear willing to pursue.
As mentioned earlier, in November 2024, regional elections were held in Emilia-Romagna, a historically left-wing region, and Umbria, which had been governed by the Right. In both cases, Meloni’s candidates were defeated, challenging her campaign claims of ever-mounting popular support. However, what is particularly striking is the voter turnout: 46.4 percent in Emilia-Romagna and 52.3 percent in Umbria. This represents a decline of 21.3 percent in the former case and 12.4 percent in the latter compared to the respective previous elections. This happened even despite a change to let people vote across two days — a longer window that typically favors higher turnout. While specific data on voter demographics is unavailable, it is not difficult to imagine which part of the population stayed home.
A Left for the Educated?
When discussing class dealignment, we must consider an additional, crucial factor: education level and the distinct cultural capital it provides. Education has emerged as a key predictor of voting behavior, with higher levels of education increasingly linked to left-leaning preferences in many elections in Europe. French economist Thomas Piketty even coined the term “Brahmin Left” to describe a Left increasingly reliant on highly educated, culturally elite individuals. Education is not necessarily a good proxy for income or class, and equating them can result in misleading conclusions. Contemporary stratification systems feature weaker correlations between hierarchies, meaning that high cultural status does not always align with economic wealth — and vice versa.
This was evident in the first round of the 2024 French elections. Among low-income individuals (those earning less than €1,250 per month), Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National (RN) scored slightly better than the left-wing Nouveau Front Populaire (NFP), but the margin was narrow: 38 percent for RN versus 35 percent for NFP. Both did better among low-income voters than among the general electorate (34 percent for RN, 28.1 percent for NFP). However, when we look at education level, the difference becomes striking: among individuals without a secondary education (baccalauréat), RN support soared to 49 percent, while the NFP’s dropped to 17 percent. In contrast, among those with a bachelor’s degree (bac+3), NFP not only led with 37 percent of the vote but did so with a substantial 15-point lead over both RN and Emmanuel Macron’s Ensemble, each at 22 percent.
In Italy, right-wing parties collectively outperformed left-wing ones among low-income voters in the June 2024 EU elections, if only barely. Among voters in the lowest economic bracket, the broad right-wing camp secured 48 percent of the vote compared to 47 percent for all left-wing parties. Only in the low-middle economic bracket did the Right have a major advantage: 52 percent against the Left’s 42 percent. However, the differences become much wider when looking at education. Among those without secondary education, the Right had a 59-37 percent advantage. Conversely, among individuals with a university degree, the Left dominated, garnering 61 percent of the vote against the Right’s 34 percent.
What emerges, then, is not only a decline in the Left’s ability to attract working-class voters but, more significantly, a deepening divide in electoral preferences within the working class itself, along educational lines. Manual and low-skilled workers are increasingly leaning toward abstention or right-wing parties, while knowledge workers largely support the Left.
This issue is also closely related to activism and candidate profiles. Today the ranks of left-wing activists include a disproportionately large number of well-educated but downwardly mobile individuals compared to their representation within the working class. The same trend is evident among candidates, as those with higher education overwhelmingly dominate many contemporary left-wing parties.
For example, based on my estimates from the resumés of all candidates for Italy’s left-wing coalition Alleanza Verdi e Sinistra (AVS) at the 2024 EU elections, 80.6 percent hold a master’s degree or equivalent (five years of university education), while only 14 percent of Italians overall do so — a figure that would likely drop further if focusing solely on Italy’s working class. This disparity clearly highlights a serious problem with the representation of the working-class electorate the Left aims to engage. Unsurprisingly, in the European election, AVS got 11 percent among those with a bachelor’s degree, but only 3 percent among those without a school leaving certificate. Yet it seems obvious that the Left’s candidates should represent the working class in all its diversity, not just its most educated segment.
Common-Sense, Progressive Universalism
Education thus complicates the strategic questions around class dealignment. The challenge is not only to build a left-wing politics with working-class appeal, but also to ensure it resonates with its diverse members, across educational backgrounds. This requires focusing on issues shared across the broader working population — despite the differing life experiences shaped by varying education levels — such as job insecurity, rising rent prices, declining public services like health care, and wages that don’t keep pace with inflation.
While the era of left-wing populism in Europe may have faded, one crucial lesson endures: much of its electoral success came from its ability to foster a common identity around clear, shared progressive goals that transcended inevitable differences among the people. Regardless of the policies concerned — including those that primarily benefit particular minority groups — it seems crucial to frame them from a unifying, universalist perspective, i.e., as proposals that contribute to the improvement of society as a whole. That means fostering a sense of shared identification that transcends particular differences, even without denying their existence.
To craft a message that resonates across the entire working class, regardless of education level, it seems essential to use a language and a way of framing things that draws on common sense and is accessible to everyone. If a left-wing project leans too heavily on theory-laden rhetoric, complex linguistic registers, and political etiquette, then it will only reach individuals who have a handle on this vocabulary and these manners.
This creates barriers for people who lack the cultural capital to navigate such specialized cultural codes and conventions. Clearly, this does not imply that we should stop producing deep political reflections or complex analyses. It simply underscores the obvious: the language and cultural register should always adapt to the collective context and the audience. An academic conference is not a political rally, and vice versa.
Such a discussion about language, aesthetics, and symbols also highlights the importance, for the Left, of drawing on culturally resonant, nationally rooted references — what Antonio Gramsci called the “national-popular” — in a progressive way. This is no simple task, and in recent years Italian right-wingers have excelled at appropriating national identity and belonging, infused with their own traditionalist and exclusionary values. Yet, however challenging, this remains an important strategic objective, since the popular classes, especially those with lower levels of education, tend to be more “nationalized” in their culturalization process. This means they are more responsive to the nation’s symbols, codes, and references, compared to individuals with higher educational backgrounds, who tend to be more culturally cosmopolitan.
Class dealignment is an issue that needs confronting head-on, with particular attention to the challenge posed by different educational backgrounds. There is, however, reason for hope: there are also exceptions to class dealignment around Europe, from which Italy’s left can learn — both from mainstream center-left parties and more radical-left movements. For instance, Spain’s center-left has highest support among lower-income brackets, without the ruling Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party being a “culturally conservative” force. The same holds true for the rising star of Europe’s radical left, the Workers’ Party of Belgium, whose support grows in low-income areas and drops in higher-income ones.
The Left urgently needs strategies to more effectively communicate with the entire working class and to represent all its segments within its ranks. This must be achieved without succumbing to the right-wing narrative that creates a false divide between conservative common people and privileged progressives. While this is no easy task, it is a critical one. Such efforts could halt class dealignment and pave the way for winning back working-class voters from abstention or the appeal of the Right.