L’eterno abietto: le classi popolari napoletane nelle rappresentazioni del Partito Comunista Italiano

This article examines the complex albeit rarely studied relationship between the PCI/PDS and the so-called ‘popular classes’ in Naples from the end of the Second World War to 1998. Despite the fact that the party after 1958 consistently received more votes in Naples than in Milan or Rome, the popular classes would always represent a dilemma for the Neapolitan institutional Left and its way of thinking about the city. On the one hand, the mobilization of the ‘lumpen’ city was considered a crucial goal for a communist politics, on the other, the ‘pre-political’ forms of life of the city’s subaltern classes were seen to pose an obstacle to such a project. Through an analysis of the writings of local party leaders and the communist daily press, the article illustrates how the relationship between the Left and the popular classes was reconfigured over time: from the aim of building class consciousness among the ‘lumpenproletariat’ to the goal, during the 1990s, of inculcating ‘civic consciousness’ among the Neapolitan people.