Left or Right?

Friday’s NYT has an obit for an Italian anti-fascist, Vittorio Foa, who recently
died at 98. Jailed by Mussolini, he led a left-wing labor union after WWII and
was a socialist senator. The Times describes him delicately as “a leading
intellectual of the non-Communist left [who] in the 1960s inspired some
extra-parliamentary leftist groups.”

La Repubblica published his impatient answer to the question of what today’s
left should do:

It’s a waste of time and sense to try to define a leftist identity. You have to do what’s right and necessary for the country. It’s up to posterity to decide whether it came from the right or the left.

Amen. Requiescat in pace. La lotta continua.