Where have political affiliations gone? Many claim that the blurring of the contrast between opposing collective identities marks a shift in politics from ideological infatuation to a new, more pragmatic dimension. But the underlying reasons for the Left-Right conflict are all still out there on the ‘world’ stage, strengthened and magnified by the forces of globalization. What is most surprising is that this misting over of the Left’s identity should happen precisely when the scandal of inequality is exploding in all its fury throughout the planet. It is difficult not to feel that this undifferentiated convergence of political programmes and proposals, this renunciation of debate over fundamental questions – the kind capable of lending collective action meaning and direction – does not instead derive from an unspoken and unutterable impotence, from an objective absence of responses to vital questions about our collective existence. With globalization the entire public space has collapsed; unable to recoup it, the Left has lost – and with it all of politics – its material support.