Democrats of The Left - Factions

Factions

Inside the party were several organized political tendency associations. Inside the party, there was often a somewhat simplistic distinction between reformists (riformisti) and radicals (radicali or massimalisti), indicating respectively the mainstream or the left-wing area, formerly known as Correntone.

The core of the social-democratic party majority wasn't related to a specific tendency association, although several smaller movements, splits of former centrist or centre-left Italian parties, related to it. These were the Labourites – Liberal Socialists (Laburisti – Socialisti Liberali), Reformist Europe (Europa Riformista) and the Sicilian Reformist Movement (Movimento Riformista) all from the Italian Socialist Party, the Social Christians (Cristiano Sociali) from the left-wing of Christian Democracy, the Republican Left (Sinistra Repubblicana) from the left-wing of the Italian Republican Party and the Liberal Left (Sinistra Liberale) from the left wing of the Italian Liberal Party.

On the right wing the Liberal association had a moderate Third Way or radical center political agenda. This faction was included in the party majority in later years, while a dissident group left it, in opposition to the creation of the Democratic Party, and formed a new faction, named Socialists and Europeans.

Before the 2007 convention, the left-wing opposition was led by the DS Left-wing-Returning to win (Sinistra DS-Per tornare a vincere), a left-wing democratic socialist tendency, with other smaller groups including DS Left-wing for Socialism (Sinistra DS per il Socialismo), left-wing democratic socialists and the Ecologist Left (Sinistra Ecologista), left-wing environmentalists. As most of their members left the party in refusal of the Democratic Party foundation, their subsequent composition and weight was unclear.

Several personalities formerly inside or close to the left-wing area of the party, as Pietro Folena, Pietro Ingrao and Achille Occhetto approached or joined the Communist Refoundation Party which, from its sixth congress held in January 2005, was moving towards a more heterogeneous, non-sectarian and strongly pacifist kind of left-wing party.