This book gathers texts that were published in the weekly column "Ideas" of the Newspaper of the Editors, as well as speeches delivered on various occasions and in different contexts.

The articles in the newspaper present works by past, modern, and contemporary thinkers such as Thomas Robert Malthus, David Ricardo, Max Weber, Edward Palmer Thompson, Zygmunt Bauman, Ernesto Laclau, Chantal Mouffe, Donald Sassoon, Timothy Snyder, Mariana Mazzucato, Konstantinos Tsoukalas, and others.

It also examines periods and experiences from the history of the communist and leftist movements, describes the conflicting tensions in the relationships between capitalism and democracy, and highlights the major strategic difficulties that the Left faces today globally.

The speeches refer, among other things, to the October Revolution, the Prague Spring, Primo Levi, and the memory of the Nazi genocide.

We are of course aware that nowadays, the understanding and interpretation of the world pass increasingly less through the reading of printed discourse and more through the filters of television, the internet, and social media.

In this new technological and communicative universe, we often become victims of media narratives that oversimplify or distort reality.

Communication tends to dominate in the political field as well, displacing substantial political contents, critical thinking, rational argumentation, ideas, and programs.

In the face of the immense power of large technological networks, digital platforms, or tomorrow's artificial intelligence, it is certain that printed discourse, the ideas circulating through books or newspapers, can no longer exert the same or even a similar influence in the public sphere.

Nevertheless, they can still help us regain our ability to study and critically analyze events, to realize the complexity of things, and to acquire primarily that kind of knowledge capable of orienting action.