It is the duty of the Republic to remove those obstacles of an economic or social nature which constrain the freedom and equality of citizens, thereby impeding the full development of the human person and the effective participation of all workers in the political, economic and social organization of the country.

Calamandrei added:

It is the task (of the Republic) to remove the obstacles that forbid the full development of the human being. Therefore, give everybody a job, give everybody a fair wage, give everybody an education, give all men the dignity of human beings. Only when this is achieved will we be able to say that the content of the first article, ‘Italy is a democratic Republic, founded on labour’, has become a reality. Because unless every person has the possibility of working and studying and of drawing security from his/her job the means of living as a human being, not only our Republic won’t be able to be called ‘founded on labour’, but we won’t even be able to call it democratic, because a democracy in which there isn’t this real equality, in which there is only an equality of right, is merely a formal democracy. It is not a democracy in which all the citizens can really contribute to the life of society, to give their best contribution, in which all the spiritual forces of all the citizens can be used to contribute to this process, to this constant progress, of the whole society.

Indifference to politics, non-participation: that’s the danger that Calamandrei feared. And in the end this is precisely the aim of the mudslinging machine, of the ruthless mechanism of delegitimization. To get us to say ‘They are all alike’, ‘We are all alike.’ Responding to the failure of the political system by generalizing, by saying ‘We are all alike’, is the fastest way to sink the ship on which we all find ourselves.