It was launched in December 2017 as a left-wing joint electoral list of anti-capitalist parties and movements which ran in the 2018 general election.

[7][8] In its manifesto, PaP's membership is described as "social and political, anti-liberal and anti-capitalist, communist, socialist, environmentalist, feminist, secular, pacifist and southernist left-wing", whose goal as a coalition is "to create real democracy, through daily practices, self-governance experiments, socialisation of knowing and popular participation".

[20] Contextually, that same day Viola Carofalo, a Naples-based university researcher in philosophy who had been a long-time activist of Ex OPG Je so' pazzo, was chosen as national spokesperson and as political leader on 6 January 2018.

[26][27] In July 2021 senator Matteo Mantero, elected with the Five Star Movement, joined the party, giving it representation in the Italian Parliament.

[28] After its founding in December 2017, PaP took inspiration from Momentum, the organisation supporting Jeremy Corbyn's leadership of the Labour Party in the United Kingdom and La France Insoumise, whose leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon spoke of a "common adventure for the construction of a people's alternative for Europe".