Passive revolution is a transformation of the political and institutional structures without strong social processes by ruling classes for their own self-preservation. The phrase was coined by the

Marxist Marxism is a political philosophy and method of socioeconomic analysis. It uses a dialectical and materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to analyse class relations, social conflic ...

politician and philosopher

Antonio Gramsci Antonio Francesco Gramsci ( , ; ; 22 January 1891 – 27 April 1937) was an Italian Marxist philosophy, Marxist philosopher, Linguistics, linguist, journalist, writer, and politician. He wrote on philosophy, Political philosophy, political the ...

during the

interwar period In the history of the 20th century, the interwar period, also known as the interbellum (), lasted from 11 November 1918 to 1 September 1939 (20 years, 9 months, 21 days) – from the end of World War I (WWI) to the beginning of World War II ( ...

in Italy.

Gramsci's use of the term

Passive revolution describes a gradual but continuous reorganization of the state and economy in order to preserve the power of the elite by incorporating or neutralizing the power of adversarial groups through transforming them into partners, all without overcoming the fundamental social contradictions. Gramsci argued that when a social group lacks the strength to establish

hegemony Hegemony (, , ) is the political, economic, and military predominance of one State (polity), state over other states, either regional or global. In Ancient Greece (ca. 8th BC – AD 6th c.), hegemony denoted the politico-military dominance of ...

, it will instead choose a path where its interests and demands will "be satisfied by small doses, legally, in a reformist manner-- in such a way that it was possible to preserve the political and economic positions of the old ruling class." This "avoid the popular masses going through a period of political experience such as occurred in France in the years of

Jacobinism A Jacobin (; ) was a member of the Jacobin Club, a revolutionary political movement that was the most famous political club during the French Revolution (1789–1799). The club got its name from meeting at the Dominican rue Saint-Honoré ...

." Gramsci uses "passive revolution" in a variety of contexts with slightly different meanings. The primary usage is to contrast the passive transformation of

bourgeois The bourgeoisie ( , ) are a class of business owners, merchants and wealthy people, in general, which emerged in the Late Middle Ages, originally as a "middle class" between the peasantry and Aristocracy (class), aristocracy. They are tradition ...

society in 19th-century Italy with the active revolutionary process of the bourgeoisie in France. Whereas the French case is seen by Gramsci as an authentic revolution guided by social forces, the Italian case was 'elite-driven'; a process of modernization that did not disrupt the social arrangements of power in Italy but instead modernized it on the behalf of elite classes to secure their own position. The change described is not abrupt but a slow and gradual

metamorphosis Metamorphosis is a biological process by which an animal physically develops including birth transformation or hatching, involving a conspicuous and relatively abrupt change in the animal's body structure through cell growth and different ...

that may take years or generations to accomplish. In addition to his comparison of the French Revolution versus the Italian case, Gramsci also associates

Italian fascism Italian fascism (), also called classical fascism and Fascism, is the original fascist ideology, which Giovanni Gentile and Benito Mussolini developed in Italy. The ideology of Italian fascism is associated with a series of political parties le ...

with the notion of passive revolution. Gramsci also used the term for the mutations of the structures of

capitalist Capitalism is an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and their use for the purpose of obtaining profit. This socioeconomic system has developed historically through several stages and is defined by ...

economic production that he recognized primarily in the development of the US factory system of the 1920s and 1930s. Passive revolution is detailed by Gramsci as an elite process of state restructuring in Italy specifically, but it has been used as a frame of analysis for viewing other transitions to capitalist modernity.

Usage since Gramsci

'Passive revolution has been characterized by the quote from Prince Don Fabrizio Corbera of Salina in Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa’s novel '' Il Gattopardo'': ‘Everything must change so that everything can remain the same’. Professor Yiching Wu writes that China's post-Mao reforms were an example of passive revolution. The

Chinese Communist Party The Communist Party of China (CPC), also translated into English as Chinese Communist Party (CCP), is the founding and One-party state, sole ruling party of the People's Republic of China (PRC). Founded in 1921, the CCP emerged victorious in the ...

under

Deng Xiaoping Deng Xiaoping also Romanization of Chinese, romanised as Teng Hsiao-p'ing; born Xiansheng (). (22 August 190419 February 1997) was a Chinese statesman, revolutionary, and political theorist who served as the paramount leader of the People's R ...

coped with socioeconomic woes through consolidating its power, using market mechanisms and commodification to create controlled openings "to buy precious time in relation to both global capitalist competition and domestic popular discontent." Through the "passive revolution" of the reforms, party bureaucrats and intellectuals created a new technocratic elite that won the support of rural peasants who wanted personal control of land and urban people who wanted more consumer goods and a higher living standard.

References

{{reflist

External links

The Antonio Gramsci Library
Revolution terminology Antonio Gramsci

Gramsci's use of the term

Usage since Gramsci

See also

References

Further reading

External links