A failed bourgeois revolution stems from economic weakness and historical timing

Evidence

If in Italy a Jacobin party was not formed, the reasons are to be sought in the economic field, that is to say in the relative weakness of the Italian bourgeoisie and in the different historical climate in Europe after 1815. … The bourgeoisie could not (perhaps) extend its hegemony further over the great popular strata-which it did succeed in embracing in France-(could not for subjective rather than objective reasons); but action directed at the peasantry was certainly always possible. Differences between France, Germany and Italy in the process by which the bourgeoisie took power (and England). It was in France that the process was richest in developments, and in active and positive political elements. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 483

Categorization

• DEFINE: Establishes the materialist criterion for why progressive bourgeois revolution fails — economic base determines revolutionary political form.
• XREF: Connects to hegemony theory and passive revolution concepts that resurface throughout the Prison Notebooks. — connects to: Vienna’s cultural flowering emerged from the crisis of a weak liberal bourgeoisie — Alex Callinicos, Against Postmodernism: A Marxist…, 206; Settler-decimated or sidelined bourgeoisies let colonial struggles converge with socialist revolution — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures, 141; The American bourgeois revolution featured slaveholding leaders and lagged France by a century (+1 more)