A military class can permeate and partly occupy the state apparatus

Evidence

In short, continuing to maintain itself under arms amidst the general disarmament, and brandishing the danger of a civil war between its own troops and the regular, conscripted army if the ruling class shows too great an itch for resistance, it succeeds in permeating the State with its interests, up to a certain point, and in replacing a part of the leading personnel. These observations must not be conceived of as rigid schemata, but merely as practical criteria of historical and political interpretation. In concrete analyses of real events, the historical forms are individualised and can almost be called “unique”. Caesar represents a very different combination of real circumstances from that represented by Napoleon I, as does Primo de Rivera from that of Zivkovic, etc. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 847

Categorization

• DEFINE: Gramsci’s caution that these observations are practical interpretive criteria, not rigid schemata, is itself a methodological principle.
• XREF: The relation between military-backed rule and the state relates to later Foucault/necropolitics readings on how state power is exercised through extra-democratic means. — connects to: Military format constrains which class can dominate a regime — Charles Tilly, Regimes and Repertoires, 81