A political element must prepare its own successors against its destruction

Evidence

For that to happen, the iron conviction has to have been formed that a particular solution of the vital problems is necessary. Without this conviction the second element will not be formed. This element can the more easily be destroyed in that it is numerically weak, but it is essential that if it is destroyed it should leave as its heritage a ferment from which it may be recreated. And where could this ferment better be formed and subsist than in the first and third elements, which, obviously, are the nearest in character to the second? The activity of the second element towards creating this ferment is therefore fundamental. The criteria by which the second element should be judged are to be sought; 1. in what it actually does; 2. in what provision it makes for the eventuality of its own destruction. It is difficult to say which of these two facts is the more important. Since defeat in the struggle must always be envisaged, the preparation of one’s own successors is as important as what one does for victory. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 681

Categorization

• XREF: The preparation of successors via a ‘ferment’ connecting elite and mass elements echoes Gramsci’s general theory of how leadership is regenerated from below — connects forward to the Islamophobia field’s concern with how cadres/subjectivities are reproduced. — connects to: Discredited successor parties must break with the past early to regain power; Sacralized politics yields a self-sustaining power structure resistant to change — Nadim N. Rouhana and Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, When Politics Are Sacralized:…, 108