A rising class can dominate economically while old elites retain politico-intellectual supremacy.

Evidence

In England the development is very different from France. The new social grouping that grew up on the basis of modern industrialism shows a remarkable economic-corporate development but advances only gropingly in the intellectual-political field. There is a very extensive category of organic intellectuals—those, that is, who come into existence on the same industrial terrain as the economic group—but in the higher sphere we find that the old land-owning class preserves its position of virtual monopoly. It loses its economic supremacy but maintains for a long time a politico-intellectual supremacy and is assimilated as “traditional intellectuals” and as directive [dirigente ] group by the new group in power. The old land-owning aristocracy is joined to the industrialists by a kind of suture which is precisely that which in other countries unites the traditional intellectuals with the new dominant classes. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 305

Categorization

• DEFINE: Introduces the crucial distinction between organic and traditional intellectuals, here with the ‘suture’ metaphor for how old elites attach to new groups.
• XREF: connects to: Regime collapse preserves inherited advantages for some elites — Anna M. Grzymala-Busse, Redeeming The Communist Past: The…, 1514