A social order persists until new productive relations mature within it

Evidence

A social order does not perish until all the productive forces for which it still has room have been developed and new and higher relations of production have taken their place, and until the material conditions of the new relations have grown up within the womb of the old society. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1539

Categorization

• DEFINE: States Marx’s thesis on when social orders perish — a foundational mechanism for understanding historical change that later critical theory assumes.
• XREF: connects to: Industrial society is static while appearing dynamic — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the…, 144; Exchange of labor-power injects novelty into circulation while system stasis persists — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 1553