A theory’s universality is proven by its incorporation into new concrete realities.

Evidence

One may term “Byzantinism” or “scholasticism” the regressive tendency to treat so-called theoretical questions as if they had a value in themselves, independently of any specific practice. … The problem arises of whether a theoretical truth, whose discovery corresponded to a specific practice, can be generalised and considered as universal for a historical epoch. The proof of its universality consists precisely 1. in its becoming a stimulus to know better the concrete reality of a situation that is different from that in which it was discovered (this is the principal measure of its fecundity); 2. when it has stimulated and helped this better understanding of concrete reality, in its capacity to incorporate itself in that same reality as if it were originally an expression of it. It is in this incorporation that its real universality lies, and not simply in its logical or formal coherence, or in the fact that it is a useful polemical tool for confounding the enemy. In short, the principle must always rule that ideas are not born of other ideas, philosophies of other philosophies; they are a continually renewed expression of real historical development. The unity of history (what the idealists call unity of the spirit) is not a presupposition, but a continuously developing process. Identity in concrete reality determines identity of thought, and not vice versa. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 812

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines Byzantinism/scholasticism as theory valued apart from practice, and gives the criterion for genuine theoretical universality: fecundity and incorporation into concrete situations.
• XREF: This ‘ideas arise from concrete historical development, not other ideas’ mechanist principle connects to Gramsci’s historicism and to how later readings distinguish ideological legitimation from material conditions.
• DEEPTHINKING: Gramsci’s two-part test of universality — stimulating insight into foreign concrete reality, then incorporating into it — is a paradigm-shifting criterion for what makes a concept genuinely portable rather than merely formal or polemical. This carries directly into a toolkit meant to carry critical-theory vocabulary across domains.
• SEED: The two-part fecundity test gives a ready yardstick for evaluating whether Orientalism-type frameworks genuinely travel to new contexts or merely function as byzantine abstraction.