A weakly-developed bourgeoisie shapes a country’s political-military structure.

Evidence

In Spain it is necessary to take certain peculiarities into account: the size of the national territory, and the low density of the peasant population. Between the lati-fundist aristocrat and the peasant there does not exist a numerous rural bourgeoisie; hence, minor importance of the junior officer corps as a force in itself. (On the other hand, a certain oppositional importance was possessed by the officers of the technical corps— artillery and engineers; these, of urban bourgeois origin, opposed the generals and attempted to have a policy of their own.) Hence military governments in Spain are governments of “great” generals. Passivity of the peasant masses, as citizens and as soldiers. If political disintegration occurs in the army, it does so in a vertical rather than a horizontal sense, through rivalries between cliques at the top: the rank and file splits up behind the various competing leaders. Military government is a parenthesis between two constitutional governments. The military are the permanent reserves of order and conservation; they are a political force which comes into action “publicly” when “legality” is in danger. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 845

Categorization

• DEFINE: Gramsci introduces the mechanism that class structure determines whether armies become junior-officer-led or general-led political forces.