Americanism is not a new civilisation but an intensified extension of European capitalism

Evidence

In the case of Americanism, understood not only as a form of cafe life but as an ideology of the kind represented by Rotary Clubs, we are not dealing with a new type of civilisation. This is shown by the fact that nothing has been changed in the character of and the relationships between fundamental groups. What we are dealing with is an organic extension and an intensification of European civilisation, which has simply acquired a new coating in the American climate. Pirandello’s observation on the opposition that Americanism encounters in Paris (but in Le Creusot?) and on the immediate welcome that it supposedly had in Berlin proves, in any case, that the difference between it and “Europeanism” is not one of nature but of degree. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1162

Categorization

• DEFINE: Gramsci defines Americanism as an ideology (Rotary Clubs) rather than a new type of civilisation — an organic extension of European capitalism with unchanged class relations.
• XREF: Connects to the reader’s toolkit on how ideologies naturalize existing class structures; anticipates later work on cultural hegemony and how the ‘new’ masks continuity of fundamental group relations. — connects to: Capitalist values shaped how Americans contrasted their republic with Ottoman despotism — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 212