An absolute duty rule is the only guarantee of responsible collective leadership.

Evidence

In an “autobiographical note” written in prison, Gramsci confirms this: “The rule has been made that a captain must be the last to abandon his vessel in a shipwreck; that he must leave only when everybody else on board is safe. Some have even gone so far as to claim that in such cases the captain ‘must’ go down with his ship. Such assertions are less irrational than it might seem. Certainly, there may be certain cases in which there is no reason why the captain should not save himself first. But if such cases were made the basis for a rule, what guarantee would there be that a captain had done everything: (1) to prevent the shipwreck from occurring; (2) once it had occurred, to reduce human and material losses (material losses which represent future human losses) to a minimum? Only the ‘absolute’ rule that, in case of shipwreck, the captain is the last to leave his ship, and indeed may die with her, can provide this guarantee. Without it, collective life would become impossible; for nobody would be prepared to accept responsibility or continue activity which involved putting their lives in the hands of others.” — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 223

Categorization

• DEFINE: Gramsci here articulates a principle about why absolute, non-utilitarian rules (rather than case-by-case judgment) are necessary to sustain trust in leadership and collective life — a rationale relevant to how political obligation works.
• CANDY: The shipwreck captain analogy as a justification for absolute rules is a clean, self-contained point one could mention in conversation.