Analyzing mass movements requires examining social content before judging motives
Evidence
When a movement of the Boulangist type occurs, the analysis realistically should be developed along the following lines: 1. social content of the mass following of the movement; 2. what function did this mass have in the balance of forces—which is in process of transformation, as the new movement demonstrates by its very coming into existence? 3. what is the political and social significance of those of the demands presented by the movement’s leaders which find general assent? To what effective needs do they correspond? 4. examination of the conformity of the means to the proposed end; 5. only in the last analysis, and formulated in political not moralistic terms, is the hypothesis considered that such a movement will necessarily be perverted, and serve quite different ends from those which the mass of its followers expect. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 716
Categorization
Category: Definitional Content
- XREF: This methodological checklist for analyzing movements prefigures the tools needed to read Islamophobia literature about populist and nationalist movements — a framework for dissecting a movement’s social base before evaluating it.