Bourgeois law and state aim to absorb the whole of society into itself
Evidence
The revolution which the bourgeois class has brought into the conception of law, and hence into the function of the State, consists especially in the will to conform (hence ethicity of the law and of the State). The previous ruling classes were essentially conservative in the sense that they did not tend to construct an organic passage from the other classes into their own, i.e. to enlarge their class sphere “technically” and ideologically: their conception was that of a closed caste. The bourgeois class poses itself as an organism in continuous movement, capable of absorbing the entire society, assimilating it to its own cultural and economic level. The entire function of the State has been transformed; the State has become an “educator”, etc. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 967
Categorization
Category: Definitional Content
- DEFINE: Defines the bourgeois State as ‘educator’ — an organic, absorptive organism contrasting with the closed-caste ruling classes before it.
- XREF: This is core Gramsci vocabulary — the ‘educator State’ and ethicity of law — that the Islamophobia field’s arguments about state-shaped subjecthood depend on.