Bourgeoisie could grow within feudal states, but socialism cannot grow within capitalism

Evidence

Gramsci does not offer clear answers to all these questions. The sense of the analogy he draws between the post-1815 period in Europe and the period in which he is writing (see final sentences of this section) is simply to reaffirm that even when frontal attack may be impossible, a passive revolution may nonetheless be taking place; that the class struggle continues despite the surface stability of the fascist regime. Yet here we approach one of the supreme paradoxes of Gramsci’s thought, a dilemma to which he found no answer. For there is precisely a radical dissimilarity between the situation of the bourgeoisie under feudal or pre-bourgeois forms of State and that of the proletariat under bourgeois rule. In the former case, capitalist relations of production can develop within the feudal State, until at a certain point in time the “carapace” cracks. In the latter case, however, this is not so. It is quite impossible for socialist relations of production to develop “within” capitalism. It is unquestionably for this reason that whenever Gramsci touches on this dilemma— which is also the question of how fascism can be overthrown—he tends to pose questions rather than make assertions. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 382

Categorization

• DEFINE: This is load-bearing scaffold: the asymmetry between capitalist development within the feudal carapace and the impossibility of socialist relations of production within capitalism defines the ‘passive revolution’ concept’s limit.
• XREF: Feeds forward directly into the Islamophobia toolkit: the mechanism of how subordinate classes cannot quietly ripen inside the dominant order, only fracture it — relevant to how Muslim identity is formed under, rather than within, secular-national frameworks. — connects to: Guild socialism had to survive inside capitalist markets it sought to replace
• QUESTION: Worth chasing: does Gramsci’s refusal of an answer here, posing questions instead, itself model a methodological stance (question-posing over assertion) that recurs across his work?
• DEEPTHINKING: The ‘carapace cracks’ asymmetry is genuinely dense — one of the conceptual cruxes of the prison notebooks, resisting one-sentence summary and repaying sitting with it.