Crises must be analyzed through the organic-conjunctural distinction rather than either economism or ideologism.

Evidence

A common error in historico-political analysis consists in an inability to find the correct relation between what is organic and what is conjunctural. This leads to presenting causes as immediately operative which in fact only operate indirectly, or to asserting that the immediate causes are the only effective ones. In the first case there is an excess of “economism”, or doctrinaire pedantry; in the second, an excess of “ideologism”. In the first case there is an overestimation of mechanical causes, in the second an exaggeration of the voluntarist and individual element. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 749

Categorization

• DEFINE: Introduces the organic versus conjunctural distinction foundational to Gramsci’s analysis of historical crises.
• XREF: Connects to Althusser’s overdetermination and to later hegemony analyses; directly scaffolds the Islamophobia field’s understanding of how crises are periodized.