Economic class analysis of the state cannot be applied mechanically to history

Evidence

The conception of the State according to the productive function of the social classes cannot be applied mechanically to the interpretation of Italian and European history from the French revolution throughout the nineteenth century. Although it is certain that for the fundamental productive classes (capitalist bourgeoisie and modern proletariat) the State is only conceivable as the concrete form of a specific economic world, of a specific system of production, this does not mean that the relationship of means to end can be easily determined or takes the form of a simple schema, apparent at first sight. It is true that conquest of power and achievement of a new productive world are inseparable, and that propaganda for one of them is also propaganda for the other, and that in reality it is solely in this coincidence that the unity of the dominant class—at once economic and political—resides. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 579

Categorization

• XREF: Gramsci warning against mechanical economic determinism connects to postcolonial critiques that reject reading state formation purely through productive-class lens.