Effective reality is a shifting equilibrium of forces, not a static ground

Evidence

A distinction must be made not only between “diplomat” and “politician”, but also between political scientist and active politician. The diplomat inevitably will move only within the bounds of effective reality, since his specific activity is not the creation of some new equilibrium, but the maintenance of an existing equilibrium within a certain juridical framework. Similarly, the political scientist has to keep within the bounds of effective reality in so far as he is merely a scientist. But Machiavelli is not merely a scientist: he is a partisan, a man of powerful passions, an active politician, who wishes to create a new balance of forces and therefore cannot help concerning himself with what “ought to be” (not of course in a moralistic sense). Hence the question cannot be posed in these terms, it is more complex. It is one, that is to say, of seeing whether what “ought to be” is arbitrary or necessary; whether it is concrete will on the one hand or idle fancy, yearning, daydream on the other. The active politician is a creator, an initiator; but he neither creates from nothing nor does he move in the turbid void of his own desires and dreams. He bases himself on effective reality, but what is this effective reality? Is it something static and immobile, or is it not rather a relation of forces in continuous motion and shift of equilibrium? If one applies one’s will to the creation of a new equilibrium among the forces which really exist and are operative— basing oneself on the particular force which one believes to be progressive and strengthening it to help it to victory—one still moves on the terrain of effective reality, but does so in order to dominate and transcend it (or to contribute to this). What “ought to be” is therefore concrete; indeed it is the only realistic and historicist interpretation of reality, it alone is history in the making and philosophy in the making, it alone is politics. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 727

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the core Gramscian distinction: ‘ought to be’ as concrete will operating on a shifting equilibrium of real forces, vs. abstract moralism on the one hand and static realism on the other.
• XREF: This is the seed of Gramsci’s concept of hegemony as the active creation of a new equilibrium — directly load-bearing for later Islamophobia readings on how ‘common sense’ is actively re-made.