Every spontaneous movement contains rudimentary elements of conscious leadership and discipline

Evidence

But this need was at least implicit (perhaps even explicitly stated) in the doctrine of Ilitch [Lenin]—something of which De Man is entirely ignorant. The fact that every “spontaneous” movement contains rudimentary elements of conscious leadership, of discipline, is indirectly demonstrated by the fact that there exist tendencies and groups who extol spontaneity as a method. Here one must distinguish between the realm of pure “ideology” and that of practical action, between scholars who argue that spontaneity is the immanent and objective “method” of the historical process, and political adventurers who argue for it as a “political” method. With the former it is a question of a mistaken conception, whereas with the latter what is involved is an immediate and vulgar contradiction which betrays its manifest practical origin—i.e. the immediate desire to replace a given leadership by a different one. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 805

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the structural claim underneath ‘spontaneism’: spontaneous movements are never purely spontaneous but already contain embryonic leadership and discipline.
• XREF: Connects to Gramsci’s later concept of hegemony and the role of the organic intellectual; also to how the Islamophobia field treats ‘grassroots’ movements as never purely organic. — connects to: Every conforming action doubles as an unconscious status signal readable by others. — W. David Marx, Status and Culture: How Our Desire for…, 195