Failed revolutionary agency lets the old order exterminate its rival elite

Evidence

If this process of development from one moment to the next is missing—and it is essentially a process which has as its actors men and their will and capability—the situation is not taken advantage of, and contradictory outcomes are possible: either the old society resists and ensures itself a breathing-space, by physically exterminating the elite of the rival class and terrorising its mass reserves; or a reciprocal destruction of the conflicting forces occurs, and a piece of the graveyard is established, perhaps even under the surveillance of a foreign guard. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 768

Categorization

• XREF: Feeds the toolkit concept of how hegemony fails or is imposed by force when the historic bloc lacks organized will; connects forward to necropolitics readings on state violence against subaltern classes.