Fatalistic determinism and crude voluntarism can coexist in one politics

Evidence

Apparent contradictions : there predominated a fatalistic and mechanistic conception of history (Florence, 1917, accusation of Bergsonianism), 280 and yet positions taken up were characterised by a formalistic, crude and superficial voluntarism. … There was a failure to grasp what would happen if reaction triumphed, because the real struggle was not lived—only the struggle as a doctrinal “principle”. A further contradiction with respect to voluntarism: if one is against voluntarism, one ought to appreciate “spontaneity”. But in fact the opposite was the case: what was “spontaneous” was inferior, not worth considering, not even worth analysing. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 864

Categorization

• XREF: This pairing of mechanistic fatalism with bad voluntarism and contempt for spontaneity resonates with later analyses of movement politics that theorize action abstractly while despairing of real mass agency. — connects to: Contradictory rationalities can symbiotically combine in one political subjectivity. — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism: Is There No…, 125