German cultural predominance was abstract prestige, not structural influence

Evidence

It may be said: (a) that no organic or disciplinary bonds ensured this supremacy, which was therefore merely a phenomenon of abstract cultural influence and of highly unstable prestige; (b) that such cultural influence in no way affected real activity, which was on the contrary fragmented, localised, and without overall direction. Thus one cannot speak of any kind of centralism here—neither organic nor democratic, nor of any other kind, nor a mixture of these. The influence was felt and experienced by a handful of intellectual groups, who had no links with the popular masses; and it was precisely the absence of any such links which characterised the situation. Nevertheless, such a state of affairs is worth studying, since it helps to explain the process which led to the formulation of the theories of organic centralism. These are precisely a one-sided and intellectualistic critique of that disorder and dispersal of forces. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 775

Categorization

• QUESTION: Worth chasing: what does Gramsci’s own organic/democratic centralism actually demand as the alternative to this dispersed ‘intellectualistic’ cultural influence?
• XREF: connects to: Old-guard German sociology remained abstractly opposed to empirical research after the war — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 1926; Germans ranked above native whites in prestige before the war reversed it — John Higham, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of…, 1152

Related

• Germans ranked above native whites in prestige before the war reversed it (similarity 0.80)
• Old-guard German sociology remained abstractly opposed to empirical research after the war (similarity 0.79)