Gramsci held a minority seizure of power without mass organisms would be quickly overthrown

Evidence

For the Ordine Nuovo group’s immense merit was its grasp of the role of the masses, and their spontaneous action, in the revolutionary process. Oddly, in view of the accusation of “voluntarism” which was so often to be hurled at them in these years, they were the only Italian Marxists to attempt to pose the problem of revolution in non-voluntarist terms. Gramsci, in November 1919, wrote: “Even if a revolutionary minority succeeded in seizing power violently, that minority would be overthrown the next day by the backlash of capitalism’s mercenary forces … the communist revolution is a necessity in Italy more for international reasons than for reasons inherent to the process of development of the national productive apparatus … The revolution finds the great popular masses of Italy still amorphous, still fragmented… .” In Gramsci’s view, it was only through the creation of organisms capable of uniting the masses and channelling their spontaneity, that the revolution could command majority assent and hence overcome definitively the power of the capitalist State. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 96

Categorization

• XREF: The claim that revolution requires majority assent through mass-uniting organisms foreshadows the hegemony concept — the need to win consent rather than impose by violent minority — central to the toolkit.
• SEED: Gramsci’s 1919 counter-voluntarist argument offers a contrast case for texts on mass consent and manufactured political legitimacy in Islamophobia studies.