Ideological factors lag behind economic ones and require conscious political struggle

Evidence

For there is no understanding of the fact that mass ideological factors always lag behind mass economic phenomena, and that therefore, at certain moments, the automatic thrust due to the economic factor is slowed down, obstructed or even momentarily broken by traditional ideological elements— hence that there must be a conscious, planned struggle to ensure that the exigencies of the economic position of the masses, which may conflict with the traditional leadership’s policies, are understood. An appropriate political initiative is always necessary to liberate the economic thrust from the dead weight of traditional policies—i.e. to change the political direction of certain forces which have to be absorbed if a new, homogeneous politico-economic historical bloc, without internal contradictions, is to be successfully formed. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 719

Categorization

• DEFINE: States the lag of ideology behind economy and the need for planned political initiative — core to Gramsci’s account of hegemony.
• DEEPTHINKING: The claim that economic thrust is routinely broken by traditional ideological elements, requiring conscious political struggle, is a dense, paradigm-shifting counter to economism.
• XREF: connects to: Ideological change requires persistence against contrary immediate evidence — Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion: Reinventing Free…, 561; Economic reason usurped political subjectivity only near the end of the twentieth century. — Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s…, 172; Ideological forms are how people become conscious of economic conflict — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 2104