Impoverished rural strata use left-wing subversivism as blackmail while siding with the right

Evidence

These strata exist in every region, and have ramifications in the towns, too, where they merge into the criminal underworld or into the shifting milieu which surrounds it. Many petty clerks in the towns originate socially from these strata, and conserve the arrogant mentality of the impoverished nobleman, of the landowner who endures work under compulsion. The “subversivism” of these strata has two faces, one turned to the left and one to the right, but the left face is simply a means of blackmail; at the decisive moments they always move to the right, and their desperate “courage” always prefers to have the carabinieri on their side. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1015

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to Gramsci’s broader concept of ‘subaltern’ strata and base/superstructure; also parallels the class-position malleability of lumpenproletariat ideas in Marx.
• DEFINE: Defines the two-faced ‘subversivism’ of impoverished rural landowning strata — a useful mechanism for how class location can drive contradictory political positioning.