Industrialists wield influence by funding whichever party suits their balance of forces
Evidence
The problem arises of whether the great industrialists have a permanent political party of their own. It seems to me that the reply must be in the negative. The great industrialists utilise all the existing parties turn by turn, but they do not have their own party. This does not mean that they are in any way “agnostic” or “apolitical”. Their interest is in a determinate balance of forces, which they obtain precisely by using their resources to reinforce one party or another in turn from the varied political checkerboard (with the exception, needless to say, only of the enemy party, whose reinforcement cannot be assisted even as a tactical move). — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 686
Categorization
Category: Factual Claims
- XREF: A concrete mechanism of how a ruling class operates without a party of its own — relevant to how hegemonic blocs work without formal control of a single party.
- QUESTION: Is Gramsci’s claim that industrialists lack a permanent party empirically testable — e.g. against the US Republican Party today?