Intellectual strata emerge from concrete historical class processes, not abstract democracy

Evidence

It is worth noting that the elaboration of intellectual strata in concrete reality does not take place on the terrain of abstract democracy but in accordance with very concrete traditional historical processes. Strata have grown up which traditionally “produce” intellectuals and these strata coincide with those which have specialised in “saving”, i.e. the petty and middle landed bourgeoisie and certain strata of the petty and middle urban bourgeoisie. The varying distribution of different types of school (classical and professional) 10 over the “economic” territory and the varying aspirations of different categories within these strata determine, or give form to, the production of various branches of intellectual specialisation. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 275

Categorization

• DEFINE: Core scaffolding concept: the production of intellectuals is historically and class-determined, feeding directly into Gramsci’s organic/traditional intellectual distinction.
• XREF: Connects forward to how colonial and postcolonial states import intellectual strata; resonates with the Islamophobia literature’s account of who becomes the authorized interpreter/elite voice. — connects to: Borkenau explained seventeenth-century epistemology as class ideology of production methods — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 505