Objective conditions become political power only through organized capable cadres

Evidence

One might make use of this law metaphorically to understand how a “movement” or current of opinion becomes a party— i.e. a political force which is effective from the point of view of the exercise of governmental power: precisely to the extent to which it possesses (has developed within itself) cadres at the various levels, and to the extent to which the latter have acquired certain capabilities. The historical “automatism” of certain premisses (the existence of certain objective conditions) is potentialised politically by parties and by men of ability: absence or inadequacy (quantitative and qualitative) of these neutralises the “automatism” itself (which anyway is not really automatic): the premisses exist abstractly, but the consequences are not realised because the human factor is missing. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 785

Categorization

• DEFINE: This introduces the key mechanism that ‘movements’ become effective political forces only when they develop capable cadres at multiple levels — the human factor potentializes otherwise abstract historical premises.
• XREF: Directly relevant vocabulary for the Islamophobia toolkit: the claim that beliefs/orientations only become politically effective through organized leadership formation parallels how Orientalist discourse becomes policy power. — connects to: Ideas gain force only when paired with practical execution and political will — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the…, 422; Constitutionalism is only one mechanism among several that lock political decisions in. — Daryl Levinson and Benjamin I. Sachs, Political Entrenchment and Public Law, 512