Organizational rupture with old socialism did not require ideological rupture too

Evidence

But at the same time, it is something of a paradox that Bordiga, who so early appreciated the implications of the Bolshevik revolution, and who was aware two years before Gramsci of the need to break organisationally with the socialism of the Second International, should have so little understood the need to break with that Second International socialism ideologically as well, and should have continued to share its rigidly mechanical conception of the relationship between party and masses. For the Ordine Nuovo group’s immense merit was its grasp of the role of the masses, and their spontaneous action, in the revolutionary process. Oddly, in view of the accusation of “voluntarism” which was so often to be hurled at them in these years, they were the only Italian Marxists to attempt to pose the problem of revolution in non-voluntarist terms. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 95

Categorization

• DEFINE: Introduces the voluntarism charge and its inversion — that Gramsci’s group posed revolution in the least voluntarist terms of any Italian Marxists — a key distinction for the toolkit.
• XREF: connects to: Frankfurt theorists rejected socialism as a necessary outgrowth of capitalism. — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History…, 294; Shared ideological critique did not yet imply a clear program of positive policy — Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion: Reinventing Free…, 167; Systemic economic transformations require a legitimising ideology to offset their cruelties — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism, 219 (+3 more)