Passive revolution is an interpretive criterion, not a fatalistic programme

Evidence

Hence theory of the “passive revolution” not as a programme, as it was for the Italian liberals of the Risorgimento, but as a criterion of interpretation, in the absence of other active elements to a dominant extent. (Hence struggle against the political morphinism which exudes from Croce and from his historicism.) — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 574

Categorization

• DEFINE: Clarifies that for Gramsci ‘passive revolution’ names an analytic lens, distinct from how Risorgimento liberals treated it as an actual policy programme.
• XREF: The interpretive-vs-programmatic distinction mirrors how later theorists (including postcolonial and Islamophobia scholars) caution against reading analytic concepts prescriptively. — connects to: Passive revolution denotes either revolution without masses or molecular hidden change
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 574