Passive revolution theory risks fatalism but remains dialectically dependent on a vigorous antithesis

Evidence

The thesis of the “passive revolution” as an interpretation of the Risorgimento period, and of every epoch characterised by complex historical upheavals. Utility and dangers of this thesis. Danger of historical defeatism, i.e. of indifferentism, since the whole way of posing the question may induce a belief in some kind of fatalism, etc. Yet the conception remains a dialectical one—in other words, presupposes, indeed postulates as necessary, a vigorous antithesis which can present intransigently all its potentialities for development. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 574

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines Gramsci’s ‘passive revolution’ concept and its internal dialectic — a key toolkit term for analyzing change without revolutionary rupture.
• XREF: Passive revolution anticipates later accounts of how colonial and postcolonial modernization is imposed ‘from above’ without mass agency — directly relevant to Islamophobia scholarship on state-led reform.