Passive revolutions suppress some contradictions only to spawn new ones

Evidence

An essential, though unspoken, premiss of Americanism and Fordism is that the revolutionary working-class movement was in a phase of retrenchment and defeat throughout the capitalist world. In the absence of an antagonistic revolutionary force any changes taking place within the mode of production could at most constitute what Gramsci, here and elsewhere in the Quaderni , terms a “passive revolution”. Changes would take place, leading to the suppression of certain contradictions. But new contradictions would appear in their place. Not the least of the merits of Americanism and Fordism lies in its recognition of the fluidity of the situation and the complexity of the contradictions generated. Although in general it foresees a development, already prefigured in fascist Italy, in the direction of a more achieved form of state monopoly capitalism, it emphatically rejects any undialectical pessimism and leaves open the question of how the contradictions that this new development of capitalism will bring about will themselves be contested in their turn. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1029

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines ‘passive revolution’: capitalist change occurring in the absence of an antagonistic revolutionary force, which suppresses some contradictions and generates new ones.
• XREF: This ‘passive revolution’ concept connects to later Islamophobia readings about how ruling blocs absorb and defuse opposition without revolutionary rupture — the mechanism behind co-optation of anti-racist movements.