Political actors who understand their rivals’ full role hold decisive superiority

Evidence

Out of the Action Party and the Moderates, which represented the real “subjective forces” of the Risorgimento? Without a shadow of doubt it was the Moderates, precisely because they were also aware of the role of the Action Party: thanks to this awareness, their “subjectivity” was of a superior and more decisive quality. In Victor Emmanuel’s crude, sergeant-major’s expression “we’ve got the Action Party in our pocket” there is more historico-political sense than in all Mazzini. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 572

Categorization

• XREF: The Moderates’ reflexive self-awareness of rivals is an early form of hegemony — seeing the other’s position to incorporate and supersede it.