Political realism is an inherited skill of ruling classes, not universal knowledge
Evidence
One may therefore suppose that Machiavelli had in mind “those who are not in the know”, and that it was they whom he intended to educate politically. This was no negative political education—of tyrant-haters—as Foscolo seems to have understood it; but a positive education—of those who have to recognise certain means as necessary, even if they are the means of tyrants, because they desire certain ends. Anyone born into the traditional governing stratum acquires almost automatically the characteristics of the political realist, as a result of the entire educational complex which he absorbs from his family milieu, in which dynastic or patrimonial interests predominate. Who therefore is “not in the know”? The revolutionary class of the time, the Italian “people” or “nation”, the citizen democracy which gave birth to men like Savonarola and Pier Soderini, rather than to a Castruccio or a Valentino. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 621
Categorization
- DEFINE: Gramsci introduces the idea of political knowledge as socially distributed — the governing stratum inherits realism automatically while the ruled must be educated into it.
- XREF: This undergirds Gramsci’s later concept of organic intellectuals and hegemony: the ruled need their own education into political consciousness. — connects to: Technocratic realism is descriptively accurate but costs citizens their political autonomy — Jürgen Habermas, A New Structural Transformation of the…, 102; Realism is defined by avoiding the question of reality and serves ruling power — Jean-François Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on…, 482; Progressive politics do not equip educators with skills for teaching diverse students. — bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress: Education as…, 89
- DEEPTHINKING: The claim that realism is automatic for rulers but must be taught to the ruled inverts the usual assumption that realism is a natural or elite virtue.
- corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 621