Political rightward shifts are constructed responses to organic crises, not mere reflections

Evidence

Gramsci insisted that we must get the “organic” and “conjunctural” aspects of a crisis into a proper relationship. What defines the “conjunctural”—the immediate terrain of struggle—is not simply the given economic conditions, but precisely the “incessant and persistent” efforts which are being made to defend and conserve the status quo . If the crisis is deep—“organic”—these efforts cannot be merely defensive. They will be formative : aiming at a new balance of forces, the emergence of new elements, the attempt to put together a new “historic bloc,” new political configurations and “philosophies,” a profound restructuring of the state and the ideological discourses which construct the crisis and represent it as it is “lived” as a practical reality: new programs and policies, pointing to a new result, a new sort of “settlement”—“within certain limits.” These new elements do not “emerge”: they have to be constructed. Political and ideological work is required to disarticulate old formations, and to rework their elements into new ones. The “swing to the Right” is not a reflection of the crisis: it is itself a response to the crisis. — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 1099

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the organic/conjunctural distinction in Gramscian crisis theory and what makes a conjuncture specifically political.
• XREF: Connects to ‘articulation’ and hegemony theory used across the reader’s Stuart Hall reading, and to the Frankfurt School discussions of ideology.
• DEEPTHINKING: Core Gramscian insight — that the conjunctural is the site of active construction rather than economic reflection — resists compression and underpins all of cultural studies’ politics.