Pre-capitalist cities sustain an ideological unity against the countryside

Evidence

In this type of city there exists, among all social groups, an urban ideological unity against the countryside, a unity which even the most modern nuclei in terms of civil function do not escape (and there are such nuclei). There is hatred and scorn for the “peasant”, an implicit common front against the demands of the countryside— which, if realised, would make impossible the existence of this type of city. Reciprocally, there exists an aversion—which, if “generic”, is not thereby any less tenacious or passionate—of the country for the city, for the whole city and all the groups which make it up. This general relationship is in reality very complex, and appears in forms which on the surface seem contradictory; it had a primary importance in the course of the struggles for the Risorgimento, when it was even more absolute and operative than it is today. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 508

Categorization

Category: Causal Relationships

• XREF: This urban-rural ideological front is a mechanism of dominance that parallels how hegemonic blocs produce unity — the same ‘common front’ logic drives the national-popular alliance examined in Western scholarship on Gramsci and in later Islamophobia readings of how internal others are consolidated against.

Related

• Italian urbanism cannot be read as a simple index of industrialisation (similarity 0.83)
• Southern urban forces derived strength from representing Northern urban prestige (similarity 0.82)
• Urban and rural population types are not homogeneous or schematically opposed (similarity 0.81)
• Northern urban forces subordinated Southern urban leadership within national unity (similarity 0.81)
• Italian history is driven by the city-countryside relation as its fundamental motor force (similarity 0.81)
• An urban republic fell because it neglected the countryside and threatened its income sources (similarity 0.81)