Pre-modern states worked as mechanical blocs of semi-autonomous social groups with dual power

Evidence

A further criterion of research must be borne in mind, in order to emphasise the dangers inherent in the method of historical analogy as an interpretative criterion. In the ancient and mediaeval State alike, centralisation, whether political-territorial or social (and the one is merely a function of the other), was minimal. The State was, in a certain sense, a mechanical bloc of social groups, often of different race: within the circle of political-military compression, which was only exercised harshly at certain moments, the subaltern groups had a life of their own, institutions of their own, etc., and sometimes these institutions had State functions which made of the State a federation of social groups with disparate functions not subordinated in any way a situation which in periods of crisis highlighted with extreme clarity the phenomenon of ‘dual power’. … The modern State substitutes for the mechanical bloc of social groups their subordination to the active hegemony of the directive and dominant group, hence abolishes certain autonomies, which nevertheless are reborn in other forms, as parties, trade unions, cultural associations. The contemporary dictatorships legally abolish these new forms of autonomy as well, and strive to incorporate them within State activity: the legal centralisation of the entire national life in the hands of the dominant group becomes ‘totalitarian’. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1867 (#expands, via linked claim)

Much the same can be said of the local community. We should avoid the romanticised view of community which has often surfaced in social analysis when traditional cultures are compared to the modern. I mean here to stress the importance of localised relations organised in terms of place, where place has not yet become transformed by distanciated time-space relations. In the large majority of pre-modern settings, including most cities, the local milieu is the site of clusters of interweaving social relations, the low spatial span of which provides for their solidity in time. — Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity, 247 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Classic Continental theory held parties subordinate to the state; Modern states replace the mechanical bloc with active hegemony by dominant groups — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1867; Local place-based relations gave pre-modern communities solidity — Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity, 247 (+5 more)

Related

• Modern states replace the mechanical bloc with active hegemony by dominant groups (similarity 0.85)
• States rule subject groups by allying with their internal elites (similarity 0.82)
• A newly hegemonic subaltern group must build a new intellectual and moral order (similarity 0.80)
• Segmented early states made revolutions break vertical ties rather than horizontal ones (similarity 0.79)
• Transformism absorbed opposition elites into the ruling bloc (similarity 0.79)
• A modern state is an institutionalized division of political labor (similarity 0.79)
• Modern European states formed through reform waves rather than revolution (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Modern states replace the mechanical bloc with active hegemony by dominant groups #expands (0.85) — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1867
• Local place-based relations gave pre-modern communities solidity #corroborates (0.75) — Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity, 247
• African anti-colonial resistance slowly integrated discrete societies into cohesive movements #corroborates (0.72)
• Marxism reads social formations as overdetermined unities with relatively autonomous levels #corroborates (0.70)
• Class equilibrium creates the appearance of a neutral, autonomous state #corroborates (0.70)