Refuting ideas does not destroy the social forces behind them

Evidence

The possibility of error must be asserted and justified, but without being untrue to one’s own conception, because what counts is not the opinion of Tom, Dick and Harry, but that ensemble of opinions which have become collective, a social element and a social force. These are the opinions that must be refuted, in the person of those of their theoretical exponents who are most representative and indeed worthy of respect for the high quality of their thought and for their “disinterestedness” in the immediate term. Nor should this be done with the idea that one has thereby destroyed the corresponding social element and social force (which would be pure enlightenment rationalism) but only with the idea of having contributed 1. to maintaining and strengthening among one’s own side the spirit of distinction and division; and 2. to preparing the ground for one’s own side to absorb and give life to an original doctrine of its own, corresponding to its own conditions of life. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1563

Categorization

• XREF: Connects directly to Gramsci’s own hegemony/common-sense vocabulary the reader is building — the Marxist-materialist refusal of ‘enlightenment rationalism’ parallels the later Islamophobia-field critique of liberalism’s faith in debunking stereotypes. — connects to: Ideologies can entrench without any deliberate design by their inventors — Daryl Levinson and Benjamin I. Sachs, Political Entrenchment and Public Law, 494