Revolutionary clubs were media-centred assemblies held together by a newspaper’s clientele

Evidence

The French Revolution offered two prevalent types. There were the “clubs”—loose organisations of the “popular assembly” type, centralised around individual political figures. Each had its newspaper, by means of which it kept alive the attention and interest of a particular clientele that had no fixed boundaries. This clientele then upheld the theses of the paper in the club’s meetings. Certainly, among those who frequented the clubs, there must have existed tight, select groupings of people who knew each other, who met separately and prepared the climate of the meetings, in order to support one tendency or another—depending on the circumstances and also on the concrete interests in play. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 962

Categorization

• QUESTION: Gramsci’s remark about hidden tight groupings ‘preparing the climate’ inside the clubs is an early sketch of cadre/caucus behavior — worth chasing how this maps onto later party theory.
• XREF: connects to: Le Cap’s elite circulated news and ideas through newspapers and intellectual clubs — Dubois, Laurent, Avengers of the New World_ The Story of…, 88; Revolutionary French clubs combined public assemblies with newspapers and inner circles; Mass democratic association historically depended on newspapers to coordinate collective action — Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone The Collapse and Revival…, 734 (+8 more)
• yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: Le Cap’s elite circulated news and ideas through newspapers and intellectual clubs — Dubois, Laurent, Avengers of the New World_ The Story of…, 88; Revolutionary French clubs combined public assemblies with newspapers and inner circles; Mass democratic association historically depended on newspapers to coordinate collective action — Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone The Collapse and Revival…, 734 (+8 more)

Broader Connections

• Revolutionary French clubs combined public assemblies with newspapers and inner circles #expands (0.93)
• Populist-left parties replaced mass-party structures with leader-centric media-driven quick mobilization #complicates (0.74) — Arthur Borriello and Anton Jäger, The Populist Moment, 97