Revolutionary theory raises the masses culturally while the Church maintains only mechanical unity

Evidence

But from this point of view it is important not to confuse the attitude of the philosophy of praxis with that of Catholicism. Whereas the former maintains a dynamic contact and tends continually to raise new strata of the population to a higher cultural life, the latter tends to maintain a purely mechanical contact, an external unity based in particular on the liturgy and on a cult visually imposing to the crowd. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1409

Categorization

• DEFINE: Distinguishes dynamic vs mechanical contact with the masses — a mechanism for how hegemonic ideology binds people without raising them.
• XREF: This ‘external unity via mechanical contact’ is the prototype for how state ideology (including Orientalist/Islamophobic discourse) incorporates the subaltern without transforming their consciousness.