Ruling-class philosophy subordinates masses without positively transforming their thought

Evidence

These systems influence the popular masses as an external political force, an element of cohesive force exercised by the ruling classes and therefore an element of subordination to an external hegemony. This limits the original thought of the popular masses in a negative direction, without having the positive effect of a vital ferment of interior transformation of what the masses think in an embryonic and chaotic form about the world and life. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1504

These systems influence the popular masses as an external political force, an element of cohesive force exercised by the ruling classes and therefore an element of subordination to an external hegemony. This limits the original thought of the popular masses in a negative direction, without having the positive effect of a vital ferment of interior transformation of what the masses think in an embryonic and chaotic form about the world and life. The principal elements of common sense are provided by religion, and consequently the relationship between common sense and religion is much more intimate than that between common sense and the philosophical systems of the intellectuals. But even within religion some critical distinctions should be made. Every religion, even Catholicism (indeed Catholicism more than any, precisely because of its efforts to retain a “surface” unity and avoid splintering into national churches and social stratifications), is in reality a multiplicity of distinct and often contradictory religions: there is one Catholicism for the peasants, one for the petits-bourgeois and town workers, one for women, and one for intellectuals which is itself variegated and disconnected. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1504

Categorization

• XREF: Precursors the ‘hegemony vs. organic philosophy’ mechanism that later Islamophobia critics use to explain how colonial categories subordinate. — connects to: The ruled adore the ideology that enslaves them more ardently than the rulers do — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 104; Official philosophy is reduced to a mental Taylorism serving industry; Philosophical style itself can be judged unfree and dictatorial — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 609 (+1 more)
• DEFINE: Mechanism of hegemony: intellectuals’ philosophical systems grip the masses only as external coercive-political force, limiting rather than transforming their thought ‘from within’. Core distinction for how cultural domination works.
• QUESTION: The claim that one religion contains multiple class-and-gender-specific versions (peasants, town workers, women, intellectuals) — does this undercut later claims in the Islamophobia literature about ‘monolithic’ representations of Islam?
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1504