Social formations persist while productive forces retain room to advance

Evidence

The concept of “passive revolution” 134 must be rigorously derived from the two fundamental principles of political science: 1. that no social formation disappears as long as the productive forces which have developed within it still find room for further forward movement; 2. that a society does not set itself tasks for whose solution the necessary conditions have not already been incubated, etc. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 553

Categorization

• DEFINE: Gives passive revolution its two foundational Marxist principles of historical change.
• DEEPTHINKING: The second principle — societies only set tasks whose conditions are already incubated — is a compact, reusable statement of historical-materialist constraint that resists summary.