Spontaneous mass uprising without organized revolutionary leadership invites state suppression

Evidence

In so far as there was any organisation on the insurgent side, it was provided by the anarchists. The intransigent socialist leaders were as impotent as the reformist deputies or trade union officials. This impotence of the socialist leaders was to be demonstrated repeatedly during the next three years. The insurrection lasted for four days, and machine-guns and tanks had to be brought into the fray before the last barricades fell. Some fifty workers were killed in the fighting, and almost one thousand were subsequently either imprisoned or sent to the front by order of the courts. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 77

Categorization

• XREF: This is the empirical ground beneath Gramsci’s later claim (elaborated in the hegemony essays) that subordinate classes cannot achieve lasting power through spontaneous revolt alone — the concept the reader’s later Islamophobia materials build on when theorizing how exclusion persists despite resistance. — connects to: A leaderless mass movement can outflank its own nominal leaders’ proposals — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and…, 506; Excluded masses may revolt violently against acceleration society — Hartmut Rosa, Social Acceleration: A New Theory of…, 850; A spontaneous uprising can surprise the ruling class only once before it fails — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and…, 98 (+3 more)