State prestige can substitute for a class’s missing intellectual and moral authority
Evidence
At all events, the fact that the State/government, conceived as an autonomous force, should reflect back its prestige upon the class upon which it is based, is of the greatest practical and theoretical importance, and deserves to be analysed fully if one wants a more realistic concept of the State itself. Moreover, this phenomenon is not something exceptional, or characteristic of one kind of State only. It can, it seems, be incorporated into the function of elites or vanguards, i.e. of parties, in relation to the class which they represent. This class, often, as an economic fact (which is what every class is essentially) might not enjoy any intellectual or moral prestige, i.e. might be incapable of establishing its hegemony, hence of founding a State. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1001
Categorization
- DEFINE: Clarifies the mechanism by which a ruling but non-hegemonic class borrows legitimacy from the state apparatus itself.
- XREF: Connects forward to how Islamophobia readings treat states lending legitimacy to majority or elite groups who lack organic cultural leadership over a society. — connects to: Masses differ from classes by lacking common-interest articulation; A political party can absorb intellectuals by replicating the state’s services; Failing to integrate masses into the state produces a stunted, dependent ruling class (+3 more)
- corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1001
Broader Connections
- Civil-servant honor substitutes discipline for individual moral responsibility
#exemplifies(0.78) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 94 - A cultural tradition can substitute for a weak tradition of national political unity
#expands(0.75)