States claim belated basic improvements as merit and prestige

Evidence

In private life, such behaviour would warrant a good kicking. In the case of the State, it appears to be a “merit”. Not merely that, but the fact that one “washes oneself” at the age of fifty appears to be a sign of superiority over other men of fifty who have always washed. One hears this kind of thing said about drainage schemes, public works, roads, etc., i.e. about a country’s basic social equipment. The fact that a country provides itself with this equipment, with which others have provided themselves in their day, is loudly acclaimed and trumpeted forth, and the others are told: do as much, if you can. But the others cannot, because they have already done so in their day, and this is presented as a sign of their “impotence”. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1000

Categorization

• SEED: The fifty-year-old-washing metaphor is a usable critical device for development discourse that celebrates late basic infrastructure as triumph.
• CANDY: The ‘washes himself at fifty’ analogy is a brisk, quotable absurdity of state self-congratulation.
• XREF: connects to: States historically added piecemeal courts, prompting later consolidation reforms — G. Alan Tarr, Judicial Process and Judicial…, 350; American states frequently replaced whole constitutions rather than amend them — Lawrence M. Friedman, A History of American Law, 657; States defended birching by appealing to tradition and fixed treaty standards — , The Rod and the Child: A Global History…, 9136
• yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: States historically added piecemeal courts, prompting later consolidation reforms — G. Alan Tarr, Judicial Process and Judicial…, 350; American states frequently replaced whole constitutions rather than amend them — Lawrence M. Friedman, A History of American Law, 657; States defended birching by appealing to tradition and fixed treaty standards — , The Rod and the Child: A Global History…, 9136