The Action Party substituted a principled abstraction for a concrete political terrain

Evidence

On this whole series of problems, the Action Party failed totally. It in fact limited itself to making into a question of principle, and into an essential element of its programme, what was simply a question of the political terrain upon which it might have been possible to focus, and find a legal solution for, such problems: the question of the Constituent Assembly. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 535

Categorization

• DEFINE: Shows the distinction Gramsci makes between posing an issue as a ‘question of principle’ versus finding concrete ‘political terrain’ for it — a conceptual mechanism central to his theory.
• XREF: Directly prefigures Gramsci’s later critique of abstract ‘maximum programmes’ and relates to his distinction between war of position and war of maneuver.