The Jacobins represented future needs of groups not yet fully part of the nation

Evidence

The Jacobins, consequently, were the only party of the revolution in progress, in as much as they not only represented the immediate needs and aspirations of the actual physical individuals who constituted the French bourgeoisie, but they also represented the revolutionary movement as a whole, as an integral historical development. For they represented future needs as well, and, once again, not only the needs of those particular physical individuals, but also of all the national groups which had to be assimilated to the existing fundamental group. It is necessary to insist, against a tendentious and fundamentally anti-historical school of thought, that the Jacobins were realists of the Machiavelli stamp and not abstract dreamers. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 474

Categorization

• XREF: This is Gramsci’s positive revaluation of Jacobinism — directly relevant to the Islamophobia field’s debates about revolutionary nationalism and the nation-form as hegemonic project.
• DEFINE: Gramsci here defines what a truly hegemonic party is: one representing future needs of groups still to be assimilated, not just present constituents.