The objective level of productive forces grounds which ideologies are practicable in a society

Evidence

1. A relation of social forces which is closely linked to the structure, objective, independent of human will, and which can be measured with the systems of the exact or physical sciences. The level of development of the material forces of production provides a basis for the emergence of the various social classes, each one of which represents a function and has a specific position within production itself. This relation is what it is, a refractory reality: nobody can alter the number of firms or their employees, the number of cities or the given urban population, etc. By studying these fundamental data it is possible to discover whether in a particular society there exist the necessary and sufficient conditions for its transformation— in other words, to check the degree of realism and practicability of the various ideologies which have been born on its own terrain, on the terrain of the contradictions which it has engendered during the course of its development. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 760

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the first level of the relation of forces — the structural, objective, measurable layer that limits which ideologies can succeed.
• XREF: This ‘objective structural limit on ideology’ claim links directly forward to Islamophobia readings on how material conditions constrain which anti-Muslim narratives become hegemonic.