The State’s dominant group presents its interests as universal rather than corporate.

Evidence

It is true that the State is seen as the organ of one particular group, destined to create favourable conditions for the latter’s maximum expansion. But the development and expansion of the particular group are conceived of, and presented, as being the motor force of a universal expansion, of a development of all the “national” energies. In other words, the dominant group is coordinated concretely with the general interests of the subordinate groups, and the life of the State is conceived of as a continuous process of formation and superseding of unstable equilibria (on the juridical plane) between the interests of the fundamental group and those of the subordinate groups—equilibria in which the interests of the dominant group prevail, but only up to a certain point, i.e. stopping short of narrowly corporate economic interest. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 762

Categorization

• DEFINE: Clarifies how the State functions: a dominant group’s interests get presented as universal national interests, giving hegemony its content.
• XREF: This is the mechanism Islamophobia scholarship uses to explain how dominant groups’ interests get laundered as ‘national interest’ concerns. — connects to: Parliament favors business because business is its only organized pressure group. — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 2185