The state operates as both civil and political society
Evidence
Attitude of each particular social group towards its own State. The analysis would not be accurate if no account were taken of the two forms in which the State presents itself in the language and culture of specific epochs, i.e. as civil society and as political society. … This “statolatry” is nothing other than the normal form of “State life”, or at least of initiation to autonomous State life and to the creation of a “civil society” which it was not historically possible to create before the ascent to independent State life. … However, this kind of “statolatry” must not be abandoned to itself, must not, especially, become theoretical fanaticism or be conceived of as “perpetual”. It must be criticised, precisely in order to develop and produce new forms of State life, in which the initiative of individuals and groups will have a “State” character, even if it is not due to the “government of the functionaries” (make State life become “spontaneous”). — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 998
Categorization
- DEFINE: Establishes the civil society / political society distinction and the concept of statolatry in Gramsci’s own terms.
- XREF: Connects to the civil-society/hegemony vocabulary the Islamophobia module will build on, where the state is never just its governmental apparatus. — connects to: The state is an equilibrium of coercion and consent run through civil society — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1869; Civil society’s claimed independence from the state renders its critique dismissable; State and civil society mutually constitute each other’s form — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race: Reflections on…, 286 (+7 more)
- yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: The state is an equilibrium of coercion and consent run through civil society — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1869; Civil society’s claimed independence from the state renders its critique dismissable; State and civil society mutually constitute each other’s form — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race: Reflections on…, 286 (+7 more)
Broader Connections
- Hegemony requires a separation between civil and political society
#complicates(0.83)