Voluntarism degenerates into false heroism when detached from organic social blocs.

Evidence

A distinction must be made between two kinds of voluntarism or Garibaldism. On the one hand there is that which theorises itself as an organic form of historico-political activity, and celebrates itself in terms which are purely and simply a transposition of the language of the individual superman to an ensemble of “supermen” (celebration of active minorities as such, etc.). On the other hand there is voluntarism or Garibaldism conceived as the initial moment of an organic period which must be prepared and developed; a period in which the organic collectivity, as a social bloc, will participate fully. “Vanguards” without armies to back them up, “commandos” without infantry or artillery, these too are transpositions from the language of rhetorical heroism—though vanguard and commandos as specialised functions within complex and regular organisms are quite another thing. The same distinction can be made between the notion of intellectual elites separated from the masses, and that of intellectuals who are conscious of being linked organically to a national-popular mass. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 820

Categorization

• DEFINE: Distinguishes legitimately organic vanguard action from rhetorical ‘Garibaldism’ — a key conceptual distinction between elitism and organic intellectual work.
• XREF: Connects to Gramsci’s organic intellectuals concept and to the notion of vanguardism active in the Islamophobia readings’ framing of activist knowledge. — connects to: False heroism measures superiority through the harm it inflicts on others — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 495; Charismatic dictatorships inverted Weber’s claim that heroic leaders save passive masses. — Stephen Reicher, S. Alexander Haslam, and Nick Hopkins, Social identity and the dynamics of…, 14