What appears objective social necessity is only a transitory phase of class rule

Evidence

An increasingly perfect division of labour objectively reduces the position of the factory worker to increasingly “analytical” movements of detail, so that the complexity of the collective work passes the comprehension of the individual worker; in the latter’s consciousness, his own contribution is devalued to the point where it seems easily replaceable at any moment. At the same time, work that is concerted and well organised gives a better “social” productivity, so that the entire work-force of a factory should see itself as a “collective worker”. These were the premisses of the factory movement, which aimed to render “subjective” that which is given “objectively”. What does objective mean in this instance? For the individual worker, the junction between the requirements of technical development and the interests of the ruling class is “objective”. But this junction, this unity between technical development and the interests of the ruling class is only a historical phase of industrial development, and must be conceived of as transitory. The nexus can be dissolved; technical requirements can be conceived in concrete terms, not merely separately from the interests of the ruling class, but in relation to the interests of the class which is as yet still subaltern. A compelling proof that such a “split” and new synthesis is historically mature is constituted by the very fact that such a process is understood by the subaltern class—which precisely for that reason is no longer subaltern, or at least is demonstrably on the way to emerging from its subordinate position. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 814

Categorization

• DEFINE: Gramsci here defines ‘objective’ — for the worker, the unity of technical development and ruling-class interests — as a merely historical, dissoluble phase rather than a natural given.
• XREF: This is the core motif scaffolded in her working class consciousness and selfhood in the toolkit; the objective-as-historical move recurs in Althusser’s ideology and in later subaltern studies.
• DEEPTHINKING: The redefinition of ‘objective’ as a contingent alignment of technology and class interest, plus the claim that comprehension itself marks class emergence, is a dense and paradigm-shifting conceptual move.