Without coercion, virtue becomes hypocritical and crisis turns permanent

Evidence

A two-fold situation can then create itself in which there is an inherent conflict between the “verbal” ideology which recognises the new necessities and the real “animal” practice which prevents physical bodies from effectively acquiring the new attitudes. In this case one gets the formation of what can be called a situation of totalitarian social hypocrisy. … On the other hand, in the case where no coercive pressure is exercised by a superior class, “virtue” is affirmed in generic terms but is not practised either through conviction or through coercion, with the result that the psychophysical attitudes necessary for the new methods of work are not acquired. The crisis can become “permanent”—that is, potentially catastrophic—since it can be resolved only by coercion. This coercion is a new type, in that it is exercised by the elite of a class over the rest of that same class. It can also only be self-coercion and therefore self-discipline (like Alfieri tying himself to the chair). — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1114

Categorization

Category: Definitional Content

• XREF: Introduces ‘totalitarian social hypocrisy’ — a concept that prefigures the internalized self-discipline required of Muslim subjects in later Islamophobia theory.