You Can’t Have a Revolution Without Revolution
You can’t have a ‘revolution without revolution’ was a sentiment expressed by Antonio Gramsci, the Italian Marxist philosopher, in his Prison Notebooks (1926-1937).
Gramsci was specifically commenting on the 19th century Italian Risorgimento—the movement for independence and unity—which he characterised as a ‘passive revolution’. For Gramsci a passive revolution was a top-down revolution that strove for a new and modern political course without actually engaging with the will of the people or disrupting the hegemony of ruling factions. Gramsci considered the Risorgimento a passive revolution because the new Italian government failed to get ordinary people politically involved or truly united…