An inquiry of Gramsci’s concept of passive revolution in South Africa: reclaiming its value for organisational perspectives

Abstract

South African scholarship has engaged with Antonio Gramsci’s category of passive revolution as a historical analytical framework for analysing the transformation of post-apartheid society. Many of these interpretations characterise passive revolution as a top-down process of state formation, capital restructuring and governance mechanisms. This article engages with various interpretations of passive revolution by investigating this concept in Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks and exploring three key debates: the scope of passive revolution, its relation to hegemony, and its dialectic nature. The paper emphases the concept’s dialectic nature and reclaims its value for strategic debates for movements and organisations, utilising the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA) and the FeesMustFall movement as vantage points from which to demonstrate its utility. It argues that passive revolution, framed within Gramsci’s philosophy of praxis, offers a framework for reflecting on movements’ tactics and strategies in specific conjunctures, placing the possibilities for transformations and alternative societies at the centre of analysis.