The limits of passive revolution

Abstract

This article addresses what it identifies as the over-extension of the concept of passive revolution in recent writing on international political economy. It traces the evolution of the concept in the Prison Notebooks, where it is rooted in Antonio Gramsci’s development of the Marxist theory of bourgeois revolutions to account for episodes of what he called ‘revolution/restoration’ such as the Italian Risorgimento. But, in his attempt to offer a comprehensive alternative to the great liberal philosopher Benedetto Croce, Gramsci extends the concept to cases such as Mussolini’s fascism. The core meaning common to these uses is that of socio-political processes in which revolution-inducing strains are at once displaced and at least partially fulfilled. In more recent Marxist work, even this meaning is in danger of being lost. The article concludes by seeking to relocate passive revolution within Gramsci’s non-determinist, but still firmly materialist, understanding of Marx’s theory of history.