#losurdo

A revolution may be regarded as stably victorious only when the class that is its protagonist, after having gone through a more or less protracted period of conflicts and contradictions, trial and error, succeeds in expressing the enduring political form of its rule. This is a learning process that extended from 1789 until 1871 in the case of the French bourgeoisie, which (as Gramsci correctly stressed) only discovered the political form of its rule thereafter, creating a parliamentary republic on the basis of universal (male) suffrage. That rule proves enduring in a modern society on condition that it can combine hegemony and coercion and can activate coercion and dictatorship only at times of acute crisis.