2025-10-01_A Gramsci and BR Ambedkar on efficacy

Educate, Organise, Agitate! […] To enunciate the principle of justice is one thing. To make it effective is another thing…

• Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar
  

Educate yourselves because we’ll need all your intelligence. Rouse yourselves because we need all your enthusiasm. Organise yourselves because we need all your strength.

The intellectual’s error consists in the belief that it is possible to know without understanding and above all without feeling or being passionate … that is, the intellectual can be considered as such if distinct and detached from the people-nation, i.e. without sharing the elementary feelings of the people, understanding them, and then explaining and justifying them within a given historical situation, and linking them dialectically to the laws of history… . Without this passion – this sentimental connection between intellectuals and people- nation – politics-history cannot be achieved.

• Antonio Gramsci