A conformism created from below enables, rather than destroys, individual freedom.

Evidence

The development of economic forces on new bases and the progressive installation of the new structure will heal the contradictions which cannot fail to exist, and, when they have created a new ‘conformism’ from below, will permit new possibilities for self-discipline, i.e. for freedom, including that of the individual. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 2313

Categorization

• DEFINE: Gramsci redefines freedom as self-discipline arising from a collectively produced conformism — useful for the habitual slippage in later readings between discipline, biopolitics, and consent.
• XREF: connects to: Respectability rhetoric demanded structural state reform, not just private behavior. — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent: The Women’s…, 1007