Fordist hegemony rests on force plus persuasion, born in the factory.

Evidence

These economies affected production costs and permitted higher wages and lower selling prices. Since these preliminary conditions existed, already rendered rational by historical evolution, it was relatively easy to rationalise production and labour by a skilful combination of force (destruction of working-class trade unionism on a territorial basis) and persuasion (high wages, various social benefits, extremely subtle ideological and political propaganda) and thus succeed in making the whole life of the nation revolve around production. Hegemony here is born in the factory and requires for its exercise only a minute quantity of professional political and ideological intermediaries. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1064

Categorization

• DEFINE: Gramsci’s definition of American/Fordist hegemony as factory-born, combining force and persuasion (coercion + consent), is a cornerstone concept for the toolkit.
• XREF: Links directly to the reader’s Scaffolding Theory module: this is Gramsci’s canonical statement of how hegemony operates through consent manufactured at the point of production — foundational for later Islamophobia readings on manufactured consent.