Fordist labour discipline requires persuasion and high wages, not coercion alone.

Evidence

Once these reasons have been established, the problem arises; whether the type of industry and organisation of work and production typical of Ford is rational; whether, that is, it can and should be generalised, or whether, on the other hand, we are not dealing with a malignant phenomenon which must be fought against through trade-union action and through legislation? In other words, whether it is possible, with the material and moral pressure of society and of the State, to lead the workers as a mass to undergo the entire process of psycho-physical transformation so that the average type of Ford worker becomes the average type of worker in general? Or whether this is impossible because it would lead to physical degeneration and to deterioration of the species, with the consequent destruction of all labour power? It seems possible to reply that the Ford method is rational, that is, that it should be generalised; but that a long process is needed for this, during which a change must take place in social conditions and in the way of life and the habits of individuals. This, however, cannot take place through coercion alone, but only through tempering compulsion (self-discipline) with persuasion. Persuasion should also take the form of high wages, which offer the possibility of a better standard of living, or more exactly perhaps, the possibility of realising a standard of living which is adequate to the new methods of production and work which demand a particular degree of expenditure of muscular and nervous energy. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1145

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to Gramsci’s core concept of hegemony — consent won through material concessions rather than pure force — which scaffolds the Islamophobia readings’ account of how dominant ideology is internalized.
• DEFINE: This passage is the seed of the ‘self-discipline + persuasion’ mechanism that later becomes the analytic core of consent-based domination in the Islamophobia toolkit.