High wages require state discipline to keep workers spending rationally

Evidence

The element of so-called high wages also depends on this necessity. It is the instrument used to select and maintain in stability a skilled labour force suited to the system of production and work. But high wages are a double-edged weapon. It is necessary for the worker to spend his extra money “rationally” to maintain, renew and, if possible, increase his muscular-nervous efficiency and not to corrode or destroy it. Thus the struggle against alcohol, the most dangerous agent of destruction of labouring power, becomes a function of the state. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1120

Categorization

• XREF: This is Gramsci’s account of how economic concession gets coupled to disciplinary power — primes the reader for how welfare and surveillance co-arise, relevant to later readings on liberal governance. — connects to: High interest rates deliberately broke workers’ power to enforce subordination — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 154