Mechanized work frees the worker’s brain rather than mummifying it

Evidence

However it is done, and it is not the spiritual death of man. Once the process of adaptation has been completed, what really happens is that the brain of the worker, far from being mummified, reaches a state of complete freedom. The only thing that is completely mechanicised is the physical gesture; the memory of the trade, reduced to simple gestures repeated at an intense rhythm, “nestles” in the muscular and nervous centres and leaves the brain free and unencumbered for other occupations. … American industrialists have understood all too well this dialectic inherent in the new industrial methods. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1139

But if one really thinks about it, the effort that these workers have to make in order to isolate from the often fascinating intellectual content of a text (and the more fascinating it is the less work is done and the less well) its written symbolisation, this perhaps is the greatest effort that can be required in any trade. … Once the process of adaptation has been completed, what really happens is that the brain of the worker, far from being mummified, reaches a state of complete freedom. The only thing that is completely mechanicised is the physical gesture; the memory of the trade, reduced to simple gestures repeated at an intense rhythm, “nestles” in the muscular and nervous centres and leaves the brain free and unencumbered for other occupations. … One walks automatically, and at the same time thinks about whatever one chooses. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1139

Categorization

• XREF: Reverses the usual Marxism-of-labor reading; connects to the broader Gramscian theme of how subaltern consciousness can survive within capitalist discipline, which the reader’s toolkit will reuse. — connects to: Taylorism deliberately breaks up skilled workers’ psycho-physical nexus; Automatic behavior is your brain’s efficiency strategy; the basal ganglia and other subcortical structures can run learned behaviors without conscious input. — Can Your Subconscious Take Over? Automatic Behavior; Mechanization sustains exploitation while shifting its form from muscular to mental exhaustion. — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the…, 169 (+3 more)
• corroborated: 3 independent passages support this claim — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1139