Rationalized labor discipline requires directing nervous energy away from passion

Evidence

It seems clear that the new industrialism wants monogamy: it wants the man as worker not to squander his nervous energies in the disorderly and stimulating pursuit of occasional sexual satisfaction. The employee who goes to work after a night of “excess” is no good for his work. The exaltation of passion cannot be reconciled with the timed movements of productive motions connected with the most perfected automatism. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1124

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Worker stress-control routines signal how far agency goals are achievable — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy: Dilemmas of…, 635; Workers must now perform enthusiasm for work rather than merely perform the work. — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 1705; Wage labor alone cannot motivate people without offering meaning — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 2019