War governments paired coercion with consent-building to manage labor

Evidence

To achieve desired outcomes, governments used the parallel strategy of soft ening the antagonism with labor. Th e British War Cabinet Report recognized that accelerated mechanization during the war had “aggravated” the feeling “that industry was becoming dehumanised” (HMSO 1918a, 100). Th e worker “[w]anted more individual consideration and some voice in the determination of the conditions under which he should work” (ibid.). Coercive methods had to be integrated alongside policies that would elicit consent and promote cooperation. Hence, in the report of the following year, the War Cabinet championed the intention to satisfy “the public mind,” which had been “prepared for a new order of things in industry aft er the war,” a new order that would off er a “more democratic basis, if there is to be lasting peace in the industrial world” (HMSO 1919a, 145, 149). — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, 163

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the general theme of authoritarian-populist splits between coercion and consent that pervades the reader’s other foundation books on class rule. — connects to: The state is an equilibrium of coercion and consent run through civil society — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1869; Hegemony runs on consent backed by a standby coercive apparatus; State control of labor made capitalist surplus extraction explicitly political during the war — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order: How Economists…, 186 (+4 more)

Broader Connections

• The state is an equilibrium of coercion and consent run through civil society #corroborates (0.80) — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1869
• Hegemony combines coercion with actively won consent, with consent in the lead #corroborates (0.80)
• Hegemony runs on consent backed by a standby coercive apparatus #corroborates (0.75)
• Hegemony rests on consent backed by state coercion held in reserve #corroborates (0.75) — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 278
• State power fuses hegemonic consent with coercive enforcement #corroborates (0.75) — David Theo Goldberg, The Racial State, 61
• State control of labor made capitalist surplus extraction explicitly political during the war #corroborates (0.72) — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, 186
• Capitalism requires willing state complicity in producing compliant labor forms #expands (0.70) — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 162