Work discipline internalized by the worker beats external imposition

Evidence

This equilibrium can only be something purely external and mechanical, but it can become internalised if it is proposed by the worker himself, and not imposed from the outside, if it is proposed by a new form of society, with appropriate and original methods. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1119

Categorization

• DEFINE: Early statement of hegemony’s core mechanism: control that is self-imposed rather than coercive is more effective and durable.
• XREF: This is the seed of Gramsci’s distinction between coercion and consent that later readings of ideological state apparatuses and racialized self-policing assume. Connects forward to how colonized/racialized subjects internalize dominant norms.