Date: Mon, 20 Jan 1997 18:41:14 -0500 (EST)
From: louisgodena-AT-ids.net (Louis R Godena)
Subject: M-I: Re: What will socialism look like?



Charlotte writes:

>It seems to me that any society,  socialist or no,  will have to have
>some mechanism for compelling people to work.     Since workers 
>have nothing to stir them up to be serviceable but their wants,  what 
>device would you employ to insure that the productive needs of 
>socialism are met?


In any society it is necessary to recruit workers and compel them to work
where and when they are needed -- just as,  if you accept the postulate that
it is necessary to defend the working class by force of arms,  you must
recruit soldiers and compel them to fight when and where they are needed.
The nineteenth century industrialists hit on an efficient method of making
workers work,  presenting the worker the stark choice of starvation,  the
early nineteenth century workhouse,  or the early nineteenth century
factory.    Later,  Lenin himself put it without squeamishness with his
epigram that "he who does not work,  nor shall he eat."    After the first
world war,  the mass unemployment in Europe of the early 1920s and the great
depression of the early 1930s drove home for the next fifty years that,  in
work or out of work,  the adequate maintenance of the worker was a public
obligation.    There is now a deliberate retreat from this trend,  owing to
the recurrent crises of western capitalism.    The old economic whip of fear
of starvation once again looms large over an increasing number of workers.

So,  what means would a socialist society employ to guarantee the
satisfaction of basic material needs?    A necessary prerequisite is to
invite the worker to toil in a society in which s/he is a full and equal
partner and takes his/her full part in the running of affairs,   including
the management of its industries and economic policy.    I'm inclined to
believe that the nationalization of industry would also be a necessary
condition of the transition from purely economic incentives to incentives
which include a sense of social obligation on the part of the worker.   But,
of course,  you're right; while this may be a condition precedent for the
solution of this problem,  it does not by itself provide a solution.    Let
us not -- as I see many of our "market socialists" doing -- gloss over the
basic difficulty of labor incentives under any kind of socialist order.


An offhand remark by Zeynep a week or so ago is suggestive of that old
truism that what differentiates economic systems from one another is the
character of the motives they invoke to induce people to work.    I am led,
willy-nilly,  toward the prospect of some ultimate power of what is called
the direction of labor resting in some arm of socialist society,   whether
in an organ of State or of trade unions.    Much,  perhaps most,  depends on
positive incentives -- continually higher wages or standards of living,  as
well as the healthy solidarity and self-discipline of the community.    But
some office would have to exist,  not so much as an instrument of daily use
but rather as an ultimate sanction held in reserve where voluntary methods
fail.    A socialist society which undertakes to ensure freedom from want to
its members must be able to count on keeping up a level of organized
production sufficient to meet their basic needs.

Louis Godena    



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