s_sanderson wrote:
>
> In the old Soviet Union, it was discovered that workers who received
>guaranteed employment and a guaranteed wage regardless of what work they
>did and how well they did it performed poorly. This contributed in an
>important way to the economic crisis and ultimate collapse of state
>socialism. A basic characteristic of human nature even agreed to by
>such WSNers as Chase-Dunn and Hall, is that humans follow a Law of Least
>Effort. That is, they try to expend a minimal amount of time and energy
>in the performance of activities, especially those involving toil.
>Socialist labor systems, much to their dismay, ran up against this hard
>fact and suffered accordingly.
> Of course, Austin will now claim that there's no such thing as human nature. We've had that debate before. But the evidence from anthropology
and history suggests otherwise.
> For all of its faults capitalism still works better in some ways than
>many other social systems, socialist societies included. Even
>world-system theorists like Wallerstein admit that overcentralization of
>production is a problem that has to be avoided in creating any future
>socialist system. Markets and incentives are important and have a role
>to play, even within "socialism."
> Stephen Sanderson
This is a great characteristic of homo sapiens, to follow the Law of
Least Effort, the same can be said for other species. In the former there
are two ways of doing this, by inventing ways to reduce effort, or by
stealing off others. The latter seems to be preferred since this requires
even less effort.
Members of the race will do either; the point is the argument of
what is better for either method of performing the least effort,
socialism or capitalism, cannot be answered in terms of the two systems.
Indeed, the problems now cannot be answered with the organising myth of
either. Neither capitalism nor socialism is a problem, the problem is
thinking they are canonical extremes. As Wallerstein commented, Marx was
a bit to Smithian for his liking.
William Kirk