One of the central ideological differences between capitalism and socialism concerns incentive. Capitalist defenders often assert that only individual self-interest is strong enough to maintain incentive and that without the incentive to 'do better' than others innovation and extra effort will cease. The problem with undifferentiated distribution (everyone receiving the same goods, or receiving goods 'according to need'), defenders of capitalism assert, is that if extra initiative will not be recognized only average work will be performed, even by those possessing above-average skills. The equitable thing about capitalist systems, according to the conventional wisdom, is that rewards for merit can vary as much as performances can vary---and that merit and reward are matched by supply and demand. The defense of individual self-interest as incentive is that each individual can choose how much effort he or she desires to exert.
Critics of capitalism, on the other hand, often assert that capitalist systems are rarely responsive to individual self-interest. They point out that most workers receive flat pay-rates and are rewarded with raises at set intervals. Furthermore, these 'incentives' are not determined by individual initiative or above-average skills, but by things like the level of unemployment, interest rates, level of profitability for individual companies---impersonal market conditions of supply and demand, all factors outside of any individual's performance and ability. Critics of capitalism acknowledge that incentives exist between professions and within the hierarchies of professions but point out that these incentives apply only to limited positions and often require education which, also subject to supply and demand, have little to do with the individual.
To enter into polemics concerning incentive, as differentiated between capitalist and socialist ideologies, it may be worthwhile to investigate various types of incentive. Incentive systems are at the heart of the study of behavior (behaviorology). Following a brief synopsis of such systems, pros, cons, and qualifications will be forwarded using a behaviorological analysis.
Positive and Negative Incentive
Positive incentive is receiving a social or material good that was not possessed prior to performing specified work. A common example, of course, is a wage. Another example is health care. In the language of behaviorology, a wage is a conditioned reinforcer while medical treatment is an unconditioned reinforcer---i.e. the first is contrived (valuable in relation to other things) while the other is natural (valuable in itself). Yet another example---showing a further distinction, a distinction between social goods and material goods---is the affection of a mate (which has elements of both contrived and natural reinforcers).*
Because wages are generalized, they can be used to acquire either unconditioned reinforcers (such as food, shelter, or heat) or other conditioned reinforcers (jewelry, computers, or vacations). This dual function of money presents a significant problem in the analysis of incentive, namely the difference between necessity and luxury. As B.F. Skinner pointed out many times, wages often serve 'simply to create a standard economic condition which may be withdrawn aversively.' Food, shelter, and heat, being necessities, represent the part of a wage that has no control over work performance as positive incentive; necessities represent the part of a wage that controls work performance through negative incentive. Thus, only the part of a wage that remains after necessities have been secured can be considered positive incentive.
Behaviorology subscribes strongly to the belief that positive reinforcement is preferable to negative reinforcement (and vastly superior to punishment). Although negative reinforcement is immediate and cheap (taking goods away instead of supplying more), in the long run it results in behaviors incompatible with effective work performance---behaviors expressed as resentment, anxiety, or countercontrol.** Positive reinforcement, on the other hand, presents the individual with nothing to rebel against or escape from. Unlike aversive control or negative incentive, positive incentive is not coercive and, therefore, emits behaviors that are commonly associated with freedom and dignity.
Various Schedules of Incentive
Behaviorology has demonstrated that different schedules of incentive significantly affect the rates and magnitude of behavior. These schedules are: (a) fixed-interval, (b) fixed-ratio, (c) variable-interval, and (d) variable-ratio. Examples of these schedules applied to the work place are: fixed-interval (predetermined weekly, biweekly, or monthly salary), fixed-ratio (piecework), variable-interval (stock dividends), and variable-ratio (commissions and profits). Extensive behaviorological research has demonstrated that variable schedules are much more effective in maintaining high and steady rates of performance. This would explain the intense ambition associated with investors and executives as contrasted with the lesser ambitions of many wage laborers.
An important factor in the effectiveness of different schedules is the intermittent intervals or ratios that pass between reinforcements. As the success of variable schedules suggest, unpredictable periods between reinforcement emit much 'speculative' effort, thus making resistance to extinction (cessation of behavior) quite strong. (In comparison, a worker who received payment after each exertion would soon cease exertion if payment stopped immediately.) Nonetheless, immediate reinforcement is very important in developing initial conditioning. The likelihood of a ratio or interval being 'stretched' requires first a gradually expanding chain of reinforcements in order to build a repertoire of endurance (or 'faith' that reinforcement is forthcoming).
This has a direct bearing on the fact that wage-workers, in addition to experiencing fixed schedules, are also under the control of variable schedules. An example is the competition amongst wage workers for more remunerative professions and more remunerative positions within professions. Although such intermittent schedules (subject to the caprices of supply and demand) are the same as ones experienced by investors and executives, they are considerably less effective because initial conditioning and maintained exposures to reinforcement have had considerably longer, less-reinforcing intervals. Business-people usually receive either positive or negative results quarterly; workers are much more likely to change jobs or receive promotions annually---therefore their incentive has less operant strength (probability of response).
Natural and Contrived Incentive
Another significant factor determining incentive involves the relationship between unconditioned and conditioned reinforcement. As mentioned above, unconditioned reinforcers are valuable in themselves whereas conditioned reinforcers are valuable in exchange for other things. Another distinction concerning the latter is that conditioned reinforcers also can act as 'progress reports' on behavior emitted to obtain unconditioned (or primary) reinforcers---such as the use of praise in conversation, grades in school, or 'body language' in courtship. In such cases, the 'progress report' of incentive sought itself becomes discriminative stimuli which provides added incentive.
Skinner observed many times that business practices were overly dependent upon contrived incentive to maintain the performance of workers. Wages, and the threat of their removal, strongly suggest that work itself for many workers does not provide enough incentive to produce whatever it is that the work produces. The necessity of contriving incentive since the industrial revolution has become especially acute because mass production is predicated upon a hypertrophied division of labor that requires low-skilled workers to maintain its high level of productivity and profitability. Because such work lacks reinforcing qualities, it possesses little natural incentive.
One problem every mass-production economy must face is that skilled (presumably reinforcing) work must be limited to a small segment of society (or in small proportional allotments to all segments) whereas the problem every artisan economy must face is that skilled work limits the amount of material (presumably reinforcing) goods to a small segment of society (or in small proportional allotments to all segments). Skinner noted that a return to the 'life of the craftsman' was, in itself, 'not a very enlightened solution.' However, increasing the levels of contrived incentive (material goods or punishment) is not especially conducive to the survival of the species (pollution, dependence, and countercontrol).
Behaviorology posits that it is not reinforcers themselves which count in providing incentive, but that it is their relation to behavior that counts. This implies that performance may be maintained more effectively by incorporating more 'progress reports' and less 'payoffs' into schedules of reinforcement. This also infers that contrived incentive must, ultimately, be related to natural and cannot be maintained by indefinite contingencies; in order to claim success, contrived incentive must be able to withdraw its contrived reinforcers (with behavior remaining intact).
Individual Incentive vs. Collective Incentive
A cornerstone of behaviorology has been the observation that behavior is selected by the effect that behavior has upon the environment. An application of this is that reinforcement is 'an event which increases the rate of a response which it follows.' Behavior, shaped by reinforcement, is maintained by the effects that behavior has had upon the environment in the past. As Skinner pointed out, a problem with this is that much behavior is selected by a selecting past which often is incongruous with behaviors conducive to survival in the present and future---a problem acerbated by the rapid pace of cultural evolution. This problem is often understood as differences between individual incentive and collective (cultural) incentive.
A well-known example of such differences are illustrated in the 'problem of the commons' (where a hypothetical communal pasture is endangered by overgrazing unless each member of society reduces his or her use of it---yet a single person's use of it is, in itself, nominal and, thus, easy to justify from an individual perspective as returns from the pasture begin to decrease). Utopia 2000 submits that such 'ideological' differences (capitalist vs. socialist) are better understood in temporal terms (short- vs. long-term). After all, even a pasture atomized into segments of private property will fail to produce profits if short-term incentive completely overrides long-term. Struggles between present and future gains resemble struggles between individualism and collectivism only because, using survival as a measure of success, '[w]hat survives are the species and the culture,' not the individual.
An important behaviorological observation is that people, when faced with a choice between immediate and deferred gratification, will more often than not choose the immediate (even if the gain from the immediate is lesser to the gain from the later). Howard Rachlin has emphasized, however, that 'commitment strategies' (such as placing temporal barriers of equal length between both immediate and deferred gains) result in successful behavioral intervention.*** Only contrived incentives can support such strategies in the present until natural incentives assume control. Such a technology of incentive, unfortunately, has been confronted by a long cultural tradition of asserting that incentive exists 'within the individual' and acts independently of environmental influence. As a result, most incentive is left to the capricious commitment strategies of short-term goals.
Toward a Technology of Incentive
Because Skinner criticized the punitive and ineffectual incentive practices of America, he was a critic of capitalism. There is little to suggest, however, that he would had found much to recommend about the Soviet Union's incentive methods, had he been familiar with them. He once stated:
Marx contended that the economic theory of his time was the ideology of the industrial and commercial bourgeoisie, but I did not think that anything of the sort could be said of interpretations of economic practices in the light of laboratory work. For thousands of years employers had used various schedules of reinforcement, but that fact could scarcely have affected the analysis of schedules in the laboratory, where the rat or pigeon (free of ideology) told the story rather than the scientist. Not only could we reach an understanding of human behavior free of ideology, we should be able to design practices which were also free of it.
Nonetheless, his fictional utopia, Walden Two proffered many socialist values.**** Work was rotated (according to 'sliding scale' preferences) and hierarchy was conspicuously absent. The two real-life communities (Twin Oaks***** and Los Horcones) that have claimed the distinction of being 'Walden Two' communities have both taken income-sharing as a basic Skinnerian tenet, a feature he never cared to disallow. Indeed, his fondness for his early book lasted throughout his life, and he noted with pride that Walden Two contained 'no example of the explicit use of a contrived reinforcer.'
This is not to infer that simple 'equality' of income and ownership of the means of production will necessarily create and maintain incentive. If such utopian contracts suffice, there would be no need for a technology of behavior to intervene and history has strongly suggested otherwise. Utopia 2000 submits that what is required is an egalitarian contract and a technology of incentive. The first would insure that all members of a participating community would be affected by the same contingencies (thus allowing self-interest to align with egalitarian policies) and the second would insure that long-term goals do not become overridden by the immediate reinforcers of short-term goals.
Face-to-face Incentive
Although the competitive climate of American business might suggest otherwise, the problem with traditional incentive systems is that there is too little incentive to go around. Competition is not incentive, it is selection. Conspicuous examples include the fact that only one-fourth of American jobs require any skill above a high school level (1) and business failures have increased 10% in the last five years (2) while corporate mergers have doubled.(3) Investment magazine Barronšs once commented cavalierly: '[C]apitalism without bankruptcies and failures would be like Christianity without hell.'(4) These examples persuasively infer that while our culture perpetuates the survival of the individual, it is uninterested in the survival of all individuals. This cannot be anything but a culture offering punitive incentive, and (as behaviorology has demonstrated) punishment is not the opposite of reinforcement---it is far less effective.
In a large society, the survival of all individuals is largely immaterial. In a small society (such as an experimental community), the survival of all individuals becomes paramount. In such a society, where the actions of each individual have immediate, consequential impact, participation and 'investment' in the survival of the culture becomes acute---much like the incentive of entrepreneurs who stand to wholly gain, or lose, with the fate of their companies. Another significant advantage of the small community is that deferred, delegated authorities are unnecessary: the values of the culture can be expressed individually, or 'face-to-face.' Reinforcement (and the incentive that precedes it) is also more likely to be immediate, personal, and---importantly---contingent upon the survival of the community.
The 'unified environment' of social (and labor) relations can best be studied, addressed, and amended in a small community. Long-term goals need to be aligned with short-term desires. Individual expression needs to be compatible with collective interests. Values need to be established. Who will establish these values? Utopia 2000 believes that by mutualizing contingencies of incentive, individuals in a community can best foster incentives which will be satisfactory to all members---or as Los Horcones has put it, individuals will choose to create 'a society in which the happiness of some does not depend on the unhappiness of others.'(5) Only by creating contingencies of incentive that are to govern those who design them can assurance be provided that the designers will choose, with unwavering equity, incentives that best address all participants of such a culture.
* See Robert D. Nye, The Legacy of B.F. Skinner (Brooks/Cole, 1992), pp. 21-22.
** See Holland and Skinner, The Analysis of Behavior (McGraw-Hill, 1961), pp. 251-62.
*** See Howard Rachlin and Leonard Green, 'Commitment, Choice, and Self-Control,' Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, 17: 1, 1972, pp. 15-22, and Rachlin, 'Self-Control,' Behaviorism, 2: 1, 1974, pp. 94-107.
**** One of the most common misunderstandings about Skinner was his position on values. He asserted---most famously in Beyond Freedom and Dignity---that '[t]o make a value judgment by calling something good or bad is to classify it in terms of its reinforcing effects.' Many critics construed this far too generally and, therefore, assumed that behaviorism offered a clinical if not amoral 'value' system ('if it feels good, do it'). What Skinner said was that whatever receives reinforcement is most likely to be repeated---with the 'mental' narrator (verbal behavior) saying 'this is worth doing again.' His observation was simply to point out how elastic 'values' really are (already). As previously mentioned, temporal reinforcers present temporal values, i.e. behavior that will be valued today may produce consequences that will not be valued tomorrow. There are many values and, as Skinner pointed out, '[t]here is nothing inconsistent or contradictory about...uses of "good" and "bad," or about other value judgments, as long as the [temporal] level of selection is specified.' Obviously values are necessary in the application of a technology of behavior (and Skinner's values tend toward the communitarian), but the technology itself has no predetermined values.
***** Twin Oaks ceased to call itself a 'Walden Two' community during the 1980s and has largely severed its earlier association with Skinner. However, co-founder Kat Kinkade recently stated: I'd rather have done Walden Two, and I can't persuade myself otherwise.' See Kinkade, Is It Utopia Yet? (Twin Oaks Publishing, 1994), p. 141.
Sources:
1. Business Week, 1 September 1997, p. 67.
2. Statistical Abstract of the United States 1997, table 854, p. 548.
3. Ibid., table 859, p. 550.
4. Barron's, 3 November 1997, p. 6.
5. Horcones, with Roberts and Epstein, 'Walden Two and Social Change: The Application of Behavior Analysis to Cultural Design,' Behavior Analysis and Social Action, 7: 1 & 2, 1989, p. 40.
