'To make a science of socialism, it had first to be placed upon a real basis' Engels wrote as he famously dismissed 'utopian' socialism. The scienceı that Marx and Engels employed, however, was only historical interpretation.* It proved to be effective enough for studying capitalism (which had existed for centuries) but it was inadequate for studying 'modern' communism (which, in Marx's time, had existed only briefly during the Paris Commune). Although Marx's analysis of surplus value (the unpaid portion of a commodityıs value that labor adds to capital investment) was accurate, his speculative claims concerning capitalism's 'inevitable downfall' remains unsubstantiated. Without an empirical base of research to support its hypothesis, Marxian socialism is not a science as science is known today.Utopia 2000 believes that B.F. Skinner and behaviorism have provided a scientific basis for socialism in the 21st century.
ORIGINS OF BEHAVIORISM
Behaviorism's central premise is that the environment determines the development of an individual.
The first famous proponent of this claim was Robert Owen, a successful owner and manager of a cotton-spinning mill, located in Manchester England, called New Lanark. New Lanark was a community of 2,000 laborers (and their families) who, in addition to performing their work at the mill, were exposed to a milieu that encouraged education, profit-sharing, job rotation, ecological sustainability, and, above all, positive reinforcement. New Lanark existed for about twenty years (1800 to1820) and, as a living laboratory of behavioristic principles, it demonstrated the viability (and profitability) of natural reinforcement over punitive or contrived reinforcement in maintaining motivation. One of Owen's early statements passionately put forth the central idea of behaviorism:
'From the earliest ages it has been the practice of the world to act on the supposition that each individual man forms his own character, and that therefore he is accountable for all his sentiments and habits, and consequently merits reward for some and punishment for others...This error cannot much longer exist; for every day will make it more and more evident that the character of man is, without a single exception, always formed for him; that it may be, and is, chiefly created by his predecessors; that they give him, or may give him, his ideas and habits, which are the powers that govern and direct his conduct. Man, therefore, never did, nor is it possible he ever can, form his own character.'
It should be noted that Owen was a behaviorist first and a socialist second. His socialism grew out of behaviorism---a science of human behavior predicated upon contingencies of reinforcement. The experiment that was New Lanark, however, demonstrated that behaviorism (as a social structure) required socialism (as an economic structure).
POLITICAL IMPLICATIONS OF BEHAVIORISM
Behaviorism's second premise is that human behavior not only can be altered, but should be altered---in order to eliminate institutional inequities and to bring out every person's full potential (and happiness).
The founder of classical behaviorism was psychologist John B. Watson. Rejecting academic theorizing, his earliest writings, dating from 1914, affirmed that '[i]t is the business of behavioristic psychology to be able to predict and to control human activity.' In his classic book, Behaviorism (1925), Watson outlined what he called 'The Behavioristıs Platform':
'[W]e will have a behavioristic ethics, experimental in type, which will tell us whether it is advisable from the standpoint of present and future adjustments of the individual to have one wife or many wives; to have capital punishment or punishment of any kind; whether prohibition or no prohibition; easy divorce or no divorce; whether many of our other prescribed courses of conduct make for adjustment of the individual or the contrary, such for example as having a family life or even knowing our own fathers and mothers.'
Despite these strong words, Watson did not advance a specific program or proclaim any specific policies. What he did, however, was inform the 'vested interests' of government, business, and clergy that, once equipped with a complete analysis of human behavior, behaviorism might well challenge the assumptions---and the authority---of those who held vested positions in society. Watson, in clear statements, challenged biological determination (racism and sexism), punishment (coercion of workers and/or withholding of reinforcement), as well as the inegalitarian belief that some people 'deserved' to be educated while others did not. His classic statement was:
'Give me a dozen healthy infants, well-formed, and my own specified world to bring them up in and I'll guarantee to take any one at random and train him to become any type of specialist I might select---doctor, lawyer, artist, merchant-chief, and, yes, even beggar-man and thief, regardless of his talents, penchants, tendencies, abilities, vocations, and race of his ancestors.'
The most revolutionary idea expressed in that statement, implicit in all of behaviorism, is that the environment (existing political, economic, and religious structure) must be altered first in order to alter human behavior (for the better).
MODERN BEHAVIORISM
The primary spokesperson for modern behaviorism was B.F. Skinner---the most famous and the most misunderstood psychologist of the 20th century. Because of his large published output, the technical terminology employed in it, the complexity of many of his concepts, and significant changes he made in some of his positions over the course of his lifetime, Skinner has been easier to misrepresent than to represent. Behaviorism, as a result, has been often negatively presented to Americans by representatives of both the Left and the Right.**
Ideas basic to Skinnerian behaviorism are:
(1) Individuals, able to control their (physical and social) environment, are empowered to control their subsequent behavior and, thus, their destiny.(1)
(2) Small communities of voluntary associations, exercising only group and peer censure, are best suited to realize cooperative behavior.(2)
(3) Natural reinforcement is more effective (and rewarding) than contrived reinforcement.(3)
(4) It is more conducive to happiness to 'deaffluentize' (reduce consumer dependence) and to have the process of achieving reinforcement itself be the reinforcement.(4)
An important advantage the small voluntary association has over the state apparatus is that: the more diversity there is in a society, the more mediation (rules) there must be to accommodate the inevitable conflicts that diversity brings; whereas the more a community shares similar values (upon forming a community), the less mediation (rules) will be required.
Skinnerism, however, is not anarchy, nor is it the individualistic irresponsibility of libertarianism. Skinner's emphasis on long-term collective well-being over short-term individual interests has been clearly stated.*** Skinner also contrasted the interests of the people with the interests of the ruling class:
'If the futures of governments, religions, and capitalistic systems were congruent with the future of the species, our problem would be solved. When a certain behavior was to endanger the species, the institutions would declare it illegal, sinful, or too costly, respectively, and would change the contingencies they impose. Unfortunately the futures are different...Governments, religions, and capitalistic systems, whether public or private, control most of the reinforcers of daily life; they must use them as they have always done, for their own aggrandizement, and they have nothing to gain by relinquishing power. Those institutions are the embodiments of cultural practices that have come into existence through selection, but the contingencies of selection are in conflict with the future of the human species.'
BEHAVIORISM 2000 (AND BEYOND)
The director of the Cambridge Center for Behavioral Studies Robert D. Nye has stated that 'what Skinner advocated was a cultural revolution. He believed that major changes must be made in our overcrowded, overconsuming, and impersonal society.'(5) The practical application of this task has been accomplished, most notably, by the 'intentional community' Los Horcones (located in Sonora, Mexico), founded by psychologists Linda Armendariz and Juan Robinson in 1973. Skinner made clear his approval of their work before he died in 1990.****
Principles of behaviorism as applied by Los Horcones include:
1. Participatory consensus government.(6)
2. Equal access to job training and job rotation.(7)
3. Income and resource sharing.(8)
4. Elimination of hierarchy.(90
Los Horcones has brought behaviorism from theory to sustained practice. Like Owen's New Lanark, Los Horcones is a 'social laboratory,'(10) a solvent and fully-functioning community. Like New Lanark, Los Horcones has applied behavioristic principles by incorporating basic principles of 'utopian' socialism. These principles have been applied to all members and all aspects of their living. They have collectively analyzed their success in creating a cooperative, egalitarian society, and they have collectively modified the structure of their environment (social practices) to further its success---that is, its satisfaction amongst all members. This living laboratory, this application of behaviorism, is nothing less than a living democracy.
The critics of behaviorism have always asked: who is to determine the reinforcement that determines behavior? Los Horcones, putting behavioristic principles into practice, has answered the question. The 'control' is done by the people, all the people:
'At Los Horcones, we have been careful in becoming people who behave less and less by following rules, and who behave more and more through the natural consequences of our behavior. In 1973, we wrote our behavior code, but have modified it through the years. All the behaviors written into the code have been selected by taking into consideration the effects they would have on the total environment (physical, biological, behavioral, and ecological). In the beginning, the members followed rules, but little by little our behavior has come to be maintained by its natural consequences. Gradually, the behavior code has been forgotten.'(11)
Utopia 2000 acknowledges the ideal and the potential behaviorism holds for assisting people achieve an egalitarian society based upon mutual incentive, cooperation, and trust. We can only strive to meet the challenges before us in following the commendable example of Los Horcones in creating a Walden Two on earth. Toward a socialist intentional community (movement)!
* This is not to say that science does not originate with hypothesis. Indeed, science is not so much 'the facts' as it is the accurate selection of pertinent facts. (A good metaphor for factual inclusiveness at the expense of context is Lewis Carroll's map in Sylvie and Bruno Concluded. So accurate was this map that its scale was an actual mile to the mile---thus, if unrolled, 'it would cover the whole country, and shut out the sunlight.') However, selected facts (hypothesis) must ultimately yield empirical verification---and it is on this point that Marx's prediction that capitalism will produce its own 'gravedigger' (in the form of the proletariat) has fallen short.
** Two of the more famous distortions of behaviorism have been the work of Noam Chomsky and Ayn Rand. In Chomsky's 'Psychology and Ideology' (Chomsky Reader, Pantheon, 1987, pp. 157-82), Skinner was presented as a totalitarian interested in manipulating 'malleable' humans like so many laboratory rats in order to build a fascist state apparatus. Chomsky's statement that Skinner believes that "the control of the population as a whole must be delegated to specialists---to police, priests, owners, teachers, therapists, and so on, with their specialized reinforcers and their codified contingencies" (p. 155 [of Beyond Freedom and Dignity, Knopf, 1971])' is an extreme example of pulling a quote out of context. What Skinner said, in his truncated statement, was---defending the 'face-to-face' control of small communities and arguing against the bureaucratic control associated with state mechanisms---'ethical control may survive in small groups but the control of the population as a whole...' Skinner had wrote, in the previous paragraph (p. 154): 'Perhaps the most important feature of the utopian design, however, is that the survival of a community can be made important to its members. The small size, the isolation, the internal coherence---all these give a community an identity which makes its success or failure conspicuous.' Rand's 'The Stimulus and the Response' (Philosophy: Who Needs It, Signet, 1982, pp. 137-161) praised (and followed) Chomskyıs critique of Skinner, but revealed her (usual) unfamiliarity with what she critiqued. Using her title for example, stimulus-response conditioning (Pavlovian psychology) was precisely the first thing Skinner replaced with his 'three-term' contingency of stimulus-response-consequence, the latter aspect based on a reciprocal relationship between environment and behavior (and vice versa). Most importantly, both Chomsky and Rand (like most critics of behaviorism) exploited the behavioristic term 'control' without acknowledging that all behaviorists---especially Skinner---have clearly repudiated either punitive or negative control, and have advocated that all control be positive reinforcement. (Skinner, Science and Human Behavior, MacMillan, 1953, sec. II, chapter XII, for one of many examples.)
*** See Science and Human Behavior, (MacMillan, 1953), sec. IV, chapter XXI, pp. 327-29; Contingencies of Reinforcement: A Theoretical Analysis, (Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1969) p. 48; Beyond Freedom and Dignity, (Knopf, 1971) pp. 122-25; and 'The Steep and Thorny Way to a Science of Behavior,' Reflections on Behaviorism and Society, (Prentice-Hall, 1978) p.80.
****See the New York Times, 7 November 1989, pp. C1 and C8.
Notes
1. Skinner, 'Humanism and Behaviorism,' Reflections on Behaviorism and Society, (Prentice-Hall, 1978) p. 54.
2. Skinner, 'The Design of Experimental Communities,' Cumulative Record, 3rd ed., (Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1972), p. 61. Also 'Human Behavior and Democracy,' Reflections on Behaviorism and Society, pp. 8-10.
3. Skinner, 'What Is Wrong with Daily Life in the Western World,' Upon Further Reflection (Prentice-Hall, 1987), P. 20.
4. Skinner, 'Walden Two Revisited,' Reflections on Behaviorism and Society, p. 61. Also 'Walden (One) and Walden Two,' ibid., p. 193.
5. Robert D. Nye, The Legacy of B.F. Skinner, (Brooks/Cole, 1992), p. 100.
6. Horcones, 'Personalized Government: A Governmental System Based on Behavior Analysis,' Behavior Analysis and Social Action, 7: 1 & 2, 1989, pp. 42-47.
7. Ibid.
8. Robinson, 'Comunidad Los Horcones: Radical Behaviorism in Mexico,' Shared Visions, Shared Lives, Bill Metcalf, ed., (Findhorn Press, 1996), p. 149.
9. 'Walden Two and Social Change: The Application of Behavior Analysis to Cultural Design,' Behavior Analysis and Social Action, op. cit., p. 39.
10. Horcones, 'Experimental Culture,' http://www.loshorcones.org/experiment.html, 17 June 1998.
11. Horcones, 'News From Now-here, 1986: A Response to News From Nowhere, 1984,' The Behavior Analyst, 9, 1986, p. 130.
