Daily Times

One of the most common and frequently used arguments of the apologists of capitalism is that incentive for money and competition is necessary for human incentive to work and create for socio-economic growth and development. If one gives deeper thought to this prevailing misconception, then do teachers teach, writers write, journalists report, doctors treat, engineers build, peasants toil and workers work only for money? Capitalist opinion makers and intellectuals see it all as a question of money despite the fact that there are many things people do (hobbies etc.) that are motivated simply because we like doing them, things that develop us as people, give us a sense of purpose and help us to form bonds with others.
In reality, it is the capitalist system that imposes this psychology on society to coerce labour and subjugate them into slavery of money and capital for their existence. However, if that were the case, why would people take the initiative to save a wounded accident victim, rescue people from raging fires and risking their lives, help and care for the elderly, children, disabled and weak, oppressed people in society? From a historical and social point of view, greed as a driving force for human development never existed from eternity and will have to be abolished in order for humanity to enjoy work for the common good and collective emancipation. Where the lives of human beings are not enslaved to technology, its development and utilisation can create an abundance of human needs for the abolishment of want in society becoming a reality. From the commanding heights of the capitalist economy of transnational corporations to the lowest rungs of capitalist drudgery such as bonded labour in brick kilns, the vision of ordinary people is viciously compressed into the narrowness of thought that money is the sole incentive and source for survival.
We are often told that competition is the secret to capitalist efficiency but, in reality, competition leads to greater waste. For example, there is significant duplication of work between businesses performing similar functions, meaning that time and money are invested twice into the same things. Take supermarkets as an example: if food distribution were carried out by one organisation, then the economies of mass scales would make the process cheaper and centralised planning would make it more efficient. Competition also forces companies to create needs for their particular products through advertising, the cost of which is passed onto the consumer. Trade secrets and intellectual property rights mean that the best ideas and innovations are not pursued to their full potential. Instead of the world’s best and brightest minds being employed in tandem to produce the things that society needs, scientists, engineers and designers are set against each other in competition, resulting in completely unnecessary duplication of efforts and resources. In any case, genuine competition in the age of imperialism — the highest stage of capitalism — is something of a myth. In recent years, airlines, supermarket chains, beverages and food chains, pharmaceutical firms and most other sectors of the economy were found to have colluded on prices in order to secure larger profits. These companies in effect recognise that planning is a more efficient way to run the economy than leaving it to the anarchy of the free market.
The very presence of a few giant transnational monopolies in every industry, dominating the market, demonstrates how free competition turns into its opposite precisely because of the increased productivity and efficiency that can be achieved from producing on such a vast scale. Within each firm there is an immense level of planning, coordination, and cooperation, all for the sake of increasing efficiency in the lust for making greater profits. Between firms, meanwhile, the anarchy of competition and the invisible hand remains, leading to enormous inefficiency and waste on a societal level.
In his book, Multinational Corporate Strategy: Planning for World Markets, James C Leontiades cites the example of an electronics company, Texas Instruments, a multinational organisation that plans all of its operations from its Dallas headquarters. The level of centralised control of the multinational is indicated by the elements of strategy decided upon in the headquarters. In this example, we see the seed of a new society present in the old. Paradoxically, a socialist society would embrace all possibilities that come with planning the economy but, of course, we would be able to plan in the interests of the needs of the many, instead of the profits of a few. This is the foundation of a society of superabundance in which all the forces of economic production and investment are rationally and democratically planned in the interests of the majority. The first step towards this will be the expropriation of the landed estates, the banks, the utilities, the infrastructure and the commanding heights of the economy, all to be placed under the democratic control of the working class actively participating in a planned economy. Further development on the basis of a planned economy can achieve miracles, drastically reducing the length of the working day. On this basis, labour requirements for each person could eventually be worked out on a lifetime basis, instead of a daily, weekly or monthly basis.
Marxists are often chided that there will be no incentive left to work in a socialist society. It is generally assumed under capitalism that offering people bigger financial rewards means people try harder. However, pioneering work in behavioural sciences, psychology and economics, and more recently neuroscience carried out in various researches demolishes that notion. Edward Deci, a psychologist at Rochester University in New York, concludes: “People’s psychological needs are to feel autonomous and the sensation of being related to others. Monetary payment does not fulfill these needs. Over-emphasis on financial reward undermines autonomy and therefore intrinsic motivation. This negative effect of money on motivation matters hugely. To increase people’s creativity using money to motivate them does not work.”
Harvard Business School professor, Teresa Amabile recognises this in her book The Progress Principle: “It is a feeling of making progress and moving forward that really motivates people at work.” Socialism, by contrast, is about freedom from work. The incentive to work under socialism will be that we are working to build a society in which we will be free from the necessity of labour. There will be collective efforts of society to develop the economy and forces of production to such an extent that minimal human labour is required to keep it moving, leaving us free to lead our lives however we like. Instead of alienating us from our work, socialism will gives us a real stake in the economy and society by giving us collective ownership over it. The work itself, not just the wages derived from it, will therefore have a real purpose. It would be clearly for our and the benefit of others around us instead of for fat cats in far off boardrooms.

The writer is the editor of Asian Marxist Review and international secretary of Pakistan Trade Union Defence Campaign. He can be reached at ptudc@hotmail.com