>>> Leigh Meyers <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 12/07/2007 12:10 PM >>> On Dec 7, 2007 7:02 AM, Charles Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> So, given all you say above, you are hard pressed to explain how and > why so many Soviet people were motivated to do so much work. > You are especially hard pressed to explain it since you seem to think > there was no reserve army of unemployed to pressure them to work. So, > from your standpoint all that was produced was done at gunpoint. > The muzzle of the gun was sociological, that their newly found freedom (from various forms of serfdom) could evaporate into another callous monarchy... or worse. ^^^^^ CB: Yes, it's necessary to move one level of abstraction to a "sociological gun". There is a sociological gun behind the protection of private property under wage-labor/capital relations too. Both capitalism and socialism have states. In fact, there was a legal responsibility to work that went along with the right to a job under socialism. Odd nobody said " he who doesn't work doesn't eat" yet. ^^^^ FWIW, primitive societies were very labor efficient too! The need to survive DOES that. Leigh ^^^^^^^ CB: Have you heard of the anthropologist Marshall Sahlins and his thesis in _Stone Age Economics_ ?
