THIS IS THE CONCLUSION of an article on a particularly deceptive piece of email propaganda about an economics professor who taught his class a lesson in socialism. To start at the beginning, with a complete version of the email go here.
Before continuing our analysis of the email itself, it's worth mentioning a kind of odd twist in the conservative propaganda world-view which this email illustrates.
Economics is not a hard science. It is, at this stage in its development, a social science, and one that has multiple schools which often disagree, even about how to best approach the topic.
Yet conservative propaganda about economic issues typically puts the conservative point of view in the mouth of an economics professor, who is "right" where the students are "wrong", making the professor an intellectual authority figure.
Contrast this with a field like, say, biology. Propaganda stories about evolution—a theory which is rooted in overwhelming evidence in a field whose progress makes economics look like baby babbling—almost always show the anti-intellectualism of the conservative mind: most typically, a student argues with the professor and comes out on top.
I don't have an easy explanation for this anomaly, but I suspect it has something to do with an even deeper split in the conservative movement itself.
For years now, since Reagan at least, that movement has survived by bonding an aggregate of racism, conservative religion, and homophobia (all of which are anti-intellectual) to a core of capitalist wealth and elitism with a kind of political super-glue.
These interests, and worldviews, are not only different, but often opposed. And the recent election seems to show that the super-glue can't hold forever.
But back to the email in question. The next line reads:
The scores never increased as bickering, blame, name calling all resulted in hard feelings and no one would study for the benefit of anyone else.
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Really? I would expect the bickering and name calling and blame to be aimed primarily at the professor, for not keeping his word.
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As for no one studying for the benefit of others—this is another projection of the author's world-view on a contrived fiction.
People will study just to learn, people will study to help the group, people will study for all kinds of reasons that have nothing to do with grades.
If this story were true, there wouldn't be a single charity organization in the world. How much of what we do is done for others, or just to achieve a goal that we find desirable but gets us, personally, nothing?
All failed, to their great surprise, and the professor told them that socialism would also ultimately fail because when the reward is great, the effort to succeed is great; but when government takes all the reward away; no one will try or want to succeed.
- Notice that "socialism" is still left undefined, so that it can be used to tar the political opponents of the right, who have nothing to do with anything like communism.
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The example, being both fictional and contrary to the real world, proves nothing.
But even if it had been a real example, it would still prove nothing—except that a group of students gave up trying to learn when it became clear that the professor was going to jerk them around, lie to them, change the rules, and generally turn the academic class they had signed up for into a circus, just because he disagreed with them on a political point. -
The story, and the argument at the end, are both rooted in a mistaken and simplistic view of human nature.
We did not survive for millions of years as hunter-gatherers, in egalitarian societies, because we refused to work for the good of the community, or for the value of the work itself.
We are not robots, or Skinner's chickens, who require a stick or a carrot wielded by an authoritarian in order to be productive. -
But there is another, deeper, problem with this story. It makes a fundamental assumption about the nature of motivation.
It assumes that the primary, and best, motivators are extrinsic—that they are things like rewards and punishments that are not directly related to the work itself, and can be controlled by someone else.
Grades are an excellent example of this kind of motivator, as are wages. The author of this story would like to believe, and would like you to believe, that this is the only kind of motivation there is.
It would be very convenient for the wealthy if that were so. The fact that this kind of motivation works at all is what allows them to treat labor (another word for human beings) as a commodity which can be bought and sold and traded.
But even educators have long known that extrinsic motivation is the least reliable where humans are concerned. We can only be moved so far by carrots and sticks.
(A point which is echoed from a Christian, and purely religious, perspective here.)
To really tap into the potential of humans requires meaningful work, and the security to do it well.
I should end by saying that I am not a very socialist type, on the whole. I think we should have a free market wherever that will work, and I think we should use government where that will work.
Nevertheless, this email is a fraud. It's not, in the end, even a serious argument against socialism, and it isn't designed to be.
It's designed to shape the minds of the conservative base, in order to get more Republican votes—to put a push-button in conservative minds, so politicians can get them to vote against their own interests by simply uttering the S-word.
Could not be any simpler than that....
Exactly.
At least, that's what I think today.
For an alternative version of the tale, read on...
