"Socialist piecework" extended: commission pay under socialist relations?

[Die Neue Zeit]

While Trotsky neglected the orthodox Marxist position on "socialist piecework" when criticizing Stalin and co.'s use of it during the industrialization drive, below is that position:


A glance over the various forms of communist production from the primitive communism down to the latest communist societies will reveal how manifold are the forms of distribution that are applicable to a community of property in the instruments of production. All forms of modern wage-payment-fixed salaries, piece wages, time wages, bonuses – all of them are reconcilable with the spirit of a socialist society; and there is not one of them that may not play a role in socialist society, as the wants and customs of its members, together with the requirements of production, may demand.

I would suggest that any possible socialist primitive accumulation "with a human face" in the future would have something like this in order to promote productivity (assuming any form of socialist primitive accumulation is needed in the first place).

That said, what about commission pay? One of the smaller arguments against the developed Soviet economy was that enterprises produced parts with the wrong specifications (i.e., the glass is too thick or wide). I would also add that the warranty system in the fSU was limited only to the end consumer products, and did not include intermediate ones.

Commission pay is based on a simple premise: if a seller can't sell a product, that seller can't get paid based on the proceeds of sale. Commission pay could help solve another problem, that of parochial production for immediate producers only, which the Bolsheviks felt the impact of when they turned against "workers control":


"One was so-called workers’ control, which would be better translated as ‘workers’ supervision’, which appeared to correspond with Lenin’s plans for transition. However, Lenin quickly turned against the movement because it usually meant the takeover of individual factories by their individual workforce. This then turned factories into support networks for their workers, not efficient production units. It promoted what Lenin feared to be a process of subdividing and sectionalizing the working class into competing micro-units rather than drawing them together as a whole."

Entire workplaces could be required to apply this premise. Workplaces that can't "sell" their products because of not producing to the required buyer specifications won't be able to compensate their workers at least in part. Workplaces that "sell" their products only to the immediate producers won't realize much benefit with regards to labour compensation, as well.

[EDIT: I put "sell" in quotes given arguments below about commodity production.]

[cyu]

http://businessofsoftware.org/2012/12/dan-pink-to-sell-is-human-the-surprising-truth-about-moving-others/

‘an if then motivator’ as in, if you do this, then you get that, are effective for simple, routine tasks. once you get past rudimentary cognitive skill, those kinds of incentives, those kinds of rewards don’t work very well. They don’t work very well for heuristic tasks. They don’t work very well for conceptual tasks. They don’t work very well for creative tasks.

‘I noticed that this sales team was gaming the compensation system.’

‘I’m going to lay down the gauntlet. I’m going to do something different and I’m going to eliminate commissions for my sales force. We’re at the level of doing things that violate the natural laws of human kind. It worked. Why?’

taking away those individual commissions made people more collaborative. ‘Why should I help Fred if I don’t get a piece of the action, if I help Fred sell?’ Customers liked it better. It freed up Neil’s time to do things besides litigate and adjudicate the compensation system.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc

The idea that these rewards don't work seems vaguely left-wing and socialist. It's kind of this weird socialist conspiracy - seems to defy the laws of behavioral physics.

The people offered the top reward did worst of all - higher incentives led to worse performance. This has been replicated over and over again by psychologists, sociologists, and by economists.

If you don't pay people enough, they won't be motivated. Pay people enough to take the issue of money off the table, so they're not thinking about the money, they're thinking about the work. Once you do that, 3 factors lead to better performance, not to mention personal satisfaction: Autonomy, Mastery, and Purpose.

[cyu]

"Autonomy, Mastery, Purpose" actually reminds me a bit of the superiority theory described at http://www.revleft.com/vb/does-one-make-t188083/index2.html - there are a few different versions of the theory:

1. Superiority Theory: Everyone wants to feel superior - whether it's to someone else, something else, superior to a past version of themselves, etc. For leftists that work for human equality, focusing on superiority to other people is probably not as good as focusing on superiority to other ideologies. For fascists of course, it's all about feeling "superior" to various races or ethnic groups. Superiority theory also plays a role in humor - many jokes (including self-deprecating humor) are about making the audience feel superior in one way or another.

2. People want to feel good about themselves. Similar to superiority theory, people will like you or your ideology if you make them feel better about themselves. If you (or your ideology) regularly criticizes them, they'll tune you out or think up excuses (even bad excuses) for why you're wrong.

3. Play to their pride. Just another facet of the two versions above. Flatter freely. Push their self-esteem (often even the most confident appearing people have self-esteem issues - they just hide it well). Make them proud to be on your side. As long as they feel pride, feel flattered, or feel a boost in self-esteem when participating, that may be all you really need to motivate them - even to the point of self-sacrifice, which could have ethical issues if you hide your psyops tactics from your audience, rather than share your tactics with them.

Viewed through the lens of "superiority theory", we have:

Autonomy: People don't like to be forced into things - that implies they are in a subordinate position and often leads to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reactance_%28psychology%29 - regardless of whether the chain of command is coming from an exploiter, a general, or the Politburo. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valve_Corporation and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._L._Gore_and_Associates have done some unique things with pushing autonomy - although if you can still be fired for doing the "wrong" thing, there will always be some sense of resistance against not being as autonomous as you'd like.

Mastery: People want to feel like they are improving because that makes them feel good about themselves. Even if they are not measurably improving, the fact that someone is good at something often makes them enjoy it more as well - if all the while you're doing something, you're thinking (or made to think) "look how awesome I am at this", it may be enough of a continuous ego boost to continue to drive more of that behavior.

Purpose: Probably the opposite of alienation. If the person is thinking, "I may be awesome at doing anything I want to do, but what is the point of it all?" then that may be a great demotivator - it's hard to feel superior or good about yourself if you think everything you do is pointless. When purpose is missing, that may result in a march towards depression and the ultimate demotivation: suicide. On the opposite end, there are acts of "suicide" because of a great sense of purpose as well - soldiers that sacrifice their lives in battle, being one example.

[ckaihatsu]

[L]enin quickly turned against the movement because it usually meant the takeover of individual factories by their individual workforce. This then turned factories into support networks for their workers, not efficient production units. It promoted what Lenin feared to be a process of subdividing and sectionalizing the working class into competing micro-units rather than drawing them together as a whole."


I'm in agreement with this concern, which I would characterize as 'syndicalism' (workplace-constrained workers control), and also concerning the absence of *societal motivation*, as for future-minded research-and-development efforts -- if everyone can get by with a parochial mindset and localist production, the conventional gruntwork tasks and roles might be tolerated indefinitely, with a lack of socialist-minded automation to eliminate such roles once and for all.





Entire workplaces could be required to apply this premise. Workplaces that can't sell their products because of not producing to the required buyer specifications won't be able to compensate their workers at least in part. Workplaces that sell their products only to the immediate producers won't realize much benefit with regards to labour compensation, as well.


This is a rank accommodation to market socialism, which is too fundamentally problematic to entertain *at all* -- 'sell' implies commodity production on a workplace-by-workplace basis, merely instead of using capital for the same. This equates to the very same patchwork syndicalism, basically.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Ckaihatsu, "socialist primitive accumulation" and "with a human face" by definition precedes the lower phase of the communist mode of production. I should have put "sell" in quotes originally.

[ckaihatsu]

Ckaihatsu, "socialist primitive accumulation" by definition precedes the lower phase of the communist mode of production. I should have put "sell" in quotes originally.


Oh, okay.