Building Communism With Work Theory

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

Reading the history of Soviet psychology, I drew attention to the fact that literally all prominent Soviet psychologists were engaged in the psychology of work. After all, there are so many directions, so many schools in psychology … Why exactly the theory of labor activity in Soviet psychology occupied, literally, the lion's share of the attention of Soviet psychologists?

I think there are several reasons, including the influence of behaviorism, which was very popular at that time, but this is not the main reason. I will not reveal a secret if I say that all the humanities at that time in the USSR were strongly ideologized. And such a suspicious science as psychology was all the more under strict ideological control.

Suspicious, if only because this science in the West raised such questions as human freedom, contact with reality, knowledge of truth, awareness. Of course, the Soviet state did not need the Soviet people to suddenly realize that they are free creative individuals and how state ideologists manipulate their consciousness.

However, psychology has not been banned. Why did the Soviet state need it?

On the one hand - just for the manipulation of public consciousness. So that people are more or less happy, and do not question the authority of the authorities. For this there was a kind of "secret psychology". I do not have enough data to describe it - only fragmentary information.

Probably, many remember that in those days there were so-called special depositories - they kept literature that was not given to everyone, but only to specially selected people. I remember very well how in 1988, when these restrictions were lifted, on the librarian's table in the Public Library, I was surprised to find a book lying there with a chipboard seal, that is, "for official use." I don’t remember the exact title of the book, but I do remember that there was the word “Subconsciousness” in the title. That is, some people were still engaged in the theory of the unconscious, read books, translated, perhaps wrote something themselves.

In one of the jokes performed by Khazanov, the hero pretends to be a "secret physicist". Something seems to me that along with secret physicists there were also secret psychologists. What was the purpose of this secret psychology? There is no doubt - the development of methods for manipulating consciousness - mass and individual. Perhaps something else - but this is the main thing.

What, from the point of view of the then ideologists, still had to be done by Soviet psychologists, though this information could not have been classified?

The main goal to which the entire Soviet people in a single impulse under the wise leadership of the Party then strove (note - irony) is the construction of communism. And under communism, let me remind you, there should have been no money, and, nevertheless, people had to work, but not for money and for gaining material wealth, but because … What? Why will people who have worked for thousands of years for the sake of gaining benefits begin to work for free? How to do it? What is labor activity in general? We need her theory. This is what psychologists were allowed to do.

Of course, on the sly, some even holding a fig in their pockets, hiding behind loud and empty phrases that they are doing science under the leadership of the party and going towards the next plenum, many psychologists managed to really do science. And the theory of activity as such and the theory of labor activity, including, is far from nonsense, the works of these scientists inspire respect, although reading them one has to wade through ideological rubbish. In this regard, the works of Western scholars are easier to read. Even if they are devoted to the theory of activity, which, however, does not take up such a large percentage of the total volume of Western psychological literature.

In fact, it seems that in the practical implementation of attempts to force people to work for the time being, not for free, but simply for a very low, moreover, leveling salary (egalitarianism), Soviet leaders used the developments not so much of the Soviet as of the Western (primarily American) researchers who dealt, in particular, with motivational theory.

Yes, in the West they also did this, but the purpose of the research was different - namely, to increase production efficiency. They were not dominated by the ideological destructive meme in the form of building communism.

That, in general, helped in the development of effective methods of production management, and high productivity of workers. In contrast to the Soviet Union, where productivity, especially shortly before its collapse, when the ideological ways of motivation are certificates, honor boards, etc. no longer worked, and there was no material interest in effective work, it was extremely low. The Soviet theory of labor activity did not help; it did not fulfill its task of creating effective motivation using exclusively non-material incentives. Although, I repeat, there is a lot of value in the works of many eminent Soviet psychologists who were engaged in the theory of labor activity.

Maybe I'm wrong, but there is an analogy, for example, with alchemy, the goal of which - finding the philosopher's stone was just as impracticable as building communism, but the research of alchemists made a huge contribution later to the science of chemistry, which already posed more adequate tasks …