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Post date: Jan 15, 2012 11:19:10 PM
Noam Chomsky argues that behaviourism predicates greed as the human motivator — but is that true?
[Philosophically and scientifically] Chomsky has… returned stubbornly to the classical socialist vision of man as a naturally creative and productive being, not a passive consumer or behavioural blank tablet, who will naturally avoid any productive effort without the goad of hunger for goods, money, or power. He hardly claims that this is more than a vision of autonomous man, as opposed to something that might be established in a future science of human nature. But he is extremely effective in poking holes in the arguments of the apologists for capitalism[, in particular those university trained and based,] who claim it to be an established fact of human nature that men will only work in competition for money or power, and who assume that those who are most highly paid — for example, accountants who create tax dodges with wealth and power — are necessarily this who contribute the most value to society (179-80).
Noam Chomsky: A Philosophic Overview.
New York: St. Martin's Press, 1975. ISBN 0312576102, but the book is out of print. For a preview, see Google Books Link.
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