Moral and material incentives
도덕적 자극과 물질적 자극
Two ways of motivating workers in building socialism. Material incentives rely on individual or collective material interest: wage differentials by output, bonuses, profit-sharing. Moral incentives rely on recognition, voluntary labour, a sense of social duty and consciousness. In the Cuban Great Debate of the 1960s Che Guevara put moral incentives first, holding that using material incentives as the main lever would revive capitalist relations; supporters of economic calculation held that at the existing level of the productive forces material incentives were needed. In the same years the Liberman discussion and the Kosygin reform in the Soviet Union put profit and bonuses at the centre of enterprise evaluation.
In depth
Guevara's position
In "On the Budgetary Finance System" (1964) Guevara noted that the theme of material versus moral incentives had given rise to many discussions, and stated that he did not deny the objective necessity of material incentives but was reluctant to use them as the fundamental lever. In economics such a lever quickly becomes a category in its own right and imposes its own force on relations between people; it came from capitalism and was destined to die under socialism. His own system did use individual bonuses and monetary penalties, but limited direct material incentives through the wage scale.
In "Socialism and Man in Cuba" (1965) he warned that the "blunted weapons" left by capitalism (the commodity, profitability, individual material interest) could lead to a dead end, and that the instrument for mobilising the masses had to be fundamentally moral, without forgetting a correct use of material incentives. Voluntary labour was its practice; he himself worked on construction sites and cut cane on his days off.
The other side
Supporters of economic calculation held that material interest was the great lever moving individuals and collectives. Bettelheim argued that the decisive lever for changing people's behaviour was the change brought to production.