The USSR also had a huge problem with absenteeism, and with people trying to do as little as possible, while someone else does the job... which is kind of the same as now. Its almost as if compulsory employment will naturally lead to people wanting to circumvent the system.
Parenti talks about it a little in Part IV of Blackshirts and Reds. A big part of the problem was a ham-fisted quota system that essentially punished shops for over-producing by increasing their production quotas for subsequent years -- basically the kind of thing you would expect out of a rudimentary planned economy that exists before any real large-scale data processing capabilities. Factories and farms also tended to be very management-heavy, not unlike a lot of late-capitalist big corps are today. I guess bullshit jobs still exist under compulsory employment, but in fairness, they had their hands pretty full with siege conditions from the West.
Here's the Parenti blurb from the beginning of that chapter:
Blackshirts and Reds excerpt
It is not enough to denounce ineptitude, one must also try to explain why it persisted despite repeated exhortations from leaders—going as far back as Stalin himself who seethed about timeserving bureaucrats. An explanation for the failure of the managerial system may be found in the system itself, which created disincentives for innovation:
Managers were little inclined to pursue technological paths that might lead to their own obsolescence. Many of them were not competent in the new technologies and should have been replaced.
Managers received no rewards for taking risks. They maintained their positions regardless of whether innovative technology was developed, as was true of their superiors and central planners.
Supplies needed for technological change were not readily available. Since inputs were fixed by the plan and all materials and labor were fully committed, it was difficult to divert resources to innovative production. In addition, experimentation increased the risks of failing to meet one’s quotas.
There was no incentive to produce better machines for other enterprises since that brought no rewards to one’s own firm. Quite the contrary, under the pressure to get quantitative results, managers often cut corners on quality.
There was a scarcity of replacement parts both for industrial production and for durable-use consumer goods. Because top planners set such artificially low prices for spare parts, it was seldom cost-efficient for factories to produce them.
Because producers did not pay real-value prices for raw materials, fuel, and other things, enterprises often used them inefficiently.
Productive capacity was under-utilized. Problems of distribution led to excessive unused inventory. Because of irregular shipments, there was a tendency to hoard more than could be put into production, further adding to shortages.
Improvements in production would lead only to an increase in one’s production quota. In effect, well-run factories were punished with greater work loads. Poor performing ones were rewarded with lower quotas and state subsidies.
I honestly have no idea, but I have heard it described as a characteristic of the later period of the union. In any case my point was that when you are forced to have a job you will naturally resist that coercion.
The problem here is that there is work that simply has to be done, and when one person is slacking off and someone else has to take over, that feels unfair to the people who have to do more and get paid the same. But this is something that happened both in late USSR and happens in capitalism so I dont know the solution, beyond simply not forcing people to work more than they want to, and having something based on labour time x productivity or just labour time or something like that.
The USSR also had a huge problem with absenteeism, and with people trying to do as little as possible, while someone else does the job... which is kind of the same as now. Its almost as if compulsory employment will naturally lead to people wanting to circumvent the system.
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well there's shouting at people, social pressure to not skate by in your job etc that's more or less how the Soviet union handled it
Parenti talks about it a little in Part IV of Blackshirts and Reds. A big part of the problem was a ham-fisted quota system that essentially punished shops for over-producing by increasing their production quotas for subsequent years -- basically the kind of thing you would expect out of a rudimentary planned economy that exists before any real large-scale data processing capabilities. Factories and farms also tended to be very management-heavy, not unlike a lot of late-capitalist big corps are today. I guess bullshit jobs still exist under compulsory employment, but in fairness, they had their hands pretty full with siege conditions from the West.
Here's the Parenti blurb from the beginning of that chapter:
Blackshirts and Reds excerpt
It is not enough to denounce ineptitude, one must also try to explain why it persisted despite repeated exhortations from leaders—going as far back as Stalin himself who seethed about timeserving bureaucrats. An explanation for the failure of the managerial system may be found in the system itself, which created disincentives for innovation:
I honestly have no idea, but I have heard it described as a characteristic of the later period of the union. In any case my point was that when you are forced to have a job you will naturally resist that coercion. The problem here is that there is work that simply has to be done, and when one person is slacking off and someone else has to take over, that feels unfair to the people who have to do more and get paid the same. But this is something that happened both in late USSR and happens in capitalism so I dont know the solution, beyond simply not forcing people to work more than they want to, and having something based on labour time x productivity or just labour time or something like that.
If you slack off you should go straight to gulag