first of all, yes, many scientists are content with a proverbial pat on the back, because they're not in it for external validation. jonas salk could've patented the polio vaccine if he wanted to and made millions - he didn't. and you didnt hear einstein saying "gib me monies and i'll tell you how relativity works." also it implies that scientists are even well compensated in the first place. as someone majoring in physics and planning on doing graduate school b2b research - i wish!dansci wrote:I doubt any brilliant scientist is going to sit back and receive a pat on the back after devoting years to make a single invention. Communism denies the bright and smart their fair compensantion by making the claim that anything other than basic materials is capitalist evil.
like OGlemon said, communism is a stateless, post-scarce society, where this problem doesn't even exist: "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need". however, until we reach this post-scarcity, we have socialism, which can be seen more along the lines of "to each according to his contribution."
do you really think capitalism truly incentivizes hard work? what about the millions of people in the US alone working well over 40 hours a week on minimum wage, and yet they still live below the poverty line? or the billions in the third world not even receiving a tiny fraction of that (more on the order of cents per day)? touting this myth that capitalism rewards hard work spits in the face of each and every one of them.
haven't you ever noticed that the richest individuals in our system actually tend to be those who work the least? those who contribute the least? what the fuck does a hedge fund manager do for anyone? the only real incentive to work in capitalism is that you have to sell your labor power so you don't get fired and starve. unless, of course, you've already amassed enough of the means of production to leverage that private property to make you more money
you only believe this because the very way you the see the problem is framed by the ideology you subscribe to. it's not a matter of "communism doesn't give individuals the drive to innovate." rather, you have to realize that for every steve jobs, bill gates, etc, every such great "captain of industry," there are millions who aren't receiving any of the compensation they deserve. the bill gates and steve jobs in the world do not exist because of capitalism, but instead, despite it. this is why the whole "great man" narrative (eg, alexander the great, caesar, napoleon, even gandhi and MLK) is so common in bourgeois history - it propagates the false ideology that any individual, with enough effort/brilliance/charisma, can unilaterally achieve what they want
almost as good as the people who say "yeah but marx forgot one reason communism can never work... human nature." yeah checkm8, in decades of thinking and writing, marx, a founding figure of sociology, never thought to consider human nature
