MY SHORT FLIRT WITH "BEHAVIOROLOGY"

It was quite by chance that I found three months ago the following reference in a long "Google" searchlist:

Ulman, J. D. (1991). Toward a synthesis of Marx and Skinner. Behavior and Social Issues, 1(1), 57-70

I was pleasantly surprised to discover that there is someone else who also thinks that behaviorism can and should be applied for the creation of socialist society. Therefore I contacted Dr. Ulman. Here is the short exchange of e-mails that followed:

"Mr. Jerome D.Ulman

Dept. of Special Education

Ball State University

Re.: Your article “Toward a Synthesis of Marx and Skinner” - copy request

Berlin, August 14th, 2011

Dear Mr. Ulman,

I was very pleased to discover by purest chance your aforementioned article on the Web. Unfortunately, all sites which supposedly contain it in full, are journal or database sites and require subscription for reading it. The best I could find on the Web is a summary of it, made by Mr. Jim Farmelant, together with his critique. Would you kindly send me your original article via e-mail as a .pdf or .doc file?

This article opened my eyes on the fact that I am actually “inventing a bicycle” - my, as I call it, “behaviorist socialism”. But I enjoyed realizing that I am not alone. Please do me a favour and look through my sites:

http://behaviorist-socialist.blogspot.com in English (sorry, nothing new lately) and

http://behaviorist-socialist-ru.blogspot.com in Russian (I am a Russian).

A couple of lines to introduce myself. I graduated Moscow State University in biochemistry many years ago, but since moving to Germany in 1983 I work as a technical translator, a photographer and earlier as a construction team manager. That is the way the life goes... After 1990 I devoted much of my leisure time to find out what was wrong with the Soviet system and Marxism and why they failed.

In the course of my (re)search I came across Dr. Skinner’s writings via my old memories of what I was taught at the University about Dr. Pavlov and his dogs. I read actually everything the university and public libraries in Berlin have on the subject of behaviorism, and my further enquiries among German „psychologists“ convinced me that Skinner is either forgotten or „despised“. That is why I was so pleasantly surprised seeing the first reference on your work in a rather hostile article.

I would greatly appreciate your e-mail reply, with a copy of the requested (and/or some later article or essay of yours on the same subject) attached. It would be of big help and honour for me to remain in contact with you, because - frankly - I have many questions concerning Skinnerian behaviorism and the behaviorist technology of social engineering.

Yours very sincerely,

Alexei

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Hello Alex,

It is indeed a pleasure to receive you request. Thank you for your kind words. Apparently, we have been following the same path (including travel to Cuba). A little about me: I have been interested for many years in relating Skinner and Marx. Just as you have discovered, the interpretations of both writers are so varied as to result in a large mass of confusion. Regarding Skinner, I consider myself a behaviorologist (please see the article I coauthored with Ernest Vargas on the International Society for Behaviorology website (http://web.me.com/eavargas/ISB/Home.html). And as for Marxism, for the most part I follow the political perspective of Leon Trotsky. The most penetrating materialistic analysis that I have found of what happened to the Soviet Union is his book, Revolution Betrayed (available from www.pathfinderpress.com). You may also be interested in Fertile Ground: Che Guevara and Bolivia. In brief, this is my last year at Ball State University where I have been teaching for the last 36 years. In my retirement I look forward to continuing work on this project.

I have attached the article you requested along with a related book chapter titled "Marxist Theory and Behavior Therapy." I quickly scanned through your website and found it to be quite intriguing. Most striking for me were the viewpoints we share in common (especially concerning Skinner) along with the differences we have in how to go about making the world a nicer place for humanity. I would be delighted to remain in contact with you, Alex.

Most sincerely,

Jerry

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Mr. Jerome D.Ulman

Dept. of Special Education

Ball State University

Dear Jerry,

once again, many thanks for your kind reply. I hope not to abuse your time and readiness to stay in contact with me by bringing today the following to your attention:

1) Searching the English-language Wikipedia for “Behaviorology” results in an automatic redirection to the “Ethology” article which is about a totally different kettle of fish. (Please see the screenshot attached). I do not feel myself either authorised or competent enough to write on the subject of “Behaviorology”. Remember, I learned this word just a couple of days ago. Now I am ploughing through the saga of the recent battles of behaviorologists against “behavioral psychologists”, attached as references to the Wikipedia article on “Los Horcones”. Well, I hope you already have some text which could be easily adapted to post it as the still non-existent Wikipedia article on “Behaviorology”. As soon as it is posted, I can (if you wish) translate it into Russian and post it at the Russian-language Wikipedia.

2) The word “contingency” (of reinforcement) is still confusing for me, especially when I translate behaviorist texts (I posted translation into Russian of several fragments from books by Skinner at my Russian language site). I certainly could resort to writing “contingency” with russian letters, but it would be a dishonest trick which is far too often used by incompetent translators. This trick is also the plague of Russian science: it creates swarms of parrots repeating fashionable foreign words without “understanding the meaning”. Then, there is the following definition of “contingency” in “Behavior principles”, 3^rd ed., by Charles B. Ferster & Stuart A. Culbertson, in the “Glossary”:

“Contingency of reinforcement: The circumstances under which a specified performance will or will not be followed by specified reinforcers. The contingency of reinforcement specifies the relationship between a peformance and its outcome.” Do you agree?

I translate “contingency of reinforcement” as FAKTOR PODKREPLENIJA, this Russian “factor” being a rather more general term than the English “factor”. It is more like German “Faktor” and “Umstand” = English “factor” AND “condition” but NOT the same as Russian USLOVIJE = English “condition”, as in “conditional reflex” = USLOVNYJ REFLEKS. I would greatly appreciate your comments and suggestions!

3) You know, Germany is a relatively cosy country - but the contingencies here are purely antisocial. I miss being again together with the people excited with the vision of socialism - like some (not all) Russians of my childhood - the short-lived Khrushchev era: Sputnik, Gagarin, development of Siberia and Central Asian Steppe... Later, at the University, I met some Chileans. They had the same precious, noble elan - which again was short-lived, smashed by the CIA & Pinochet.

I would like to participate in opening the eyes of the Chavistas on the enormous potential of radical behaviorism for building the “21^st century socialism” they dream of. That would be an achievement to be extremely proud of. Without it the socialist experiment risks once again, this time in Venezuela, to end up in the dead alley of noncontingent reinforcement and compulsion. It is tragic that only capitalism makes use of contingent positive reinforcement - certainly, in its specifically vicious “sucker-punching” way.

So please let me know whether anyone (I mean, any behaviorologist) has any serious plans to start some behaviorology-flavoured project of the Sandinista-sandalista sort in Venezuela. I tried to contact Venezuelans (Chavistas) directly and via their Embassy in Berlin. Alas, the reply was always the notorious Latino “manana” and later no reply at all...

4) What I see differently from Skinner and you (“Synthesis of Marx and Skinner”, p. 14) is:

“Behaviorologists reject both the conscious and the unconscious as inner causal agents. Thus, "to increase a person's consciousness of the external world is simply to bring him under more sensitive control of that world as a source of stimulation" (Skinner, 1974, pp. 153-154).“

Well, operant behavior should be unconscious to proceed smoothly. Only when the actual situation does not fit the contingencies of some already „known“ operant response well enough, then „consciousness“ wakes up as the agent which makes men (or animals) to „procrastinate“ or to „reflect“, being in effect the time used for producing an operant „skeleton key“ which would eventually match the situation and „solve“ this non-habitual „problem“.

Therefore “to know” is actually “to be certain = to believe”. And “to think” is actualy “to be uncertain, i.e. NOT to know”. I believe here is the point which makes many people behaviorism haters: our “knowledge” DECREASES our “consciousness” of the reality of the world. If social manipulation or, as Guy Debord put it, “The Spectacle”, is performed professionally and follows the track of habits, we accept it as “natural” despite all its artificiality. But as soon as “consciousness” interferes (say, you suddenly get “thoughts” about lung cancer when seeing the fascinating cowboy image of a “Marlboro” ad), then the magic of the image disappears, the “knowledge” = “certainty” that “There Is No Alternative” (the notorious TINA of Mrs. Thatcher) is lost!

Now the bitter truth about society: this destructive nature of “thought” necessitates the society, in order NOT to be screwed up by “ideas”, to be divided into those who really (and conservatively) control the social environment and OTHERS (the majority) who only believe = “know” to be in control of it. This is the essence, the precondition of every sustainable society. Or, as George Orwell put it, “All animals are equal. But there are animals who are more equal than the others.” As soon as the contingencies of social life come under scrutiny, they are rejected, as a bank-note discovered to be bogus. The bloody Western mass-society exists only because it 1) is protected by mass-media from mass-criticism and 2) timely eradicates all alternatives.

As an elderly guy I would not object socialism to be a gerontocracy, i.e. the manipulation of young generations by the older ones. Actually it is the way it works in traditional societies. Or as someone said (I do not remember who): “Education is the warping of unsuspecting, immature minds into a meticulous system of superstitions.” But maybe you have a better (more egalitarian) solution of this Huxleyan “Brave New World” problem of socialist “cultural revolution” made by behavior control?

5) You have certainly noticed looking through my site that I am a passionate Marxism-basher... Therefore please allow me to discuss with you OTHER points - those which hopefully unite, NOT divide us. Namely, that the radical behaviorism (or behaviorology) is THE future of socialism and communism which can and should be put into practice. As an individual I am far too weak to make alone any noticeable progress in this direction. I would like to join forces with you and other behaviorologists - to promote our common ideals and pursue common aims.

With best regards,

Yours very sincerely

Alexei

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Dear Alexei,

On the contrary—your questions, requests, and suggestions are most welcome. I will be happy to address each one in order.

1. I would not be surprised what you find when you search the Internet using the term behaviorology. First, you are liable to encounter the names Lawrence Fraley and Stephen Ledoux. Along with Ernie and Julie Vargas, and me—among others, these two gentlemen were founders of The International Behaviorology Association in 1989. Over the next several years an irreconcilable difference of views emerged, largely concerning our relationship with the discipline of psychology. We all agreed that the fundamental difference between behaviorology and psychology is the positing of hypothetical agencies within the organism (e.g., attitudes, egos, etc.—those concepts that Skinner called explanatory fictions). Where we differed is in how we were to relate to psychology. Fraley and Ledoux were adamant that we must attack psychology as a pseudoscience, whereas the rest of us saw as our priority the building of a scientific community of behaviorologists to advance this new science. Eventually a schism developed and we ended up going our separate ways. The other group that identifies with behaviorology is, as you found, Los Horcones. This is a small behaviorally oriented commune in Mexico. In fact, in 1990, we held one of our conventions there. The scientific community we formed following the split is the International Society for Behaviorology. Your suggestion about posting an article on Wikipedia is an excellent one, something that we should have considered some time ago. Thank you for that and for the offer to translate in into Russian. However, it just so happens that we have a website on which is posted a brief article authored by Ernie Vargas and me that describes behaviorology. Moreover, one of our members, Aleksandr Federov, a faculty member a Novosibirsk University, translated it into Russian. This translation is also posted on our website:

http://web.me.com/eavargas/ISB/Behaviorology__Ulman_Vargas%E2%80%94Russian.htmlI highly recommend that you read it. You will probably want to look at the rest of the website too. Meanwhile Ernie and I will look into the possibility of have the English version, or summary thereof, posted on Wikipedia.

2. Concerning the matter of translating the term contingency into Russian, please let me know if you have any questions or comments after reading the Russian translation of our article.

3. This section is somewhat of a challenge to address adequately without writing a long manuscript on the subject. I will try to be brief, combining my socialist and radical behavioral perspectives. First, I do not have much hope for your project of “opening the eyes of the Chavistas on the potential of radical behaviorism for building a 21st Century socialism in Venezuela. The primary reason being that Skinnerian science focuses largely on the variables that control the actions of individuals (but see below). A clear example of this focus in in Skinner’s book, Science and Human Behavior (which is free to download from the B. F. Skinner Foundation website:

http://www.bfskinner.org/BFSkinner/PDFBooks.html.

I think you will also enjoy looking through this website. What Ernie an I have been working on lately is an exploration of what a school of heterodox economists—that is, institutional/evolutionary economics—have to offer for examining human behavioral phenomena behaviorologically at the institutional level of analysis. This is new work that we hope to eventually develop into a book. What interests me in particular is that among these evolutionary economists are some who are Marxist oriented to varying degree. In short, without a “macroscopic” perspective based on the science of behaviorology, I don’t think that radical behaviorism (today behaviorologists use the term behavioral materialism) will accomplish much in changing society. As you can probably guess, I am not a strong believer in the viability of piecemeal reform. But that’s just me speaking. Along this line of inquiry in developing a behaviorological “macroscope” is a concept that I have been working on for a long time--with Ernie’s invaluable collaboration: the macrocontingency, defined as the conjoint actions of two or more individuals under common contingency control. In analyzing institutional arrngements, macrocontingency relations function as "behavioral glue"—giving an institution coherence and endurance over long periods of time. My point here is that I believe an appropriate conceptual framework will be needed to approach the issue of a socialist experiment, one that is based on the science of behaviorology (i.e. the analysis of contingency and macrocontingency relations). Does that make sense?

4. I find that I cannot effectively reply to you comments in this section. Specifically, terms such as unconscious, procrastinate, believe, ideas, and the like are foreign to behaviorology; they are agency terms (explanatory fictions) that cannot account for human actions within a natural science framework. What is required to approach what you have shared in this section is a very thorough operant analysis of verbal behavior. I see that you listed Skinner’s (1957) book Verbal Behavior on your website. We consider that book his most important work. In it he deals with such phenomena as thinking, etc., but purely in term of verbal and mediating behavior under the control of contingency relations. I think it is here where we will need to resume our discussion of matters in this section.

5. When I consider your learning history I can readily understand why you are a “passionate Marxist-basher.” I take into account all of those years living under the dictatorship of Stalinist parasites and their privileged and lavish lifestyles obtained at the cost of the labor of Russian farmers and workers, a privileged caste resting on a grotesque caricature of Marxism. My candid opinion is that as a result you were horribly mis-educated politically—if you will forgive my boldness in saying so. I have been a revolutionary Marxist since 1975 and continue to be active politically, so I will leave for another day our discussion of Marxism. I do want to end here by pointing out that Ernie is not at all a Marxist, yet he and I have for many years been able to collaborate on our scientific writing in a most amicable way. With that in mind, I look forward to continuing my communication with you.

Best regards,

Jerry

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Jerome D. Ulman, Ph.D., BCBA-D

Graduate Program in Applied Behavior Analysis

Professor, Department of Special Education

Ball State University

Muncie, IN 47306

Dear Jerry,

First of all, please let me know the e-mail address of Mr. Alexander Fedorov at Novosibirsk State University. I need to get in contact with him directly before making any comments on his translation.

Second, my interests mainly follow pragmatic approach - NOT that of “fundamental science”, but that of humble engineering. I am interested in simple, primitive things which WORK, and that is why I consider myself a behaviorist, not a “cognitivist” or “marxist” with all their high-flown “theoretical” bla-bla-bla which never worked. I adore Skinner just because he managed, when experimenting with a rat, to see through the non-existent “learning curve” and find a real working thing - the operant - in its place.

The problem is that behaviorism nowadays is a pariah of “scientific community”, whereas cognitivism-mentalism attracts many bright people who discover interesting things despite the blinders of obligatory ideology, just like alchemists discovered alcohol, black powder, amalgams, acids etc. Therefore if there is a FACT, I won’t sacrifice it to the glory and purity of “THE theory”. If there ARE “terms such as unconscious, procrastinate, believe, ideas,“ which were and are used by billions, including such keen observers as Dickens, Flaubert, Turgenev etc., I will be with them, NOT with Prof. Skinner.

(Actually, his book „Verbal Behavior“ disappointed me. I started reading it in a hope to find there a clear refutation of Chomski’s „generative grammar“ and other structuralist nonsense. But I did not find it there. Hundreds of pages filled with obscure neologisms like „mand“ etc., and - sorry - nothing one can apply as a ready-to-use instrument of social engineering.)

In the meantime cognitivists get funds - both from governments and capitalists - and have to deliver. For example the fact I mentioned in my previous letter that “our “knowledge” DECREASES, not increases our “consciousness” of the reality of the world” they “explain” in their typical way of putting a label on it. The label in this particular case is “framing”. See, for example, Susan Fiske & Shelley Taylor, “Social Cognition”. This is really an interesting book; but what is needed is to see (and show others in a SIMPLE and convincing way) that this “framing” actually describes verbal operants and how they WORK. Just admit that verbal operants are constructed by mass-media, public relations, advertising agencies etc. using PREDOMINANTLY mentalist “explanatory fictions“ (as you brand them). Exactly these „fictions“ are very efficient operant tools of propaganda, but you wish to throw them overboard and forget about them...

The power of capitalism lies in its sophisticated manipulative use of positive operant reinforcement. (By the way, exactly this makes „proletarians“ as wage earners NON-revolutionary, quite contrary to marxists visions). Hence I see my task as a behaviorist-socialist in putting forward the socialism based not on „revolutionary“ compulsion and marxist thoroughly mentalist illusions like „class consciousness“, but on positive reinforcement.

Best regards,

Alexei"

...

As I sent my last e-mail two months ago and there was no reply whatsoever, the reasonable thing to suppose is that the whole affair is finished and the only thing remaining to be done is to draw the necessary conclusions. Here they are.

The fact that the whole (very successful and prolific) scientific carreer of Prof. Skinner was devoted to experiments with caged animals (mice, rats, pigeons etc.) made his attempts to build a bridge between behaviorism as the experimental science of animal behavior and the sociology of humans to result in an utter failure. Prof. Skinner was a genius of observing and manipulating the behavior of caged animals, but human society is by far more tricky business than operant training of small animals.

Skinner's understanding of human society ignores all conflicts and contradictions which are obvious for an unbiased observer exactly because he attempted to "scientifically reduce" the perplexity of "condition humaine" to unambigous experimental data of operant conditioning, obtained on pigeons locked in famous "Skinner's boxes".

It is a pity that (as I stated in my e-mails to Dr. Ulman) behaviorism did not attract a new generation of talented followers who could be able to take up further innovative development of skinnerian radical behaviorism. It seems that the attempt to achieve this under the contorted name of "behaviorology" which unfortunately smacks of "scientology" and similar rip-off-cult names can already be counted as a failure.

And the half-hearted attempt of Dr. Jerome Ulman to cross-breed his Skinnerian "pure behaviorology" with marxist dogmatics failed exactly because both these doctrines have proven their inability to see the conflicts of interests, the competition for reinforcement and the active struggle for influencing fellow human beings as the essence of social life and the meaning of life of every socialized individual.

In fact, Skinner imprinted radical behaviorism with his conservative and even absolutist views of human society, most akin to the Hobbesian "Leviathan". Exactly these views make his utopian novel "Walder Two" so dull and boring. Both for Hobbes and Skinner the essence of social life is imaginary harmony created by supreme force, be it Hobbesian "god-given" absolutist monarch or Skinnerian "Planners" practicing behavioral engineering. All conflicts are seen only as malfunctions of society, which is imagined to be nothing but a sort of a clockwork - to be repaired, cleaned, wound up and adjusted to function properly.

It is exactly this elitist totalitarian view of society as a bunch of passive alienated subjects which made Skinner's preaching of behavioral engineering so hated by all sorts of intellectuals, compelling them to reject the scientific principles of behaviorism and to embrace the bogus "science" of mentalism-cognitivism. Even the most keen observers of social life and institutions with all inherent conflicts and contradictions, such as Erving Goffman, saw no other alternative than to interprete and generalise their observations invariably in the vague idealistic terms of cognitivism.

Conflicts, rivalries and other dramatic situations which are the fabric of everyday operant interactions between individuals, make the attainment of paradisiac serenity on Earth an extremely complicated task. This reality was vividly depicted by Goffman, but his analysis is cast in the form of nebulous idealist allegories, epithets and metaphors of mentalism-cognitivism and should be reinterpreted in behaviorist terms. And the readiness to see human beings as they are and not as abstract carriers of mythical "class conscience" is the only way to use the scientific approach of radical behaviorism for the creation of the applied technology of social engineering which can serve as a fool-proof instrument of building the socialist society on the solid rock of operant behavior, NOT on the sand of abstract "ideas".

This point can be clearly demonstrated if we take for example the often-quoted concluding passage of Goffman's "The Underlife of a Public Institution":

"Without something to belong to, we have no stable self, and yet total commitment and attachment to any social unit implies a kind of selflessness. Our sense of being a person can come from being drawn into a wider social unit; our sense of selfhood can arise through the little ways in which we resist the pull. Our status is backed by the solid buildings of the world, while our sense of personal identity often resides in the cracks".

If we try to find out what sort of social reality is hidden behind Goffman's highly poetical abstractions, we can discover that they apply only to hierarchical institutions which are divided into rulers and their subjects, the privileged and the dispossessed, the oppressors and the oppressed, the exploiters and the exploited. Thus Goffman's "little ways" are nothing but the attempts of the oppressed and the exploited to reclaim their fair share of positive reinforcement or at least to obtain some illusory compensation for being confined in their "cracks". The so-called "underlife" is in essence the striving of the dispossessed for social justice, denied to them by the oppressive and exploitative hierarchical social order.

Reading just a couple of pages from the immortal "The Good Soldier Svejk" by Jaroslav Hasek (Yaroslav Hashek) gives a clear idea of how a common man can defy oppressive social order by mocking overcommitment to the duties imposed upon him, and by playing an innocent fool when threatened with punishment. Unfortunately this widely used strategy of passive resistance is of no help for creating the alternative, i.e. egalitarian and libertarian social order.

This quite obvious absence of egalitarian and libertarian habits and patterns of social behavior in hierarchical societies means the necessity of introducing them artificially in the course of cultural revolution which should accompany political revolution. But these habits and behavior patterns are actually chains and networks of operants! That is why only behaviorist socialism can put into practice the communist democracy proclaimed by Vladimir Lenin in chapter V of his famous "The State and the Revolution": "Every person should be fully enabled to participate in governing the state".

I have a very strange feeling when reading - again and again - this marvellous book which Lenin wrote on the eve of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution. It gives the most clear-cut understanding of social revolution ... but puts forward - strictly following the marxist tradition - an utter fiction and figment of imagination: the so-called "proletariat" as the revolutionary protagonist. This ghostly "revolutionary proletariat" was most conspicuous by its NON-involvement in ALL successful social revolutions: the Bolshevik in Russia, the Maoist in China, the Castroist in Cuba etc. etc. Therefore I agree with Lenin in all points up to this traditionally marxist obsession with the "revolutionary proletariat". Every time I see this hollow phrase I want to replace it with something real, for example: "the exploited and the dispossessed victims of capitalism and imperialism in their grass-roots struggle against the oppressors and the privileged". Exactly this "lower classes" multifarious multitude was always the most revolutionary force in all anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist revolutions.

Ergo: behaviorist socialism is the urgently required application of scientific methods of behavioral engineering for the benefit of the revolutionary grass-roots struggle of "lower classes" for communism or - if you dislike this word - for the old good revolutionary "liberte, egalite, fraternite". It should be the OPPOSITE of the instrument of subjugating the mankind under the manipulative rule of some pretendedly "benevolent" tyranny of elitist "Planners" - be it globalist "Bilderberg" billionaires, technocratic bureacracy of the "new left", etc. etc. -, piously praised by Skinner in his "Walden Two".

This application of behavioral engineering which makes socialism genuinely scientific is urgent precisely because Western imperialists routinely and SUCCESSFULLY apply it now in their struggle AGAINST socialism. All so-called "colored revolutions" are NOT "of the people, by the people and for the people", but of the US imperialism, by the US imperialism and for the US imperialism. CIA is the true protagonist of all of these revolting pro-Western pro-capitalist "revolutions": from the first unsuccessful ones - 1953 in East Germany, 1956 in Hungary, 1968 in Czechoslovakia - to the latest imperialist bloodbath in Libya.