Main trends of research in the social and human ... - unesdoc - Unesco

334 Economics
lieved that accumulation could be stimulated only by having wide differences of
income, because the propensity to save was considered to grow proportionately
with income. This is no longer taken as obvious, however, for at least two
reasons :
I. It is by no means the volume of savings in monetary terms that determines
accumulation in the highly-developed capitalist countries ; on the contrary,
the fist problem usually is to provide the stimuli to real investment (especially
investment in fixed capital) ,after; which the financial counterpart:can easily
be found;
2. The growing r61e of the public sector causes personal income to lose its
importance to at least some degree as a source of accumulation - in the social-
ist countries, personal income has almost entirely ceased to be a source of accu-
mulation.
Mention must be made here of a question long overlooked: investment in
human resources. The unequal distribution of income is a major reason why
prospects for the young are unequal, and hence for the waste of talent that oc-
curs unless material conditions for its development have been otherwise provid-
ed. In post-war literature in England, in which there was a strong political un-
dercurrent (cf. Strachey, Crossland), this is often used as an argument in favour
of narrowing down the income gap and expanding the r6le of the public sector
in education, science, health services, and so on. The socialist countries face the
same problem, though on a different level. In view of what is needed to imple-
ment economic and social policies, economics has hitherto had far too little to
say in such questions as the differentiation of personal income, and the r61e and
possibilities of services provided from public funds, and hence associated with
redistribution. Here, too, there seems to be a distinct need for a much closer co-
operation between economics and sociology, psychology, organizational tech-
niques and - in view of the r6le of the public sector in income redistribution -
political sciences.
The ties between income distribution and readiness to innovate call for re-
consideration, primarily because of the increasing separation of functions as be-
tween the manager and the owner of the means of production. The r61e of in-
centives created by differences of income must thus be considered against the
entire range of economic motivations. The inadequacy, under present conditions,
of the traditional narrow definition - the maximization of private gain - has al-
ready been pointed out, but it nevertheless continues to serve as the foundation
of many economic theories. Its existence need not be denied; it is only necessary
to evaluate it properly and rank it among other incentives of varying importance.
The study of economic motivation, however, is only beginning. Some of the
new considerations introduced rate as little more than slogans or ornament
(e.g. the ‘socially-minded corporation’; cf. the extensive American discussion
on this, and particularly The Corporation in Modern Society, edited by E. Mason).
Economies which have a large public sector and, above all, the socialist countries,
need to go beyond such generalities, and aim at a high degree of precision.