This paper extends an earlier analysis (1988) of the extent to which socialism and capitalism are consistent with behavioral principles. I first argue that a reductionistic analysis from the level of systems to that of individuals is warranted. I then propose that socialism, unlike capitalism, fails to provide environmental arrangements that are likely to effectively direct behavior in our curr...

His remonstrations were enjoined by Robert Merton, who reproached me for the false imputation that mistakes capitalism for industrialism. He was criticising an essay I had written in 1982 about the industrial sociology of his recently deceased student Alvin Gouldner. I claimed that Gouldner’s classic text, Patterns of Industrial Bureaucracy, missed the specifically capitalist character of indus...