The world today faces numerous problems – global warming, economic inequality, rise of right-wing/reactionary politics to name a few. People (many) are understandably furious and looking for solutions. Modest/humble/simple people feel that they cannot simply stand aside and feel compelled to act – I am such a person and this blog is one of the steps I can take to improve our future.
I don’t claim to have all the answers, but I believe I know the theoretical background which will provide us with necessary guidance along the way. This is exactly the combination of B.F. Skinner’s radical behaviorism (aka experimental behavior analysis) with leftist/socialist political thought. Researching these lines of thought, I discovered that the theories fit, they complement each other well and arguably cannot be developed separately. As the YouTube user Sven Stelloo noted in this video (talking about Skinner’s theory): “Its like seeing the world in 3D. While normal people see it in 2D.”
To cite Jerry Ulman’s 1979 paper “A Critique of Skinnerism: Materialism Minus the Dialectic” (p. 5):
“By locating the causes of social problems in the environment rather than within people, behaviorism poses a great threat to the status quo of bourgeois ideology. No other psychology has produced such a threateningly powerful technology and no other psychology is both dialectical and materialistic. In diametric opposition to Mishler’s thesis, I aver that the only suitable psychology for Marxism is radical behaviorism.”
I shall develop the idea in this blog, as I feel there are many issues to be discussed (to name a few):
Presentation of radical behaviorist theory (1), presentation of leftist thought (2), commentary on mainstream psychology and its relation to the capitalist/neoliberal agenda (In Lithuania and elsewhere) (3), ideas for action (4) etc.
I am writing this blog mainly for myself – to organize my thoughts, discoveries in books, articles, movies etc., but still I hope that any readers of the blog will find the ideas presented here as enlightening as I do.
Radical behaviorist leftist 