Somebody: Chris knows more about this when it comes to the Soviet Union, but it's clear that worker's are less productive when they know they aren't going to be laid off and that there's limited opportunity for wage growth. The cliche "we pretend to work, they pretend to pay us," has more than a kernel of truth to it, don't you think? The alternative of course is to turn harsher methods to compel labor, as Trotsky with his visions of militarizing labor and Stalin with his best attempt to put that into practice, revealed. This latter method does seem to work, at least.
So, people need to be more altruistic because they'll need to put in work that's not fully compensated for (as in capitalism), but without the lash of economic necessity (although there can be other consequences like ostracism). I mean, aside from the period of enthusiasm and ideological fervor immediately following revolutions, isn't it the case that worker apathy tends to become endemic in socialist countries? Doesn't that in a sense, come down to selfishness?