ABSTRACT
This chapter examines socialist labor morality and the emerging trends in labor morality and work ethics in post-Soviet society. It shows that socialism created its own labor culture, which included specific labor values and labor morality. Soviet leaders always took a keen interest in workers' behavior and sought to keep work ethics under strict state control. The chapter examines some of the new employment opportunities sanctioned by the Russian state and generally endorsed by public opinion. It focuses on current trends in everyday labor culture as revealed in recent sociological inquiries into labor motives and work ethics. A prominent place in socialist political economy was given to work ethics, labor motives, employment opportunities, reward structure, and other characteristics of socialist labor culture. During the early perestroika years, Socialist ideologists sneered at free enterprise because it would restore the "exploitation" of hired labor allegedly absent under socialism, a system supposedly incompatible with work for hire.
