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B. F. Skinner's new book Beyond Freedom and Dignity has become one of the most talked-about books of the season. The attention lavished on it has been remarkable. Excerpted and talked about in dozens of journals, it has been hailed as “the book of the year.” The New York Times daily book reviewer said that if you could read only one book this year, read Skinner's (from his review the inference is probable that he has never read any other book on psychology). With equal gusto the same reviewer then reported Noam Chomsky's devastating reply to Skinner in The New York Review of Books without realizing that it had made the reviewer a laughing stock for calling Skinner's book the event of the decade.
Yet an examination of the book merely makes one wonder more and more what all the praise is about. It is a small (215 page) work, obviously written for the layman. The expert will recognize that it is a popularization of his previous works, The Behavior of Organisms and Science and Human Behavior. In fact, it is also a recasting in more “scientific” language of his Utopian fantasy in Walden Two.
Skinner's essential thesis, as indicated by the title, is that freedom and dignity are illusions which interfere with scientific progress. Man is controlled by his environment; find the right way to manipulate the environment, which he calls a technology of behavior, and you will have Utopia. This time he chooses not to grapple with the all important questions of the relationship of his Utopia to communism and fascism, which he had discussed at some length in Walden Two.