Free Access: I want ten Ferraris!

Gandhi had a saying “The world has enough for everyone's need, but not enough for everyone's greed.”However, it is how you define greed that is the questionThere is a Situationist-influenced pamphlet called the Right to be Greedy (word-play on Paul Lafargue's Right to be Lazy)https://libcom.org/library/right-be-greedy-theses-practical-necessity-demanding-everything"Greed in its fullest sense is the only possible basis of communist society. The present forms of greed lose out, in the end, because they turn out to be not greedy enough."Free access and the accompanying argument that distribution will be to each according to self-defined needs, i think has been pointed out by Robbo and others on another thread that this is not actually literally true.It will be society as a whole which will define what needs are that are to have free access, not the individual. What is consumed will be socially decided in what and how much and even where production of various things will take place.We are of course not talking about a central command economy imposing limitations but social democracy being applied to allocation of necessities. 

The aspiration for a world without war, by deed or proxy and poverty, absolute or relative, capitalism's twin inevitable concomitants, will be the motivational driving force for the socialist revolution and surely swamp conspicuous consumption excesses.

Needs will be self-defined at the individual and community level.  Therefore, its safe to presume that free acess will be determined by the resources available at a regional level.  As for goods which are inherently scarce the global community would have to decide on what alternatives are suitable and what form of rationing would be needed on resources which are scarce.Also not everybody will be seeking a comfortable lifestyle.

Defenders of capitalism have offered 'Ferrari's for All' in this bookhttps://www.amazon.co.uk/Ferraris-All-Defence-Economic-Progress/dp/1847423469I'm still waiting on mine to be delivered.

i I appreciate the use of hyperbole etc but you have to sensible about this kind of thing and going too far spoils the analysis a bit. But to get one part out of the way as regards ten Ferraris. People do that kind of thing as it provides some kind of social status perverted as it maybe in capitalism. Having ten Ferraris in communism would work then, and would carry all the social status, of being caught with child porn on your PC. Perhaps we wouldn’t have Ferraris and gold toilet seats in communism because;  Either we would democratically decide not to make them. Or what amounts to the same thing no-one would volunteer to work in factories making Ferraris and gold toilet seats. Gold miners, having some decentralised control about what happened to their work? might refuse to supply it to people who wanted to turn it into toilet seats. [If these things are still around I would suggest allocating them according to trial by combat to death.] However greed when it comes to consumption can be a bit subjective. I would define it as consuming a lot more than you produce, as measured by labour time. If people want to have, or actually more importantly use, a 25 foot yacht, a Ferraris or something like £15,000 superbike or something. And are prepared to ‘work’ for it in communism by doing 40 hours a week when the rest of us are doing 10 hours then that would be fair enough with me. Flipping over to the decadent consumption type people, should they exist in communism. We presume that the amount of stuff anyone can actually consume or use up is limitless in confounding it with possession. Even the infamous Imelda Marcos with her seven thousand per of shoes fortunately only had two feet and could if she tried use them up. If they insist on that kind of thing I would suggest letting them do it and ‘have’ seven thousand shoes. Without police and property rights etc of course there would be nothing to stop people turning up and taking them to use for themselves. Under such circumstances we would understand their distress and suggest that they take a careful note of what was taken and let us know and we would promise to replace them as soon as possible. They might like that idea and so should we as they would be happy then running community stores and performing a useful social function. When stuff is glorious and relatively unobtainable or has limited attainability it is easily imagined than given abundance and free access enough will never be enough etc. I loved Cadbury’s chocolate fingers and chocolate chip cookies when I was young. Then miraculously I went to work in the factory that made them in 1979. This place as it was in 2011. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-merseyside-12173304 Started off in the biscuit section and the fingers line; you could eat as much as you want as it came off the line. As well as the line that made the chocolate chips for the cookies, which was the best bit. It took about 1 week before I was sick of it and three before the smell of chocolate made me want to puke I asked for a transfer to the ‘tea house’, they made Typhoo tea bags as well. Never got sick of the tea though, even though you would think it was worse as there was so much tea dust your snot was brown. It used to settle on the floor like snow and the swept it up to sell to people who made vending machine instant tea stuff. So Neelix with water and replicators in star trek voyager had a kind of resonance.   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IDPHW21R13E

On re-reading my last post, it may seem that i envisage a socialism that is merely capitalism – but only better.In a sense that is correct. Capitalism has already organised production socially – but it is not socially owned or controlled, remaining in the hands of a few individuals and acting in their interests of them and not society's.But i fully take on board what others have said that our attitudes and psychology to what we consider to be our needs will change.This was brought out in the Marxist Animalism thread. Our ideas will change but what that topic also brought out – those will develop and evolve inside socialism and cannot be imposed on cultures that are not ready to adjust.Certainly, a lot of change will take place in the process of revolutionary action to establish socialism and the transformation of our belief-systems will have to undergo great changes for us to succeed in the class war. Doesn't Marx talk about the process of revolution is required to rid us of the shit of the past? Even today, membership of the SPGB is based on the conscious rejection of racism, nationalism, sexism and the other isms.

With all due respect its not a question of spelling it out more fully but trying to partially figure it out.  So that human needs are democratically decided and enriched by the re-direction of wealth production.  We have already figured out the decision making process more or less here:  http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/2010s/2016/no-1346-october-2016/what-could-socialism-beIt may be fruitful if we made a distinction between extravagent needs and 'normal' needs.  In this respect we have stated human needs consist of: food, shelter, clothing, education and leisure.