What is Socialism?

[robbo203]

TheSpanishInquisition wrote:

By definition, capitalism doesn't waste resources. The whole idea of capitalism is to reduce expenditure as much as possible. 

Lol SpanishInquistion.  By whose definition is this the case? Looking at the matter abstractly and purely from the point of view of the competing productive units – businesses – then it is certainly true that each business has an an incentive to reduce all unnecessary costs  in order to maximise its profit margin and stave off the competition.  I guess thats what you mean by capitalism not wasting resources.Your mistake , however, is to equate "capitalism" with the individual productive unit under capitalism.  The problem with your "methodological individualism", as it is called, is that you cannot see the wood for the trees. You cannot see the way capitalism functions as a system.  It is only when you've stepped outside of the box youve trapped yourself in and look at the question of resource allocation from a genuinely non-market socialist perspective that you can begin to see just how grotesquely wasteful capitalism actually is from the standpoint of meeting human need. The great bulk of economic activity in the formal sector of the capitalist economy  is completely and utterly useless from the standpoint of meeting human needs.  Such activity occurs simply and solely to enable the system to operate on its own terms. You can get a rough idea of the extent of structural waste in capitalism  – a concept which only becomes visible and salient through the prism of a socialist perspective – by trawling through data bases like the American Bureau of Labor Statistics which contains comprehensive information about the occupational structure of the US economy. Take just one small aspect of this structural waste – such as direct financial  activities like banking   Now banks will not be needed in a socialist society since economic exchange will cease to exist and hence also a means of exchange in the form of money. According to  the BLS  site, for the US alone there are about 8.2 million workers employed in "financial acitivities"  (http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t17.htm). This  of course is only the tip of the iceberg because a substantial chunk of the apparently "socially useful sector "of the economy – like the construction industry or the power supply indistry – is actually put to the service of  the socially useless sector of the economy itself.  That is to say, institutions like banks need to be housed in buildings which require energy, raw materials and human labour to be built and maintained on an ongoing basis. Financial acitivites comprise, as I say, just one aspect of capitalism's structural waste; there are many others.  Some estimates of the percentage of structural waste inside capitalism are very high indeed- Marshall McLuhan famously put the figure at 95% which I think is a gross overestimate.  I think a more reasonable figure would be between a half and two thirds of the formal sector. To put this in perspective , what this means is that socialism could, at the very least,  double the amount of socially useful wealth produced compared with capitalism using the same quanitities or human labour and materials – or alternatively could produce the same socially useful output  using half the human labour and resoruces that we use today under capitalism

[TheSpanishInquisition]

alanjjohnstone wrote:

According to William Morris a socialist from the 19th C it is even more lovely to use your own two hands , some simple tools …and create your own lovely things. He was a person who took pride in the handicraft traditions of earlier ages rather than what we would do these days, buy a flat pack from IKEA…usean Allen key and think we built our book-case ourselves. I think we will always appreciate nice things and socialism is not about doing away with personal possessions. 

Yes, it is nice to build something yourself, but it's also nice to hold onto what you make instead of having to give it to someone else. It's not fun to have to mass produce something without getting compensation for doing it. Then there's also the issue of wanting something you don't know how to make. Sure, you can say that someone who does know how to make it could make it for you, but what incentive do they have to make it for you with no money or barter? 

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But as i said in an earlier reply, we can support free-riders but a more positively turn  we don't need everybody to pitch in. We can let the poets and the painters, the writers and the musicians, all the arts in fact, have all the time they require to bring culture and their individual expression to to thie world…if they so wished. The pessimists think over-population is a problem but every person in the world is an extra pair of hands and an additional brain. 

So how many people do you need to pitch in? How many people do you think would become artists if they didn't need to work? Pretty much everyone, because even writing poems about hills is more entertaining that cleaning sewers or running a battery farm or spending even just 20 hours a week sitting behind a computer making sure nothing goes wrong on a production line. If I was told "Ok, you can spend all day making ornate sculptures or you can come and do really exhausting manual labour for no reward"… well the choice is obvious. 

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If the pot-holes on the road is such a problem then i am sure you will bake your pie tomorrow. Or you can simply offer some pie to the road-workers for their lunch. As i said, we don't condemn you to a life on the road-gang as capitalism does. More and more division of labour will dissolve (not enttirely disappear, though i am guessing) Marx said a free person should be able to “hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, herdsman or critic.” He foresaw that the separation of town and country merging into one. On the forum it has been highlighted that plumbers have voluntarily installed water filters to mitigate the damage capitalist cost-cutting has done in the city of Flint.

But when someone else could just do it for me and I have nothing to gain from doing it, I have no reason to do it. I could bake my pie today and have tomorrow to make a casserole that I otherwise wouldn't have had time to make. Why would I give pie to the road workers? I baked this pie, no one's going to know if I only share it with my family. So essentially, you want everyone to be a jack-of-all-trades? Remember that being such means you are a master-of-none, and masters of a trade are infinitely more useful, able and important than jacks. Specialisation is very very important because one person who is a master of their trade can produce things at 5, 10 or 15 times the quality of 4 jacks making the same item.

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I know it is a bad example but recall in a war, how people are willing to sacrifice not just their standard of life but even their lives for something they believe in…So in the words of the Grateful Dead, Spanish Inquisition, Keep on Truckin' and keep on studying and learning…everybody on this forum is doing the same, none of us are sitting back believing we know it all…even if at times that seems to be how it seems. ..know-it-alls 

This was because they have no alternative. They were conscripted, often against their will because everyone over 16 didn't have a choice, and if they didn't then they'd die anyway, except so would all their friends and relatives. 

[TheSpanishInquisition]

robbo203 wrote:

TheSpanishInquisition wrote:

By definition, capitalism doesn't waste resources. The whole idea of capitalism is to reduce expenditure as much as possible. 

Lol SpanishInquistion.  By whose definition is this the case? Looking at the matter abstractly and purely from the point of view of the competing productive units – businesses – then it is certainly true that each business has an an incentive to reduce all unnecessary costs  in order to maximise its profit margin and stave off the competition.  I guess thats what you mean by capitalism not wasting resources.Your mistake , however, is to equate "capitalism" with the individual productive unit under capitalism.  The problem with your "methodological individualism", as it is called, is that you cannot see the wood for the trees. You cannot see the way capitalism functions as a system.  It is only when you've stepped outside of the box youve trapped yourself in and look at the question of resource allocation from a genuinely non-market socialist perspective that you can begin to see just how grotesquely wasteful capitalism actually is from the standpoint of meeting human need.

Capitalism doesn't aim to meet human needs; it meets human desires, which does coincide with needs on the lower end. Anytime someone wants something, they can probably get it and if they work hard enough (ignoring opportunity, for the minute. Let's pretend it's a world where everyone starts at least average, as is the most desirable world), they can afford to buy it. This is a natural reward system of capitalism, in that the more you contribute to humanity, the more you get out of it, and that's fair because in a world with an equal starting point like the one I hypothesised just now, that is what exists. 

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The great bulk of economic activity in the formal sector of the capitalist economy  is completely and utterly useless from the standpoint of meeting human needs.  Such activity occurs simply and solely to enable the system to operate on its own terms. You can get a rough idea of the extent of structural waste in capitalism  – a concept which only becomes visible and salient through the prism of a socialist perspective – by trawling through data bases like the American Bureau of Labor Statistics which contains comprehensive information about the occupational structure of the US economy. Take just one small aspect of this structural waste – such as direct financial  activities like banking   Now banks will not be needed in a socialist society since economic exchange will cease to exist and hence also a means of exchange in the form of money. According to  the BLS  site, for the US alone there are about 8.2 million workers employed in "financial acitivities"  (http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t17.htm). This  of course is only the tip of the iceberg because a substantial chunk of the apparently "socially useful sector "of the economy – like the construction industry or the power supply indistry – is actually put to the service of  the socially useless sector of the economy itself.  That is to say, institutions like banks need to be housed in buildings which require energy, raw materials and human labour to be built and maintained on an ongoing basis.

You've failed to tell me why banks are actually bad; just that a world without money wouldn't need them. What it would need though, is administrative facilities in which people keep record of who has what, who needs what, and arranges for the person who has the item to give it to the person who needs the item, which also requires energy, raw materials and labour. Or would you have the people organising this just do so from cardboard boxes in the street? And that's another point. The ones organising the system have more power than the ones subject to it, which is another obstacle to socialism and proves it could only work on a very small, self-sufficient scale inside a world where everyone is in such mini-societies. Once you get enough people in your society, you need people to keep track of who has what because not everyone is going to be a personal acquaintance of Andy the Lumberjack. 

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Financial acitivites comprise, as I say, just one aspect of capitalism's structural waste; there are many others.  Some estimates of the percentage of structural waste inside capitalism are very high indeed- Marshall McLuhan famously put the figure at 95% which I think is a gross overestimate.  I think a more reasonable figure would be between a half and two thirds of the formal sector. To put this in perspective , what this means is that socialism could, at the very least,  double the amount of socially useful wealth produced compared with capitalism using the same quanitities or human labour and materials – or alternatively could produce the same socially useful output  using half the human labour and resoruces that we use today under capitalism

What form does this waste take? You've only said that it makes waste, not what the waste actually is. In the same way, I could say that socialism produces a lot of waste, and the only choice you have is to believe me, or ask me what form the waste takes. 

[Anonymous]

TheSpanishInquisition wrote:

Yes, it is nice to build something yourself, but it's also nice to hold onto what you make instead of having to give it to someone else.

 You wont have to give your personal possessions away. Socialism means common ownership of the means of production, which means you can keep your toothbrush but you cant keep a reserovoir that produces fresh water for the community. Surely it is not difficult to distinguish between 'means of production' and your house or car which are your personal possessions?They will be free in socialism for you to keep

[TheSpanishInquisition]

Vin wrote:

TheSpanishInquisition wrote:

Yes, it is nice to build something yourself, but it's also nice to hold onto what you make instead of having to give it to someone else.

 You wont have to give your personal possessions away. Socialism means common ownership of the means of production, which means you can keep your toothbrush but you cant keep a reserovoir that produces fresh water for the community. Surely it is not difficult to distinguish between 'means of production' and your house or car which are your personal possessions?They will be free in socialism for you to keep

But what classifies as a 'means of production'? What if Fred the Baker built a pizza oven in his kitchen. Since that could be used to produce pizzas theoretically by anyone, would anyone be able to just waltz into his kitchen and make a pizza? 

[Young Master Smeet]

TheSpanishInquisition wrote:

But what classifies as a 'means of production'? What if Fred the Baker built a pizza oven in his kitchen. Since that could be used to produce pizzas theoretically by anyone, would anyone be able to just waltz into his kitchen and make a pizza? 

Well, lets start from the other end: you focus on things one person can use.  We know, for eample, that no-one person can work a car assembly line (and no one person can claim to have made any given car), so if we start with items, installations and machines that require groups of people to operate, and are currently operated by associations of people employed in a contract of service.  That rules out Freds oven, but would include all the cumulative ovens owned by Greggs, say.Lets not focuss on things, but on the social relationship, the ending of wage slavery.  Once we are free to work together, it's a question of co-operating: no one plan can describe how the co-operation will be carried out, other than that it is the free association of workers.  We work because we need to in order to have things we need to live, and because we will have made all forms of exploitation and slavery impossible.

[Anonymous]

TheSpanishInquisition wrote:

But what classifies as a 'means of production'? What if Fred the Baker built a pizza oven in his kitchen. Since that could be used to produce pizzas theoretically by anyone, would anyone be able to just waltz into his kitchen and make a pizza? 

'Means of producion' are what society uses to produce society's goods and services. Social means of production land factories etcIndividuals will be free to continue to bake for themselves. You are free to produce a batman costume and jump from the wardrobe if it takes your fancy.(not that I'v ever done that)Fred can keep his pizza oven and the pizzas he produces, Socialism has nothing to do with preventing people owning their own homes ovens, batman costumes and other personal possessions, we leave that to capitalism. A child dies every few seconds for the want of a pizza and millions are homeless for the want of a dwelling ( But heythat's efficiency for you}I can't imagine anyone would be interested in your batman suit or Fred's pizzas in a really human society.

[alanjjohnstone]

I aleady placed a caveat on the division of labour that we will not all be pilots but will accept that some are more qualified then others to make certain decisions. But i do think we be brought up to multi-task much more than we do presently. What we propose is that the whole system of money and exchange, buying and selling, profit-making and wage-earning be entirely abolished and that instead, that instead community as a whole should organise and administer the productions of goods for use only, and the free distribution of these goods to all members of the community according to each person’s needs.Since money would not exist, and wealth could not, therefore, be measured in terms of money, no person could say that he or she owned a share of such-and-such value in the people’s means of production. The main features of the World Commonwealth are really quite simple, so I’ll proceed to sum them up for you in a few sentences.Firstly, the new social system must be world-wide. It must be a World Commonwealth.The world must be regarded as one country and humanity as one people.Secondly, all the people will co-operate to produce and distribute all the goods and services which are needed by mankind, each person willingly and freely, taking part in the way he or she feels they can do best.Thirdly, all goods and services will be produced for use only, and having been produced, will be distributed, free, directly to the people so that each person’s needs are fully satisfied.Fourthly, the land, factories, machines, mines, roads, railways, ships, and all those things which mankind needs to carry on producing the means of life, will belong to the whole people .Suppose that the new social system were to start tomorrow; the great mass of people having already learnt what it means, and having taken the necessary action to bring it about.Everybody would carry on with their usual duties for the time being, except all those whose duties being of an unnecessary nature to the new system, were rendered idle, for example, bank clerks, salesmen, accountants, advertising and insurance agents etc. These people would, in time, be fitted into productive occupations for which they considered themselves suitable wirh appropriate re-training if necessary.When people first hear of how radically different society is being proposed, with all work being voluntary, and free access to whatever we need, most immediately view this as bizarre and impossible. Unsurprising, given that we have spent our entire lives being brainwashed and conditioned by the education system, by the media, by politicians and employers, into swallowing capitalism’s propaganda that this is the natural way of things. For those who can get beyond the initial shock of first hearing about moneyless real socialism, by simply comparing what both the present and new system offer the majority of us, it should be obvious that outdated capitalism must be scrapped and replaced with the real socialist alternative.Although money will disappear in socialism this does not mean that there will no longer be any need to make choices, evaluations and calculations. Our argument is that these evaluations and calculations, including those conceding the non-monetary "cost" of objects in terms of the effort and materials used to produce them, will be done directly in kind, without any general unit of account or measurement, neither money nor labour-time. Wealth will be produced and distributed in its natural form of useful things, of objects that can serve to satisfy some human need or other. Not being produced for sale on a market, items of wealth will not acquire an exchange-value in addition to their use value. In socialism their value, in the normal non-economic sense of the word, will not be their selling price nor the time needed to produce them but their usefulness. It is for this that they will be appreciated, evaluated, wanted… and produced. So estimates of what is likely to be needed over a given period will be expressed as physical quantities of definite types and sorts of objects. Decisions apart from purely personal ones of preference will be made after weighing the real advantages and disadvantages and real costs of alternatives in particular circumstances. The belief that without money nothing can work is flawed. The truth is that production is carried out by people not money. Problems are solved by human beings, not money. 

[Bijou Drains]

The Spanish Inquisition wrote that ""Capitalism doesn't aim to meet human needs; it meets human desires"Actually that's not true, The only aim of any capitalist concern is to make profit. If in making that profit they meet human need and or desire, so be it, if in making that profit it meets no human need or desire again that is immaterial. The PPI "scandal" is an example of a capitalist enterprise which did not wish to meet a human need or desire, the marketing of thalidomide at pregnant women another, there are so many more. Just because a text book on an MBA states something, it does not make it true.

[Chadwick]

TheSpanishInquisition wrote:

"By definition, capitalism doesn't waste resources. The whole idea of capitalism is to reduce expenditure as much as possible. "

But in practice it does nothing of the sort. Think of the panicked tones in which slumps in consumer spending are announced. But what does such a slump really mean? Do we really need to be buying every new thing that comes on the market? Why do we need new numberplates every six months? To try and encourage people to buy more new cars. Is this really necessary? Why does Apple bring out a new computer/phone/watch every few months? Sure, the technology is better, but the root technology, the solid state drives and what have you, is typically no different to that in the previous model. It's just a ploy (which only makes sense in the capitalist model) to keep us spending.Looking at the impact if consumer culture on the environment, is it really the way to go in the future? Do we really need exponential growth in energy consumption? Can we afford to keep the game going? These are irrelevant questions in capitalism, because anything that turns a profit is good. Socialism offers a sane, sustainable model for the future of humanity.

[robbo203]

TheSpanishInquisition wrote:

Capitalism doesn't aim to meet human needs; it meets human desires, which does coincide with needs on the lower end. Anytime someone wants something, they can probably get it and if they work hard enough (ignoring opportunity, for the minute. Let's pretend it's a world where everyone starts at least average, as is the most desirable world), they can afford to buy it. This is a natural reward system of capitalism, in that the more you contribute to humanity, the more you get out of it, and that's fair because in a world with an equal starting point like the one I hypothesised just now, that is what exists. 

Are you serious? Do you imagine for one moment that the world that exists is one that correlates with your hypothetical dreamworld  of a level playing field? Do you really think that the 62 multibillionaires who  currently own between them more wealth than half the world's population – 3,500,000,000 people – have contributed as much to humanity as the latter?  I would put it to you that the "rewards" that these  62 individuals have received has very little, if anything ,to do with their own effort but overwhelmingly has to do with efforts of those who produce their wealth for them – the working class.  The workers in effect run capitalism from top to bottom but are largely excluded from the means of production However  hard they work it is the owners of capital that reap the benefits simple because they own capital and not because they merited or worked for what they  receive Also capitalism is not about "meeting human desires".  In fact that is a rather odd thing to say given that the bourgeois economists, with whom I am guessing you are in some sympathy, confidently inform us that our desires are (allegedly) insatiable.  Rather , capitalism is all about the cultivation of desires that ultinatrelt cannot be met through such as means as advertising becuase this is the corrollary of its own iirrational expansionist dynamic:  producton for the sake of production 

TheSpanishInquisition wrote:

You've failed to tell me why banks are actually bad; just that a world without money wouldn't need them. What it would need though, is administrative facilities in which people keep record of who has what, who needs what, and arranges for the person who has the item to give it to the person who needs the item, which also requires energy, raw materials and labour. Or would you have the people organising this just do so from cardboard boxes in the street? And that's another point. The ones organising the system have more power than the ones subject to it, which is another obstacle to socialism and proves it could only work on a very small, self-sufficient scale inside a world where everyone is in such mini-societies. Once you get enough people in your society, you need people to keep track of who has what because not everyone is going to be a personal acquaintance of Andy the Lumberjack. 

 Why would you want to keep track of who has what in a socialist society? To what end? We already know that the means of prpduction would be owned in common in such a society.  So your question really presupposes a property based society and is thus irrelevant.  In any case,  you dont seem to understand what banks are for.  They are not there to organise the distribution of energy raw materials and labour., they are there to provide finance – financial capital fro businesses , mortgage loans etc etc- and so presuppose a society in which finance is essential to "oil the wheels" of commerce and industry within a capitalist society.  That wont be the case in socialism in which there will be no "finance" and therefore no banks.  Socialism will produce directly ad solely for human need.  You have already conceded that capitalism is not about meeting human needs.  So from a socialist standpoint, anything that is superfluous to, or departs from, the task of meeting humans needs is wasteful and unecessary, Its not that banks are  "bad", its just that they produce nothing of value – they are socially useless – and divert  vast amounts of human and material resources from socially useful production.  The banking sector is just one aspect of an array of socially useless activities under capitalism whose function is to seve the systemic needs of the system itself not human needs

TheSpainishInquisition wrote:

What form does this waste take? You've only said that it makes waste, not what the waste actually is. In the same way, I could say that socialism produces a lot of waste, and the only choice you have is to believe me, or ask me what form the waste takes. 

  Structural waste takes the form of all those activities under capitalism that do not meet human needs  but merely exist to seve the systemioc needs of the system itself and are thus socially useless from the standpoint of directly meeting human needs.

[Anonymous]

Even in capitalism stock outflows from distribution centres,  (shops etc) are accounted for by the barcodes scanned as physical items for replacement. They are replaced as physical items, not by prices (so many tins of beans or packets of oats) . We just won't need to have prices on them any more than a supermarket warehouse does when it come to restock shelves. Prices are for the purpose trading in these goods and of assessing profit and loss and just won't apply in a production for use social system of common ownership.

[TheSpanishInquisition]

Tim Kilgallon wrote:

The Spanish Inquisition wrote that ""Capitalism doesn't aim to meet human needs; it meets human desires"Actually that's not true, The only aim of any capitalist concern is to make profit. If in making that profit they meet human need and or desire, so be it, if in making that profit it meets no human need or desire again that is immaterial. The PPI "scandal" is an example of a capitalist enterprise which did not wish to meet a human need or desire, the marketing of thalidomide at pregnant women another, there are so many more. Just because a text book on an MBA states something, it does not make it true.

That's all meeting human desires. If you can't sell your product to anyone because no one wants it, how on earth do you intend to make profit? The PPI companies were meeting the desire of humans to get money (even if it was actually a scandal). The marketing of thalidomide towards pregnant women was to meet the desire of those women to not have morning sickness. No one was forced to buy the thalidomide, they bought it because they didn't want morning sickness. This is basic common sense: "If someone wants an item, and they have the means to obtain that item, they will obtain that item." Perhaps it is more accurate to say that human desires control capitalism, rather than capitalism aiming to meet human desires (although, it can manipulate human desire, to a certain extent, but that's another fascinating discussion). 

[TheSpanishInquisition]

Chadwick wrote:

TheSpanishInquisition wrote:

"By definition, capitalism doesn't waste resources. The whole idea of capitalism is to reduce expenditure as much as possible. "

 Looking at the impact if consumer culture on the environment, is it really the way to go in the future? Do we really need exponential growth in energy consumption? Can we afford to keep the game going? These are irrelevant questions in capitalism, because anything that turns a profit is good. Socialism offers a sane, sustainable model for the future of humanity.

Well that's certainly not true. It was said earlier that overpopulation was a good thing because it means more hands; but more hands need more space to work in and the only place to put that extra space is where the rainforests and other protected environments currently are. Doesn't sound great for the environment to me. 

[TheSpanishInquisition]

robbo203 wrote:

TheSpanishInquisition wrote:

Capitalism doesn't aim to meet human needs; it meets human desires, which does coincide with needs on the lower end. Anytime someone wants something, they can probably get it and if they work hard enough (ignoring opportunity, for the minute. Let's pretend it's a world where everyone starts at least average, as is the most desirable world), they can afford to buy it. This is a natural reward system of capitalism, in that the more you contribute to humanity, the more you get out of it, and that's fair because in a world with an equal starting point like the one I hypothesised just now, that is what exists. 

Are you serious? Do you imagine for one moment that the world that exists is one that correlates with your hypothetical dreamworld  of a level playing field? Do you really think that the 62 multibillionaires who  currently own between them more wealth than half the world's population – 3,500,000,000 people – have contributed as much to humanity as the latter?  I would put it to you that the "rewards" that these  62 individuals have received has very little, if anything ,to do with their own effort but overwhelmingly has to do with efforts of those who produce their wealth for them – the working class.  The workers in effect run capitalism from top to bottom but are largely excluded from the means of production However  hard they work it is the owners of capital that reap the benefits simple because they own capital and not because they merited or worked for what they  receive

Please tell me you're joking right now. 

TheSpanishInquisition wrote:

(ignoring opportunity, for the minute. Let's pretend it's a world where everyone starts at least average, as is the most desirable world),

As for the rest: Those billionaires aren't these lazy, useless invalids you think they are. They give huge sums to charity, they invest huge sums in businesses. They're the lifeblood of capitalism. Without them, capitalism would crumble. They're far more important than expendable workers who can just be replaced with another person if they screw up.  

robbo203 wrote:

Why would you want to keep track of who has what in a socialist society? To what end? We already know that the means of prpduction would be owned in common in such a society.  So your question really presupposes a property based society and is thus irrelevant.  In any case,  you dont seem to understand what banks are for.  They are not there to organise the distribution of energy raw materials and labour., they are there to provide finance – financial capital fro businesses , mortgage loans etc etc- and so presuppose a society in which finance is essential to "oil the wheels" of commerce and industry within a capitalist society.  That wont be the case in socialism in which there will be no "finance" and therefore no banks.  Socialism will produce directly ad solely for human need. 

You ignored the problem. Your argument against the existence of banks is that they take up unnecessary space and resources. I was simply pointing out that the use of those resources would just be replaced by the administration necessary in socialism. You need the administration to figure out rations and make sure people aren't taking more than their fair share. You also need the administration to keep track of who has what. Socialist society requires people be able to obtain what they need, but how are they supposed to do that if no one knows where the item in question actually is? Just walk around until you find someone who has it? Your counter to the rations argument will be to say that people will only take what they need out of 'good will'. To this, I direct you to Denmark in 2012, a welfare state in which only 73% of independent citizens had any kind of employment, and a lot of this employment had very short work hours too. This includes people who work only because working is necessary to have the money to live properly. Imagine how much that willingness to work would decrease if Denmark were to abolish money and give everyone, even if you don't work, the resources necessary to live comfortably. 

Quote:

You have already conceded that capitalism is not about meeting human needs.  So from a socialist standpoint, anything that is superfluous to, or departs from, the task of meeting humans needs is wasteful and unecessary, Its not that banks are  "bad", its just that they produce nothing of value – they are socially useless – and divert  vast amounts of human and material resources from socially useful production.  The banking sector is just one aspect of an array of socially useless activities under capitalism whose function is to seve the systemic needs of the system itself not human needs

TheSpainishInquisition wrote:

What form does this waste take? You've only said that it makes waste, not what the waste actually is. In the same way, I could say that socialism produces a lot of waste, and the only choice you have is to believe me, or ask me what form the waste takes. 

Structural waste takes the form of all those activities under capitalism that do not meet human needs  but merely exist to seve the systemioc needs of the system itself and are thus socially useless from the standpoint of directly meeting human needs.

So a socialist state's production would be only enough to meet human needs, and not human desires. Sounds like a horrible world to live in if the food available to you is only what is necessary to live, where entertainment is scarce because you don't need it; only want it. Where no one can go on holiday because they don't need to; only want to.

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