> What would be the point of the surplus? If people had enough
> (their "needs" in the formula), then what would they continue
> to labor for? Labor itself? This is not a rhetorical question.
There of course is a technical need for a surplus (not of surplus value, which is anothe matter), as a reserve in case of difficulty (such as a disastrous year in agriculture, whatever), and productive forces must be renewed. If the population is increasing, that has to be allowed for. If it is decreasing, that too may well demand a reserve. But in general I think you are right. Under socialism, even in its fairly early moments, there would cease to be any *necessity* for a surplus, and there may well be for ecological reasons a strong need to reduce not only the surplus but even many forms of consumption.
As to "labor," I think Hannah Arendt's distinction between labor and work is useful. There will always be a need for work as an end in itself. Labor will be reduced to the absolute minimum, even if that means reducing consumption.
But -- such speculations re socialism should never be considered as providing motives for *becoming* socialist. That would be millenarianism or utopianism. One becomes a socialist out of a need to fight against capitalism, *not* out of hope for a future world. There can be no certainty of achieving that future nor that those who have it will find it desirable. We only know that capitalism must be destroyed or it will destroy us. The only reason to try to work out a rough conception of a classless society is to provide a historical perspective on the present -- to understand capitalism better.
Carrol
P.S. I haven't digested the Zizek passage yet, but on first blush it looks like another effort to mock human desires and human struggles in the name of a mystical Desire. I have just been reading Eagleton on Schopenhauer, and learning a bit more about the bizarre ideological twistings that led to the Freudian invention of Desire.