Democratic planning
> How to rearrange work so as to greatly
>shrink the realm of necessity and greatly enlarge the realm of
>freedom?
Simply deduct all those tasks that are specific to capitalism, like insurance, financial services etc, as well as taking away the luxury consumption of the unproductive propertied classes and you would release vast resources of human labour time.
Further to that, apply technology to production without the redirection of resources into idle market speculation. One only has to imagine the substitution of the speculative growth of the Stock Exchange with real growth. That would profoundly abbreviate the time required to reproduce the means of life.
>
>And don't tell me that the way to transcend desire is to abolish it,
>and be happier with fewer goods and less power over nature:
No - that is the romantic solution. The Marxist one was always the opposite.
> And don't tell me that
>everyone can be happy if only they work for society instead of for
>the capitalist...
That would be unconvincing in present conditions, where 'society' is only an empty abstraction, but in such a state where self-interest and social were actually combined, then, yes, one would work for the good of society, insofar as it was at the same time for personal self- betterment.
-- Jim heartfield