Comment & Debate
Socialism gives about 4 times as many people the chance to harness their individual desires since they are no longer held back by poverty and class restraints (see the section on inequality, particularly the argument that Inequalities in capitalism stifle individual opportunity as well as the section on class). In capitalism about 80% of the population (the working class) are blocked from a chance to express their creativity and desires through empowering and creative work and are instead disempowered through rote work and through the hardships of living in poor conditions in a unequal society. But in socialism these people are now empowered to have a chance to express their desires and have creative and empowering tasks as part of their job. Socialism also presents the opportunity for the rote, disempowering jobs to be shared out (via a balanced job complex – see Parecon: Life After Capitalism by Michael Albert) so that some people are no longer disempowered by being stuck with all the rote tasks. And balanced job complexes wouldn’t decrease efficiency because since more people would be empowered through their live, so you would get 80% more people (80% is about the amount in the disempowered working class in capitalism) who have an opportunity to go into science, through their talents that had not been discovered because they were disempowered. This easily makes up for the time that the current people who have the specialised, empowering jobs would spend doing rote work.