From Each According to Ability, To Each According to Need
Let's FULLY implement this wonderful principle now. (Karl Marx and the CPC would NOT agree, by the way.)
The idea of sharing according to need is as old as the hills.
My egalitarian formulation of the wonderful idea in the title of this Substack post goes like this:
“From each according to reasonable ability, to each according to need or reasonable desire with scarce things equitably rationed according to need.”
I use the word “reasonable” for two reasons: 1) to emphasize that this principle requires adaptation to the particular circumstances by reasonable people; 2) to promote discussion of the fact that for this principle to be implemented properly there needs to be a governmental body that determines what is reasonable, and that the appropriate body is a SOVEREIGN local assembly of egalitarians, i.e., a body composed of people who agree that this principle ought to be implemented and not any contrary principle such as “Rich people should have everything that their money can buy even if they don’t do any work at all.”
This “From each according…” principle is one that most people think makes perfect sense. According to the authors of this Monthly Review article, "Back in 1987, a poll of the U.S. population indicated that 45 percent of the population believed that Marx’s famous words from the Critique of the Gotha Programme delimiting communism—'from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs'—were enshrined in the U.S. Constitution. This, of course, said more about the absolute ideals of most Americans, and what they thought they should expect, than about the U.S. Constitution itself.19"
Virtually every family applies the “From each according…” principle to its distribution of wealth within the family. This is why at meal time the children are not told they can eat only what they can afford to pay for! Likewise, many churches and synagogues and mosques arrange for their congregations to share some wealth according to this principle.
Scarce things equitably rationed according to need
When the stakes are very high—life and death—almost everybody agrees that the “…according to need…” and “…scarce things equitably rationed according to need” principle trumps the “…according to ability to buy…” principle. This is why, for example, organ transplants are distributed according to need, not who can afford to pay the most for one.
Even when the stakes are low the widely accepted principle is “scarce things equitably rationed according to need.” Thus when people want a table at a nice restaurant and there is a scarcity of tables on any given evening, the tables are rationed equitably according to need (everybody’s need in this case happens to be exactly the same, zero, since nobody NEEDS a table at the restaurant): it’s called “making a reservation” first come first served. The restaurant does NOT auction the tables to the people who can pay the most for them.
With some exceptions such as those mentioned above, our current society is based on the opposite of the “From each according…” principle. That’s why there are mansions for the rich:
and tents for the poor:
and why billionaires get to have everything they could possibly want no matter how little they contribute reasonably according to ability:
In contrast, as Stokely Carmichael once observed, looking around the cotton fields of the Mississippi Delta, "If hard work made you rich, black people would own this country."
If and when the “From each according…” principle is fully implemented, then there will be no rich, powerful and privileged billionaire and mega-millionaire upper class. This is the reason—obviously!—why the upper class works so hard to make sure that the “From each according…” principle is NOT implemented fully. It is why it stigmatizes the principle as being “Communism”—i.e., equivalent to having a dictatorship of Marxists ordering everybody around and killing millions of innocent people. This is why the phrase, “From each according…” is virtually ALWAYS associated with Karl Marx today, and why, if you do a Google search of the phrase, you will almost always read how it is a Marxist phrase due to Karl Marx.
But guess what?
Karl Marx did NOT invent the “From each according…” principle, nor—unfortunately!—did he advocate its prompt implementation!
As early as 1775 (43 years before Karl Marx was born) in his Code de la Nature ou le Veritable esprit de Ses Lois a Frenchman named Morelly wrote that his aim was "To distribute work according to capacity; products according to needs." The same idea appears even earlier, in the Bible (Acts, 4:34-35): "Neither was there any among them that lacked: for as many were possessors of lands or houses sold them, and brought the prices of the things that were sold, And laid them down at the apostle's feet: and distribution was made unto every man according as he had need."
Note that while Marx used the phrase, "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs" in his “Critique of the Gotha Program,” his point was that society could NOT be based on this principle until far FAR in the future (a “higher phase of communist society”). Here are his exact words:
In a higher phase of communist society, after the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labor, and therewith also the antithesis between mental and physical labor, has vanished; after labor has become not only a means of life but life's prime want; after the productive forces have also increased with the all-around development of the individual, and all the springs of co-operative wealth flow more abundantly -- only then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be crossed in its entirety and society inscribe on its banners: From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs! [my emphasis]
But the “From each according…” principle CAN be and OUGHT to be implemented now! The egalitarian revolution in Spain 1936-9 did in fact implement this principle widely despite the economy being rather undeveloped (as discussed here) and it resulted in an INCREASE, not a decrease, in economic productivity despite many men having to be sent to the front to fight the fascist General Franco (as discussed here.)
Marx wrongly believed that working class people, being supposedly motivated only by self-interest, would never support the “From each according…” principle until the economy had been made (in the far future!) so vastly productive that there was no longer ANY scarcity of anything. Marx was wrong! Events in revolutionary Spain proved him wrong. The Communist Party of China, in perfect keeping with Marxism, does not implement the “From each according…” principle, as I discuss in the section about China here.
“From each according to reasonable ability” means NO FREELOADERS!
The ruling class tries to stigmatize the “From each according…” principle by telling people it means that those who work are required to hand over the fruits of their labor to those who refuse to work: freeloaders. The ruling class does this by having its liberal wing censor the key “From each according to reasonable ability” part of the principle and instead promote the idea that some things are “THE RIGHT OF ALL” meaning the right of freeloaders who refuse to contribute reasonably according to ability.
No! It is not true that some things are the “right of all.” Read about this here. Also please read “Is Health Care a RIGHT for Freeloaders?” and "A Parable: The Right to Health Care" and "Here's a Moral Question for You."
To implement the “From each according…” principle in all aspects of society, those who want to do that, and ONLY they, must have the sovereign power
If the people who want to implement the “From each according…” principle in all aspects of society do NOT exclusively have sovereign power then (read about this here and here if you don’t understand this point) the sovereign power will be in the hands of those who do NOT want to implement this principle. This is not complicated! It’s as simple as the idea that if you want the Fire Department to put out fires instead of starting them, then you need the Fire Department to consist of people who want to put out fires and NOT contain any arsonists, for crying out loud, right?
This is why those who DO want to fully implement the “From each according…’ principle need to take, with a revolution, sovereign power away from the people who have it today—the ruling billionaire plutocracy (as discussed here.)
I discuss what such sovereign power means and I call it genuine democracy (as opposed to the fake democracy we now have that is actually a dictatorship of the rich) here.
I discuss what the economy might look like if the “From each according…” principle were fully implemented here.
This is what it takes, and it is not at all the same as “taxing the billionaires” (which really means charging them a fee for the right to rule over us and treat the have-nots like dirt to stay in power, as discussed here.)
John, While I concur with your overall direction here, I think you have maligned Marx, despite quoting his words. Yes, the Spanish Republicans did attempt to implement the concept, but in the end did not succeed due to subordinate political and military power. The same had happened in 1871 with the inspiring but doomed Paris Commune. THIS, I think is why Mark referred to a distant time (then) why it could not be successfully implemented, though desirable, because the bourgeoisie had the power to crush the effort. In fact, you allude to just that fact later in your essay in the appeal to conduct an egalitarian revolution against the rich (bourgeoisie) in order to successfully implement the concept! So, you end up making exactly the point Marx already cited.
As for China, a mixed assessment. The "Great Leap Forward" despite its aspirations, turned out to be horribly implemented, with over-zealous middle management making impossible demands on the rural population, mandating what they were incapable of achieving. Eventually after the policy disaster was rectified, the principle was more fully implemented. I spent a month there as part of a bookseller's tour in 1976, and we did not see abject poverty--certainly no homeless people in tents on streets nor visible garbage either. Clearly people were not wealthy, but everyone by then had enough to survive. Jon
A relatively recent attempt to satisfy this idea is how things are shared on the kibbutz. In the early days of this social institution, the kibbutzim were so poor that they virtually were forced to use common showers, dormitories, dining halls, and child's caring centers, where the parents participated by working elsewhere and seeing their children for only a few hours each day (if that). As time passed and the wealth accumulated, these institutions were able to provide individual homes, private vehicles and relaxed access to farm produce for private use, and the schools were not full-time child-raising arrangements. So the varied needs of the kibbutz members became so widely spread that the Marxian principle was no longer practical. The member's needs were so different that it was impossible to balance them for equality in worth and even money became a useful way for a limited kind of equality in sharing. What evolved was the realization that from each according to ability and to each as per need. was not a practical way for sharing folks to live in villages together and today most kibbutzim have compromised greatly away from this older theory of sharing. In other words theoretical socialism (even when communalism is only partial), does simply not work in practice.
People are unequal in both their talents and in their basic necessities. It seems to me that this idea of sharing would better expressed were it to be the sharing of opportunities that are provided by the natural resources and in particular the benefits possible depending on where you live. Those that live in a wealthy neighborhood should pay more tax than those whose homes are far away from the centers of the more civilized parts of town.