this post was submitted on 08 Feb 2024
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Could you help clarify this for my understanding? I thought the lower phase of Communism (socialism) would be an unequal society (to each according to their contribution).
I'm asking out of genuine curiosity, I was just explaining socialism in these terms to someone the other week, so would like to be corrected if I'm wrong.
I can't off the top of my head recall where I read "to each according to their contribution" but I think i've seen it in both Marx and Lenin's writings.
Appreciate it.
Yeah it's one of those distortions that seems minor until it suddenly isn't, and hence it's one of the depressing distortions that was unintentional. Molotov describes it better than I can (and I prefer quoting him to describe it, bc he was there, quotes from pages 202-204)
Lenin addresses this in chapter 5, largely by summarizing Marx's criticism of Section 3 of the Gotha Programme, with the main "ability...need" quote being:
The original Marx quote being:
Molotov's critique of "in the lower stage of communism, in socialism, we have "from each according to their ability, to each according to their work"" continues as follows:
tldr; So to summarize, Molotov's issue with Stalin's formulation in the 1936 constitution (from...ability, to...work) is that the first part ("from each according to ability") isn't possible given shitty pay in e.g. a collective farm or e.g. lack of housing around a new mine, and the second part ("to each according to work") is demonstrated false by idlers being given equal pay as hard workers. To quote Molotov again because he says this very very well:
If Molotov were sent back to 1936, as he said above, he would likely tell Stalin to replace "from each according to their ability, to each according to their work" with something like "From each according to the quota, to each according to the wage-scale".