Equity under Self-Management: Equality or Inequality?

Abstract

Socialism is frequently suspected of wage-equalization, a suspicion derived from the Marxist slogan ‘From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs’. But this principle is very remote from socialist practice. This does not mean that socialists do not believe in equality. In fact, equality is the dream of socialists, a dream to come true in some future world under an economic system called communism. Marx (1938, p. 10) is quite explicit about the idealist and utopian character of real equality in the system of distribution:

In a higher phase of communist society, after the enslaving subordination of individuals under division of labour, and therewith also the antithesis between mental and physical labour, has vanished; after labour, from a mere means of life, has itself become the prime necessity of life; after the productive forces have also increased with the all-round 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 fully left behind and society inscribe on its banners: from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!