Abstract
Marx showed little interest in creating pictures of the future, but the exigencies of German politics prompted him to write his letter about the future to some leading activists critiquing the Gotha Program. This one letter gives perspectives on the future. Responding to its narrow focus on distribution, Marx wrote about slogans of contribution and distribution that would characterize justice in some phases of communism. His characterization of society in a higher phase of communism is wrongly interpreted as expecting the abolition of scarcity, while the nature of phases, according to him, is misconstrued. Some confusions are corrected, and the slogans are made more specific with attention to individual and collective distinctions.
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Notes
- 1.
This chapter updates and revises material that was originally published in Robert Ware, “Marx on Some Phases of Communism” in Rodger Beehler, David Copp, and Béla Szabados, editors, On the Track of Reason: Essays in Honor of Kai Nielsen (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1992), pp. 135–153. The use here is gratefully acknowledged.
- 2.
As Marx said (in 1875) in the Critique, “in present capitalist society the material, etc., conditions have at last been created [for] the workers to lift this historical curse” of capitalism (MECW 24, p. 83).
- 3.
In German, it is: “Jeder nach seinen Fähigkeiten, jedem nach seinen Bedürfnissen!” (Marx 1962 [1875], p. 21). The idea of proportionality (discussed below) works here but would be even more natural in the quantitative notions of (the sum of one’s) “ability” and “need ” rather than in terms of (many) “abilities” and “needs.”
- 4.
His comments draw on the work of the Nells (1975), which is subject to the same criticism. Another part of the criticism of the principle of contribution is that it is too unspecific for the distribution according to needs, but this relies on an undesirable specificity of that part.
- 5.
One might just as well call it “life’s prime need ” because Marx’s German (Bedürfnis) does not distinguish needs and want , an issue discussed below.
- 6.
See also Capital, on the “combined labour power of the community” (MECW 35, p. 89).
- 7.
An important theme in the Critique is that the cooperative forms of production should not be under the control of the existing state, as Lassalle had proposed.
- 8.
- 9.
There is an ambiguity of “social consumption” between what is socially provided and consumed individually (health care, clean air, etc.) and what is “distributed” to social groups from families, to neighbourhoods, and so on. This is a complexity that seems unnecessary to go into here.
- 10.
In this interpretation, the distribution depends upon subjective interests (what people want ) rather than objective requirements, as “needs” might be interpreted. See Braybrooke (1992) on Marx’s meaning having an ambiguity between primary (restrictive) needs and desire (generalized) needs. I will not try to resolve the complex issues here.
- 11.
The misinterpretation of abundance conspires with another misinterpretation about the development of the productive forces being fettered by capitalist relations so that communism would bring an unprecedented development of productive forces. Marx’s point was that the productive forces would be freed for better use rather than for massive development. See Chap. 4 on this issue.
Sometimes the misconstrual of Marx’s discussion of abundance leads to speculation that communism can come only when there is (great) abundance, as, for example, in Levine (1987).
- 12.
For an excellent discussion of abundance, and the only one I know, see Van Parijs (1993). Of course the issues combine with the important issues about the environment as well.
- 13.
Nielsen writes otherwise, following the Nells, saying that the principle is “incomplete and defective” (Nielsen 1989a, pp. 86ff). The principle is incomplete in the sense that it is unspecific, but that is a virtue because Marx did not want to write prescriptions.
- 14.
- 15.
G. A. Cohen has made a similar point (personal communication to the author) that people’s needs, especially primary and basic needs, are similar if not equal. This raises a complex of issues about technology and the social satisfaction of social and individual needs.
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Ware, R.X. (2019). Marx on Some Phases of Communism. In: Marx on Emancipation and Socialist Goals. Marx, Engels, and Marxisms. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97716-4_11
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