QuestionsWhat is a just society?To each according to his needs: equal right is still bourgeois right
What is a just society?Equality

To each according to his needs: equal right is still bourgeois right

"From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs"

Karl Marx 1818 · 1883History is the history of class struggles.
See profile
What it claims

Equal right according to labour remains bourgeois right, and the principle "to each according to his needs" can hold only in a society of abundance.

Why

The same measure applied to unequal people keeps the inequality: equal right does not end injustice.

In short

"To each according to his needs: equal right is still bourgeois right" is an argument by Karl Marx (Critique of the Gotha Programme, 1875, part I) on the question "What is a just society?" (answer: equality). Its claim: Equal right according to labour remains bourgeois right, and the principle "to each according to his needs" can hold only in a society of abundance. According to AskPhilosophy's logic check (Z3 solver), the argument is valid only if one grants a premise the author leaves unstated (P6). AskPhilosophy presents 3 objections, 2 of them with a documented reply, and the original text behind each premise, checked word for word.

Critique of the Gotha Programme, 1875, part I
Valid with an implicit premise

In 1875, German socialists wanted to write in their programme that the product of labour belongs "undiminished, with equal right" to all. In notes written for his friends, Marx answers that this equal right is not the end of injustice. In the society that has just left capitalism, each would receive according to the labour he supplied: that is better than a wage, but the measure is the same for everyone, while people are unequal (strong or weak, single or with many children). With equal labour, one would therefore live better than another. Marx calls this a "bourgeois" right, and draws a conclusion: only a society of abundance, where labour is no longer a constraint, can write on its banners "to each according to his needs". He does not say that equality before labour is unjust in itself: he says it is a progress, but a limited one, and that this flaw is unavoidable at the start.

P1In the first phase of communist society, each person receives according to the labour he has supplied: labour is the common measure for all.
P2Individuals are unequal (strength, aptitude, family burdens). This common measure sees them only as workers and ignores everything else: it tacitly recognises unequal endowment as a natural privilege.
P3So, with equal labour and an equal share of the consumption fund, one in fact receives more than another and is richer than another.
P4Equal right therefore remains bourgeois right: it keeps a bourgeois limitation, because it applies the same measure to unequal beings.
P5This narrow horizon can only be crossed in a higher phase: when the productive forces have grown, labour has become a vital need, and the springs of wealth flow abundantly.
P6 · implicit premiseDistributing according to needs is precisely to leave the horizon of bourgeois right, that is, of a common measure applied to everyone.
Therefore equal right according to labour remains bourgeois right, and the principle "to each according to his needs" can hold only in a society of abundance.

click a premise to reject it

If you accept every premise, logic forces you to accept the conclusion. So the debate is about the premises.
Checked by a logic solver: the premises cannot all be true while the conclusion is false.
Without the implicit premise: Without P6, the computer finds a world where abundance is necessary to go beyond bourgeois right, but where that is done in another way (for instance by sharing according to some other common rule) and where the rule "according to needs" is applied without abundance. Nothing links them.
With P1 to P6 the conclusion follows. P1 to P4 show that equal right according to labour remains bourgeois. P5 gives the condition for leaving it, abundance. P6 links the two: the principle of needs is what goes beyond bourgeois right. Without P6 one cannot say that the principle of needs requires abundance: P5 speaks of crossing the horizon of bourgeois right in general, and nothing yet says that this crossing is precisely distribution according to needs.
Analogy. A teacher gives every pupil the same time for a test: an equal rule. But a dyslexic pupil and a fast reader do not have the same chance with the same time. The equal rule quietly favours the one who is already advantaged. To treat each according to needs (extra time for one, none for the other), you need resources and a way to recognise each person's needs. Marx thinks at the scale of a whole society, with scarcity added.

Objections

3

Each objection is a conversation: click to see who replies and where the debate stands.

Robert Nozick 1974 · attacks the conclusion

Nozick targets every principle of distribution based on a pattern, "according to needs" included. If people are free, they exchange and give, and even a distribution one judges just is soon upset. To keep the pattern, one would have to keep forbidding voluntary exchanges. Our summary: he does not discuss Marx in this passage; he criticises all distributions "according to a pattern".

a defender replies
see the argument
No reply possible: objection raised in 1974, after the author's death (1883).
G
G. A. Cohen defender of the argument · 1977
Cohen, a Marxist in the analytic tradition, answers the Wilt Chamberlain example by arguing that patterns of distribution can preserve liberty. Our summary of his article (source not read).
Where the debate stands (our summary)The basic disagreement is about liberty: for Nozick, preventing voluntary exchanges is an attack on liberty; for his critics, everyone's liberty already depends on the initial distribution of goods. The debate remains open.
Friedrich Hayek 1976 · attacks the conclusion

Hayek argues that "social justice" has no meaning in a market economy, where the distribution results from thousands of decisions that no one directs: one can judge a person's conduct just or unjust, not the outcome of a process without an author. Distributing according to needs would require an authority that knows everyone's needs and has the power to impose its decision. Our summary of the book (source not read).

a defender replies
No reply possible: objection raised in 1976, after the author's death (1883).
G
G. A. Cohen defender of the argument · 2009
Cohen defends the value of an ideal in which people share according to solidarity and need, with the example of a camping trip among friends, and admits that the real difficulty is whether it can be organised on a large scale. Our summary of the book (source not read).
Where the debate stands (our summary)Hayek denies that justice can apply to a distribution; Cohen answers that the ideal is attractive and that the question is feasibility. It is a disagreement about what "just" means and about what a complex society can organise: an open point.
A
Alec Nove 1983 · attacks premise 5

Nove, an economist of the Soviet economy, doubts that abundance in Marx's sense is attainable: wants grow with wealth, so some scarcity remains, and a complex society needs prices and markets to coordinate production and demand. Our summary of the book (source not read).

no reply
No reply possible: objection raised in 1983, after the author's death (1883).
Where the debate stands (our summary)Marx makes abundance the condition for the principle of needs; if it is never reached, the principle remains a horizon. Marx's defenders speak of a distant goal, his critics of an illusion. Open point: no widely accepted answer.