carnes@gargoyle.UChicago.UUCP (Richard Carnes) (03/27/85)
Neal Weidenhofer writes: > I can't help but be struck by the essentially "socialistic" or >"Marxist" definition of "fair" that you are using. (Cf. "From each >according to his ability, to each according to his need".) A rumor seems to have got about that the maxim quoted above represents Marx's criterion for a fair or just distribution. Marx, the story goes, held that the only just way to distribute goods was according to the "need" of each individual, and any social arrangement that failed to do so was deficient in justice. However, this is not the case. Marx, as I read him, rejected justice as a category by which to judge societies or on which to base political action. His vision was of a society in which alienation, as he conceived it, would be overcome, not a society in which justice would be finally be achieved. He did not, in any passage of which I am aware, say that the capitalist system is unjust or advocate its overthrow on such grounds. This does not mean he regarded it as just in a positive sense, any more than an atheist who denies that God is malevolent must therefore believe that God is benevolent. The way to interpret this often-quoted phrase is to place it in its context in *The Critique of the Gotha Programme* and to place the *Critique* in the context of Marx's other important writings. It is in this work, after all, that Marx says that under socialism as distinguished from communism income will have to be allocated according to work performed rather than according to need. I don't think that Marx regarded this as advocating an injustice. Richard Carnes