To each according to what?
On the axis: Distributive justice · each one's share
Should we distribute according to need, according to merit, or equally among all? Three criteria of the just share that sketch three different societies.
Justification
For Marx, private property in the means of production is no natural right but the very lever of exploitation: it is what allows the worker's surplus labour to be captured, so that distributive justice is won not by sharing better within that framework but by abolishing the framework. Yet he refuses to enshrine abstract equality as an ideal: a right that measures all men by the same standard remains an unequal right, since needs differ. Full communism therefore grounds distribution on need, beyond the horizon of right itself, which makes it a radical opposed to any legitimation of merit or of the market.
From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.Critique of the Gotha Programme
Critique of the Gotha Programme (1875) · Manifesto of the Communist Party, ch. 2 (abolition of private property)
Anchors: Marx