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Concept
From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs
Summary
"From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs" (Jeder nach seinen Fähigkeiten, jedem nach seinen Bedürfnissen) is a slogan popularised by Karl Marx in his 1875 Critique of the Gotha Programme. The principle refers to free access to and distribution of goods, capital and services. In the Marxist view, such an arrangement will be made possible by the abundance of goods and services that a developed communist system will be capable to produce; the idea is that, with the full development of socialism and unfettered productive forces, there will be enough to satisfy everyone's needs.
The complete paragraph containing Marx's statement of the creed in the Critique of the Gotha Programme is as follows:
In a higher phase of communist society, after the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labor, and therewith also the antithesis between mental and physical labor, has vanished; after labor has become not only a means of life but life's prime want; after the productive forces have also increased with the all-around 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 crossed in its entirety and society inscribe on its banners: From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!
Although Marx is popularly thought of as the originator of the phrase, the slogan was common within the socialist movement. For example, August Becker in 1844 described it as the basic principle of communism and Louis Blanc used it in 1851. The French socialist Saint-Simonists of the 1820s and 1830s used slightly different slogans such as "from each according to his ability, to each ability according to its work" or "from each according to his capacity, to each according to his works.” The origin of this phrasing has also been attributed to the French utopian Étienne-Gabriel Morelly, who proposed in his 1755 Code of Nature "Sacred and Fundamental Laws that would tear out the roots of vice and of all the evils of a society", including:
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Official source
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