justice

Rakesh Narpat Bhandari rakeshb at Stanford.EDU
Sun Apr 8 09:50:08 PDT 2001


Someone offlist questioned the claim that Marx may have held to some form of distributive justice.

I am basically suggesting that the following from the Critique of the Gotha Programme has to be considered:

one of the most vital principles of communism, a principle which distinguishes it from all reactionary socialism, is its empiric view, based on a knowledge of man's nature, that difference of *brain* and of intellectual capacity do not imply any differences whatsoever in the nature of *stomach* and of physical *needs*; therefore the false tenet, based on existing circumstances, 'to each according to his abilities', must be changed insofar as it relates to enjoyment in its narrower sense, into the 'to each according to his need'; in other words, a different form of activity, does not justify inequality, confers no priviliges in respect of possession and enjoyment. ________ Now perhaps there is no ideal of distributive justice here in a strict technical sense. But can't Marx be read to adovcate for some form of distributive justice as a way of justifying actions which would prevent the varying individual attributes from crystallizing into priviliges?

Yours, Rakesh

ps the new question of course is the opportunity genetic engineering may create for the priviliged to improve their so called natural abilities.



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list