http://www.osa.ceu.hu/galeria/sites/com2000/stalin_leo/ludwig.html
Conversation with the German writer, Emil Ludwig, 1931.
>From the Collected Works of Stalin. Vol. 13. Szikra Publishing House,
Budapest, 1951.
Ludwig: (?) You speak about ?leveling? with some irony although general equality is a socialist idea.
Stalin: Marxism has nothing to do with that type of socialism in which everybody gets the same salary, receives the same amount of food and wears the same uniform. Marxism only states that until all classes vanish, and until work has become a voluntarily contribution to society instead of being simply necessary for survival, people will be paid according to their actual contribution: ?From each according to his ability; to each according to his work? ? this is the main principle of the first stage of communism. This will be replaced only at the highest, final stage of communism by a new principle: ?From each according to his ability; to each according to his need?.
It is obvious that in socialism different people have different needs. Socialism has never denied the variability of the quantity and quality of needs. Just read ?The Critics of the Gotha-program? by Marx, or other relevant works by Marx, Engels and Lenin. The source of the idea of ?leveling? was the individualistic peasant mentality. It was based on the psychology of an equal share of goods, upon the psychology of ?primitive? peasant communism. This kind of desire for leveling has nothing to do with Marxist socialism. Only ignorant critics of Marxism believe that the Russian Bolsheviks first want to collect goods, then distribute them equally among the people. That was how communism was imagined in the age of Cromwell or during the French Revolution by the ?primitive? communists. But neither Marxists nor Russian Bolsheviks have such crazy ideas about equality and real communism. (?)