> Oh, like Marx, I do hold this, for those able to work. "From each according
> to his abilities, to each according to his needs." But for me the reason
> isn't a matter of negative incentives. It's justice. I don't think that
> citizens of the socialist commonwealth should be allowed to exploit other
> citizens by loafing while others work for them. I don't think they'd
> tolerate that, or that the commonwealth would survive as a socialist one if
> that sort of self-indulgence were permitted. Reciprocity is important: you
> have to give in order to get. So I'd see the state guarantee a place at a
> cooperative for all alble-bodied persons, or failing that a government job.
> Those unable to work would be decently provided for.
The context in which Marx asserts this as the ultimate principle of distributive justice - a principle characteristic not of "socialism" but of "a higher phase of communist society" - includes the claim that, for a set of individuals for whom the principle would be practicable (a set of what Marx elsewhere calls "universally developed individuals" - the product of "the all-around development of the individual" made possible by the conditions characteristic of the "higher phase of communist society"), "labour has become not only a means of life but life's prime want".
"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 labour, has vanished; after labour 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 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!" (Marx, Critique of the Gotha Programme)
It is, consequently, a characteristic of Marx's "higher form of communist society" that there are no longer any individuals who wish "to exploit other citizens by loafing while others work for them". The universally developed individual fulfills the obligation of labour in the realm of necessity (labour now transformed so as to make it fit for this kind of individual) completely voluntarily; for such an individual such labour is "regarded as a natural necessity or a social duty, according to one's inclination."
"Time of labour, even if exchange value is eliminated, always remains the creative substance of wealth and the measure of the cost of its production. But free time, disposable time, is wealth itself, partly for the enjoyment of the product, partly for free activity which - unlike labour - is not determined by a compelling extraneous purpose which must be fulfilled, and the fulfillment of which is regarded as a natural necessity or a social duty, according to one's inclination.
"It is self-evident that if time of labour is reduced to a normal length and, furthermore, labour is no longer performed for someone else, but for myself, and, at the same time, the social contradictions between master and men, etc., being abolished, it acquires a quite different, a free character, it becomes real social labour, and finally the basis of disposable time - the time of labour of a man who has also disposable time, must be of a much higher quality than that of the beast of burden." (Theories of Surplus Value pp. 301-2 Collected Works, vol. 32)
Ted