“From each according to his abilities,
to each according to his needs.”
— Karl Marx
Put yourself into the position defined by that famous Marxist quote above. It’s recommended to you by all the people advocating socialism, so why not try it on and see how it fits? Let’s do this.
We’ll take things in order starting with: “From each according to his ability.” Obviously if such an arrangement is in place you can’t be the one who decides what your ability is, so someone else will have to make that assessment. If you are allowed to make that decision your ability will be to do something pleasant and comfortable, even fun, if you are one of us who likes to enjoy his work. If everyone made his own decision of how much and what kind of work he’s going to do it would never work out. There would be very little work done at all and only of the most pleasant kind. So you will be told what kind of work and, possibly, after a bit of testing to try to get a picture of what that ability is and, of course, the overriding factor will be whatever kind of work is needed.
Now, on to: “ To each according to his need.” Just as with the ability to work this can’t be left up to the subjective judgement of the individual or there would be some extravagant needs indeed to be filled and an absence of the wherewithal to do so.[1] Consider further that all of the aggregate needs to be filled must be met by the aggregate products of everyone’s abilities. This has to balance out, so the filling of needs will also have to be decided by someone other than the person experiencing those needs. Alas, there goes the life of easy luxury.
So now we must have a coordination of needs and abilities to get a balance and we will assume someone is to do this in good faith and a fair effort to reach overall optimum results.
If people are to work to their abilities then indeed their basic needs must be met. If their needs are to be met, everyone must work at something he is able to accomplish. So, there you are in Marxist paradise. And what else could it be?
Well, it’s also the life of a slave on a plantation in the antebellum South. You are given what someone else thinks you need and are worked to someone else’s estimate of your ability. Can you see any distinction between Marxist paradise and literal slavery? Does it not seem ironic that slavery is being promoted under the guise of an easy life? Not if you’re in the propaganda business and we’ll see that it’s all that Marxism is: a propaganda trick to deceive people into slavery under a dictatorship.
In the application of these ideas here are the answers to the questions which result from the above:
Question 1, “ability”: How do you get someone to work according to his ability when the reward is not connected to the effort?
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Answer 1: The politicians in power and their servant bureaucrats apply extortion and exhortation until they are satisfied that he’s working hard enough.
Question 2, “needs”: How do you distribute to everyone according to their needs?
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Answer 2: The politicians in power and their servant bureaucrats divide the work product among the workers according to their idea of what the needs are, then announce that everyone’s needs have been met. Of course that’s after the politicians and bureaucrats take all they want off the top.
Think about whether there are any other answers to these questions and then think about where you have seen those questions and answers at work. What is described here is the outcome of Marxist economics everywhere on the planet where it has been implemented. Take a look around the world: Russia, China, Vietnam, Cambodia (Ouch! One fourth of the population murdered), Laos, Mongolia, Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua, Grenada, Azerbaijan and Montenegro. Then add all the Iron Curtain countries after WWII: Poland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, East Germany, Ukraine, Belarus, Albania and Moldova. And possibly the most extreme example of Marxist paradise, the so-called “Democratic People’s Republic of Korea” (North Korea) where everyone is happy all the time. Says the government. And I’m sure I’ve left some out. All are or were Communist hell-holes where people work according to their ability and receive according to their needs.
For the worker the outlook is grim. He’s already working to what someone has decided is his ability. If he works harder he is only pointing out that his ability is not being fully employed. If the worker finishes his assigned work too early he’s pointing out that he has some extra ability left so he must be driven harder. The old dodge of raising the quota will be put upon him and of course what he receives will not change because his needs have not changed. So he’d better not work any harder than he can get by with and, of course, there’s no reason to show initiative to do so. Initiative in this case has become self-injurious.
On the other side of the formula any worker will at some point try to discern how he may get more. It’s a natural part of the human mind to want to get ahead or, if not get ahead, at least to get more out of the position he is in. But his opportunities have been extinguished. The worst part is not that his needs may or may not be met to his satisfaction but that the decision of what he needs has been taken away from him is now a decision made by the politicians and bureaucrats. Slaves are not allowed to make decisions, not even on matters like how hard they will work and what pay they will accept. Thus, the “From each…to each” rule only works with slaves and livestock. More on this parallel below.
The status of a worker in this kind of economy is somewhere between that of a farm animal and a machine. A socialist economy accomplishes all of its ends through the application of force. There is no incentive or reward analogous to the old carrot and stick metaphor; it’s all stick and no carrot. There is no invisible hand.
The implementation of this maxim becomes even starker than its literary description. Let’s have a look at how Marx’s ideal was put into practice in the Soviet Union. Here’s an excerpt from the Soviet Constitution of 1936:
ARTICLE 12. In the U.S.S.R. work is a duty and a matter of honor for every able-bodied citizen, in accordance with the principle: “He who does not work, neither shall he eat.”[2]
So, in practice what Marx’s dictum results comes to is:
From each what the government decides to take and to each what the government decides to give.
But isn’t that what it meant in the first place?
This inescapably leads us to the question of what purpose was intended for Marx’s famous aphorism. Why would you go to such a length to dress up socialist politics in the garb of a worker’s Garden of Eden only to create slaves? The answer to this manipulation of appearances is the appearance itself. Karl Marx may have been sincere in his alcohol-fogged fantasies but the purveyors of this rhetorical fraud see a very different and more politically useful purpose for it. If the mass of people can be sold this bill of goods it becomes and easy matter to impose serfdom on the suckers and manage them as so much livestock—as in Orwell’s classic, socialist model, “Animal Farm.” And having voted their way into serfdom they will have to live in it or shoot their way out. But of course they will be prohibited from having weapons. Socialism is a trap with a one-way door.
Consider the livestock on a farm. The farmer makes use of them as best serves his purposes. The animals are powerless; they must accept their lot as it is handed to them. Still, they can only be put to those uses which are within their abilities. The farmer knows he can’t hitch a chicken to a plow. The ability of the chicken is to lay eggs and of course in the end to become food itself. The horse can pull the plow so that will be his lot. And so on with all the other livestock. On the other side of things the animals must be given what they need if the farmer is going to harvest their abilities. Corn for the chicken, hay and occasionally oats for the horse and so on. Not too often with the oats, though; the farmer doesn’t waste money on animal feed.
So we find farm animals living in the socialist paradise. They must do what they can and take what they’re given. (“From each…to each,” remember?) The only reason the animals are not called “slaves” is that they’re not human. And once they are no longer able to work for that farmer, then the final bit of “ability” will be wrung from them—at the slaughterhouse.[3]
So in the end we have looked into an apothegm made up by a drunken old fabulist and found in it a ruse designed to deceive the gullible. All the charm and promise of socialism is the cheese in a mousetrap. This Marxist swindle is used to seduce what Lenin labeled as “useful idiots” into the service of one dictator or another. The victim of this fraud would have to be incapable of seeing through to the odious conclusions which this short, simple essay has tiptoed into. If we can see it for what it is we can avoid it.
And here’s a warning from academia:
Communism and socialism is [sic] seductive. It promises us that people will contribute according to ability and receive according to needs. Everybody is equal. Everybody has a right to decent housing, decent food and affordable medical care. History should have taught us that when we hear people talk this stuff — watch out!
— Walter E. Williams, (1936-2020) Columnist, Professor of Economics at George Mason University[4]
But it’s not necessary to go into all the analysis and description set out above. The whole subject can be set out in a few, simple words. If one understands power it’s possible to see the underlying cause of all these dislocations. Power is what it’s all about. In the Marxist scheme the population is bereft of any vestige of power; all power, without limit, is vested in the government, its politicians and bureaucrats. When someone else can decide what you are going to do and what your compensation is, he owns you. Power has been taken from the citizen and given to the agencies that decide what “ability” is and what “needs” are. That’s the political entirety of it. The holder of power has all the options and makes all the decisions. The powerless person has none. The powerless become the slaves and property of the powerful.
[1] Your humble essayist would find that his needs include a filet mignon, smothered with mushrooms, and a bottle of a fine red wine every day.
[2] https://www.departments.bucknell.edu/russian/const/36cons01.html
[3] Don’t think this can’t happen to people as well. In China living and healthy people are being scrapped for body parts, like cars in a junk yard. See the recent book on the subject, Killed to Order, by Jan Jekielek, Sky Horse, © 2026.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/1510786503/?bestFormat=true&k=killed%20to%20order&ref_=nb_sb_ss_w_scx-ent-bk-ww_k0_1_9_de&crid=1X0WRNTQ65CDO&sprefix=killed%20to
[4] https://libertytree.ca/quotes/Walter.Williams.Quote.717E
© 2026 Thomas A. Nelson Sr
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