#superabundance

This slogan is sometimes attributed to Marx. In fact he’s not the author, and warns about misusing it.

Pro-capitalist commentators abuse this phrase, claiming a socialist state would seize all property and redistribute it according to perceived need.

In socialism, workers collectively decide what to produce and how. They democratically decide what to do with the products. This leads to more equitable distribution of the wealth they produce.

A “socialist state” does not alienate workers from the fruits of their labour. On the contrary. It exists to stop wealth being taken from those who produce it.

Only in a state of superabundance, where co-operative labour has provided allworkers with more than they need or want, might society voluntarilychoose to distribute on the basis of need.

“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 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’