Thus far, I’ve covered conservative complaints about the number of people who pay income tax, as well as conservative protestations that rich people create jobs. As many non-conservatives have probably noticed, you can’t get very far into a debate with a conservative on either of these topics without being called that most dreaded of all epithets…that’s right, you must be a socialist. Interestingly, this one doesn’t even piss me off anymore. I just don’t mind being called a socialist by a person who uses the term “socialist” interchangeably with “communist,” “fascist,” “liberal,” and “person I don’t like very much.” There is, however, one conservative complaint about the dreaded socialists that does get under my skin. Let’s talk about that today, shall we?
#3- “Socialism means from each according to their ability to each according to their need”
Well, to begin with, let’s take a look at the origins of this statement. While it is commonly attributed to Karl Marx, which would make it a statement about communism, not socialism per se, the slogan itself predated Marx’s published use of it. In other words, it is not necessarily dishonest to use this quote and represent it as being about socialism. Socialism has meant many things to many people. Marx himself used socialism to represent an imperfect application of communism, a time when income would be distributed according to work, not need. The USSR followed this model, and would therefore have been considered a socialist nation by Marx, not a communist one. Marx used the “from each according to his ability to each according to his need” model to describe a perfect communistic society, not an imperfect socialistic one (Marx also knew how to make his subjects agree with his verbs, but neglected to use non-gender-specific language). Therefore, if a person identifies this as a Marx quote and goes on to link it to socialism, that would be misleading, whether intentionally or not. However, you won’t usually see this done. Why not?
Because most conservatives haven’t read Karl Marx, of course. They know the quote, instead, from their goddess Ayn Rand. This characterization of communism features heavily in Atlas Shrugged, and the connection to Rand alone is enough to get under my skin. Frequently, the person doing the quoting won’t even have bothered reading the actual novel. It, like the Bible, is so long and mostly boring that few of its adherents have actually read the whole thing. They’ll have read the “Tramp’s Speech” excerpted, or know someone who has, or have had it summed up for them in some other form. I’ll do so for you now, to spare you from having to read the thing yourself: A guy worked for a factory that used the slogan being discussed as its sole law. The hardworking, productive men devolved within just a few years into craven creatures, competing to be seen as the least competent and most needy in order to benefit the most from the system. Oh, what a terrible thing communism is. There’s also a part about punching the teeth out of an eight-year-old girl.
How could I possibly argue with that? Socialism is not only economically unfeasible, but also it makes people punch little girls. This has been incontrovertibly proven by the power of parable. Well, let’s just take one moment to look non-hysterically at the words themselves, think about what they mean, and then compare that to what conservatives say they mean. Let’s start with that first part, “from each according to his ability.” The words that are actually there would seem to suggest that each and every person in a given society would be expected to contribute, and that they should do so based on their own ability. What exactly would be the problem with this? If everyone were actually contributing based on ability, we could have zero unemployment, right? Without the process of having to wait for a person with resources to figure out that there is a need in society great enough to warrant sharing their resources in the hopes of getting back even more resources, a person could simply go do some productive work. No one would be exempt from the expectation that they should be working. No one would get to spend their whole life sitting on a couch watching Springer and pulling an SSI check, because some productive contribution could be found for them to make. Likewise, no one would get to spend an entire life sitting by a gold-plated pool enjoying the fruits of their ancestor’s spoils, because a contribution would be expected from them as well, and not one based on how expensive a college their parent was able to legacy them into. If Jr. is just plain dumb, he can do work appropriate for a dumb kid. Sounds nice, but kind of unfeasible, right? Hold that thought.
Let’s look at the second part of the quote, “to each according to his need.” This is the sticking point for a lot of people. It seems more possible, if not likely, that we could figure out what each person’s ability is and put them to work. How, though, do we figure out everyone’s individual need? Certainly, there are many things in my life that I enjoy but do not strictly “need.” I can think of hot fudge, science fiction television, and ceiling fans right off the bat. Why does socialism want to take those things away from me? For a moment, though, let’s stop overthinking this thing and making it about ourselves. In light of the first part of the slogan, we can imagine that we are living in a world where each and every adult is working productively for as many hours as their health will allow, up to forty. Should any person, who is contributing all they can towards a productive society, not be able to have a dry place to sleep? Food for their family? Medical care for themselves and their children? At a very basic level, is there a problem with thinking that a person who spends half their waking hours doing work that society needs done is entitled to having their basic needs covered? Or, on the other hand, are we comfortable with saying that although we all like mushrooms and will always need people to farm them, we want the people who do that work to never be able to treat their cancer, because they just aren’t valuable enough?
Now, the interesting thing about this slogan is that even conservatives will rarely disagree directly with either part. They won’t say that some people shouldn’t have to work to their ability, or that some people shouldn’t have their needs met, even if they are productive and hard-working. They may believe these things, but they usually don’t say them. They will say, instead, that this is a lovely idea, but that it will never work because people are too evil. No matter what, they tell us, the utopian ideal will be undone by people who will try to cheat the system. They will pretend to be unfit so we won’t work them as hard, and they will pretend to need more than they really do to get more than their fair share of other people’s toil. Is this a huge surprise? Of course not. Every ideal is corrupted and perverted by humans, including their own ideal of capitalism. Utopian ideals seem unfeasible precisely because they are idealistic. Yet, in their ideal conception, capitalism works like Little House on the Prairie, with each person working directly for the benefit of their family, providing for all of their own needs and trading as necessary in a mutually beneficial fashion, and this seems feasible somehow. In reality, capitalism has resulted in such lovely concepts as slavery, child factory workers, sweatshops, and blood diamonds. Yet, conservatives want to be able to compare the Little House version of capitalism with the worst possible corrupted version of socialism, and then act as if Medicare will have America turning into a communist wasteland. There is no simple solution to all of society’s problems. Certainly, pure socialism is not the answer, but neither is pure capitalism. Both systems, left unchecked, allow one group of people to corrupt and subvert the system to their own benefit and the detriment of everyone else. However, the next time someone uses this quote and then jumps right into the Ayn Rand worst case scenario, I’m going to stop and ask them which it is. Do they think they shouldn’t have to work, or do they think someone else who worked shouldn’t get to eat?
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