Page:Karl Kautsky - The Class Struggle (Erfurt Program) - tr. William Edward Bohn (1910).djvu/144

 all that was needed was to invent a juster one, and to convince the world of its advantages. The just system could be no other than the reverse of the existing one. "Today the grossest inequality rules; the principle upon which distribution should be based must be one of equality." Today the idler rolls in wealth while the laborer starves, so others said: "To each according to his deeds" (or in newer form, "To each the product of his labor"). But doubts arose as to both these formulas, and so arose a third: "To each according to his needs."

Since then socialists have come to realize that the distribution of products in a community is determined, not by the prevailing legal system, but by the prevailing system of production. The share of the landlord, the capitalist and the wage-earner in the total product of society is determined by the part which land, capital and labor-power play in the present system of production. Certainly in a socialist society the distribution of products will not be left to the working of blind laws concerning the operation of which those concerned are unconscious. As today in a large industrial establishment production and the payment of wages are carefully regulated, so in a socialist society, which is nothing more than a single gigantic industrial concern, the same principle must prevail. The rules according to which the distribution of products is to be carried out will be established by those concerned. Nevertheless, it will not depend upon their pleasure what these rules shall be; they will not be adopted arbitrarily according to this