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 and so on; then, also out of the collective product a fund for the expenses of management, for schools, hospitals, homes for the aged, and so forth.

Instead of the hazy, obscure, general phrase of Lassalle—"the full product of his labor for the worker"—Marx gives a sober estimate as to how exactly a Socialist society will have to manage its affairs. Marx takes up a concrete analysis of the conditions of life of a society in which there will be no capitalism, and says: "We have to deal here" (analyzing the program of the Party), "not with a Communist society which has developed on its own foundations, but with one which has just issued actually from capitalist society, and which, in consequence, in all respects—economic, moral and intellectual—still bears the stamp of the old society, from the womb of which it came." And it is this communist society—a society which has just come into the world out of the womb of Capitalism, and which, in all respects, bears the stamp of the old society—that Marx terms the first, or lower, phase of communist society.

The means of production are now no longer the private property of individuals. The means of production belong to the whole of society. Every member of society, performing a certain part of socially necessary labor, receives a certificate from society that he has done such and such a quantity of work. According to this certificate, he receives from the public stores of articles of consumption, a corresponding quantity of products. After the deduction of that proportion of labor which goes into the public fund, every worker, therefore, receives from society as much as he has given it.

"Equality" seems to reign supreme. But when Lassalle, having in view such a social order (generally called "Socialism," but termed by Marx the first phase of Communism), speaks of this as "just distribution" and says that this is "the equal right of each to an equal share of the products of labor," Lassalle is mistaken, and Marx explains his error.

"Equal right [says Marx] we indeed have here: but it is still 'bourgeois right' which, like every right, presupposes inequality. Every 'right' is an application of the same measure to different people who, as a matter of fact, are not similar and are not equal to one another; and, therefore, 'equal right' is really a violation of equality, and an injustice. In effect, every man having done as much social labor as every other receives an equal share of the social products (with the above-mentioned deductions). Notwithstanding this, different people are not equal to one another. One