Marx’s First Law
From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.
Karl Marx popularised the phrase but did not originate it. He acknowledged this himself, carefully enclosing the statement within quotation marks in his Critique of the Gotha Program (1875). Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations notes that Marx probably was quoting (or thought he was quoting, his version actually amounting to a paraphrase) a passage from Organisation du Travail (1840) by Louis Blanc or Le Code de la Nature (1755) by a Morelly, a political theorist who anticipated Rousseau to some extent and about whom nothing is known, not even his first name. Of course, the essential idea of Marx’s First Law also appears in the Bible: “Neither was there any among them that lacked: for as many as were possessors of lands or houses sold them and brought the prices of the things that were sold And laid them down at the apostles’ feet: and distribution was made unto every man according as he had need” (Acts 4:34-35).
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