Letter to the Editors from the October 1937 issue of the Socialist Standard
Equal Rewards to Unequal Persons
H. W. Henderson (Glasgow).—The assumption on which your questions rest is not correct. Socialists do not claim that “the worker is entitled to the full product of his labour." With cooperation in production and the sub-division of labour it is seldom that we can know what is the full product of a worker's labour. Even if it were possible to know, the worker could not have the full product of his labour if the means of production are to be replaced and extended. It is quite true that the capacities of individuals vary, but if it is “unjust" for the man with big output to have no greater reward than the man with small output this may be due to physique and health. Would you call it "just’’ that the small and weak should be penalised because they cannot keep up with their more fortunate fellows? You say that some superior capacities are the result of self-development through years of effort. Leaving aside for the present the knotty question of the claim of such individuals to be rewarded, how are you going to get over the practical difficulty of distinguishing between the man whose large output comes without effort and the man whose large output comes only with great effort. Surely it would be "unjust" on your argument to reward them equally?
It is for these and other reasons that Socialists stand by the principle "From each according to his abilities: to each according to his needs," but we have never supposed that it could be applied in Russia or anywhere else where the productive forces were insufficiently developed and where the population was still saturated with capitalist prejudices.
We will return to this subject in the near future and deal with your points more fully.
Ed. Comm.
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