9 Feb 2024 6:26 am
(PART I OF IV)
I wrote: "Cannonpointer either ignores or, like nearly everyone, is unaware that Dr. Marx didn't originate 'From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs,' which changes everything and makes Cannonpointer's point moot."
Cannonpointer: "It's from Marx's Critique of the Gotha Programme, available on eBay. If it weren't (and it is) an aphorism with which Marx was sanguine, it would be easy to quote him saying the reverse."
Yes, it's in Marx's Critique of the Gotha Programme. "Critique" is the keyword here because Marx was critiquing the writings of another; in this case, the writings of the French socialist Louis Blanc, who used the phrase "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs" in his The Organization of Work (1839), which served as the platform for the then-German Socialist Party titled The Gotha Programme.
Moreover, Dr. Marx did "say the reverse" when, while critiquing the phrase, he wrote, "In a higher phase of communist society, after the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labor, and therewith also the antithesis between mental and physical labor, has vanished; after labor has become not only a means of life but life's prime want; after the productive forces have also increased with the all-around development of the individual, and all the springs of co-operative wealth flow more abundantly—only then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be crossed in its entirety and society inscribe on its banners: From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!" --The Critique of the Gotha Programme."
Cannonpointer reaction: "You're making a distinction without a difference. Marx was sanguine with it and saw it as an ultimate goal. And it flies in the face of human nature. Marx spoke for machines, not humans."
No, sir, "a distinction without a difference" is a formal fallacy in which someone attempts to distinguish between two objects where no perceivable difference exists. The difference, in this case, is that Etienne-Gabriel Morelly coined the phrase "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs" 120 years before Marx's birth; Louis Blanc used it in his Gotha Programme when Marx was 21 and; that Marx merely critiqued the said phrase. "You're making a distinction without a difference," indeed. Methinks our Cannonpointer harbors a machismo-centered need to be correct. Too funny. (As an aside: https://www.apa.org/monitor/2009/03/nazi )
I wrote: "Marx's criticism of Blanc's and Morelly's 'From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs' affirms their misunderstanding, not an indication of any contingency."
Cannonpointer's obstinate reaction: "I left your quote of Marx intact - there's a truckload, and a leftover ****, of contingencies that are childishly naive."
There it is again, "...your quote of Marx" when, in reality, it was no such thing. Moving on...
Concerning Cannonpointer's comment, "Marx spoke for machines, not humans." It's interesting that, although Cannonpointer denies the humanity of approximately 93.5% of the world's human population and supports their destruction, he purports to be - what - understanding and supportive of human beings?
http://www.slp.org/pdf/statements/siu_chart.pdf (END OF PART I)
(END OF PART I)