Unfortunately this mindset is so common that even most "Marxist" movements have corrupted the "to which according to his needs" to "which according to his work/contributions".
Reminder that, the elites don't contribute, EVER
That's immaterial to the fundamental right to have access to basic needs.
Marxists movements have not corrupted it, you just haven’t studied Marxism, specifically Marx’s Critique of the Gotha Programme, from which that phase came.
The end goal is the “higher phase” of communism, in which it is to be, “from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.”
However, before reaching the end goal of communism, one must go through the “lower phase” of socialism, wherein it is, “to each according to his contribution.” But even so, in this phase the state is still to provide a social safety net for those unable to work.
Communism has not been yet been reached, as any communist party of any socialist state will tell you themselves. It’s a long-term project, and it probably can’t be reached until socialism has been spread around the world, because as long as capitalist/imperialist states exist, they will attack the socialist states.
On the surface this sounds like a terrible and extreme mindset, so I thought about how one might go about disproving it.
Clearly if everyone owned enough productive land to be self-sufficient it would be false. We are told this is still theoretically possible, but it's a finite resource so it's not a given.
Conversely, if one person owned all the land with the arbitrary power of taxing or restricting its use... that would make it true. Similarly with two, three, a dozen...
So contrary to my bias, it would seem a safer bet to consider it true (absent better info or theory)... and its truth may simply be a matter of degrees. I wonder where the logical (almost mathematical or numeric) tipping point is, and how the problem could more precisely be defined or measured.
The kneejerk reactionary take is to tell them that nothing is free and all the food and housing and electricity they need costs other people.
And that is fair...
But those reactionaries never ask "how much work is enough to pay of the debt my existence incurs on society"?
The actual amount of work we need to make society function, if we efficently allocated resources and only required people to work essential jobs, I'm confident they would pay it off before 40, some probably even before 30 years old.
Imagine that, a society where you retire at 30 if you work your ass off. Maybe a more honest society would even see people willingly contribute to society in retirement again just because they like being part of their community and like their society. My Grandma was one of those people, but I don't see them anymore and I can't blame them.
It's a crime how much of people's lives this current system wastes due to inefficiency and corruption. It's wasted most of my adult life so far, and it feels like there's no hope of ever retiring now.
