Collectivist remuneration will only perpetuate the injustices of capitalist society
The collectivists say, ‘To each according to his deeds’; or, in other terms, according to his share of services rendered to society. They consider it expedient to put this principle into practice, as soon as the social revolution will have made all means of production common property. But we think that if the social revolution had the misfortune of proclaiming such a principle, it would mean its necessary failure; it would mean leaving the problem that a distinction between professional and simple work results in social inequalities, which past centuries have burdened us with, unsolved:
Of course, in a society like ours, in which the more someone works the less they’re remunerated, this principle, at first sight, may appear to be a yearning for justice. But in reality it is only the perpetuation of injustice. It was by proclaiming this principle that wage-slavery began, to end in the glaring inequalities and all the abominations of present society; because, from the moment work began to be appraised in currency, or in any other form of wage, the day it was agreed upon that people would only receive the wage they should be able to secure to themselves, the whole history of a state-aided capitalist society was as good as written.
Shall we, then, return to our starting-point, and go through the same evolution again? Our theorists desire it, but fortunately it is impossible. The revolution, we maintain, must be communist; if not, it will be drowned in blood, and have to be done over again.
References
- Kroptokin, Peter. (1892). The Conquest of Bread Chapter 13. The Collectivist Wages System (p. 224).