The collectivists are aware that the needs of the individual do not always correspond to their works
The collectivists vaguely understand that a society could not exist if it carried out the principle of ‘each according to his deeds’. They have a notion that the needs of the individual do not always correspond to their works. Thus De Paepe tells us: ‘The principle—the eminently individualist principlee—would, however, be tempered by social intervention for the education of children and young persons (including maintenance and lodging), and by the social organization for assisting the infirm and the sick, for retreats for aged workers, etc.’ They understand that a man of forty, father of three children, has other needs than a young man of twenty. They know that the woman who tends to an infant spends sleepless nights at its bedside, and cannot do as much work as another who has slept peacefully. They seem to take into account that men and women, worn out maybe by dint of overwork for society, may be incapable of doing as much work as those who have spent their time leisurely and pocketed their ‘labour-notes’ in the privileged career of state functionaries.
References
- Kroptokin, Peter. (1892). The Conquest of Bread Chapter 13. The Collectivist Wages System (p. 233).