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p Seeking to discredit the principle of “From each according to his ability to each according to his needs”, the adversaries of scientific communism argue that this principle is incompatible with the all-sidedly and harmoniously developed individual, that it is at 259 variance with the full satisfaction of his material and cultural requirements. They persist in speaking of some ascetic socialism in which, they allege, the person is divested of individuality and the main concern is not for man but for production and machines. Moreover, they hold that the rising standard of living leads to individualism and is therefore incompatible with communism. The fact of the matter is that a high and ever growing standard of living does not run counter to communist construction, let alone the interests of the individual. On the contrary, distribution according to needs, Engels wrote, “allows all members of society to develop to the utmost and sustain and display their talents”. Communist society will be rich enough not only to give people an abundance of food, clothes and housing but also to enable them to live a full-blooded life worthy of human beings. Man will be delivered from considerations of income and personal material benefit. His mind will thus be unburdened of worry and anxiety and he will be able to devote himself to serving the interests of society, of the whole of working mankind. As regards crude, levelling communism, founded on egalitarian consumption, on the concept of some minimum consumption, Marx wrote that it strips man of his individuality. This communism is based on “the abstract negation of the entire world of culture and civilisation, the regression to the unnatural simplicity of the poor and undemanding man" and therefore cannot be accepted by the working class.

p Communism has nothing to do with asceticism, with the levelling of people’s requirements and vital interests. It brings not equality of requirements but equality in the possibility and conditions of satisfying requirements. This means that in accordance with their tastes, and physiological and mental peculiarities all citizens will fully satisfy their growing material requirements, which cannot be identical because tastes and peculiarities differ.

p All citizens will have equal opportunities to study, to master science and culture and to pursue creative activities, i.e., to satisfy their spiritual needs as well. Inasmuch as the capabilities, interests and aspirations of people differ, their spiritual needs will likewise be dissimilar; nobody will deny that every capability develops and manifests 260 itself in specific needs. If to this we add that these will be people of different professions, age and sex, that they will live in different climates, il will become plain that their needs cannot be identical.

p Communist equality is thus not an equality among people lacking individuality but an equality among active and different people. Each person will have his own personality, capabilities, level of knowledge, needs, interests, tastes and passions.

p This equality is achieved gradually, step by step, in proportion to the creation and development of the material and technical basis of communism, the formation of communist social relations and the moulding of the new man.

p A far cry from petty-bourgeois notions of communism, of crude egalitarianism, scientific communism at the same time rejects the other extreme—the idea that the future society is one of idleness and leisure, an Aladdin’s lamp that brings man anything his heart desires.

p The communist principle “to each according to his needs" does not mean that without doing anything a person will receive anything he wants.

p In The State and Revolution Lenin ridiculed the notion that in communist society people would “receive from society, without any control over the labour of the individual citizen, any quantity of truffles, cars, pianos, etc.”  [260•*  Along with a high level of labour productivity, communist society presupposes a new type of man unlike the “ordinary run of people who, like the seminary students in Pomyalovsky’s stories, are capable of damaging the stocks of public wealth ’just for fun’, and of demanding the impossible”.  [260•**  In the process of building communism it is necessary to cultivate people’s tastes, to teach them to be economical, to look after the national wealth and use it for the benefit of society. “Until the ‘higher’ phase of communism arrives,” Lenin wrote, “the socialists demand the strictest control by society and by the state over the measure of labour and the measure of consumption.”  [260•*** 

p Idleness and extravagance are features of the exploiting 261 classes, who amass fabulous wealth from the labour of millions of ordinary people. Perverted needs and tastes do not dovetail with the interests of the people who know the cost of labour and of the means of subsistence won by labour, value and treasure material blessings and expend them intelligently and with the greatest benefit. Healthy thrift and the intelligent use of social wealth will be features of the citizens of communist society.

p In the building of communism, people’s requirements will, naturally, change. They will become broader and more diversified. If we closely study the development of needs in the Soviet Union in the past two or three decades we shall see that they have grown in breadth. It will be naive to try and guess what exactly will be the material and spiritual requirements of the man of the future.

p We can speak more or less definitely of the satisfaction of material requirements, particularly food requirements which know bounds. Although the food norms will not change markedly in the future, it may be asserted that the quality and choice of food will not remain unchanged.

p With all its diversity and breadth, consumption in communist society will be free of excesses and whims. “For all their diversity,” declares the Programme of the C.P.S.U., “the requirements of people will express the sound, reasonable requirements of the fully developed person.”

p Reasonable requirements will be those that conform with the achieved level of production and whose satisfaction will facilitate the development of the individual and the improvement of his physical and intellectual qualities. This includes the requirement for food, clothes and footwear, for articles of cultural and household use, for education and medical service, and so on.

p The adversaries of communism maintain that no strict line of demarcation can be drawn between reasonable and unreasonable requirements. It is useless to argue about what are reasonable requirements, and that, it is said, is one of the reasons that distribution according to needs cannot be introduced. This theory is expounded, for example, by the bourgeois sociologist Peter Wiles in a paper entitled Economy of Abundance and Complete Communism. Man, he says, naturally has unlimited capacities with regard to requirements. At first he wants to have an 262 ICBM in his garden, then he will want to take a trip to the Moon and various planets of the solar system and, finally, having reached the Moon he will demand that the state opera should perform for him there. Hence, Wiles concludes, regardless of the relations of ownership or the system of economic control the real satisfaction of reasonable consumer requirements will always be a Utopia.

Indeed, man’s requirements constantly grow but it should not be forgotten that the means of satisfying them likewise grow and improve. Communist society, Engels wrote, “will bring to life new requirements and, at the same time, create the means for satisfying them”. Besides, communism presupposes not only the satisfaction of each person’s requirements but also those of the qualitatively new consumer who will also be the maker of material and cultural values, a consumer who has learned to conform his requirements to the existing social wealth, to society’s potentialities, to the level of its material and cultural development. This new consumer is formed in the process of socialist and communist construction, under conditions where the principle of distribution according to work and of control over the measure of labour and the measure of consumption are implemented. His reasonable and healthy requirements do not take shape by themselves but are brought into life, into his consciousness, by socialist reality, by labour and study, by his family, friends and fellow workers.