The Principle of Needs
Many of the early French Socialists of the Utopian school advanced this formula of distribution: "From each according to his powers; to each according to his needs." It was also put forward by the German Socialists in the Gotha Program in 1875. While they have not given to this standard formal recognition in their more recent platforms, Socialists generally regard it as the ideal rule for the distant future.[242] The difficulties confronting it are so great and so obvious that they would defer the introduction of it to a time when the operation of their system will, they hope, have eradicated the historical human qualities of laziness and selfishness. To adopt needs as the sole rule of distribution would mean, of course, that each person should be rewarded in proportion to his wants and desires, regardless of his efforts or of the amount that he had produced. The mere statement of the proposal is sufficient to refute it as regards the men and women of whom we have any knowledge. In addition to this objection, there is the insuperable difficulty of measuring fairly or accurately the relative needs of any group composed of men, women, and children. Were the members' own estimates of their needs accepted by the distributing authority, the social product would no doubt fall far short of supplying all. If the measurement were made by some official person or persons, "the prospect of jobbery and tyranny opened up must give the most fanatical pause." Indeed, the standard of needs should be regarded as a canon of Communism rather than of Socialism; for it implies a large measure of common life as well as of common ownership, and paternalistic supervision of consumption as well as collectivist management of production.
While the formula of needs must be flatly rejected as complete rule of distributive justice, or of wage justice, it is valid and indispensable as a partial standard. It is a partial measure of justice in two senses: first, inasmuch as it is consistent with the admission and operation of other principles, such as productivity and sacrifice; second, inasmuch as it can be restricted to certain fundamental requisites of life, instead of being applied to all possible human needs. It can be made to safeguard the minimum demands of reasonable life, and therefore to function as a minimum standard of wage justice.
Human needs constitute the primary title or claim to material goods. None of the other recognised titles, such as productivity, effort, sacrifice, purchase, gift, inheritance, or first occupancy, is a fundamental reason or justification of either rewards or possessions. They all assume the existence of needs as a prerequisite to their validity. If men did not need goods they could not reasonably lay claim to them by any of the specific titles just enumerated. First comes the general claim or fact of needs; then the particular title or method by which the needs may be conveniently supplied. While these statements may seem elementary and platitudinous, their practical value will be quite evident when we come to consider the conflicting claims that sometimes arise out of the clash between needs and some of the other titles. We shall see that needs are not merely a physical reason or impulse toward acquisition and possession, but a moral title which rationalises the claim to a certain amount of goods.[243]
Three Fundamental Principles
The validity of needs as a partial rule of wage justice rests ultimately upon three fundamental principles regarding man's position in the universe. The first is that God created the earth for the sustenance of all His children; therefore, that all persons are equal in their inherent claims upon the bounty of nature. As it is impossible to demonstrate that any class of persons is less important than another in the eyes of God, it is logically impossible for any believer in Divine Providence to reject this proposition. The man who denies God or Providence can refuse assent to the second part of the proposition only by refusing to acknowledge the personal dignity of the human individual, and the equal dignity of all persons. Inasmuch as the human person is intrinsically sacred and morally independent, he is endowed with those inherent prerogatives, immunities, and claims that we call rights. Every person is an end in himself; none is a mere instrument to the convenience or welfare of any other human being. The worth of a person is something intrinsic, derived from within, not determined or measurable by reference to any earthly object or purpose without. In this respect the human being differs infinitely from, is infinitely superior to, a stone, a rose, or a horse. While these statements help to illustrate what is meant by the dignity of personality, by the intrinsic worth, importance, sacredness of the human being, they do not prove the existence of this inherent juridical quality. Proof in the strict sense is irrelevant and impossible. If the intrinsic and equal moral worth of all persons be not self evident to a man, it will not approve itself to him through any process of argumentation. Whosoever denies it can also logically deny men's equal claims of access to the bounty of the earth; but he cannot escape the alternative conclusion that brute force, exercised either by the State or by individuals, is the only proper determinant of possessions and of property. Against this monstrous contention it is not worth while to offer a formal argument.
The second fundamental principle is that the inherent right of access to the earth is conditioned upon, and becomes actually valid through, the expenditure of useful labour. Generally speaking the fruits and potentialities of the earth do not become available to men without previous exertion. "In the sweat of thy brow thou shalt eat thy bread," is a physical no less than a moral commandment. There are, indeed, exceptions: the very young, the infirm, and the possessors of a sufficient amount of property. The two former classes have claims to a livelihood through piety and charity, while the third group has at least a presumptive claim of justice to rent and interest, and a certain claim of justice to the money value of their goods. Nevertheless, the general condition is that men must work in order to live. "If a man will not work neither shall he eat." For those who refuse to comply with this condition the inherent right of access to the earth remains only hypothetical and suspended.
The two foregoing principles involve as a corollary a third principle; the men who are in present control of the opportunities of the earth are obliged to permit reasonable access to these opportunities by persons who are willing to work. In other words, possessors must so administer the common bounty of nature that non-owners will not find it unreasonably difficult to get a livelihood. To put it still in other terms, the right to subsist from the earth implies the right to access thereto on reasonable terms. When any man who is willing to work is denied the exercise of this right, he is no longer treated as the moral and juridical equal of his fellows. He is regarded as inherently inferior to them, as a mere instrument to their convenience; and those who exclude him are virtually taking the position that their rights to the common gifts of the Creator are inherently superior to his birthright. Obviously this position cannot be defended on grounds of reason. Possessors are no more justified in excluding a man from reasonable access to the goods of the earth than they would be in depriving him of the liberty to move from place to place. The community that should arbitrarily shut a man up in prison would not violate his rights more fundamentally than the community or the proprietors who should shut him out from the opportunity of getting a livelihood from the bounty of the earth. In both cases the man demands and has a right to a common gift of God. His moral claim is as valid to the one good as to the other, and it is as valid to both goods as is the claim of any of his fellows.
The Right to a Decent Livelihood
Every man who is willing to work has, therefore, an inborn right to sustenance from the earth on reasonable terms or conditions. This cannot mean that all persons have a right to equal amounts of sustenance or income; for we have seen on a preceding page that men's needs, the primary title to property, are not equal, and that other canons and factors of distribution have to be allowed some weight in determining the division of goods and opportunities. Nevertheless, there is a certain minimum of goods to which every worker is entitled by reason of his inherent right of access to the earth. He has a right to at least a decent livelihood. That is; he has a right to so much of the requisites of sustenance as will enable him to live in a manner worthy of a human being. The elements of a decent livelihood may be summarily described as: food, clothing, and housing sufficient in quantity and quality to maintain the worker in normal health, in elementary comfort, and in an environment suitable to the protection of morality and religion; sufficient provision for the future to bring elementary contentment, and security against sickness, accident, and invalidity; and sufficient opportunities of recreation, social intercourse, education, and church-membership to conserve health and strength, and to render possible in some degree the exercise of the higher faculties.