# Date: January 1917

Page: 272
Also Form of compulsion: "if one does not work, then one does not get to eat" (NB)
Work has become a need, there is no compulsion at all
NB
the lower ("first") — distribution of consumer goods "proportionally" to the amount of labor contributed by each to society. The inequality in distribution is still significant. "The narrow bourgeois horizon of right" has not yet been fully overcome. This is NB! With (petty-bourgeois) right, clearly, (petty-bourgeois) state has not yet completely disappeared. This is Nota Bene!!
the higher — "from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs." When is this possible? When (1) the opposition between mental and physical labor disappears; (2) labor becomes the primary life necessity (NB: the habit of working becomes the norm; without compulsion!!); (3) productive forces are highly developed, etc. Clearly, the complete withering away of the state is only possible at this higher stage. This is NB.
(as in Switzerland)

LETTER FROM ENGELS 1876
In Engels' letter to Bebel dated March 28, 1875, there are [two] particularly instructive passages that illuminate certain aspects of Marxism more clearly than usual:
(1) ...“Firstly, (in the Gotha Program) the grandiose but historically false Lassallean phrase is adopted: in relation to the working class, all other classes are merely a reactionary mass. This statement is true only in individual exceptional cases, for example, in a proletarian revolution, like the Commune, or in a country where not only the bourgeoisie has shaped state and society in its image, but also where the democratic petty bourgeoisie has carried out this transformation to its ultimate consequences” (p. 319). (In Germany, however, you went along with the Volksparlei “for years” and your seven political demands are such “that not a single one of them is not bourgeois (Engels' emphasis)”).
(2) ...“Fifthly (Engels' fifth objection), there is no mention of the organization of the working class as a class through trade unions. And this is a very important point, because this is the real class organization of the proletariat, in which it conducts its daily struggles with capital, in which it trains itself, and which, even in the worst reaction (as now in Paris), cannot be destroyed. Given the importance that this organization has also achieved in Germany, we believe it is absolutely necessary to mention it in the program and, if possible, to leave it a place in the organization of the party.” (p. 321)
(3) ...“Similarly, (in the program) the first condition of all freedom is missing: that all officials are responsible to every citizen for all their official acts before the ordinary courts and under common law.” (p. 321)
(4) ...“Elimination of all social and political inequality” is also a very questionable phrase instead of: “sublation of all class distinctions.” From country to country, from province to province, even from place to place, a certain inequality of living conditions will always exist, which can be reduced to a minimum but never completely eliminated. Alpine dwellers will always have different living conditions than people in the flatlands. The idea of the socialist society as a realm of equality is a one-sided French idea, based on the old “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity,” an idea that was justified as a stage of development in its time and place, but which, like all the one-sidedness of earlier socialist schools, should now be overcome, since it only causes confusion in people's minds and more precise ways of presenting the matter have been found.” (p. 322).

(5) Bakunin, in his writing "Politics and Anarchy," holds us responsible for every "thoughtless word" of Liebknecht... (p. 322-3)...
(6) “Generally, it matters less what the official program of a party is than what it does. But a new program is always a publicly raised flag, and the outside world judges the party by it” (p. 323)...
Bebel replied to Engels on September 21, 1875, among other things, — and with the verdict that you passed on the draft program, I agree, as my letters to Bracke also prove, completely (p. 334-5) über ein. I have also made strong accusations against Liebknecht for his yielding”.... but now the deed is done, “it is a matter of education.”

In the manuscript, instead of the word "anrichten," "anstiften" is written. Ed.