Theory Of Marx’s Thought Of Distributive Justice In The Critique Of The Gotha Programme

Critique of the Gotha programme occupies an important role in all Marx’s works. Marx wrote it in his late time, thus the thoughts in this book are relative mature and worth studying. This thesis focuses on one of his ideas of this book, that is the distributive justice, through some research methods like literature study, comparative study and integrating theory with practice. This thesis includes four parts:The first part distinguishes two important conceptions:justice and distributive justice. By comparing the concepts of justice, fairness, impartiality and equality, it will be easy to understand the meaning of justice, so does the distributive justice. In the mean time, this thesis discusses two features of distributive justice:historic and hierarchic. In Marx’ idea, distributive justice is not abstract neither permanent. It changes with the change of time and ruling classes. In other words, discussing these two features is a precondition to study distributive justice, and only in this way would the thesis have significance.The second part discusses Marx’s critiques on Lassalle’s four concepts of justice distributive thoughts:"the decision to labor"," absolute labor income", "distribution of determinism", "unchanged wage laws". Marx illustrates the deep reason for his critiques. Referring to Marx’s early thoughts of distribution in his Das Kapital and Introduction to "Critique of Political Economy", this thesis concludes that the origin of destroying injustice distribution comes from the fact that the system of socialist public ownership has replaced the capitalist private ownership.Part three explains Marx’s idea of distributive justice in Critique of Gotha programme. In this book, Marx divides the way of distribution into two categories: distribution according to work and distribution according to needs, in accordance with two phases of communism. As referring to justice in distribution according to work, he demonstrates some defects by exploring its scale, subject and object and the law of right. But on the other hand he also tells the necessity of its existence. As referring to justice in distribution according to needs, he demonstrates it only in theory because of its yet existence in advanced phase of communism. Thus this thesis mainly discusses the theory and the real inevitability of its realization.The final part is the enlightenment of Marx’s distributive justice to Chinese scholars. Studying theory is essential to practice. It has practical meaning to our nation’s distribution system, Scientific Outlook on Development, and Common Wealth. At the same time, it is a reliable principle to settle the practical issue like tax revenue and social security.