A Study Of Equality In Critique Of The Gotha Programme

The Critique of the Gotha Programme,one of the programmatic documents on the theory of scientific socialism composed by Marx in his later years,is a reflection of the gradual maturation of Marx’s thinking on various aspects of the nature and characteristics of communist society.In the book,Marx analyses the different principles of distribution that should be adopted at the two different stages of development of communist society.From the distribution according to labour in the early stages of socialism to the distribution according to needs in the advanced stages,Marx’s profound and comprehensive ideas on substantive equality are reflected.Based on his consideration of the impact of Lassalle’s opportunism,Marx developed the ideas of Aristotle,Rousseau and Winstanley on equality to draw out the reasonable points,and finally formed a scientific idea of equality.From the perspective of historical materialism,Marx argued that the pursuit of political and legal equality of rights under capitalist private ownership was only a formal satisfaction of equality in the sense of equality.Only by seeing the essential factors such as the labour capacity and practical needs of people and changing the capitalist mode of production and distribution in the economy can substantive equality be formed in terms of results.In the new era of socialism with Chinese characteristics,faced with a series of social problems brought about by rapid socio-economic development,people’s voices for substantive equality have become louder and louder.It is of great significance to explore from Marx’s classical works reasonable ideas to solve the current difficult problems of socialist construction reality.