“From Each according to Ability; To Each according to Needs”: Origin, Meaning, and Development of Socialist Slogans

There are three slogans in the history of socialism that are very close in wording, namely, the famous Cabet-Blanc-Marx slogan: From each according to his ability; To each according to his needs; the earlier Saint-Simon–Pecqueur slogan: To each according to his ability; To each according to his works; and the later slogan in Stalin’s 1936 Soviet Constitution: From each according to his ability; To each according to his work. We trace the earliest occurrences of these slogans and their biblical sources and we show how the progression from one slogan to the next casts light on the development of early socialist thought.