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From Each According To His Ability, To Each According To His Needs

This is the famous slogan of Marx put at the end of an argument in the 1875 Critique of the Gotha Program which no one has read since. Suddenly it has reappeared in the annals of real life today.

I suppose it's the depression. Three Harvard graduates who got their B.A.'s last June are working in New York and living in the same Greenwich Village apartment. Two are in journalism being paid just about the living wage for the city, maybe a bit less. The third is working for one of the big international consulting firms. He is on a handsome salary.

How did they divvy up the rent? From each according to his ability...

This is not the first such arrangement I've heard. A small blow for rational egalitarianism.