…to each according to his need. So goes Marx’s vision of pure communism — when capitalism is no more. Unfettered labor will then produce economic goods in such great abundance that there is no question of some taking from others. All will feed at an ever-filling and overflowing public trough.

There are many holes in the Marxian argument. Here’s the bottom line: It’s an impossible dream that flouts human nature.

Capital accrues and markets arise spontaneously (where not distorted and suppressed by lawlessness, government, and lawless government) because they foster mutually beneficial exchanges of economic goods (e.g., labor for manufactured items)

Communism has failed to catch on, as a sustained and widespread phenomenon, because it rejects capitalism and assumes the inexorability of economic progress in the absence of incentives (e.g., the possibility of great rewards for taking great risks and the investment of time and resources). It is telling that “to each his own need” (or an approximation of it) has been achieved on a broad scale only by force, and only by penalizing success and slowing economic progress.

If the state were to wither to nightwatchman status, the result would be the greatest outpouring of economic goods in human history. Everyone would be better off — rich and (relatively) poor alike. Only the envious and economic ignoramuses would be miserable, and then only in their own minds.

If Marx and his intellectual predecessors and successors were capable of thinking straight, they would have come up with the winning formula:

From each according to his ability and effort,
to each according to the market value of his output,
plus whatever voluntary contributions may come his way.