Communism and Equality of Outcomes

"All communist regimes have experimented with a variety of systems of remuneration and distribution in the attempt to reduce inequalities of outcome or condition among citizens. One thinks here, for example, of early Russian drives towards the levelling of wages and benefits; of the short-lived hopes of substituting moral for material incentives in post- revolutionary Cuba; and of periodic (sometimes catastrophic) attempts in China to restructure the allocation of rewards without inducing either economic stagnation or administrative chaos...

Having conceded that inequalities of outcome, although perhaps diminished, would continue to be a necessary feature of socialist societies for the foreseeable future (at least if economic growth were to be secured), elites then offered the alternative argument that socialism nevertheless promoted distributive justice by giving people more equal access to unequally rewarded positions, in a society still (temporarily and regrettably) characterized by a hierarchy of offices carrying different levels of material advantage...

One obvious illustration is provided by Soviet policy towards entry into higher education, which alternated between egalitarian and meritocratic initiatives. What we now call positive (or reverse) discrimination was often practised in the attempt to guarantee equal outcomes in the distribution of university places. Children of workers and peasants were compensated for cultural and other disadvantages by being awarded studentships irrespective of their educa- tional achievements. At other times, performance in competitive exam- inations was the principal criterion of admission, and the concerns of individual merit were given priority over those of class preference. In this instance, as in other attempts to resolve the tensions between equality of outcome and equality of opportunity, most socialist governments pursued a middle course - 'retaining the promise of greater equality in the future, and claiming that much of it has been achieved, while citing the socialist performance principle as a contemporary guide to reward...

Marxist sociologists have been loath to discuss equality of opportunity, on the grounds that Marx himself regarded this as a bourgeois ideal that was irrelevant to the classless communist societies of the future...

In their review of the history and functions of social mobility under real socialism, Wesolowski and Mach (1986: 30) observe that

During the first stage of a socialist regime, a stress on equality of positions as the main characteristic of the new order is of strategic importance for those in authority."

--- Was Communism Good for Social Justice?: A Comparative Analysis of the Two Germanies / Gordon Marshall