are you left,right or centre?

[josef rosenkranz]

"to each according to need, from each according to means"

Ok, but how do we distinguish who contributes what? It is given that poor people need more, but where does the input come from? Doesn't this system depend on people who work their asses off contributing their earnings towards people who don't work as hard as them? Sorry if I'm confusing this, but how would you put this system into practice?

I have lived some years in a former communist country so I am familiar with those naively/stupid slogans.
Actually the former communist countries where led by communist toalitatian parties but they called them selves as socialist regimes.
The basic principle of a socialist sytem was said to be;"from each according to his means ,to each according to his contribution".
Their official purpose for the future was to build a real communist system where society will get from each according to his means and retribute him according to his needs.

I have read that in time of Stalin they had decided to begin with a little taste of this communism and distributed for free matches to lit fire.
The experience was short timed and stupid because the russians stored as much matches as they could in order to heat their homes.
Also in the time of Khrushchev the russians nurtured the idea that in a time of one decade they will begin with the communist system.
All those dreams have not proved themselves as viable and the whole communist system (except Cuba and North-Koreea)has collapsed.
China is still officially a communist country but in fact a a system where state-capitalism is mixed with private capitalism and where liberty is far fom being granted to the people.
Now,capitalism is far from being perfect and that's why people come back with dreams of socialism.We see that in Venezuela ,Bolivia and other south-american countries but they are moving towards this classical trap of dictatorship which has proved itself, at the end of millions of victimes of dictatorship, as a failure.
Modern history has proven that communism and democracy are two irreductible systems which cannot be implemented in one and the same country.
May be some day will come a new Karl Marx one who will better understand how society really works and will led to a new more succesfull method than capitalism or communism.