Die Neue Zeit
19th April 2009, 07:09
Against Personal Inheritance: Ceremonial Nobility, Productive Property, and Child Poverty
“The right of inheritance is only of social import insofar as it leaves to the heir the power which the deceased wielded during his lifetime -- viz., the power of transferring to himself, by means of his property, the produce of other people's labor. For instance, land gives the living proprietor the power to transfer to himself, under the name of rent, without any equivalent, the produce of other people's labor. Capital gives him the power to do he same under the name of profit and interest. The property in public funds gives him the power to live without labor upon other people's labor, etc.” (Karl Marx)
In 1869, Marx wrote a very short report, in his administrative capacity within the International Workingmen’s Association, dealing with personal inheritance. Contrary to modern right-“libertarian” agitational propaganda, many bourgeois intellectuals back in the day, from Adam Smith and David Ricardo to the business magnate Andrew Carnegie to John Maynard Keynes, correctly viewed the personal inheritance of wealth as a very feudal leftover. The utilitarians Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill went much further, stating that this unproductive concentration of wealth did not maximize the sum of the utility of everyone as a collective whole, and that this legal right should be abolished (or at least limited to immediate family lines and then through heavily progressive inheritance taxation, not just flat inheritance taxation or even progressive inheritance taxation), such that as many people as possible would start off on an equal footing.
However, as Marx noted, many socialist radicals back in the day were excessively enthusiastic about the meritocratic potential of opposing personal inheritance within a larger framework:
To proclaim the abolition of the right of inheritance as the starting point of the social revolution would only tend to lead the working class away from the true point of attack against present society. It would be as absurd a thing as to abolish the laws of contract between buyer and seller, while continuing to present state of exchange of commodities.
It would be a thing false in theory, and reactionary in practice.
In treating of the laws of inheritance, we necessarily suppose that private property in the means of production continues to exist. If it did no longer exist among the living, it could not be transferred from them, and by them, after their death.
In concluding his short report, Marx recommended two immediate demands curtailing personal inheritance:
Considered from this standpoint, changes of the laws of inheritance form only part of a great many other transitory measures tending to the same end.
These transitory measures, as to inheritance, can only be:
a. Extension of the inheritance duties already existing in many states, and the application of the funds hence derived to purposes of social emancipation.
b. Limitation of the testamentary right of inheritance, which -- as distinguished from the intestate or family right of inheritance -- appears as arbitrary and superstitious exaggeration even of the principles of private property themselves.
These days, however, such demands are woefully modest, even with the International’s supposition above. At least three considerations make necessary more radical takes on curtailing personal inheritance through even the immediate family line.
The first consideration is the continued existence of obscenely wealthy nobilities, especially ceremonial monarchs. In five of the Weekly Worker’s issues in 1996, there was a polemical exchange on the value of abolishing ceremonial nobilities. Both sides acknowledged the problem of broad economism throughout the class-strugglist left and stressed the need for a radically democratic political program against liberal constitutionalism, but based on the premise that the “struggle for socialism” is an economic struggle and not a political one. However, while the radical republican side’s “anti-monarchical” stance is based on the full applicability of electoral politics towards even judicial monarchs in the radically republican spirit of the Paris Commune and of soviet power, the demarchic side’s stance is based on the complete sovereignty of randomly selected jurors in the legal sphere, thereby undercutting ceremonial monarchs as formal yet wealthy and hereditary sovereigns over their respective legal systems, themselves lorded de facto by well-off judicial monarchs. “Anti-monarchical” and more general “anti-nobility” sloganeering, therefore, is valuable only to the extent that it is tied directly to broader opposition towards the personal inheritance of non-possessive property like land and gold bullion, thereby delegitimizing the very property rights which liberal republicanism seeks to legitimize.
The second consideration is the very specific personal inheritance of productive property, itself being non-possessive. For example, in the sphere of productive property, the billionaire heirs of Sam Walton’s wealth from the discount retail chain Wal-Mart, the bin Laden family and their construction conglomerate Saudi Binladin Group, and the hereditary ruling families of both the tourism-heavy United Arab Emirates and the oil-rich Saudi Arabia come to mind, but inheritances of sole proprietorships and partnership stakes are also relevant. The public appropriation of productive property that would otherwise be immediately inherited through legal will or through “gifting” (the legal loophole associated with this specific inheritance) should, if the related business has hired labour, at least be for the purpose of transforming such private property into cooperative property, as elaborated upon at the end of this chapter.
In seeming contradiction to the first two considerations, the third consideration is in fact the personal yet social inheritance of poverty – better known amongst the class-collaborationist lot of “social-democrats,” progressives, and liberals as child poverty – wherein children are born poor through no responsibility of their own. Malnutrition, the lack of education, social isolationism (the lack of social integration), cultural conservatism, inadequate income, and even the absence of appropriate infrastructure – the hallmarks of “the idiocy of rural life” noted in the Communist Manifesto – all contribute to the continued inheritance of poverty by much of the world’s population. It is no wonder that the Erfurt Program, well in advance of today’s relationship between employment incomes and levels of education, called for “free education, free educational materials, and free meals” even in “higher educational institutions for those boys and girls considered qualified for further education by virtue of their abilities.”
Overall, what is needed are ever-progressive measures against the anti-meritocratic personal inheritance of poverty by children and also of upper-class wealth – especially of productive and other non-possessive property – measures which include the abolition of all remaining nobilities. Now, does this reform facilitate the issuance of either intermediate or threshold demands? Does this reform also enable the basic principles to be “kept consciously in view”? The answer to both of these questions, according to the short report written by Marx, depends significantly on the second consideration above:
Suppose the means of production transformed from private into social prosperity, then the right of inheritance (so far as it is of any social importance) would die of itself, because a man only leaves after his death what he possessed during his lifetime. Our great aim must, therefore, be to supersede those institutions which give to some people, during their lifetime, the economical power of transferring to themselves the fruits of labor of the many. Where the state of society is far enough advanced, and the working class possesses sufficient power to abrogate such institutions, they must do so in a direct way.
[…]
All measures, in regard to the right of inheritance, can therefore only relate to a state of social transition, where, on the one hand, the present economical base of society is not yet transformed, but where, on the other hand, the working masses have gathered strength enough to enforce transitory measures calculated to bring about an ultimate radical change of society.
REFERENCES:
Report of the General Council on the right of inheritance by Karl Marx [http://www.marxists.org/history/international/iwma/documents/1869/inheritance-report.htm]
Against liberalism by Paul Cockshott [http://www.cpgb.org.uk/worker/125/letters.html]
Against conservatism by Dave Craig [http://www.cpgb.org.uk/worker/127/conservatism.html]
Communist advance by Paul Cockshott [http://www.cpgb.org.uk/worker/129/letters.html
Revolutionary republicanism by Dave Craig [http://www.cpgb.org.uk/worker/132/republicanism.html
Against republicanism by Paul Cockshott [http://www.cpgb.org.uk/worker/136/republicanism.html
Programme of the Social-Democratic Party of Germany (Erfurt Programme) by Karl Kautsky and Eduard Bernstein [http://www.marxists.org/history/international/social-democracy/1891/erfurt-program.htm]
“The right of inheritance is only of social import insofar as it leaves to the heir the power which the deceased wielded during his lifetime -- viz., the power of transferring to himself, by means of his property, the produce of other people's labor. For instance, land gives the living proprietor the power to transfer to himself, under the name of rent, without any equivalent, the produce of other people's labor. Capital gives him the power to do he same under the name of profit and interest. The property in public funds gives him the power to live without labor upon other people's labor, etc.” (Karl Marx)
In 1869, Marx wrote a very short report, in his administrative capacity within the International Workingmen’s Association, dealing with personal inheritance. Contrary to modern right-“libertarian” agitational propaganda, many bourgeois intellectuals back in the day, from Adam Smith and David Ricardo to the business magnate Andrew Carnegie to John Maynard Keynes, correctly viewed the personal inheritance of wealth as a very feudal leftover. The utilitarians Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill went much further, stating that this unproductive concentration of wealth did not maximize the sum of the utility of everyone as a collective whole, and that this legal right should be abolished (or at least limited to immediate family lines and then through heavily progressive inheritance taxation, not just flat inheritance taxation or even progressive inheritance taxation), such that as many people as possible would start off on an equal footing.
However, as Marx noted, many socialist radicals back in the day were excessively enthusiastic about the meritocratic potential of opposing personal inheritance within a larger framework:
To proclaim the abolition of the right of inheritance as the starting point of the social revolution would only tend to lead the working class away from the true point of attack against present society. It would be as absurd a thing as to abolish the laws of contract between buyer and seller, while continuing to present state of exchange of commodities.
It would be a thing false in theory, and reactionary in practice.
In treating of the laws of inheritance, we necessarily suppose that private property in the means of production continues to exist. If it did no longer exist among the living, it could not be transferred from them, and by them, after their death.
In concluding his short report, Marx recommended two immediate demands curtailing personal inheritance:
Considered from this standpoint, changes of the laws of inheritance form only part of a great many other transitory measures tending to the same end.
These transitory measures, as to inheritance, can only be:
a. Extension of the inheritance duties already existing in many states, and the application of the funds hence derived to purposes of social emancipation.
b. Limitation of the testamentary right of inheritance, which -- as distinguished from the intestate or family right of inheritance -- appears as arbitrary and superstitious exaggeration even of the principles of private property themselves.
These days, however, such demands are woefully modest, even with the International’s supposition above. At least three considerations make necessary more radical takes on curtailing personal inheritance through even the immediate family line.
The first consideration is the continued existence of obscenely wealthy nobilities, especially ceremonial monarchs. In five of the Weekly Worker’s issues in 1996, there was a polemical exchange on the value of abolishing ceremonial nobilities. Both sides acknowledged the problem of broad economism throughout the class-strugglist left and stressed the need for a radically democratic political program against liberal constitutionalism, but based on the premise that the “struggle for socialism” is an economic struggle and not a political one. However, while the radical republican side’s “anti-monarchical” stance is based on the full applicability of electoral politics towards even judicial monarchs in the radically republican spirit of the Paris Commune and of soviet power, the demarchic side’s stance is based on the complete sovereignty of randomly selected jurors in the legal sphere, thereby undercutting ceremonial monarchs as formal yet wealthy and hereditary sovereigns over their respective legal systems, themselves lorded de facto by well-off judicial monarchs. “Anti-monarchical” and more general “anti-nobility” sloganeering, therefore, is valuable only to the extent that it is tied directly to broader opposition towards the personal inheritance of non-possessive property like land and gold bullion, thereby delegitimizing the very property rights which liberal republicanism seeks to legitimize.
The second consideration is the very specific personal inheritance of productive property, itself being non-possessive. For example, in the sphere of productive property, the billionaire heirs of Sam Walton’s wealth from the discount retail chain Wal-Mart, the bin Laden family and their construction conglomerate Saudi Binladin Group, and the hereditary ruling families of both the tourism-heavy United Arab Emirates and the oil-rich Saudi Arabia come to mind, but inheritances of sole proprietorships and partnership stakes are also relevant. The public appropriation of productive property that would otherwise be immediately inherited through legal will or through “gifting” (the legal loophole associated with this specific inheritance) should, if the related business has hired labour, at least be for the purpose of transforming such private property into cooperative property, as elaborated upon at the end of this chapter.
In seeming contradiction to the first two considerations, the third consideration is in fact the personal yet social inheritance of poverty – better known amongst the class-collaborationist lot of “social-democrats,” progressives, and liberals as child poverty – wherein children are born poor through no responsibility of their own. Malnutrition, the lack of education, social isolationism (the lack of social integration), cultural conservatism, inadequate income, and even the absence of appropriate infrastructure – the hallmarks of “the idiocy of rural life” noted in the Communist Manifesto – all contribute to the continued inheritance of poverty by much of the world’s population. It is no wonder that the Erfurt Program, well in advance of today’s relationship between employment incomes and levels of education, called for “free education, free educational materials, and free meals” even in “higher educational institutions for those boys and girls considered qualified for further education by virtue of their abilities.”
Overall, what is needed are ever-progressive measures against the anti-meritocratic personal inheritance of poverty by children and also of upper-class wealth – especially of productive and other non-possessive property – measures which include the abolition of all remaining nobilities. Now, does this reform facilitate the issuance of either intermediate or threshold demands? Does this reform also enable the basic principles to be “kept consciously in view”? The answer to both of these questions, according to the short report written by Marx, depends significantly on the second consideration above:
Suppose the means of production transformed from private into social prosperity, then the right of inheritance (so far as it is of any social importance) would die of itself, because a man only leaves after his death what he possessed during his lifetime. Our great aim must, therefore, be to supersede those institutions which give to some people, during their lifetime, the economical power of transferring to themselves the fruits of labor of the many. Where the state of society is far enough advanced, and the working class possesses sufficient power to abrogate such institutions, they must do so in a direct way.
[…]
All measures, in regard to the right of inheritance, can therefore only relate to a state of social transition, where, on the one hand, the present economical base of society is not yet transformed, but where, on the other hand, the working masses have gathered strength enough to enforce transitory measures calculated to bring about an ultimate radical change of society.
REFERENCES:
Report of the General Council on the right of inheritance by Karl Marx [http://www.marxists.org/history/international/iwma/documents/1869/inheritance-report.htm]
Against liberalism by Paul Cockshott [http://www.cpgb.org.uk/worker/125/letters.html]
Against conservatism by Dave Craig [http://www.cpgb.org.uk/worker/127/conservatism.html]
Communist advance by Paul Cockshott [http://www.cpgb.org.uk/worker/129/letters.html
Revolutionary republicanism by Dave Craig [http://www.cpgb.org.uk/worker/132/republicanism.html
Against republicanism by Paul Cockshott [http://www.cpgb.org.uk/worker/136/republicanism.html
Programme of the Social-Democratic Party of Germany (Erfurt Programme) by Karl Kautsky and Eduard Bernstein [http://www.marxists.org/history/international/social-democracy/1891/erfurt-program.htm]