The International Workingmen's Association

Report of the General Council

The right of inheritance

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.

Inheritance does not create that power of transferring
the produce of one man's labor into another man's pocket -- it only relates
to the change in individuals who yield that power. Like all other civil
legislation, the laws of inheritance are not the cause, but the effect,
the juridical consequence of the existing economical organization of society,
based upon private property in the means of production; that is to say,
in land, raw material, machinery, etc. In the same way, the right of inheritance
in the slave is not the cause of slavery, but on the contrary, slavery
is the cause of inheritance in slaves.

What we have to grapple with is the cause and not the effect -- the economical
basis, not the juridical superstructure. 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. For instance, by doing away with the public debt, they get of
course, at the same time, rid of inheritance in public funds. On the other
hand, if they do not possess the power to abolish the public debt, it would
be a foolish attempt to abolish the right of inheritance in public funds.

The disappearance of the right of inheritance will be the natural
result of a social change superseding private property in the means of
production; but the abolition of the right of inheritance can never be
the starting point of such a social transformation.

It was one of the great errors committed about 40 years since by the disciples
of St. Simon, to treat the right of inheritance not as the legal effect
but as the economic cause of the present social organization. This did
not at all prevent them from perpetuating in their system of society private
property in land and the other means of production. Of course, elective
and lifelong proprietors, they thought, might exist as elective kings have
existed.

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. 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.

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.

Marx's Speech

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