The Abolition of Inheritance

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER VII INHERITANCE A PRIVILEGE, NOT A EIGHT It is necessary here as a last preliminary consideration to draw a clear distinction between labour, industrial capital and privilege. Labour is the name given to all productive effort whether of hand or brain. Industrial capital is the stored-up product of...
More Description

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER VII INHERITANCE A PRIVILEGE, NOT A EIGHT It is necessary here as a last preliminary consideration to draw a clear distinction between labour, industrial capital and privilege. Labour is the name given to all productive effort whether of hand or brain. Industrial capital is the stored-up product of labour which is used to assist new labour. It consists mainly of machines, buildings, improvements and money. Privilege is the permission to secure capital either without labour at all, or without adequate labour. It involves investment without regard to industry, or with but little regard to it. It consists almost entirely of a legal franchise to do something which others must refrain from doing, to own something that others must refrain from owning, or to secure something without rendering any service at all. The forms of privilege are almost innumerable, but a few illustrations will suffice to show whatprivilege is. A franchise to supply gas, electricity or street car conveniences for a city is a privilege, ? a monopoly granted by the Government. The right to own an oil-well or a mine to be held idle is a privilege. The power to own land not in use, holding it for a rise in price, is a privilege, generally known by the term speculation. The power to inherit a sum of money is a privilege. In short, every method of securing profits through a monopoly or speculation or by doing nothing at all, is a privilege. It is impossible to separate labour from industrial capital. Their objects are the same, and the result of their co-operation is mutually beneficial. Broadly speaking an injury to one is an injury to the other, and privilege is the enemy of both. Privilege is very insidious. It arises nearly always from the supposition that some reward is neces...