New worlds for old: A plain account of modern socialismWells, H. G. (Herbert George)
General
New worlds for old: A plain account of modern socialism
Wells, H. G. (Herbert George)
Socialism
Posthumous property, that is to say the power to bequeath and the
right to inherit things, will also persist in a mitigated state under
Socialism. There is no reason whatever why it should not do so. There
is a strong natural sentiment in favour of the institution of
heirlooms, for example; one feels a son might well own--though he
should certainly not sell--the intimate things his father desires to
leave him. The pride of descent is an honourable one, the love for
one's blood, and I hope that a thousand years from now some descendant
will still treasure an obsolete weapon here, a picture there, or a
piece of faint and faded needlework from our days and the days before
our own. One may hate inherited privileges and still respect a family
tree.
Widows and widowers again have clearly a kind of natural property in
the goods they have shared with the dead; in the home, in the garden
close, in the musical instruments and books and pleasant home-like
things. Now, in nine cases out of ten, we do in effect bundle the
widow out; she remains nominally owner of the former home, but she has
to let it furnished or sell it, to go and live in a boarding-house or
an exiguous flat.
Even perhaps a proportion of accumulated money may reasonably go to
friend or kin. It is a question of public utility; Socialism has done
with absolute propositions in all such things, and views these
problems now as questions of detail, matters for fine discriminations.
We want to be quit of pedantry. All that property which is an
enlargement of personality, the modern Socialist seeks to preserve; it
is that exaggerated property that gives power over the food and needs
of one's fellow-creatures, property and inheritance in land, in
industrial machinery, in the homes of others and in the usurer's grip
upon others, that he seeks to destroy. The more doctrinaire Socialists
will tell you they do not object to property for use and consumption,
but only to property in "the means of production," but I do not choose
to resort to over-precise definitions. The general intention is clear
enough, the particular instance requires particular application. But
it is just because we modern Socialists want every one to have play
for choice and individual expression in all these realities of
property that we object to this monstrous property of a comparatively
small body of individuals expropriating the world.
§ 2.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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