Capital Accumulation and Socialist Politics

Recent democratic socialist economists, notably Mr. Hugh Dalton and Mr. Hugh Gaitskell, have laid great emphasis on limiting more and more the right to inherit considerable quantities of income-bearing property. This is undoubtedly a sound view, so long as it is realized that income from inherited property is merely the most scandalous case of the general scandal of the private appropriation of the socially produced surplus by means of private property in the means of production.

How much, however, does the continuance of this scandal matter economically? To Marxists it is, of course, all-important, for it is the essence of exploitation. But a more important question is this: how much does it matter in the minds and hearts of the ...