Writing My Will

What an ode to private property reminded me about money and activism

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Photo by Melinda Gimpel on Unsplash

It’s about time.

After putting it off for decades, I sit down to write my will.

Common capitalist wisdom is that writing a will is the responsible thing to do. I get that. I’ve witnessed the fallouts and fallings out that can result from someone dying suddenly and intestate.

One way to think of writing a will is as an act of posthumous care for those closest to us.

But love is not enough. In the UK, only about half the population has made a will. The natural human pull towards procrastination is no doubt one explanation, as is a rational aversion to paperwork. And people like me, without offspring or fortune, are less subject to the pressures to set our affairs in order.

Then there’s the truism that no one likes much to think about their own mortality. Wills cut to the chase. One dies in legalise. One is deceased or predeceased. One does not pass. Even through the smug bird’s-eye-view that belies my life-long atheism, the act of writing down my final wishes brings a touch of humility: The world will go on.

Yet at the same time wills trick us into embracing an illusion of immortality, the fantasy that we can live on by pulling the strings from beyond the grave. Advice on will writing calls this “leaving a legacy”, whether by ensuring your kin is “well provided for” or by giving your name to a scholarship fund or a garden in a corner of your favourite park. I’m a historian and not a science fiction writer; but when I finally get around to the tedious task of writing my last testament I experience an unexpected and eery delight in imagining the world after my departure death.

To write a will is to write oneself into a system of private property that elevates individual agency to a grab for ghostly control.

But the more I write, the more the future and its mysteries are displaced by the stark realities of the here and now. A bit like a monthly budget, a will forces us to think about what we need and what we value, about what – and who – we think are worth spending money on. Historians know this well. They have long used wills to tell stories about the past: about family relations and politics; about stark racial, class and gender inequalities; about the economic and cultural significance accorded certain objects – including companion animals, still considered property in wills.  

Then there’s the long tradition of wills in literature. If novels are anything to go by, those who stand to benefit from the death of a wealthy relative have a healthy sense of entitlement. And they’re mighty pissed when the dosh goes to some long-lost cousin across the world, the Humane Society or, god forbid, the servants.

But in the realm of inheritance life doesn’t typically imitate art. Today, inherited wealth is one of the major drivers of social and economic inequality. According to a 2021 study from the British Institute of Fiscal Studies (IFS), among people born since the 1980s everything from profession to leisure and education is largely determined by the size of their parents’ bank accounts. Rich kids don’t even have to wait for their folks to die in order to benefit. While people from poorer families have to work steadily to feed, clothe and house themselves, and put whatever little is left aside to live on whenever they can afford to retire (try living on £220/week – the current amount of the UK state pension – and see how far you get), those who know a windfall is on the way can take some time off, travel, put their feet up, sail around the world – all in the knowledge that someday they’ll get a wad of free cash from Mum and Dad.

This particular form of class discrimination is enabled by a tax system that benefits the wealthy and the older. The IFS recommends that the inheritance gap be reduced through a combination of more effective taxation at the top end and higher wages at the bottom. The French economist Thomas Piketty has a more radical solution. His proposal for universal inheritance would see all young people receive a lump sum of  around €120,000 (£100,000) at 25, an age when it would have the greatest impact on their life choices. This would mean that every young person could enjoy some of the opportunities currently available only to the children of the wealthy. As he puts it, “Inheritance for all aims to increase the bargaining power of those who have nothing, to enable them to refuse certain jobs, to acquire housing or to embark on a personal project.”

Piketty’s proposal relies on the state to prioritise economic equality and is grounded in the principle of universality. By focusing on the young, it stresses the need to address economic inequality in the present. Wills, on the other hand, are all about an imagined future; they prioritise individuals and their close kin. Although a small study in the UK conducted in 2022 indicates that the percentage of people leaving money to charity in their wills has increased substantially over the past decade, it’s still only about 25%.

As someone who sat for some years on the board of a small feminist trust and has been involved in many political campaigns that relied on donations from individuals or small funding bodies, I have a lot of time for charities, especially the progressive political kind. In a world where public funding is fast disappearing, charities are crucial to supporting activist projects, particularly those focused on marginalised communities.

But in recent years the charity world has witnessed a move towards consolidation and streamlining. Effective Altruism is a movement that encourages people to donate to causes that – according to numerical calculations based on the principles of utilitarian philosophy – will make the most difference to the lives of the most people (and in some cases animals). By definition, EA prioritises large global campaigns over smaller local initiatives. One trend within EA is something called Longtermism, “the idea that future people matter morally, that there could be a very large number of future people, and that there are actions we can take now to affect how good or bad the future is.”

I won’t dispute the notion that people who haven’t been born yet are morally relevant. But in a world where the lives of so many living people are accorded little to no value at all by those in power, it feels pretty perverse to focus on those whose existence is purely speculative. The best way to guarantee a good life for human beings – and animals, and the planet – in the future is to improve the world we live in today. Moreover, as

Noah Berlatsky

wrote in a recent Substack post, EA privileges the economically privileged – it targets people with lots of money and asks them to give some of their cash to carefully chosen big causes. These people decide what others – the modern-day equivalents of the deserving poor – need in order to live better lives. Because it relies on the wealthy, it encourages rather than challenges economic inequality.

EA is philanthropy for the digital, hedge-fund age.

Some proponents of EA recommend that people give away 10% of their earnings. That’s probably a lot more than most people give to charity today, and it probably feels like a fortune to, say, people paying upwards of half of their wages on London rent. For the EA big hitters, on the other hand, it seems pretty stingy. And they’re getting a tax break to boot.

Compare the wealthy ten percenters to the former Uruguayan president Jose Múgica, who reportedly gave away 90% of his salary when he was elected in 2009. Maybe his experience of spending 14 years largely in solitary confinement in the 1970s and 80s during his country’s military dictatorship made Múgica appreciate things like freedom, close companionship and being able to wake up and look at the sky above material wealth. Or maybe he carried his commitment to revolution with him from his days in the Tupamaros into older age and statesmanship.

Writing a will is anything but revolutionary. This isn’t a reason not to do it; but it’s a good one not to spend much time on it. As I come to the end of my online free will-writing form, with my nearest and dearest accounted for, I choose a number of small grassroots charities to leave some money to. If I die tomorrow, each of these will get a donation which, judging by the scope of their activities, would allow them to do some great work. But if I live another six months or six years, there’s a good chance that, like so many grassroots initiatives, these organisations will have closed down. Better to give to them now.

Of course, charity giving is not a revolutionary act either. Nor is universal inheritance or its close cousin, universal basic income. But we live in different temporalities. We can plot the overthrow of capitalism and also do something with the little we have now to dent the gross economic inequality of today.

Pen in Fist is written by me, Carrie Lou Hamilton. You can find my other writing and projects here. If you like what you read, you can get a paid subscription or leave me a tip.

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