Review of Richard Bondam: Le Mal Social et ses Remèdes

Eugen Peter Schwiedland: Review of Richard Bondam’s Le Mal Social et ses Remèdes (1921)

Schwiedland’s brief journal review moves from Bondam’s criticism of contemporary civilisation to his proposed reform of inheritance. Its focus is the mechanism by which private bequests would become a shared territorial entitlement:

In his judgment, everybody within a given territory should receive an equal share of money out of the aggregate inherited wealth of each year.

Equality here concerns annual inherited wealth, not all existing property. The review highlights Bondam’s qualification of monetary equality by purchasing power: because living costs differ between town and countryside, redistribution would operate within districts of roughly 200,000 inhabitants.

At the end of each year every adult person is at liberty to dispose of his total, the share of minors to remain in a public bank until they come of age.

This provision combines collective redistribution with adult discretion and public custody of children’s shares. Schwiedland closes by reporting Bondam’s expectation that equalised economic opportunities would generate social, economic, and political benefits. The review’s relevance lies in its compact account of inheritance reform as an instrument of opportunity; it reports the anticipated gains without independently testing them.