Estate Taxes and Socialism

Will Franklin at WILLisms has a look at the current debate over Estate Taxes and just who is for them and who is against them. Here is Will:

The Death Tax: A Socialist Notion.
Earlier this week, the House of Representatives voted 272-162 to repeal the estate tax. Texas Republican Louie Gohmert, brandishing a wooden music box that he bought at a forced IRS sale of his great Aunt Lilly's farm property, said the death tax "is a socialist notion and it needs to go away."

We just happened to watch this moment live on C-SPAN.

In the background, members of the other party immediately snickered, presumably at Gohmert's assertion that the death tax is a socialist notion. Could they have been snickering at something else? Possibly. Perhaps someone just happened to crack a joke at that very moment.

But it was pretty clear they were paying close attention to Gohmert's speech, and when he delivered his soundbite line, they launched into derisive laughter.

So, is Gohmert some kind of nutjob who goes around calling everything socialist, and therefore worthy of petty snickering, or does he have a valid point?

Will then fact checks this curious notion:

Well, in The Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx explains ten action-items (much like the Ten Commandments of communism, or similarly, a "Bill of Wrongs") "generally applicable" for the beginning of a successful transition to communism.

Number three:

"Abolition of all right of inheritance."

He then cites some more quotes from Marx and then brings things into current perspective with this quote from The Socialist Party USA: and a paragraph of conclusion:

We need a steeply graduated estate tax...

So, Gohmert was pretty much dead-on. The death tax is a socialist notion. That individuals would dismissively snicker at that idea speaks volumes.