INTERNATIONAL STORY THE RICH ASKING TO BE TAXED INTERVIEW BY CARLOTTA BÖTTCHER Millionaire heiress Marlene Engelhorn loudly demands being taxed fairly. Having just published her first book, entitled Money, the super-rich activist lays out her views and encourages people to rethink the role of capital. 20ER: It is often said that “you don’t talk about money; you just have it”. As a millionaire heiress, you surely have plenty of money, and yet, you still choose to talk about it. In fact, you’ve written an entire book on the topic of money. What is your objective? MARLENE ENGELHORN: As a super-rich person, I approach the subject of money from the perspective of a “super-amateur”. People always assume that the richest members of society are savvy when it comes to money. But I’ve never had to worry about money since I’ve always had plenty of it. My question is, what is money when you have so much of it that you no longer need it? And what does it do to me as a person? I would like to ask this question in systemic terms and to uncover the intertwining of the super-rich with society. What does this inter-twining look like? Money often isn’t about coins and notes, but about power relations within relationships. What, after all, is the reason that I want power within a relationship? Obviously, I do not wish to go through the relationship process – in order to do so, I would have to be on equal footing. Power is alluring because it offers shortcuts to results, and money, in societal terms, works the same way: As a relationship-making instrument, designed to yield results without having to go through the process. However, the results I can achieve in this way are not sustainable, because not everybody will be on board with them. In the worst case, such results are like the results of blackmail. What kind of understanding would you like to see instead? Super-rich people need to acknowledge that their money does not justify dominance. And that, without society and its governmental structures, super-rich individuals wouldn’t exist. Because their existence necessitates an entire infrastructure, including traffic networks, the education system, hospitals, the rule of law, and so on and so forth. Without laws, there can be no property, either. It’s a statutory commodity rather than a natural one. It is easy to forget that this kind of infrastructure isn’t to be taken for granted and that receiving it goes hand in hand with social responsibility. How so? Those who have rights also have obligations. If I live within this framework, I need to see eye to eye with others. I cannot claim things for myself that I have no right to. Super-rich people think that they are entitled to special rules, but this has no basis in democratic legitimization. Privileges are prerogatives, and those are unjust. That is why we need rules, in order to ensure that individuals do not abuse their power without the MARLENE ENGELHORN WILL INHERIT AN AMOUNT IN THE DOUBLE-DIGIT MILLIONS. SHE IS PLANNING TO GIVE UP MORE THAN 90% OF IT. CREDIT: ULRICH PALZER. mandate to do so. In terms of money, this is about taxes; we act like taxes on assets are a new invention, but they have existed for millennia. What is new is personal income tax. That hasn’t even been around for 200 years. But in this case, you don’t hear anyone asking, “Is it okay for you if we take this amount of money from you?” It is absurd to apply double standards to wealth and income. In addition to fairer tax policies, there is also talk of a cap on individual wealth. Bertolt Brecht once said: “Were I not poor, you wouldn’t be rich.” It is important to make this connection. We need a counterpart to the poverty line in order to have some kind of spectrum between those two. Otherwise, there is no upwards limit – it’s blurry. We have to draw the line and say beyond this point, wealth is no longer affluence, but a political problem; beyond this point, there is too much power concentrated in the hands of individuals. Wealth ought to be something that arises between those two lines. We aiming not to have identical circumstances, but to establish equal rights and consistent equality in political and legal terms. We tend to understand money as a neutral means of barter, but there is a lot of money that is simply being hoarded and which does not circulate at all. Is our perception of money flawed? Money is not just a means of barter, but also of debt. For instance, I need outside capital in order to be able to expand my business. Then, I work with the money I have borrowed, which I promise to pay back. I don’t exchange any concrete goods in this case, but rather, I place myself in a framework of relationships. That is why we have contracts in such cases; we want something in writing which proves and certifies this relationship. It is important to understand that first, I need the relationship and the framework, within which I then make those exchanges. And what about the money that is being hoarded? Private money is something that occurs when super-rich people funnel money from the financial stream, thereby destroying the whole ‘instrument’ conception of money. Money is then only understood as a means to an end, and thus, the vicious circle of “needing money in order to have money” begins. This kind of egoistical dynamics, when money is being stored somewhere, gives rise to individual superiority. Should we question the whole concept of money as such? I would not wish to see money as an instrument disappear; it is neither good nor bad. It could be a useful tool since it gives expression to how we treat each other within our societies. Also, it is the ultimate means: the only one all of us, worldwide, have been able to agree upon. However, on top of an economic one, we also need a social and political conception of money. If we talk openly about money and recognize the underlying relational dynamics, we will also start handling it differently. Is this possible within our capitalist system? In principle, I am willing to ask questions about our current system, but I do not want to just knock it on the head, either. The legal scholar and author Katharina Pistor calls this “institutional autopsy”. We should always ask ourselves, “What works well and generates wealth, and where are there exploitative structures and unhealthy dependencies?” We ought to view the system as something permanently undergoing change, since that is what people and societies do, too. This is extremely complex, but it is the only way for us to stop thinking in “-isms”. I don’t think it is helpful to debate 10 DENVER VOICE November 2022
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