From the General Council minutes of July 20, 1869, 
                                            as taken by George Eccarius. 
 
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                       THE RIGHT OF INHERITANCE 
 
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Citizen Marx opened the discussion on the question: The Right of 
Inheritance.  
 
He said the question had been put by the Alliance of Social Democrats of 
Geneva and the Council had accepted it for discussion.  The Alliance of 
Geneva demanded, above all, the entire abolition of the right of 
inheritance.  
 
There were two forms of inheritance.  
 
The testamentary right, or inheritance by will, had come from Rome and 
had been peculiar to Rome.  The father of the Roman family had exercised 
absolute authority over everything belonging to his household.  The 
Roman family father must not be compared with the father of a family of 
the present day.  The Roman household had included slaves and clients 
whose affairs and interests and interests the head had been obliged to 
defend and maintain in public.  There had been a superstition that when 
this man died his ghost remained as a watch in the house to see that 
things were done right, or to torment if things were managed wrong.  In 
the early time of Rome, people had sacrificed to this house god; even 
blood feasts had been celebrated in his honor and to appease his wrath.  
By and by, it had become fashionable to compromise with this spirit by a 
heir-at-will.  It had been the Roman immortality of the soul.  The will 
of the deceased had been perpetuated by a testament, but this testament 
had not necessarily brought a fortune to the successor who inherited, 
but the will of the deceased had been looked upon as a religious duty.  
In course of time, these heirs-at-will had laid claim to the fortune 
too, but even in imperial times had never been allowed more than a 
fourth by law.  That pagan superstition had been transmitted to 
Christian countries and was the foundation of the right of will as at 
present existing in England and the United States.  
 
German right of inheritance was the intestate right, the family right, 
which treated an estate as a sort of co-proprietorship of which the 
father of the family was the manager.  When this manager died, the 
property fell to all the children.  The Germans had known of no other 
hereditary rights; the Church of Rome had introduced the Roman right, 
and the feudal system had falsified the German right, because feudal 
property bearing a military charged could not have been divided.  The 
French Revolution had returned to the German right of inheritance.  In 
England, we had all sorts of nonsensical things; the individual had the 
most absolute right to will away his property, even to disinherit his 
own offspring, and by this, rule long after he had ceased to exist.  
[Here, the sentence, "It was what kept the aristocracy in its present 
position and could be left to the middle class" is crossed out.] The 
right of will might be left for the middle class to deal with as it was 
a point which would work against the aristocracy.  In Prussia, only a 
little of a man's property could be willed away.  
 
The working class, who had nothing to inherit, had no interest in the 
question.  
 
The Democratic Alliance was going to commence the social revolution with 
the abolition of the right of inheritance.  He asked would it be policy 
to do so? 
 
The proposition was not new.  St. Simon had proposed it in 1830.  
 
As an economical measure, it would avail nothing.  It would cause so 
much irritation that it would be sure to raise an almost insurmountable 
opposition which would inevitably lead to reaction.  If at the time of a 
revolution it was proclaimed, he did not believe that the general state 
of intelligence would warrant its being sustained.  Besides, if the 
working class had sufficient power to abolish the right of inheritance, 
it would be powerful enough to proceed to expropriation, which would be 
a much simpler and more efficient process.  
 
To abolished the right to the inheritance of land in England would 
involve the hereditary functions connected with the land, the House of 
Lords, etc., and 15,000 lords and 15,000 ladies would have to die before 
it became available.  If, on the contrary, a workingmen's parliament 
decreed that the rent should be paid into the treasury instead of to the 
landlord, the government would obtain a fund at once without any social 
disturbance, while by abolishing the right of inheritance everything 
would be disturbed and nothing got.  
 
Our efforts must be directed to the end that no instruments of 
production should be private property.  The private property in these 
things was a fiction, since the proprietors could not use them 
themselves; they only gave them dominion over them, by which they 
compelled other people to work for them.  In a semi-barbarous state, 
this might have been necessary, but it was no longer so.  All the means 
of labor must be socialized, sot hat every man had a right and the means 
to exercise his labor power.  If we had such a state of things, the 
right of inheritance would be of no use.  As long as we had not, the 
family right of inheritance could not be abolished.  The chief aim of 
people in saving for their children was to insure them the means of 
subsistence.  If a man's children were provided for after his death, he 
could not care about leaving them wherewith to get a living, but as long 
as this was not the case, it would only result in hardships, it would 
irritate and frighten people and do no good.  Instead of the beginning 
it could only be the end of a social revolution.  The beginning must be 
to get the means to socialize the means of labor.  
 
The testamentary right of inheritance was obnoxious to the middle class; 
with this the state could safely interfere any time.  We had legacy 
duties already, all we had to do was to increase them and make them 
progressive, as well as the income tax, leaving the smaller amounts, 50 
pounds, for instance, free.  Insofar only it was a working-class 
question.  
 
All that was connected with the present state of things would have to be 
transformed, but if testaments were suppressed they would be avoided by 
gifts during life, therefore it would be better to tolerate then on 
certain conditions than do worse.  First, the means for a transformed 
state of things must be got, then the right would disappear of itself.  
 
Citizen Milner said it was but natural that people should question the 
right of inheritance seeing that so many were disinherited.  Possession 
was nine points of the law, and in all ages people had striven to get 
possession of things.  If all had the same right, there would be a 
family right to be divided, but if not, some would be dispossessed and 
others would keep possession forever.  Had one mn a right to disinherit 
another? It led to dualism in the family.  Possession led to dominion 
and dominion to slavery....  
 
Citizen Marx replied: If the state had the power to appropriate the 
land, inheritance was gone.  To declare the abolition of inheritance 
would be foolish.  If a revolution occurred, expropriation could be 
carried; if there was no power to do that, the right of inheritance 
would not be abolished.  
 
Citizen Marx consented to furnish [a resolution] at the next meeting 
[August 3, 1869].  
 
 
 
                      REPORT OF THE GENERAL COUNCIL  
                       ON THE RIGHT OF INHERITANCE 
 
              Written by Karl Marx on August 2 and 3, 1869 
          endorsed by General Council of IWMA on August 3, 1869 
 
 
1.  The right of inheritance is only of social import insofar as it 
    leaves to the heir the power which the deceased wielded _during his 
    lifetime_ -- viz., the power of transferring to himself, by means of 
    his property, the produce of other people's labor.  For instance, 
    land gives the living proprietor the power to transfer to himself, 
    under the name of rent, without any equivalent, the produce of other 
    people's labor.  Capital gives him the power to do he same under the 
    name of profit and interest.  The property in public funds gives him 
    the power to live without labor upon other people's labor, etc.  
 
    Inheritance does not _create_ that power of transferring the produce 
    of one man's labor into another man's pocket -- it only relates to 
    the change in individuals who yield that power.  Like all other 
    civil legislation, the laws of inheritance are not the cause, but 
    the effect, the juridical consequence of the existing economical 
    organization of society, based upon private property in the means of 
    production; that is to say, in land, raw material, machinery, etc.  
    In the same way, the right of inheritance in the slave is not the 
    cause of slavery, but on the contrary, slavery is the cause of 
    inheritance in slaves.  
 
2.  What we have to grapple with is the cause and not the effect -- the 
    economical basis, not the juridical superstructure.  Suppose the 
    means of production transformed from private into social prosperity, 
    then the right of inheritance (so far as it is of any social 
    importance) would die of itself, because a man only leaves after his 
    death what he possessed during his lifetime.  Our great aim must, 
    therefore, be to supersede those institutions which give to some 
    people, _during their lifetime_, the economical power of 
    transferring to themselves the fruits of labor of the many.  Where 
    the state of society is far enough advanced, and the working class 
    possesses sufficient power to abrogate such institutions, they must 
    do so in a _direct way_.  For instance, by doing away with the 
    public debt, they get of course, at the same time, rid of 
    inheritance in public funds.  On the other hand, if they do not 
    possess the power to abolish the public debt, it would be a foolish 
    attempt to abolish the right of inheritance in public funds.  
 
    The disappearance of the right of inheritance will be the natural 
    result of a social change superseding private property in the means 
    of production; but the abolition of the right of inheritance can 
    never be the starting point of such a social transformation.  
 
3.  It was one of the great errors committed about 40 years since by the 
    disciples of St. Simon, to treat the right of inheritance not as the 
    legal effect but as the economic cause of the present social 
    organization.  This did not at all prevent them from perpetuating in 
    their system of society private property in land and the other means 
    of production.  Of course, elective and lifelong proprietors, they 
    thought, might exist as elective kings have existed.  
 
    To proclaim the abolition of the right of inheritance as the 
    starting point of the social revolution would only tend to lead the 
    working class away from the true point of attack against present 
    society.  It would be as absurd a thing as to abolish the laws of 
    contract between buyer and seller, while continuing to present state 
    of exchange of commodities.  
 
    It would be a thing false in theory, and reactionary in practice. 
 
4.  In treating of the laws of inheritance, we necessarily suppose that 
    private property in the means of production continues to exist.  If 
    it did no longer exist among the living, it could not be transferred 
    from them, and by them, after their death.  All measures, in regard 
    to the right of inheritance, can therefore only relate to a state of 
    social transition, where, on the one hand, the present economical 
    base of society is not yet transformed, but where, on the other 
    hand, the working masses have gathered strength enough to enforce 
    transitory measures calculated to bring about an ultimate radical 
    change of society.  
 
    Considered from this standpoint, changes of the laws of inheritance 
    form only part of a great many other transitory measures tending to 
    the same end.  
 
    These transitory measures, as to inheritance, can only be: 
 
    a.  Extension of the inheritance duties already existing in many 
        states, and the application of the funds hence derived to 
        purposes of social emancipation.  
 
    b.  Limitation of the testamentary right of inheritance, which -- as 
        distinguished from the intestate or family right of inheritance 
        -- appears as arbitrary and superstitious exaggeration even of 
        the principles of private property themselves.  
 
 
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