In socialist society there is nothing to bequeath, unless domestic equipment and personal inventory can be regarded as inheritance; thus the current form of marriage is redundant. The question of inheritance is thereby solved, and Socialism need not concern itself with abolishing the same. No right of inheritance can arise where there is no private property. Accordingly, woman is free, and her children, if she has any, do not impair her freedom: they can only enhance her pleasure in life. Nurses, teachers, female friends, and the maturing female youth – all these are ready to offer help to the mother when she needs it.
It is possible that there will be men in the future who will say, as did Alexander von Humboldt: “I am not made to be a family father. Moreover, I consider marriage a sin, and the begetting of children a crime.” What of it? The power of natural instincts will restore the equilibrium. We are alarmed neither by Humboldt’s hostility to marriage nor by the philosophic pessimism of Schopenhauer, Mainlaender, or v. Hartmann, who present humanity with the prospect of self-destruction in the “ideal State.” In this matter we agree with Fr. Ratzel, who justly says:
“Man must no longer look upon himself as an exception to the laws of Nature; he should rather begin at last to ascertain the law that underlies his own actions and thoughts, and to endeavor to live his life according to the laws of Nature. He will conclude that he should establish his coexistence with his equals, that is, his family and the State, not according to the precepts of distant centuries, but according to the rational principles of natural insight. Politics, morals, principles of justice – all of which are presently fed from all possible sources – will be determined according to the laws of Nature alone. An existence worthy of human beings, dreamed of for thousands of years, will finally become reality.”
That day is fast approaching. Over the course of thousands of years, human society has traversed all the various phases of development only to arrive where it started from in the beginning – communistic property and complete equality and fraternity, but no longer among congeners alone, but for the whole human race. Herein lies its great progress. What bourgeois society has vainly striven for, and where it fails, and is bound to fail – the restoration of freedom, equality and fraternity among men – Socialism will accomplish. Bourgeois society could only establish the theory; here, as in so many other areas of life, practice was at odds with theory. It is for Socialism to unite theory and practice.
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