Speculations on the Transmutation of an Idea

Abstract

In the late Eighteenth and early Nineteenth Centuries, progesssive thinkers were convinced that they had to shake off the inertia of tradition in order to free themselves to remake their world. Consequently, they questioned the authority of laws and titles as well as the economic claims associated with landed property and capital. One common theme in this endeavor concerned those rights and privileges which were due to activities that had occurred in the past. I shall trace the development of this notion as it was passed along an intellectual chain that extended from Thomas Jefferson to Karl Marx.