An Interesting Failure: Wilhelm Weitling’s Utopian Communism
Though communist ideology ultimately would become synonymous with its Jewish usurper, Karl Marx, several figures – Gracchus Babeuf, Henri de Saint-Simon, Charles Fourier, and Étienne Cabet among them – predated him as pioneers of European socialist thought during what became known as its utopian phase, before the Marxists would introduce pretensions to “scientific” rigor. Another trailblazing communist, one whose name has fallen into obscurity since the nineteenth century, is German labor agitator Wilhelm Weitling (1808-1871). The sole English-language book on Weitling, Carl Wittke’s The Utopian Socialist: A Biography of Wilhelm Weitling, Nineteenth-Century Reformer, has long been out of print, and – as if to symbolically underline the subject’s neglect – the used copy I obtained was easily the mustiest-smelling book I ever purchased.
A
journeyman tailor and autodidact, Weitling was the son of a German servant girl
and a French soldier who never returned from Napoleon’s Russian campaign.
Having experienced poverty, deprivation, and humiliation, Weitling was
naturally receptive to the socialist ideas gaining currency during the early
years of the nineteenth century and helped to organize societies for the
discussion of radical economic and political reforms in various European
cities. In Paris during the late 1830s, Weitling was prominently associated
with the League of the Just, a cosmopolitan workers’ association largely
comprised of German exiles, and in 1838 – a full decade before the publication
of The Communist Manifesto – he was commissioned by the League to
compose an ideological document, Die Menschheit, wie sie ist und wie sie
sein sollte (“Mankind as it is and as it should be”), “a treatise which
would formulate the principles for which the society stood, for circulation as
propaganda material in France and especially in Switzerland and the German
states.” [1] Die Menschheit was distributed as far as Scandinavia and
was even translated into Hungarian, notes Wittke, “and the chief of Austria’s
elaborate police network instructed his subordinates in the provinces to
confiscate all copies of this ‘highly destructive and dangerous’ publication
which preached ‘hatred and hostility to all higher authority’ and was written
so interestingly as to mislead the innocent reader.” [2] “Weitling’s little
book belongs in the Christian communist tradition,” Wittke relates:
It
reveals that its author was by nature deeply religious, whatever his violent
altercations with priests and churches may suggest to the contrary. Weitling’s
communism was firmly grounded in definite moral precepts. It called for
absolute equality among human beings and for a return to that happiness of
which men have been deprived by the exercise of political and economic power
for selfish ends. It was a vigorous protest against the existing state of
society which profited through the support of an organized priesthood.
The
remedy for such abuses obviously was revolution, thorough and complete, not
partial or compromising. The break with the past must be so complete that the
new age proclaimed by the new Messiah might begin. Replete with Bible
quotations, Die Menschheit advocated the reform of Christianity itself
and a return to the original characteristics of its primitive stage, when men
loved their neighbors, lived in the happy days of communal property, and
professed a religion which was in complete conformity with the law of nature.
[3]
Notwithstanding
his appeals to Christian morality, Weitling during his most extreme phase of
the early 1840s “devised a plan to liberate professional murderers and thieves
and to turn the ‘thieving proletariat’ loose on society, to hasten the
revolution for equality by ‘one violent push’.” Wittke continues:
For
a brief moment, his mind also played with the idea of favoring the community of
women. Correspondents in Paris, such as Dr. [August] Ewerbeck, were horrified
by such proposals and said so in no uncertain terms. Their reactions to such
attempts “to found the kingdom of heaven by unleashing the furies of hell” were
violent indeed. The exchanges between Weitling and Ewerbeck became more and
more acrimonious until his friend [August] Becker felt called upon to remind
the impatient revolutionist that the world could not be conquered with iron;
that ideas were stronger than cannon; that all men shared the responsibility
for the existing state of society; and that a true communist’s revenge is
forgiveness, and moral and spiritual conquest his chief weapon. Others, such as
[Weitling’s acquaintance Mikhail] Bakunin and Johann Most, later advocated the
use of the thieving proletariat for a similar purpose. Be it said to Weitling’s
credit that he quickly recovered his balance. Essentially he was a religious
and moral man, and therefore the whole unfortunate episode may be dismissed as
a temporary aberration of a highly overworked and unusually excitable
individual. [4].
“Weitling’s
magnum opus appeared in December, 1842, under the title Garantieen der
Harmonie und Freiheit [i.e., “Guarantees of Harmony and Freedom”],” writes
Wittke, who notes, “It was issued secretly and was intended to provide the
exposition of Weitling’s complete ‘system’.” [5] Weitling advocated the
eradication of existing monetary systems and the eradication of merchants and
middlemen from the economic order, suggesting instead that society ought to be
organized around self-sufficient regional units in which families would live
communally, storing the fruits of their labor in central warehouses and
exchanging goods on the basis of the time value of work. Betraying an
authoritarian streak, Weitling’s plan for the regimentation of labor prefigures
the totalitarian systems of the twentieth century. “The Industrial Army was
divided into corps according to the nature of the tasks which were being
taught, and each corps was recruited by the volunteer method or by drawing
lots,” Wittke explains:
Every
six months the personnel was transferred to a new corps to broaden the training
program. Volunteers for the especially difficult tasks of an “honor corps”
could complete their term of service in one instead of three years.
This
unique [hypothetical] organization was patterned on the military. Unquestioning
obedience to the superior officer was enforced, and the rank and file were
quartered in barracks or billeted upon the families of the district.
Instruction included training for mining, railroading, canal, road, and bridge
building; work in the building trades; and preparation “to colonize foreign
lands.” It was expected that this program of rigorous compulsory training would
provide society with all the necessary labor and guarantee a singularly healthy
race of men. [6]
 |
| Igor Ledogorov appears in the role of Wilhelm Weitling in the 1980-1981 Soviet miniseries Karl Marx: The Early Years. |
Weitling was imprisoned for several months in Switzerland in 1843 and 1844 for his subversive activities, an experience that contributed to the radical’s delusions of grandeur and tendency toward paranoia [7]. Later, while living in Brussels, Weitling would briefly enjoy the friendship of his fellow exile Karl Marx. “In the search for an explanation for the final break between Marx and Weitling, it is clear that the religious phase of the latter’s communism was bound to prove extremely distasteful to Marx,” Wittke offers:
It
is also known that long before the Brussels conference Marx had begun to work
on a plan to divorce communism from religious sentimentality and reduce it to a
scientific doctrine. Weitling, the simple-minded Utopian, knew nothing about a
law of economic determinism and did not have the formal education which would
have enabled him to follow Marx’s learned excursions into history and prophecy.
He realized that men could not be spiritually free while held in economic
bondage, but such a conclusion was relatively simple for a man who had to work
with his hands. Weitling appealed to the emotions and the heart. He rejected
the doctrine that made self-interest the sole motivation of life. He believed
that man had an inner desire to do good and a potentiality for self-sacrifice
which could be developed by training in morality and religion; and he desired
to use religion to achieve a kind of communism which would be like the good
life of the genuine Christian, and give men a faith which would help them to
penetrate the black night of their despair. [8]
“Still
another essential difference between Marx and Weitling must be emphasized,”
Wittke continues:
The
former was a university man who had enjoyed all the advantages of higher
education, which culminated in a doctor’s degree from the University of Jena.
Marx was a pedantic neo-Hegelian, who even on minor questions could mobilize
“his whole artillery of logic, dialectic, stylistic and learning.” Weitling
could not find his way around in the “fog” of Hegelianism […] Metaphysical
abstractions did not interest him. He believed that experience was far more
valuable than books. [9]
Marx
denounced Weitling’s “fantastic propaganda calculated to arouse the people
without first giving them a definite basis for social action, and sarcastically
observed that Weitling’s ideas might be suitable for a country such as Russia
but were wholly inappropriate for Germany, whose workers needed a doctrine
which would be both scientific and specific. Marx argued in favor of his
evolutionary concept of communism, while Weitling stubbornly insisted that no
mere intellectual could comprehend the sufferings of the common people,” writes
Wittke: “The dispute ended with Marx stamping up and down the room, and making
caustic references to his opponent’s ignorance.” Weitling later “accused Marx
of turning for support to people with money.” [10]
It
is interesting to note that although Weitling had traveled far and wide as a
journeyman and a propagandist and therefore had firsthand knowledge of the
nuisances of petty boundaries, frontier guards and customs officers, he
regarded the unification of the German states as a mere side issue; in contrast
with Marx and Engels, who favored unification, he paid little attention to the
question. He steadfastly adhered to his original plan for a truly international
movement to liberate all peoples, regardless of political boundaries. [11]
“As a
matter of fact, he played a very minor role in this ‘Congress of Democrats’,
and when he suggested equal pay for all, his proposal was greeted with raucous
laughter,” Wittke recounts: “When he insisted on proclaiming the communist
state at once, he was rebuked by the presiding officer for ‘theoretical
quarreling’.” [12] “As time went on,” Wittke reveals, Weitling indulged in
“uncomplimentary remarks about ‘the men of phrases’ and especially about the
Jews, who he claimed did nothing but talk in 1848, and constituted four fifths
of the leftists in Berlin.” [13]
It was in
the disillusioning wake of the failures of 1848-1849 that Weitling emigrated to
the United States, where he established a radical paper, Die Republik der
Arbeiter, which served as the ideological trumpet for Weitling’s new
workingmen’s organization, the Arbeiterbund, which recruited from the
many Germans recently arrived in the country. American labor generally,
Weitling fretted, was inhibited by “the Anglo-Saxon’s regrettable innate
respect for law” [14], but with only Germans at his disposal Weitling still expected
to recruit 100,000 men by the autumn of 1850 and to be able to “control the
presidential election” [15]. Such flights of fancy were typical of Weitling’s
tendency to overestimate his own abilities and importance. “The size of the Arbeiterbund
may be estimated variously from 1,000 to 5,000,” Wittke suggests:
In
the first burst of enthusiasm, many societies announced affiliation in
corpore, but the real test was the number of members who actually paid
dues. By this criterion, it seems unlikely that the Bund exceeded 4,000
members at its highest point of success. Additions and withdrawals occurred so
constantly that accurate estimates are exceedingly difficult to make. Weitling’s
own figures indicate that after four years of activity the net membership had
dropped to 967. [16]
“He
actually suggested an organization made up of three degrees and with a
membership, who were subject to strict military discipline, who wore uniforms
consisting of blue shirts, black belts, and oilcloth caps and carried a red
flag with a white and silver triangle at its tip,” Wittke details [17]; and,
while the militant labor organization with mass sway that Weitling imagined
never materialized, it is easy to see in his vision and in his centralizing
tendency and “distrust of the democratic process” [18] a precursor to the authoritarian
“shirt” movements of the twentieth century, Weitling’s internationalist disdain
for German nationalism notwithstanding. “His ultimate goal was one great league
of workingmen which would exercise a powerful influence on questions of wages
and working hours and would unite all existing workers’ insurance and
benevolent activities under a central treasury strong enough to pay sick
benefits and old-age pensions to all its members,” Wittke explains: “Weitling’s
immediate objective was social insurance; his ultimate goal, a complete social
revolution.” [19]
The
organization was in steep decline by 1853, as critics rejected Weitling’s
dictatorial inclination and the membership “expected the movement to produce
jobs and financial prosperity for them and were bitterly disappointed” [20].
The organization’s resources were ruinously depleted, moreover, by Weitling’s disastrous
investment of Arbeiterbund funds in the dysfunctional communal farm at
Communia, Iowa [21]. Both the Arbeiterbund and Weitling’s newspaper, Die
Republik der Arbeiter, were defunct by the mid-1850s. In an 1854 text, Der
Katechismus der Arbeiter, a disillusioned Weitling declared that “the
working class is as egotistic, selfish, unintelligent and avaricious” as the bourgeoisie.
Always more eager to blame others than to reflect on his own shortcomings, he
also insisted that “If all had followed me as the children of Israel followed
Moses out of Egypt, I would have succeeded.” [22] In addition to the specific
problems that beset the Arbeiterbund, however, Wittke identifies the
deradicalizing influence of American life in the nineteenth century as a
further cause of the loss of interest in Weitling’s style of politics:
The
bulk of the German immigrants to this country were primarily concerned with
establishing a firm and secure economic foundation for themselves and their
families. In the caste society of Europe, where a proletarian might properly
feel that it was almost a hopeless task to try to raise his status by
individual effort, it was not too difficult to interest the underprivileged and
the poor in a scheme that promised a collectivist, revolutionary upheaval. In
the United States, on the other hand, the very absence of a caste structure
made such visionary plans seem utterly impractical and unnecessary. Here the
most radical theorist could become a property owner under the prevailing system
of cheap land and relatively high wages, and the most doctrinaire radical thus
quickly acquired a comfortable middle-class psychology. [23]
Weitling
abandoned politics, returned to his original trade as a tailor, and died in
poverty in 1871. “Weitling has been forgotten; Marx and Engels remain world
figures,” Wittke reflects:
Yet
the philosophical tailor also is entitled to his place in history. No
proletarian author ever described the miseries of the poor more eloquently or
contrasted the life of the rich and the poor more vividly. Weitling compared
the growing threat of industry with “an iron bodice crushing the tender forms
of children.” He had initiated the workers of Germany into the propaganda for
communism […] [24]
Weitling’s
experiences in the United States would reinforce the negative view of Jews he
had harbored in Europe. In Wheeling, West Virginia, for example, Weitling “detected
the evil influence of ‘preachers, Jews and Democrats’” [25]; and in Louisville,
Kentucky, the tailors “had fallen almost ‘wholly under the slavery of Jews’”
[26]; but he failed to systematize his anti-Semitic worldview or incorporate it
into his political program, and he even boasted that his Arbeiterbund admitted
“communist, socialist, Democrat, Republican, Catholic, Jew, Protestant, and
Atheist” alike [27]. The synthesis of socialism with political anti-Semitism
and the nationalism Weitling discounted would be left to later theorists. Even
so, Weitling “was to be hailed by the Nazis as the true representative of
German socialists,” relates historian P.H. Noyes: “blond, blue-eyed and ‘Teutonic’
(in spite of his French father), he was contrasted by historians with the ‘Jewish
socialism’ of 1848 as represented by Marx and Stephan Born” [28]. “Werner
Sombart, in his monumental work on proletarian socialism [Der Proletarische
Sozialismus], lists Weitling’s Garantieen with Louis Blanc’s L’organisation
du travail, Proudhon’s Qu’est ce que la proprieté?, Cabet’s Voyage
en Icarie and Moses Hess’s Die europaische Triarchie, among the ‘decisive
works of the second period’ in the evolution of socialist thought,” observes
Wittke, while historian Morris Hillquit characterizes Weitling’s platform as “the
connecting link between primitive and modern socialism” [29].
Rainer
Chlodwig von K.
Endnotes
[1]
Wittke, Carl. The Utopian Socialist: A Biography of Wilhelm Weitling,
Nineteenth-Century Reformer. Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University
Press, 1950, pp. 23-24.
[2] Ibid.,
p. 24.
[3] Ibid.,
pp. 25-26.
[4] Ibid.,
p. 44.
[5] Ibid.,
p. 48.
[6] Ibid.,
pp. 59-60.
[7] Ibid.,
pp. 81-84.
[8] Ibid.,
p. 107.
[9] Ibid.,
p. 110.
[10]
Ibid., p. 117.
[11]
Ibid., pp. 130-131.
[12]
Ibid., pp. 131-132.
[13]
Ibid., p. 134.
[14] Ibid.,
p. 193.
[15]
Ibid., p. 198.
[16] Ibid.,
p. 205.
[17]
Ibid., p. 192.
[18]
Ibid., p. 203.
[19] Ibid.
[20] Ibid.,
pp. 212-213.
[21]
Ibid., p. 245.
[22]
Ibid., p. 234.
[23]
Ibid., p. 235.
[24] Ibid.,
p. 106.
[25]
Ibid., p. 180.
[26]
Ibid., p. 181.
[27] Ibid.,
p. 209.
[28]
Noyes, P.H. Organization and Revolution: Working-Class Associations in the
German Revolutions of 1848-1849. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,
1966, p. 39.
[29] Wittke,
Carl. The Utopian Socialist: A Biography of Wilhelm Weitling,
Nineteenth-Century Reformer. Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University
Press, 1950, p. 55.
Comments
Post a Comment