THE PRINCIPLE OF HOPE

Page 575
Proletarian castle in the air from the Vormärz: Weitling
Shortly before people wake up, they usually have the most colourful dreams. Weitling, one of the last purely utopian thinkers, gave not the richest but probably the most
ardent and warmest picture of a new age. He was a proletarian by birth, and this fact alone already distinguishes him from the other world­improvers treated here.
Proudhon was also of plebeian origin of course, but he soon worked his way up into the petit bourgeoisie and spoke from its standpoint. Proudhon, the owner of a
printing works, spoke from the standpoint of his credit problems, the travelling journeyman Weitling spoke from the standpoint of proletarian misery and of the dawning
awareness of his class. Accordingly the tone of pity is also absent here which more aristocratic utopians so often show towards those who are very poor; in Weitling
bitterness and hope come from his own suffering. Weitling, as Franz Mehring says, ‘threw down the barrier which separated the utopians of the west from the working
class’; that is his historical contribution. Weitling did not of course become the head and leader of the German working class, this was only just beginning to develop in
the Germany of the Vormärz. But there was a contact here, even an identity, of a man from the disinherited class with its then existing clarity about itself. Accordingly,
Weitling presents both a penetratingly genuine and a backward aspect; his pathos is related to that of another early proletarian spokesman, that of Babeuf. Weitling is
the earliest proletarian voice in Germany, Babeuf one of the earliest in France, and he was certainly the first person after the stifling of the French Revolution to
represent those demands for real equality out of which the bourgeois had cheated the citoyen. So there are connections, both of purity and primitiveness, between the
head of the ‘Égalitaires’ and Weitling. The early proletarian manifesto of 1795 issued by the ‘Égalitaires’ is unjustly half forgotten; Weitling also shares their emotions
(one might say: their confused far­sightedness and radicalism). Take a few sentences from Babeuf's manifesto on this subject: ‘The French Revolution is only the
forerunner of a much greater, much more serious revolution, which will be the last. No individual ownership of the soil any more, the soil belongs to nobody, we
demand, we want the common enjoyment of the fruits of the earth, the fruits belong to all. Away with the outrageous distinctions between rich and poor, between rulers
and the ruled. The moment has come to form a republic of equals,