THE PRINCIPLE OF HOPE

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Saint­Simon; he is a bosom companion, friendly by nature, but for the first time in ages again, and for the last time for ages, he knows how to read the Bible as it was
read by a Baptist. From the aspect of an undeveloped proletariat, of course, what emerged was more the image of a society of ordinary people than a classless one; in
fact, not even the society of ordinary people could be realized in this way. But ‘the great family league of mankind’, made possible by a ‘co­operative business order’,
is nevertheless more than the Biedermeier style in utopia. It has the grace and purity of this style, but it does not lack crude greatness, thorough aspiration and within it a
problem which radical movements were to disregard for a century. It is the problem of the carpenter's son and socialism, or Christ's homecoming to those that labour
and are heavy laden. Weitling sought a red trade union of Jesus the proletarian, he intended a socialism which does not even guard against being devotional. Weitling's
dream, with much bitterness and purity, glanced into a Promised Land at a time when Marx and Engels had just begun to discover and to open up the real entrances to
it.
A conclusion: weakness and status of the rational utopias
It comes as a constant surprise that great hatred can still remain trusting. Many of the visionary thinkers who have appeared so far found themselves in this situation,
they were ultimately conciliatory. The same deadly enemies of exploitation who have just portrayed its merciless horror turn to the exploiters and suggest that they put
an end to themselves. With their hearts the utopians condemned injustice, and wished for justice, with their minds they sought — as abstract utopians — to construct
the better world, and in their hearts again they hoped to kindle the will for this world. A few friendly, and also snobbish exceptions, a few deserters from ‘fawning
commerce’ were made the rule; the appeal, for all that, was to justice and reason. Only around 1848 did the experience open up more generally which Herwegh
expressed as follows: ‘Only the lightning which strikes them can illuminate our masters.’ But just as the employers were to be persuaded into their opposite, so the rest
of reality, society as a whole, was to be turned into its opposite, immediately, as if by abruptly breaking a spell. Although a few utopians, such as Fourier and Saint­
Simon, explored historical mediations and premonitions of existing tendencies, even here