Part 3 (1/2)

[24] _Autobiography._

[25] _The Force of Circ.u.mstances_, a poem, by John Garwood, Birmingham, 1808.

[26] Quoted by Engels, _Socialism, Utopian and Scientific_, page 22 (English edition, 1892).

[27] Quoted by H. M. Hyndman, _The Economics of Socialism_, page 150.

[28] _The New Harmony Communities_, by George Browning Lockwood, page 71.

[29] Quoted by Lockwood, _The New Harmony Communities_, pages 71-72.

[30] Owen presided at the first organized Trade Union Congress in England.

[31] For the history of these and other Utopian Socialist schemes, the reader is referred to Professor Ely's _French and German Socialism_ (1883); Kirkup's _History of Socialism_ (1900); and Hillquit's _History of Socialism in the United States_ (1903).

[32] The Encyclopaedists.

[33] Engels, _Socialism, Utopian and Scientific_, pages 6-7.

[34] Engels, _Socialism, Utopian and Scientific_, page 15.

[35] _Idem._

[36] _Idem_, page 18.

[37] _Autobiography._

[38] _Idem._

[39] See, for instance, _The Revolution in Mind and Practice_, by Robert Owen, pages 21-22.

[40] _Essay on Robert Owen._

[41] Gerald Ma.s.sey.

CHAPTER III

THE ”COMMUNIST MANIFESTO” AND THE SCIENTIFIC SPIRIT

I

The _Communist Manifesto_ has been called the birth-cry of the modern scientific Socialist movement. When it was written, at the end of 1847, little remained of those great movements which in the early part of the century had inspired millions with high hopes of social regeneration and rekindled the beacon fires of faith in the world. The Saint-Simonians had, as an organized body, disappeared; the Fourierists were a dwindling sect, discouraged by the failure of the one great trial of their system, the famous Brook Farm experiment, in the United States; the Owenite movement had never recovered from the failures of the experiments at New Harmony and elsewhere, and had lost much of its ident.i.ty through the multiplicity of interests embraced in Owen's later propaganda. Chartism and Trade Unionism on the one hand, and the Cooperative Societies on the other, had, between them, absorbed most of the vital elements of the Owenite movement.

There was a mult.i.tude of what Engels calls ”social quacks,” but the really great social movements, Owenism in England, and Fourierism in France, were utterly demoralized and rapidly dwindling away. One thing only served to keep the flame of hope alive--”the crude, rough-hewn, purely instinctive sort of Communism” of the workers. This Communism of the working cla.s.s differed very essentially from the Socialism of Fourier and Owen. It was Utopian, being based, like all Utopian movements, upon abstract ideas. It differed from Fourierism and Owenism, however, in that instead of a universal appeal based upon Brotherhood, Justice, Order, and Economy, its appeal was, primarily, to the laborer.

Its basis was the crude cla.s.s doctrine of ”the rights of Labor.” The laborer was appealed to as one suffering from oppression and injustice.

It was, therefore, distinctly a cla.s.s movement, and its cla.s.s-consciousness was sufficiently developed to keep its leaders from wasting their lives in abortive appeals to the master cla.s.s. The leading exponents of this Communism of the workers were Wilhelm Weitling, in Germany, and etienne Cabet, in France.

Weitling was a man of the people. He was born in Magdeburg, Germany, in 1808, the illegitimate child of a humble woman and her soldier lover. He became a tailor, and, as was the custom in Germany at that time, traveled extensively during his apprentices.h.i.+p. In 1838 his first important work, ”The World As It Is, and As It Might Be,” appeared, published in Paris by a secret revolutionary society consisting of German workingmen of the ”Young Germany” movement. In this work Weitling first expounded at length his communistic theories. It is claimed[42]

that his conversion to Communism was the result of the chance placing of a Fourierist paper upon the table of a Berlin coffeehouse, by Albert Brisbane, the brilliant friend and disciple of Fourier, his first exponent in the English language. This may well be true, for, as we shall see, Weitling's views are mainly based upon those of the great French Utopist. In 1842 Weitling published his best-known work, the book upon which his literary fame chiefly rests, ”The Guaranties of Harmony and Freedom.” This work at once attracted wide attention, and gave Weitling a foremost place among the writers of the time in the affections of the educated workers. It was an elaboration of the theories contained in his earlier book. Morris Hillquit[43] thus describes Weitling's philosophy and method:--

”In his social philosophy, Weitling may be said to have been the connecting link between primitive and modern Socialism. In the main, he is still a Utopian, and his writings betray the unmistakable influence of the early French Socialists. In common with all Utopians, he bases his philosophy exclusively upon moral grounds. Misery and poverty are to him but the results of human malice, and his cry is for 'eternal justice' and for the 'absolute liberty and equality of all mankind.' In his criticism of the existing order, he leans closely on Fourier, from whom he also borrowed the division of labor into three cla.s.ses of the Necessary, Useful, and Attractive, and the plan of organization of 'attractive industry.'

”His ideal of the future state of society reminds us of the Saint-Simonian government of scientists. The administration of affairs of the entire globe is to be in the hands of the three greatest authorities on 'philosophical medicine,' physics, and mechanics, who are to be reenforced by a number of subordinate committees. His state of the future is a highly centralized government, and is described by the author with the customary details. Where Weitling, to some extent, approaches the conception of modern Socialism, is in his recognition of cla.s.s distinctions between employer and employee. This distinction never amounted to a conscious indors.e.m.e.nt of the modern Socialist doctrine of the 'cla.s.s struggle,' but his views on the antagonism between the 'poor'