50 THE UTOPIAN COMMUNISTwhy the world was out of joint. His descriptions of the sufferings
of the poor, in contrast with the happy lot of the rich, must have
moved many of his readers to fury. They are not without their
appeal to the reader of today. Weitling wrote with the rage and
fire of the craftsman, the artisan, and the petit bourgeois who were
beginning to disintegrate under the impact of large-scale industry
and were struggling for deliverance from forces that were de
pressing them into the proletariat. The author was convinced that
the battle was between a religion of brotherly love and the poverty
and suffering which were the results of artificial class distinc
tions.^27 Though Weitling sensed the beginnings of the class strug
gle, he belongs among the Utopian moralists, rather than with the
advocates of a class-conscious proletariat. His interpretation of
history was simple. It was largely the story of the robbery and ex
ploitation of honest men by crooks and thieves; and it recorded a
steady decline from that happy golden age which Rousseau had
described as the state of nature when the earth yielded abundantly,
when there was no "mine" and "thine," and when all the children
of God lived in harmony with the ordinances of Nature.
When Weitling wrote, he used the vivid word-images of the
artist or the prophet, certainly not the rationalism and objectivity
of the scholar. Though he displayed an amazing knowledge of
many things, he wrote as a simple child of the people and a ro
mantic, who sought to arouse and inspire. When he referred to
God, he put the word in quotation marks; but he had a deep faith
in man's intelligence, and in his capacity to build a harmonious
world order in which all would be brothers working toward the
common goal of happiness and virtue.^28
Weitling attributed man's happiness in the "golden age" to the
balance and harmony which had existed at that time between
man's desires and his capacities to produce and to enjoy. Con
tentment had resulted from this harmonious balance. "The total
(^27) See also Friedrich Muckle, Die grossen Sozialisten (Leipzig, 1920), 77-82.
(^28) See also Charlotte von Reichenau, "Wilhelm Weitling," Schmoller's Jahr¬
buch fur Gesetzgebung, Verwaltung und Volkswirtschaft im Deutschen Reich
(Munich, 1925), XLIX, 293-328.