52 THE UTOPIAN COMMUNIST
no meaning for the propertyless classes. "The worker has no
country, for he has no property." Yet men were marched off to
kill, "like marionettes," not as creatures made in the "image of
God," and war became simple murder. Weitling ridiculed the
silly desire for ribbons and decorations that marked the soldier and
the statesman and described the brutal barbarisms of the drill
sergeant as he transformed free men into automatons. Because of
the unequal distribution of labor, men had divided into workers
and drones. The drones wanted booty; wars resulted, and, in their
turn, led to human slavery. Weitling did not neglect an opportu
nity to excoriate the great republic across the Atlantic which
boasted of its liberty and held the black man in chains. At the same
time, he fiercely denounced a priesthood that preached happiness
in the sky to those too poor ever to achieve it on earth.
It was the author's contention that the diversification of agri
culture and the development of new desires had led to the inven
tion of new implements, a new division of labor, and thus to com
merce and trade. Because values were fixed by the law of supply
and demand, men drove hard bargains, strove for monopoly, and
eventually resorted to bloodshed.
In 1842, Weitling had translated Considérant's criticisms of
trade into German, and now he incorporated much of this mate
rial in his Garantieen. Like Cabet, he regarded money as the curse
and sin of mankind. He referred to property as "stolen" and to
"the exchange of stolen goods" as "commerce." With the multi
plication of products, trade had become more complicated, and
mankind had invented money as a medium of exchange. Thus the
basis had been provided for a new kind of slavery, for thenceforth
men had no value except in terms of what they could buy or sell,
and money not only produced inequality but was the means of
sustaining it. Instead of stamping coins with the likenesses of
crowned heads, the writer suggested that it would have been more
appropriate to use symbols for labor, such as the hammer, anvil,
saw, and chisel; or such words as "worth one loaf of bread," or
"... one pound of meat," or "... [so many hours] of labor";