54 THE UTOPIAN COMMUNISTviewed communism as an international movement that could not
be confined within narrow national boundaries. Yet he feared a
mere "barracks state" and therefore desired to substitute a form
of administration that would regulate, but not command, and to
establish a regime in which the wise and the good would rule.^29
The Garantieen passed through several editions. The third,
issued in Hamburg in 1849, contained minor variations, additions,
and omissions. The greatest expansion appeared in the chapters
about democracy and the Kommerzstunden, and in connection
with a discussion of the proper kind of propaganda for a proposed
League of Liberation (Befreiungsbund). These changes can be
detected easily, but they make no substantial difference in the
nature and content of the work. The preface to the third edition
is interesting, for in it the author reviewed his associations with the
many workers he had known and reflected on how long his faith
and strength would sustain him. He noted progress among the
workers and he was especially pleased with the great multiplica
tion of books in which the learned spoke to and for the worker.
He believed that communism was spreading "like a flow of lava"
into many lands and he thought he noted a decline in national and
craft antagonisms, as men began to envisage a truly universal goal.
The book eventually was translated into Swedish, Norwegian,
and French. Christian Essellen, who later published the Atlantis
in the United States, recommended it as a powerful proselyting
document. Emil Girardin referred to it favorably in the Paris La
Br esse, and the Belgian Le Peuple advertised the French transla
tion as the work of "the most celebrated and popular of the Ger
man Socialists." Feuerbach read the book and hailed the author as
"a prophet of his class." Even Marx approved. Letters from other
wise unknown workers, in Hamburg, Liege, and far-off Brazil,
were addressed to the "German Rousseau" and compared Weit¬
ling with Spinoza.
In the preface to the third edition, Weitling reprinted extracts
(^29) See Joho, Wilhelm Weitling, 57, 61; and Handwörterbuch der Staatswissen-
schaften (Jena, 1894), VI, 668-71.