222 THE UTOPIAN COMMUNIST
Thus personal liberty would be assured or, better still, redistrib
uted to ensure all men an equal amount, though perhaps some
what less than they had enjoyed under existing inequitable condi
tions. He was sure that the new paper money (Tauschmittel)
would be an important step forward toward "the realization of
Christian principles."
Weitling regarded the Tauschbank as a panacea for all the
economic ills of society. He expected it to revolutionize the social
order so completely as to make political campaigns and elections
superfluous, and he was sure that his plan could be inaugurated by
a relatively small group and once begun could attract the support
of millions. "We Germans can do more for social reform in one
year and with a thousand members, by means of the bank of ex
change," he wrote enthusiastically in 1851, "than we could ac
complish in a thousand years with a million votes."
This "time theory" of value was, of course, not an invention of
Weitling. As already suggested, Josiah Warren's "time store" in
Cincinnati operated on the basis of selling at labor cost, plus four
per cent for shrinkage, freight, rent, and the service of waiting on
customers. In Robert Owen's model settlement of New Harmony,
Indiana, such a store was in operation for a short time, and Weitling's proposals were similar to Owen's Equitable Bank of Labor
Exchange. Proudhon, to cite still another experimenter with ex
change, advocated the organization of industry for the exchange
of commodities on the basis of voluntary, self-governing associa
tions of producers; free competition was allowed among the vari
ous associations under the general supervision of two national fed
erations of consumers and producers. The connection of all these
proposals with modern syndicalism, which seeks to replace the
centralized sovereign state by a "cluster of sovereignties" based
on units of production, is obvious.Proudhon, like Weitling, regarded democracy as the most un
stable of governments, an absurd and impossible way of govern
ing, a "worn out childishness" that could only impede prog
ress. Both men believed significant advances could come only