WEITLING, Wilhelm.

Garantien der Harmonie und Freiheit ...

Vevey, for the author, 1842. 8vo, pp. xii, [2], 264; small wormhole to the gutter of the final eight leaves, another small hole to the last leaf with loss of one letter only; lower corner of a few leaves creased and some spotting and light foxing, but still a very good copy in contemporary marbled boards, lightly rubbed. Rare first edition, published in Vevey (German: Vivis), near Lausanne. Wilhelm Weitling (1808–1871) was the most important figure in pre-Marxian German communism and its first proletarian leader. This is his major work, in which Marx later saw ‘the jejune and feeble mediocrity of the German bourgeoisie [contrasted] with the incomparable and brilliant début of the German working man’ (quoted in Palgrave). ‘The nineteenth century’s first two German Socialists of any originality or influence were Wilhelm Weitling and Moses Hess. Both agitated years ahead of Marx and Engels, and both struggled with Marx and Engels for control of the German left. Weitling was born in Magdeburg, in 1808, the illegitimate son of a French officer and a German serving girl. A tailor by trade, he spent his early years wandering through France and Germany as an itinerant artisan. He agitated for socialism among German workers in Paris during the later 1830s, and among German artisans and students in Switzerland during the early 1840s. In 1843, the Swiss government arrested and imprisoned him because of his political activities. His sentence was only a few months, but he was banished from Switzerland, and he became more or less politically inactive. He wandered through Germany and then migrated to England, where he was given a hero’s reception by the émigré German Socialists there. Weitling’s socialist thought was laid down in three works, Die Menschheit, wie sie ist und sein soll [Paris, 1838], a small pamphlet written in France during the 1830s, Garantien der Harmonie und Freiheit, a book-length expansion of the pamphlet’s ideas, and Das Evangelium eines armen Sünders [Bern, 1845]. The first two works expressed Weitling’s theory of and plan for socialism. The third combined his political and economic beliefs with his political philosophy … ‘To Weitling, God was not only the author of all creation, but also of freedom and liberty … Anything that interfered with freedom, even the family relationship, was immoral. Property in itself was not an evil, but when population grew to the point that there was not enough productive wealth for everyone, then property became an instrument by which one person could oppress another. He felt that a natural law of progress guaranteed the eventual coming of socialism. He pictured socialism as a utopia without war, crime, or any human conflicts. He hoped for a peaceful transition to socialism by means of democratic processes, but in case the propertied elements should oppose the will of the people, he advocated revolutionary measures. He called for a group of devoted followers, willing to devote their whole lives to preliminary agitational and organizational work’ (Elliot Erikson, Karl Marx and the Communist Manifesto).Before falling out with Weitling, Marx was most generous in referring to him: ‘When drawing conclusions about Weitling’s brilliant book [i.e. Garantien …], one must admit that the German proletariat is the theoretician of the European proletariat, as the English proletariat is the economist, and the French the politician.’ Engels wrote that Weitling was ‘the only German socialist who has actually done anything.’Menger, col. 392 (erroneously sub Weiss); Stammhammer I, 261; this edition not in Kress (cf. C.5983 for the third); not in Einaudi or Goldsmiths’; OCLC locates only three copies in North America (Harvard, Maryland, and New York Public Library).

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