Weitlingism was a utopian communist political current which was characterized by egalitarianism and conspiracy that emerged in the early period of German workers’ movement. A school which arose in the 1830s and 1840s, was named after its chief representative, Weitling whose representative works include: Humanity: How it is and How it Should Be (1838) and Guarantees of Harmony and Freedom (1842). Marx highly appraised Weitling’s Guarantees of Harmony and Freedom: “Where can the bourgeoisie, its philosophers and literati included, boast of work dealing with the political emancipation, comparable with Weitling’s Guarantees of Harmony and Freedom? If one compares the dry and timid mediocrity of German political literature with this fiery and brilliant debut of the German workers, if one compares these halting but gigantic first steps of the proletariat with the mincing gait of the full-grown German bourgeoisie, one cannot help predicting that the proletarian Cinderella will develop into a prodigy of strength.” It was for this reason that Marx and Engels commented on his book Guarantees of Harmony and Freedom: “The German proletariat is the theorist of the European proletariat, just as the British proletariat is its national economist and the French proletariat is its politician.” In 1885, Engels once again affirmed the evaluation of Weitling by Marx…
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