8

THE  SOCIALISM  OF  TO-DAY.

will  thus  be  made  universal.  No  person  should  enjoy  superfluities, ­
  as  long  as  anybody  lacks  necessaries  ;  for  the  right  of
property  in  objects  of  luxury  can  have  no  foundation  until  each
citizen  has  his  share  in  the  necessaries  of  life.  Farmers  and
labourers  should  form  partnerships,  so  as  to  produce  the  most
with  the  least  possible  exertion.”  The  essential  ideas  of  the
Socialism  of  to-day,  as  regards  both  the  notion  of  right  and
its  realization,  are  contained  in  embryo  in  the  foregoing  lines,
which  were  manifestly  inspired  by  Rousseau  and  the  eighteenth
century  philosophers.
After  Fichte  must  be  mentioned  the  tailor  Weitling,  who
was  deeply  imbued  with  the  ideas  of  Fourrier  and  Cabet.  Fox
some  years  he  endeavoured  to  promulgate  them  throughout
Switzerland  and  Southern  Germany.  In  1835  he  published
his  first  work,  entitled  “  Humanity  as  it  is,  and  as  it  should
be.”  *  In  1841,  at  Vevey,  he  issued  a  German  paper  in  which
he  urged  the  working  men  to  establish  a  democratic  republic.
Finally,  in  a  book  published  at  Zurich  (1842),  entitled  “The
Guarantees  and  Harmonies  of  Liberty,”  j"  he  preached  the
Communism  of  Babeuf  and  Rousseau.  “Absolute  equality,”
he  asserts,  “  can  be  established  only  by  the  total  destruction  of
the  existing  State  organization.  It  can  admit  of  administration
only,  and  not  of  government.  Property,  when  first  instituted,
was  endurable  ;  it  did  not  then  take  away  from  anybody  the
right  and  the  means  of  becoming  a  landowner,  for  there  was  no
money,  while  there  was  vacant  land  in  abundance.  From  the
moment,  however,  that  every  free  man  could  no  longer  appropriate ­
  a  part  of  the  soil,  property  has  ceased  to  be  a  right.  It
has  become  a  crying  evil,  and  the  cause  of  the  misery  and
destitution  of  the  masses.  I  bid  you  open  your  prisons  and
say  to  those  shut  up  there,  ‘  You  know  no  more  than  we  what
property  means  ;  let  us  combine  our  efforts  to  overturn  these
walls,  these  hedges,  these  barriers,  in  order  that  the  cause  of
our  enmity  may  disappear,  and  that  we  may  live  together  as
brothers.’  ”  This  is,  in  the  main,  the  language  of  Rousseau  on
the  origin  of  inequality.
*  Die  Menscheit,  wie  sie  ist  und  sein  solle.
t  Garantien  und  Harmonien  der  Freiheit.