; the Owenite
movement had never recovered from the failures of the experiments at New
Harmony and elsewhere, and had lost much of its identity through the
multiplicity of interests embraced in Owen's later propaganda. Chartism
and Trade Unionism on the one hand, and the Cooeperative Societies on the
other, had, between them, absorbed most of the vital elements of the
Owenite movement.

There was a multitude of what Engels calls "social quacks," but the
really great social movements, Owenism in England, and Fourierism in
France, were utterly demoralized and rapidly dwindling away. One thing
only served to keep the flame of hope alive--"the crude, rough-hewn,
purely instinctive sort of Communism" of the workers. This Communism of
the working class differed very essentially from the Socialism of
Fourier and Owen. It was Utopian, being based, like all Utopian
movements, upon abstract ideas. It differed from Fourierism and Owenism,
however, in that instead of a universal appeal based upon Brotherhood,
Justice, Order, and Economy, its appeal was, primarily, to the laborer.
Its basis was the crude class doctrine of "the rights of Labor." The
laborer was appealed to as one suffering from oppression and injustice.
It was, therefore, distinctly a class movement, and its
class-consciousness was sufficiently developed to keep its leaders from
wasting their lives in abortive appeals to the master class. The leading
exponents of this Communism of the workers were Wilhelm Weitling, in
Germany, and Etienne Cabet, in France.

Weitling was a man of the people. He was born in Magdeburg, Germany, in
1808, the illegitimate child of a humble woman and her soldier lover. He
became a tailor, and, as was the custom in Germany at that time,
traveled extensively during his apprenticeship. In 1838 his first
important work, "The World As It Is, and As It Might Be," appeared,
published in Paris by a secret revolutionary society consisting of
German workingmen of the "Young Germany" movement. In this work Weitling
first expounded at length his communistic theories. It is claimed[42]
that his conversion to Communism was the result of the chance placing of
a Fourierist paper upon the table of a Berlin coffeehouse, by Albert
Brisbane, the brilliant friend and disciple of Fourier, his first
exponent in the English language. This may well be true, for, as we
shall see, Weitling's views are mainly based upon those of the great
French Utopist. In 1842 We