Their relations to communism are not quite easy to determine. Marr himself sometimes expresses disapproval of the system. He says, "Communism is the expression of impotence of will. The communists lack confidence in themselves. They suffer under social oppression, and look around for consolation instead of seeking for weapons to emancipate themselves with. It is only a world-weariness desiring illusion as the condition of its life." He says the belief in the absolute dependence of man on matter is the shortest and most pregnant definition of communism, and that it starts from the principle that man is a slave and incapable of emancipating himself. But, on the other hand, he complains that the members of "Young Germany" did not sufficiently appreciate the social question, being disgusted with the fanaticism of the communists. By the communists, he here means the followers of Weitling and Albrecht, who were at that time creating a party movement in Switzerland. The prophet Albrecht, as he is called, was simply a crazy mystic with proclivities to sedition which brought him at length to prison for six years, and which took there an eschatological turn from his having, it is said, nothing to read but the Bible, so that on his release he went about prophesying that Jehovah had prepared a way in the desert, which was Switzerland, for bringing into Europe a reign of peace, in which people should hold all things in common and enjoy complete sensuous happiness, sitting under their common vine and fig-tree, with neither king nor priest to make them any more afraid. Weitling was not quite so unimportant, but the attention he excited at the time is certainly not justified by any of the writings he has left us. He was a tailor from Magdeburg, who was above his work, believing himself to be a poet and a man of letters, condemned by hard fate and iniquitous social arrangements to a dull and cruel lot. Having gone to Paris when socialism was the rage there, he eagerly embraced that new gospel, and went to Switzerland to carry its message of hope to his own German countrymen. There he forsook the needle altogether, and lived as the paid apostle of the dignity of manual labour, for which he had himself little mind. His ideas are crude, confused, and arbitrary. His ideal of society was a community of labourers, with no State, no Church, no individual property, no distinction of rank or position, no nationality, no fatherland. All were to have equal rights and duties, and each was to be put in a position to develop his capacity and gratify his bents as far as possible. He was moved more by the desire for abstract equality than German socialists of the humanist or contemporary type, for they do not build on the justice of a more equal distribution of wealth so much as on the necessity of the possession of property for the free development of the human personality. He is entirely German, however, in his idea of the government of the new society. It was to be governed by the three greatest philosophers of the age, assisted by a board of trade, a board of health, and a board of education. In Switzerland he founded, to promote his views, a secret society, the "Alliance of the Just," which had branches in most of the Swiss towns. Its members were chiefly Germans from Germany, for very few of the communists in Switzerland were born Swiss, and according to Marr, who was present at some of their meetings, they were three-fourths of them tailors. "I felt," says Marr, "when I entered one of these clubs, that I was with the mother of tailors. The tailor sitting and chatting at his work is always extreme in his opinions. Tailor and communist are synonymous terms." It was to some of the leaders of this alliance that Weitling unfolded his wild scheme of a proletariat raid, according to which an army of 20,000 brigands was to be raised among the proletariat of the large towns, to go with torch and sword into all the countries of Europe, and terrify the _bourgeoisie_ into a recognition of universal community of goods. It is only fair to add that his proposal met with no favour. Letters were found in his possession, and subsequently published in Bluntschli's official report, which show that some of Weitling's correspondents regarded his scheme with horror, and others treated it with ridicule. One of them said it was trying to found the kingdom of heaven with the furies of hell.