Frederick Engels



                 ON THE HISTORY OF THE COMMUNIST LEAGUE





                                 London

                             October 8, 1885





     With the sentence of the Cologne Communists in 1852, the curtain

falls on the first period of the independent German workers' movement. 

Today this period is almost forgotten.  Yet it lasted from 1836 to 1852

and, with the spread of German workers abroad, the movement developed in

almost all civilized countries.  Nor is that all.  The present-day

international workers' movement is in substance a direct continuation of

the German workers' movement of that time, which was the _first

international workers' movement_ of all time, and which brought forth

many of those who took the leading role in he International Working

Men's Association.  And the theoretical principles that the Communist

League had inscribed on its banner in the _Communist Manifesto_ of 1847

constitute today the strongest international bond of the entire

proletarian movement of both Europe and America. 



     Up to now there has been only one source for a coherent history of

that movement.  This is the so-called Black Book, _The Communist

Conspiracies of the Nineteenth Century_, by Wermuth and Stieber, Erline,

two parts, 1853 and 1854.  This crude compilation, which bristles with

deliberate falsifications, fabricated by two of the most contemptible

police scoundrels of our century, today still serves as the final source

for all non-communist writings about that period. 



     What I am able to give here is only a sketch, and even this only in

so far as the League itself is concerned; only what is absolutely

necessary to understand the _Revelations_.  I hope that some day I shall

have the opportunity to work up the rich material collected by Marx and

myself on the history of that glorious period of the youth of the

international workers' movement. 



                                     *



     In 1836 the most extreme, chiefly proletarian elements of the

secret democratic-republican Outlaws' League, which was founded by

German refugees in Paris in 1834, split off and formed the new secret

League of the Just.  The parent League, in which only sleepy-headed

elements a la Jakobus Venedey were left, soon fell asleep altogether;

when in 1840 the police scented out a few sections in Germany, it was

hardly even a shadow of its former self.  The new League, on the

contrary, developed comparatively rapidly.  Originally it was a German

outlier of the French worker-Communism, reminiscent of Babouvism and

taking shape in Paris at about this time; community of goods was

demanded as the necessary consequence of "equality".  The aims were

those of the Parisian secret societies of the time: half propaganda

association, half conspiracy, Paris, however, being always regarded as

the central point of revolutionary action, although the preparation of

occassional _putsches_ in Germany was by no means excluded.  But as

Paris remained the decisive battleground, the League was at that time

actually not much more than the German branch of the French secret

societies, especially the Societe des saisons led by Blanqui and Barbes,

with which a close connections was maintained.  The French went into

action on May 12, 1839; the sections of the League marched with them and

thus were involved in the common defeat. 



     Among the Germans arrested were Karl Schapper and Heinrich Bauer;

Louis Philippe's government contented itself with deporting them after a

fairly long imprisonment.  Both went to London.  Schapper came from

Weilburg in Nassau and while a student of forestry at Giessen in 1832

was a member of the conspiracy organized by Georg Buchner; he took part

in the storming of the Frankfort constable station on April 3, 1833,

escaped abroad and in February 1834 joined Mazzini's march on Savoy.  Of

gigantic stature, resolute and energetic, always ready to risk civil

existence and life, he was a model of the professional revolutionist

that played an important role in the thirties.  In spite of a certain

sluggishness of thought, he was by no means incapable of profound

theoretical understanding, as is proved by his development from

"demagogue" to Communist, and he held then all the more rigidly to what

he had once come to recognize.  Precisely on that account his

revolutionary passion sometimes got the better of understanding, but he

always afterwards realized his mistake and openly acknowledged it.  He

was fully a man and what he did for the founding of the German workers'

movement will not be forgotten. 



     Heinrich Bauer, from Franconia, was a shoemaker; a lively, alert,

witty little fellow, whose little body, however, also contained much

shrewdness and determination. 



     Arrived in London, where Schapper, who had been a compositor in

Paris, now tried to earn his living as a teacher of languages, they both

set to work gathering up the broken threads and made London the centre

of the League.  They were joined over here, if not already earlier in

Paris, by Joseph Moll, a watchmaker from Cologne, a medium-sized

Hercules -- how often did Schapper and he victoriously defend the

entrance to a hall against hundreds of onrushing opponents! -- a man who

was at least the equal of his two comrades in energy and determination,

and intellectually superior to both of them.  Not only was he a born

diplomat, as the success of his numerous trips on various mission

proved; he was also more capable of theoretical insight.  I came to know

all three of them in London in 1843.  There were the first revolutionary

proletarians whom I met, and however far apart our views were at that

time -- for I still owned, as against their narrow-minded equalitarian

Communism [by equalitarian Communism I understand, as stated, only that

Communism which bases itself exclusively or predominantly on the demand

for equality], a goodly does of just as narrow-minded philosophical

arrogance -- I shall never forget the deep impression that these three

real men made upon me, who was then still only wanting to become a man. 



     In London, as in a lesser degree in Switzerland, they had the

benefit of freedoms of association and assembly.  As early as February

7, 1840, the legally functioning German Workers' Educational

Association, which still exists, was founded.  This Association served

the League as a recruiting ground for new members, and since, as always,

the Communists were the most active and intelligent members of the

Association, it was a matter of course that its leadership lay entirely

in the hands of the League.  The League soon had several communities,

or, as they were then still called, "lodges", in London.  The same

obvious tactics were followed in Switzerland and elsewhere.  Where

workers' associations could be founded, they were utilized in like

manner.  Where this was forbidden by law, one joined choral societies,

athletic clubs, and the like.  Connections were to a large extent

maintained by members who were continually travelling back and forth;

they also, when required, served as emissaries.  In both respects the

League obtained lively support through the wisdom of the governments

which, by resorting to deportation, converted any objectionable worker

-- and in nine cases our of ten he was a member of the League -- into an

emissary. 



     The extent to which the restored League was spread was

considerable.  Notably in Switzerland, Weitling, August Becker (a highly

gifted man who, however, like so many Germans, came to grief because of

innate instability of character) and others created a strong

organization more or less pledged to Weitling's communist system.  This

is not the place to criticize the Communism of Weitling.  But as regards

its significance as the first independent theoretical stirring of the

German proletariat, I still today subscribe to Marx's words in the Paris

_Vorwarts_ of 1844:



     "Where could the (German) bourgeoisie -- including its philosophers

     and learned scribes -- point to a work relating to the emancipation

     of the bourgeoisie -- its political emancipation -- comparable to

     Weitlings' _Guarantees of Harmony and Freedom_?  If one compares 

     the drab mealy-mouthed mediocrity of German political literature

     with this immeasurable and brilliant debut of the German workers,

     if one compares these gigantic children's shoes of the proletariat

     with the dwarf proportions of the worn-out political shows of the

     bourgeoisie, one must prophesy an athlete's figure for this

     Cinderella."



This athlete's figure confronts us today, although still far from being

fully grown. 



     Numerous sections existed also in Germany; in the nature of things

they were of a transient character, but those coming into existence more

than made up for those passing away.  Only after seven years, at the end

of 1846, did the police discover traces of the League in Berlin (Mentel)

and Magdeburg (Beck), without being in a position to follow them

further. 



     In Paris, Weitling, who was still there in 1840, likewise gathered

the scattered elements together again before he left for Switzerland. 



     The tailors formed the central force of the League.  German tailors

were everywhere: in Switzerland, in London, in Paris.  In the last-named

city, German was so much the prevailing tongue in this trade that I was

acquainted there in 1846 with a Norwegian tailor who had travelled

directly by sea from Trondhjem to France and in the space of eighteen

months had learned hardly a word of French but had acquired an excellent

knowledge of German.  Two of the Paris communities in 1847 consisted

predominantly of tailors, one of cabinetmakers. 



     After the centre of gravity had shifted from Paris to London, a new

feature grew conspicuous: from being German, the League gradually became

_international_.  In the workers' society there were to be found,

besides German and Swiss, also members of all those nationalities for

whom German served as the chief means of communication with foreigners,

notably, therefore, Scandinavians, Dutch, Hungarians, Czechs, Southern

Slavs, and also Russians and Alsatians.  In 1847 the regular frequenters

included a British grenadier of the Guards in uniform.  The society soon

called itself the _Communist_ Workers' Educational Association, and the

membership cards bore the inscription "All Men Are Brothers", in at

least twenty languages, even if not without mistakes here and there. 

Like the open Association, so also the secret League soon took on a more

international character; at first in a restricted sense, practically

through the varied nationalities of its members, theoretically through

the realization that any revolution to be victorious must be a European

one.  One did not go any further as yet; but the foundations were there. 



     Close connections were maintained with the French revolutionists

through t he London refugees, comrades-in-arms of May 12, 1839. 

Similarly with the more radical Poles.  The official Polish emigres, as

also Mazzini, were, of course, opponents rather than allies.  The

English Chartists, on account of the specific English character of their

movement, were disregarded as not revolutionary.  The London leaders of

the League came in touch with them only later, through me. 



     In other ways, too, the character of the League had altered with

events.  Although Paris was still -- and at that time quite rightly --

looked upon as the mother city of the revolution, one had nevertheless

emerged from the state of dependence on the Paris conspirators.  The

spread of the League raised its self-consciousness.  It was felt that

roots were being struck more and more in the german working class and

that these German workers were historically called upon to be the

standard-bearers of the workers of the North and East of Europe.  In

Weitling was to be found a communist theoretician who could be boldly

placed at the side of his contemporary French rivals.  Finally, the

experience of May 12th had taught us that for the time being there was

nothing to be gained by attempts at _putsches_.  And if one still

continued to explain every event as a sign of the approaching storm, if

one still preserved intact the old, semi-conspiratorial rules, that was

mainly the fault of the old revolutionary defiance, which had already

begun to collide with the sounder views that were gaining headway. 



     However, the social doctrine of the League, indefinite as it was,

contained a very great defect, but one that had its roots in the

conditions themselves.  The members, in so far as they were workers at

all, were almost exclusively artisans.  Even in the big metropolises,

the man who exploited them was usually only a small master.  The

exploitation of tailoring on a large scale, what is now called the

manufacture of ready-made clothes, by the conversion of handicraft

tailoring into a domestic industry working for a big capitalist, was at

that time even in London only just making it appearance.  On the one

hand, the exploiters of these artisans was a small master; on the other

hand, they all hoped ultimately to become small masters themselves.  In

addition, a mass of inherited guild notions still clung to the German

artisan at that time.  The greatest honor is due to them, in that they,

who were themselves not yet full proletarians but only an appendage of

the petty bourgeoisie, an appendage which was passing into the modern

proletariat and which did not yet stand in direct opposition to the

bourgeoisie, that is, to big capital -- in that these artisans were

capable of instinctively anticipating their future development and of

constituting themselves, even if not yet with full consciousness, the

party of the proletariat.  But it was also inevitable that their old

handicraft prejudices should be a stumbling block to them at every

moment, whenever it was a question of criticizing existing society in

detail, that is, of investigating economic facts.  And I do not believe

there was a single man in the whole League at that time who had ever

read a book on political economy.  But that mattered little; for the

time being "equality", "brotherhood" and "justice" helped them to

surmount every theoretical obstacle. 



     Meanwhile a second, essentially different Communism was developed

alongside that of the League and of Weitling.  While I was in

Manchester, it was tangibly brought home to me that the economic facts,

which have so far played no role or only a contemptible one in the

writing of history, are, at least in the modern world, a decisive

historical force; that they form the basis of the origination of the

present-day class antagonisms; that these class antagonisms, in the

countries where they have become fully developed, thanks to large-scale

industry, hence especially in England, are in their turn the basis of

the formation of political parties and of party struggles, and thus of

all political history.  Marx had not only arrived at the same view, but

had already, in the _German-French Annuals_ (1844), generalized it to

the effect that, speaking generally, it is not the state which

conditions and regulates the state, and, consequently, that policy and

its history are to be explained from the economic relations and their

development, and not vice versa.  When I visited Marx in Paris in the

summer of 1844, our complete agreement in all theoretical fields became

evident and our joint work dates from that time.  When, in the spring of

1845, we met again in Brussels, Marx had already fully developed his

materialist theory of history in its main features form the

above-mentioned basis and we now applied ourselves to the detailed

elaboration of the newly-won mode of outlook in the most varied

directions. 



     This discovery, which revolutionized the science of history and, as

we have seen, is essentially the work of Marx -- a discovery in which I

can claim for myself only a very insignificant share -- was, however, of

immediate importance for the contemporary workers' movement.  Communism

among the French and Germans, Chartism among the English, now no longer

appeared as something accidental which could just as well not have

occurred.  These movements now presented themselves as a movement of the

modern oppressed class, the proletariat, as the more or less developed

forms of its historically necessary struggle against the ruling class,

the bourgeoisie; as forms of the class struggle, but distinguished from

all earlier class struggles by this one thing, that the present-day

oppressed class the proletariat, cannot achieve its emancipation without

at the same time emancipating society as a whole from division into

classes and, therefore, from class struggles.  And Communism now no

longer meant the concoction, by means of the imagination, of an ideal

society as perfect as possible, but insight into the nature, the

conditions and the consequent general aims of the struggle wages by the

proletariat. 



     Now, we were by no means of the opinion that the new scientific

results should be confided in large tomes exclusively to the "learned"

world.  Quite the contrary.  We were both of us already deeply involved

in the political movement, and possessed a certain following in the

educated world, especially of Western Germany, and abundant contact with

the organized proletariat.  It was our duty to provide a scientific

foundation for our view, but it was equally important for us to win over

the European and in the first place the German proletariat to our

conviction.  As soon as we had become clear in our own minds, we set

about the task.  We founded a German workers' society in Brussels and

took over the _Deutsche Brusseler Zeitung_, which served us as an organ

up to the February Revolution.  We kept in touch with the revolutionary

section of the English Chartists through Julian Harney, the editor of

the central organ of the movement, _The Northern Star_, to which I was a

contributor.  We entered likewise into a sort of cartel with the

Brussels democrats (Marx was vice-president of the Democratic Society)

and with the French social-democrats of the _Reforme_, which I furnished

with news of the English and German movements.  In short, our

connections with the radical and proletarian organizations and press

organs were quite what one could wish. 



     Our relations with the League of the Just were as follows: The

existence of the League was, of course, known to us; in 1843 Schapper

had suggested that I join it, which I at that time naturally refused to

do.  But we not only kept up our continuous correspondence with the

Londoners but remained on still closer terms with Dr Ewerbeck, then the

leader of the Paris communities.  Without going into the League's

internal affairs, we learnt of every important happening.  On the other

hand, we influenced the theoretical views of the most important members

of the League by word of mouth, by letter and through the press.  For

this purpose we also made us of various lithographed circulars, which we

dispatched to our friends and correspondents throughout the world on

particular occasions, when it was a question of the internal affairs of

the Communist Party in process of formation.  In these, the League

itself sometimes came to be dealt with.  Thus, a young Westphalian

student, Hermann Kriege, who went to America, came forward there as an

emissary of the League and associated himself with the crazy Harro

Harring for the purpose of using the League to turn South America upside

down.  He founded a paper in which, in the name of the League, he

preached an extravagant Communism of love dreaming, based on "love" and

overflowing with love.  Against this we let fly with a circular that did

not fail of its effect.  Kriege vanished from the League scene. 



     Later, Weitling came to Brussels.  But he was no loner the naive

young journeyman-tailor who, astonished at his own talents, was trying

to clarify in his own mind just what a communist society would look

like.  He was now the great man, persecuted by the environs on account

of his superiority, who scented rivals, secret enemies and traps

everywhere -- the prophet, driven from country to country, who carried a

recipe for the realization of heaven on earth ready-made in his pocket,

and who was was possessed with the idea that everybody intended to steal

it from him.  He had already fallen out with the members of the League

in London; and in Brussels, where Marx and his wife welcomed him with

almost superhuman forbearance, he also could not get along with anyone. 

So he soon afterwards went to America to try out his role of prophet

there. 



     All these circumstance contributed to the quiet revolution that was

taking place in the League, and especially among the leaders in London. 

The inadequacy of the previous conception of Communism, both the simple

French equalitarian Communism and that of Weitling, became more and more

clear to them.  The tracing of Communism back to primitive Christianity

introduced by Weitling -- no matter how brilliant certain passages to be

found in his _Gospel of Poor Sinners_ -- had resulted in delivering the

movement in Switzerland to a large extent into the hands, first of fools

like Albrecht, and then of exploiting fake prophets like Kuhlmann.  The

"true Socialism" dealt in by a few literary writers -- a translation of

French socialist phraseology into corrupt Hegelian German, and

sentimental love dreaming (see the section on German of "True" Socialism

in the _Communist Manifesto__ -- that Kriege and the study of the

corresponding literature introduced in the League was found soon to

disgust the old revolutionaries of the league, if only because of its

slobbering feebleness.  As against the untenability of the previous

theoretical views, and as against the practical aberrations resulting

therefrom, it was realized more and more in London that Marx and I were

right in our new theory.  This understanding was undoubtedly promoted by

the fact that among the London leaders there were now two men who were

considerably superior to those previously mentioned in capacity for

theoretical knowledge: the miniature painter Karl Pfander from Heilbronn

and the tailor Georg Eccarius from Thuringia. 



[Engels footnote: Pfander died about eight years ago in London.  he was

a man of peculiarly fine intelligence, witty, ironical and dialectical. 

Eccarius, as we know, was later for many years Secretary of the General

Council of the International Working Men's Association, in the General

Council of which the following old League members were to be found,

among others: Eccarius, Pfander, Lessner, Lochner, Marx and myself. 

Eccarius subsequently devoted himself exclusively to the English trade

union movement.]



     It suffices to say that in the spring of 1847 Moll visited Marx in

Brussels and immediately afterwards me in Paris, and invited us

repeatedly, in the name of his comrades, to enter the League.  He

reported that they were as much convinced of the general correctness of

our mode of outlook as of the necessity of freeing the League from the

old conspiratorial traditions and forms.  Should we enter, we would be

given an opportunity of expounding our critical Communism before a

congress of the League in a manifesto, which would then be published as

the manifesto of the League; we would likewise be able to contribute our

quota towards the replacement of the obsolete League organization by one

in keeping with the new times and aims. 



     We entertained no doubt that an organization within the German

working class was necessary, if only for propaganda purposes, and that

this organization, in so far as it would not be merely local in

character, could only be a secret one, even outside Germany.  Now, there

already existed exactly such an organization in the shape of the League. 

What we previously objected to in this League was now relinquished as

erroneous by the representatives of the League themselves; we were even

invited to co-operate in the work of reorganization.  Could we say no?

Certainly not.  Therefore, we entered the League; Marx founded a League

community in Brussels from among our close friends, while I attended the

three Paris communities. 



     In the summer of 1847, the first league Congress took place in

London, at which W.  Wolff represented the Brussels and I the Paris

communities.  At this congress the reorganization of the League was

carried through first of all.  Whatever remained of the old mystical

names dating back to the conspiratorial period was now abolished; the

League now consisted of communities, circles, leading circles, a Central

Committee and a Congress, and henceforth called itself the "Communist

League". 



     "The aim of the League is the overthrow of the bourgeoisie, the

     rule of the proletariat, the abolition of the old, bourgeois

     society based on class antagonisms and the foundation of a new

     society without classes and without private property"



-- thus ran the first article.  The organization itself was thoroughly

democratic, with elective and always removable boards.  This alone

barred all hankering after conspiracy, which requires dictatorship, and

the League was converted -- for ordinary peace times at least -- into a

pure propaganda society.  These new Rules were submitted to the

communities for discussion -- so democratic was the procedure now

followed -- then once again debated at the Second Congress and finally

adopted by the latter on December 8, 1847.  They are to be found

reprinted in Wermuth and Stieber, vol.I, p.239, Appendix X. 



     The Second Congress took place during the end of November and

beginning of December of the same year.  Marx also attended this time

and expounded the new theory in a fairly long debate -- the congress

lasted at least ten days.  All contradiction and doubt were finally set

at rest, the new basic principles were unanimously adopted, and Marx and

I were commissioned to draw up the Manifesto.  This was done immediately

afterwards.  A few weeks before the February Revolution it was sent to

London to be printed.  Since then it has travelled round the world, has

been translated into almost all languages and today still serves in

numerous countries as a guide for the proletarian movement.  In place of

the old League motto, "All Men Are Brothers", appeared the new battle

cry, "Working Men of All Countries, Unite!" which openly proclaimed the

international character of the struggle.  Seventeen years later this

battle cry resounded throughout the world as the watchword of the

International Working Men's Association, and today the militant

proletariat of all countries has inscribed it in its banner. 



     The February Revolution broke out.  The London Central Committee

functioning hitherto immediately transferred its powers to the Brussels

leading circle.  But this decision came at a time when an actual state

of siege already existed in Brussels, and the Germans in particular

could no longer assemble anywhere.  We were all of us just on the point

of going to Paris, and so the new Central Committee decided likewise to

dissolve, to hand over all its powers to Marx and to empower him

immediately to constitute a new Central Committee in Paris.  Hardly had

the five persons who adopted this decision (March 3, 1848) separated,

before police forced their way into Marx's house, arrested him and

compelled him to leave for France the following day, which was just

where he was wanting to go. 



     In Paris we all soon came together again.  There the following

document was drawn up and signed by all the members of the new Central

Committee.  It was distributed throughout Germany and many a one can

still learn something from it even today:





     DEMANDS OF THE COMMUNIST PARTY IN GERMANY



     1.  The whole of Germany shall be declared a single indivisible

         republic. 



     3.  Representatives of the people shall be paid sot hat workers

         also can sit in the parliament of the German people.



     4.  Universal arming of the people.



     7.  The estates of the princes and other feudal estates, all mines,

         pits, etc., shall be transformed into state property.  On these

         estates, agriculture is to be conducted on a very large scale

         and with the most modern scientific means for the benefit of

         all society. 



     8.  Mortgages on peasant holdings shall be declared state property;

         interest on such mortgages shall be paid by the peasants to the

         state. 



     9.  In the districts where tenant farming is developed, land rent

         or farming dues shall be paid to the state as a tax.



     11. All means of transport: railway, canals, steamships, roads,

         post, etc., shall be taken over by the state.  They are to be

         converted into state property and put at the disposal of the

         non-possessing class free of charge. 



     14. Limitation of the right of inheritance.



     15. Introduction of a steeply graded progressive taxation and

         abolition of taxes on consumer goods.



     16. Establishment of national workshops.  The state shall guarantee

         a living to all workers and provide for those unable to work.



     17. Universal free elementary education.



         It is in the interest of the German proletariat, of the petite

     Bourgeoisie and peasantry, to work with all possible energy to put

     the above measures through.  For only by their education can the

     millions in Germany, who up to now have been exploited by a small

     number of people and whom it will be attempted to keep in further

     subjection, get their rights and the power that are their due as

     the producers of all wealth. 



                  The Committee: Karl Marx, Karl Schapper,

                                 H. Bauer, F. Engels, J. Moll, W. Wolff





     At that time the craze for revolutionary legions prevailed ni

Paris.  Spaniards, Italians, Belgians, Dutch, Poles and Germans flocked

together in crowds to liberate their respective fatherlands.  The German

legion was led by Herwegh, Bornsted, Bornstein.  Since immediately after

the revolution all foreign workers not only lost their jobs but in

addition were harassed by the public, the influx into these legions was

very great.  the new government saw in them a means of getting rid of

foreign workers and granted them _l'etape du soldat_, that is, quarters

along their line of march and a marching allowance of 50 centimes per

day up to the frontier, whereafter the eloquent Lamartine, the Foreign

Minister who was so readily moved to tears, quickly found an opportunity

of betraying them to their respective governments. 



     We opposed this playing with revolution in the most decisive

fashion.  To carry an invasion, which was to import the revolution

forcibly from outside, into the midst of the ferment then going on in

Germany, meant to undermine the revolution in Germany itself, to

strengthen the governments and to deliver the legionnaires -- Lamartine

guaranteed for that -- defenceless into the hands of the German troops. 

When subsequently the revolution was victorious in Vienna and Berlin,

the legion became all the more purposeless; but once begun, the game was

continued. 



     We founded a German communist club, in which we advised the workers

to keep away from the legion and to return instead to their homes singly

and work there for the movement.  Our old friend Flocon, who had a seat

in the Provisional Government, obtained for the workers sent by us the

same travel facilities as had been granted to the legionnaires.  In this

way we returned three or four hundred workers to Germany, including the

great majority of the League members. 



     As could easily be foreseen, the League proved to be much too weak

a lever as against the popular mass movement that had now broken out. 

Three-quarters of the League members who had previously lived abroad had

changed their domicile by returning to their homeland; their previous

communities were thus to a great extent dissolved and they lost all

contact with the League.  One part, the more ambitious among them, did

not even try to resume this contact, but each one began a small separate

movement on his own account in his own locality.  Finally, the

conditions in each separate petty state, each province and each town

were so different that the League would have been incapable of giving

more than the most general directives; such directives were, however,

much better disseminated through the press.  In short, from the moment

when the causes which had made the secret League necessary ceased to

exist, the secret League as such ceased to mean anything.  But this

could least of all surprise the persons who had just stripped this same

secret League of the last vestige of its conspiratorial character. 



     That, however, the League had been an excellent school for

revolutionary activity was now demonstrated.  On the Rhine, where the

_Neue Rheinische Zeitung_ provided a firm centre, in Nassau, in Rhenish

Hesse, etc., everywhere members of the League stood at the head of the

extreme democratic movement.  The same was the case in Hamburg.  In

South germany the predominance of petty-bourgeois democracy stood in the

way.  In Breslau, Wilhelm Wolff was active with great success until the

summer of 1848; in addition he received a Silesian mandate as an

alternate representative in the Frankfort parliament.  Finally, the

compositor Stephan Born, who had worked in Brussels and Paris as an

active member of the League, founded a Workers' Brotherhood in Berlin

which became fairly widespread and existed until 1850.  Born, a very

talented young man, who, however, was a bit too much in a hurry to

become a political figure, "fraternized" with the most miscellaneous

ragtag and bobtail in order to get a crowd together, and was not at all

the man who could bring unity into the conflicting tendencies, light

into the chaos.  Consequently, in the official publications of the

association the views represented in the _Communist Manifesto_ were

mingled hodge-podge with guild recollections and guild aspirations,

fragments of Louis Blanc and Proudhon, protectionism, etc.; in short,

they wanted to please everybody [allen alles sein].  In particular,

strikes, trade unions and producers' co-operatives were set going and it

was forgotten that above all it was a question of first conquering, by

means of political victories, the field in which alone such things could

be realized on a lasting basis.  When, afterwards, the victories of the

reaction made the leaders of the Brotherhood realize the necessity of

taking a direct part in the revolutionary struggle, they were naturally

left in the lurch by the confused mass which they had grouped around

themselves.  Born took part in the Dresden uprising in May, 1849 and had

a lucky escape.  But, in contrast to the great political movement of the

proletariat, the Workers' Brotherhood proved to be a pure _Sonderbund_

[separate league], which to a large extent existed only on paper and

played such a subordinate role that the reaction did not find it

necessary to suppress it until 1850, and its surviving branches until

several years later.  Born, whose real name was Buttermilch, has not

become a big political figure but a petty Swiss professor, who no longer

translates Marx into guild language but the meek Renan into his own

fulsome German. 



     With June 13, 1849, the defeat of the May insurrections in Germany

and the suppression of the Hungarian revolution by the Russians, a great

period of the 1848 Revolution came to a close.  But the victory of the

reaction was as yet by no means final.  A reorganziation of the

scattered revolutionary forces was required, and hence also of the

League.  The situation again forbade, as in 1848, any open organization

of the proletariat; hence one had to organize again in secret. 



     In the autumn of 1849, most of the member of the previous central

committees and congresses gathered again in London.  The only ones still

missing were Schapper, who was jailed in Wiesbaden but came after his

acquittal, in the spring of 1850, and Moll, who, after he had

accomplished a series of most dangerous missions and agitational

journeys -- in the end he recruited mounted gunners for the Palatinate

artillery right in the midst of the Prussian army in the Rhine Province

-- joined the Besancon workers' company of Willich's corps and was

killed by a shot in the head during the encounter at the Murg in front

of the Rotenfels Bridge.  On the other hand, Willich now entered upon

the scene.  Willich was one of those sentimental Communists so common in

Western Germany since 1845, who on that account alone was instinctively,

furtively antagonistic to our critical tendency.  More than that, he was

entirely the prophet, convinced of his personal mission as the

predestined liberator of the German proletariat and as such a direct

claimant as much to political as to military dictatorship.  Thus, to the

primitive Christian Communism previously preached by Weitling was added

a kind of communist Islam.  However, the propaganda of this new religion

was for the first time being restricted to the refugee barracks under

Willich's command. 



     Hence, the League was organized afresh; the Address of march 1850

was issued and Heinrich bauer sent as an emissary to Germany.  The

Address, composed by Marx and myself, is still of interest today,

because petite-bourgeois democracy is even now the party which must

certainly be the first to come to power in Germany as the savior of

society from the communist workers on the occassion of the next European

upheaval now soon due (the European revolutions, 1815, 1830, 1848-52,

1870, have occurred at intervals of 15 to 18 years in our century). 

Much of what is said there is, therefore, still applicable today. 

Heinrich bauer's mission was crowned with complete success.  The trusty

little shoemaker was a born diplomat.  He brought the former members of

the League, who had partly become laggards and partly were acting on

their own account, back into the active organization, and particularly

also the then leaders of the Workers' Brotherhood.  The League began to

play the dominant role in the workers', peasants' and athletic

associations to a far greater extent than before 1848, so that the next

quarterly address to the communities, in June 1850, could already report

that the student Schurz from Bonn (later on American ex-minister), who

was touring Germany in the interest of petty-bourgeois democracy, "had

found all fit forces already in the hands of the League".  The League

was undoutbedly the only revolutionary organization that had any

significance in Germany. 



     But what purpose this organization should serve depended very

substantially on whether the prospects of a renewed upsurge of the

revolution were realized.  And in the course of the year 1850 this

became more and more improbable, indeed impossible.  The industrial

crisis of 1847, which had paved the way for the Revolution of 1848, had

been overcome; a new, unprecedented period of industrial prosperity had

set in; whoever had eyes to see and used them must have clearly realized

that the revolutionary storm of 1848 was gradually spending itself. 



          "With this general prosperity, in which the productive forces

     of bourgeois society develop as luxuriantly as is at all possible

     within bourgeois relationships, _there can be no talk of a real

     revolution_.  Such a revolution is only possible in the periods

     when both these factors, the modern productive forces and the

     bourgeois productive forms, come in collision with each other. 

     The various quarrels in which the representatives of the industrial

     factions of the continental party of order now indulge and mutually

     compromise themselves, far from providing the occassion for new

     revolutions are, on the contrary, possible only because the basis

     of the relationships is momentarily so secure and, what the

     reaction does not know, so _bourgeois_.  From it all attempts of

     the reaction to hold up bourgeois development _will rebound just as

     certainly as all moral indignation and all enthusiastic

     proclamations of the democrats_". 



Thus Marx and I wrote in the "Revue of May to October 1850" in the _Neue

Rheinische Zeitung_, _Politisch-okonomische Revue_, Nos.V and VI,

Hamburg, 1850, p.153. 



     This cool estimation of the situation, however, was regarded as

heresy among many persons, at a time when Ledru-Rollin, Louis Blanc,

Mazzini, Kossuth and, among the lesser German lights, Ruge, Kinkel, Gogg

and the rest of them crowded in London to form provisional governments

of the future not only for their respective fatherlands but for the

whole of Europe, and when the only still still necessary was to obtain

the requisite money from America as a loan for the revolution to realize

at a moment's notice the European revolution and the various republics

which went with it was a matter of course.  Can anyone be surprised that

a man like Willich was taken in by this, that Schapper, acting on his

old revolutionary impulse, also allowed himself to be fooled, and that

the majority of the London workers, to a large extent refugees

themselves, followed them into the camp of the bourgeois-democratic

artificers of revolution? Suffice it to say that the reserve maintained

by us was not to the mind of these people; one was to enter into the

game of making revolutions.  We most decidedly refused to do so.  A

split ensued; more about this is to be read in the _Revelations_.  Then

came the arrest of Nothjung, followed by that of Haupt, in Hamburg.  The

latter turned traitor by divulging the names of the Cologne Central

Committee and being slated as the chief witness in the trial; but his

relatives had no desires to be thus disgraced and bundled him off to Rio

de Janerio, where he later established himself as a businessman and in

recognition of his services was appointed first Prussian and then German

Consul General.  He is now again in Europe. 



[Engels footnote: Schapper in London at the end of the sixties.  Willich

took part in the American Civil War with distinction; he became

Brigadier-General and was shot in the chest during the battle of

Murfreesboro (Tennessee) but recovered and died about ten years ago in

America.  Of the other persons mentioned above, I will only remark that

Heinrich Bauer was lost track of in Australia, and that Weitling and

Ewerbeck died in America.]



     For a better understanding of the _Revelations_, I give the list of

the Cologne accused:



     (1)  P. G. Roser, cigarmaker;

     (2)  Heinrich Burgers, who later died a progressive deputy to the

          Landtag; 

     (3)  Peter Nothjung, tailor, who died a few years ago a

          photographer in Breslau; 

     (4)  W. J. Reiff;

     (5)  Dr. Hermann Becker, now chief burgomaster of Cologne and

          member of the Upper House;

     (6)  Dr. Roland Daniels, physician, who died a few years after the

          trial as a result of tuberculosis contracted in prison;

     (7)  Karl Otto, chemist;

     (8)  Dr. Abraham Jacoby, now physician in New York;

     (9)  Dr. I. J. Klein, now physician and town councillor in Cologne; 

     (10) Ferdinand Freiligrath, who, however, was at that time already

          in London;

     (11) I. L. Ehrhard, clerk;

     (12) Friedrich Lessner, tailor, now in London.



After a public trail before a jury lasting from October 4 to November

12, 1852, the following were sentenced for attempted high treason:

Roser, Burgers and Nothjung to six, Reiff, Otto and Becker to five, and

Lessner to three years' confinement in a fortress; Daniels, Klein,

Jacoby and Ehrhard were acquitted. 



     With the Cologne trial the first period of the German communist

workers' movement comes to an end.  Immediately after the sentence we

dissolved our League; a few months later the Willich-Schapper separate

league was also laid to eternal rest. 



                                     *



     A whole generation lies between then and now.  At that time Germany

was a country of handicraft and of domestic industry based on hand

labor; now it is a big industrial country still undergoing continual

industrial transformation.  At that time one had to seek out one by one

the workers who had an understanding of their position as workers and of

their historico-economic antagonism to capital, because this antagonism

itself was only just beginning to develop.  Today the entire German

proletariat has to be placed under exceptional laws, merely in order to

slow down a little the process of its development to full consciousness

of its position as an oppressed class.  At that time the few persons

whose minds had penetrated to the realization of the historical role of

the proletariat had to forgather in secret, to assemble clandestinely in

small communities of 3 to 20 persons.  Today the German proletariat no

longer needs any official organization, either public or secret.  The

simple self-evident interconnection of like-minded class comrades

suffices, without any rules, boards, resolutions or other tangible

forms, to shake the whole German Empire to its foundations.  Bismarck is

the arbiter of Europe beyond the frontiers of Germany, but within them

there grows daily more threatening the athletic figure of the German

proletariat that Marx foresaw already in 1844, the giant for whom the

cramped imperial edifice designed to fit the philistine is even now

becoming inadequate and whose mighty stature and broad shoulder are

growing until the moment comes when by merely rising from his seat he

will shatter the whole structure of the imperial constitution into

fragments.  And still more.  The international movement of the European

and American proletariat has become so much strengthened that not merely

its first narrow form -- the secret League -- but even its second,

infinitely wider form -- the open International Working Men's

Association -- has become a fetter for it, and that the simple feeling

of solidarity based on the understanding of the identity of class

position suffices to create and to hold together one and the same great

party of the proletariat among the workers of all countries and tongues. 

the doctrines which the League represented from 1847 to 1852, and which

at that time could be treated by the wise philistines with a shrug of

the shoulders as the hallucinations of utter madcaps, as the secret

doctrine of a few scattered sectarians, has now innumerable adherents in

all civilized countries of the world, among those condemned to the

Siberian mines as much as among the gold diggers of California; and the

founder of this doctrine, the most hated, most slandered man of his

time, Karl Marx, was, when he died, the ever-sought-for and ever-willing

counsellor of the proletariat of both the old and the new world. 





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