IF the famous “Declaration of the Rights of Man” – the manifesto of the French Revolution – heralded the advent of what Eric Hobsbawm aptly called “The Age of Revolution” (the period between 1789 and 1848), the culminating point of that era was marked by the appearance of the Manifesto. Both these documents were historical milestones of great revolutionary significance, and the progression from the former’s grand idea of “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity” to the latter’s clarion call of “Working Men of the World, Unite!” represented a great leap forward in the history of human consciousness and the ever-ongoing march towards a better society.

However, the French Revolution, or the age of bourgeois revolutions as a whole,had not totally eliminated pre-capitalist relations and traditions either in economic base or in ideological-political superstructure. Germany for example was yet to experience a bourgeois revolution and when that took place soon after the publication of the Manifesto (as it had correctly predicted) it did not lead to a proletarian revolution (as the Manifesto had expected) but revealed a thoroughly conservative/counterrevolutionary character. But it was mainly Germany and, next to it, continental nations like France, Italy, Poland and the Netherlands that the Communist League (the organisation that issued the Manifesto) was focused on – not England, capitalistically the most advanced nation at the time, which would later provide the base for Marx’s Capital. In these countries, besides working class movement, various other struggles – of serfs against masters, peasants against landlords, common people including the bourgeoisie against the feudal aristocracy and so on – were quite significant. The Manifesto therefore attached much importance to unity of communists with democratic forces emerging from and leading those progressive struggles.

The “Age of Revolution” was, naturally, also one of counterrevolutionary repression. A good number of revolutionaries (individually and in groups) who had been exiled, or fled, from Germany and other countries, began to interact and regroup mainly in London and Paris from 1830s onwards. Thus in 1833 the “Society of Exiles” was founded by German revolutionaries in Paris. Following a split, those under the influence of the French anarchist Blanqui formed the “League of the Just”. This organisation played a major role in the Paris uprising of 1839, which was ruthlessly crushed, where- upon some of them, including Karl Schapper, migrated to London. There they founded in 1840 an organisation named, largely as a cover to avoid police harassment, “Workers’ Education Society”.

Another leader of the League, Wilhelm Weitling, fled to Switzerland. There he published a book that called for revolution based mainly on the lumpen proletariat. Jailed and then sent back to Germany, he migrated to London in 1844. The arrival of this energetic and highly influential anarchist leader encouraged the émigrés there, including Schapper, to found “The Society of the Democratic Friends of All Nations”.

Interactions between The League of Just on one hand and the Chartists (in England) and various other fighting forces in different countries were also going on, and so was the debate between various schools of socialism/communism. In the process, most members of the League began to appreciate the superiority of the scientific socialism, being developed by Marx and Engels, over various utopian ‘systems’. League leaders like Heinrich Bauer, Joseph Moll and Karl Schapper issued a circular in late 1846 proposing an international communist congress to set up a “strong party”. That congress was held in London in June 1847. Marx, then in Brussels, could not attend but gave detailed advice to Wilhelm Wolf, the delegate from that city; Engels attended as a delegate from Paris.

The congress adopted the new name “Communist League” and adopted, as the basis of its programme, the “Communist Confession of Faith (or Credo)” drafted by Engels in the form of a revolutionary catechism – the form in which workers’ societies were then wont to formulate their programmes. As proposed by Marx and Engels, the congress replaced the utopian socialist motto “All Men Are Brothers” by the class-conscious rallying cry: “Working Men of the World, Unite!” Whereas the old slogan obfuscated the real situation and sowed the illusion that with sufficient propaganda, capitalists and landlords could be turned into brothers of workers and peasants, the new one pointed to the specific political task at hand – that workers must unite on a worldwide scale for class struggle, for the forcible overthrow of the old social order and the construction of a new society. This was a tremendous advance indeed.

Shortly after the Congress, a district committee of the Communist League was founded in Brussels under the leadership of Marx. For all practical purposes it began to act as the leading ideological centre, although the Central Committee was based in London. Marx and Engels felt that the illegal and relatively narrow organisational structure of the League – which was imposed on it by the absolutist states in Europe – should be surrounded with a network of open workers’ societies. They soon established the German Workers’ Society in Brussels and took an active part in founding the Brussels Democratic Association. Marx’s lectures in the Workers’ Society were later published as Wage Labour and Capital and he was elected one of the two vice-chairmen of the Democratic Association. The Association also did a good job in building a broad alliance of democratic forces in different countries.

Engels’ Principles of Communism, a revised and enlarged version of the Communist Confession of Faith, was regarded as an outline programme of the League. However, very soon Engels himself felt it necessary to “drop the catechism form and call the thing Communist Manifesto.” (Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Selected Correspondence, p 45). Marx readily agreed and that was what the second congress of the Communist League, held in London in November-December 1847, decided to bring out.

The League already included among its members leading Chartists and the congress was attended by delegates from most European countries including England. Marx fought vigorously against various erroneous ideas and, ably supported by Engels, secured a majority for his proposals. On a motion moved by Marx and Engels, the congress resolved that in its external relations the League should take an open stand as a communist party and entrusted Marx and Engels (as recorded in the Preface to the German Edition of 1872) with the task of drafting its Manifesto.