The Making of the Manifesto* Rob Beamish Department of Sociology Queen's University Kingston, Ontario Canada * This paper is forthcoming in the Socialist Register, 1998 (The Communist Manifesto Now). _________________________________________________________________ Introduction The anonymous, 23 page, Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei was rushed off the presses in London in the latter part of February 1848 by the central committee of the Communist League but still arrived in Berlin, Cologne, Knigsberg and other parts of Prussia too late to play a major role in the revolutionary activities unfolding later the next month. Nevertheless, compact, cogent, and compelling in its imagery and rhetoric, the Communist Manifesto (as its title became after the 1872 Leipzig editi on), was destined to be the founding document of a longer- term revolution whose ultimate fate is, contrary to today s right-wing orthodoxy, by no means resolved. Surprisingly, Marx s and Engels published accounts of the Manifesto tend to obscure what they achieved in the pamphlet, above all because they ignore the important controversies and conflicts that led up to it. Thus, for example, in the preface to the 1872 German edition, Marx and Engels presented the contentious and, at times, confrontational history leading up to the writing of the Manifesto in the following manner. The Communist League, an international association of workers, which could of course be only a secret one, under the conditions obtaining at the time, commissioned us, the undersigned, at the Congress held in London in November, 1847, to write for publication a detailed theoretical and practical programme of the Party. Such was the origin of the following Manifesto, the manuscript of which traveled to London to be printed a few weeks before the February Revolution. While Marx s recollection included in Herr Vogt, and Engels longer 1885 account, are more informative, they too are still silent on a number of important issues related to the history of the Communist League and, more important, the historical, p olitical, and intellectual context within which the Manifesto was developed and written. In the Preface to the 1888 edition (which echos his preface statement to the 1883 edition), Engels wrote the following: The Manifesto being our joint production, I consider myself bound to state that the fundamental proposition which forms its nucleus belongs to Marx. That proposition is: That in every historical epoch, the prevailing mode of economic production a nd exchange, and the social organisation necessarily following from it, form the basis upon which is built up, and from which alone can be explained the political and intellectual history of that epoch; that consequently the whole history of mankind (sinc e the dissolution of primitive tribal society, holding land in common ownership) has been a history of class struggles, contests between exploiting and exploited, ruling and oppressed classes; that the history of these class struggles forms a series of ev olutions in which, nowadays, a stage has been reached where the exploited and oppressed class - the proletariat - cannot attain its emancipation from the sway of the exploiting and ruling class - the bourgeoisie - without, at the same time, and once and f or all emancipating society at large from all exploitation, oppression, class distinction and class struggles. To a certain extent Engels statement is true (although it tends somewhat to exaggerate the role that he himself played in actually writing the Manifesto), but it presents at least two problems. First, Engels statement reflects Marx s 1859 Prefa ce to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy more than it does the text of the Manifesto although there are certainly phrases and sections of the Manifesto that sound strikingly like the Preface (both highly compressed texts). Second, and more important, it directs the reader s attention to selected themes and issues in the Manifesto while ignoring others. The Manifesto is one of the high-water points in Marx s life because four crucial currents converged in its produc tion: (a) it was written on the basis of a fundamental resolution to the major epistemological and theoretical issues Marx had been struggling with since 1836; (b) it represents the victory of Marx s intellectual vision in the political arena - his triump h as the intellectual and inspirational leader of the Communist League (and hence also of his critique of other forms of socialism - Part III of the Manifesto); (c) Marx s astute use of rhetoric and imagery enhances the important subjective side of Marx s revolutionary perspective (class struggle involves class consciousness and the Manifesto was to provide workers with a deeper, conscious understanding of their reality, of their role in history, and to inspire them to take appropriate action given Marx s analysis of the situation); (d) Marx s relationship with Engels - Marx owed a major debt to Engels in reaching the intellectual stage he was at when he wrote the Manifesto, but there were also differences and the relationship between the Manifesto and En gels earlier Basic Principles of Communism needs to be better understood than it has tended to be in the past. Fortunately, by turning to Marx s and Engels correspondence, their writing projects from 1841 through to February 1848, and some later scholarly work, we can construct a more illuminating account that not only shows the theoretical, political, an d strategic debates, conflicts and, eventually, animosities out of which the Manifesto emerged, but also permits one to appreciate the full extent to which the form and content of the Manifesto are the result of intense intellectual and political battles fought by Marx, Engels, and their supporters as they tried to direct and lead the fledgling communist movement of the 1840s. The Manifesto was ultimately a collective effort of people who were trying to understand the prevailing social conditions so they could change them; to see this more precisely allows us to demystify and de-reify it as a source of eternal truths, and return it to its proper place in the annals of the struggle for socialism as one of many documents - a key one to be sure - construc ted within, and thus influenced by, a particular set of historical circumstances. Historical Background It was France, in general, and Paris in particular from which communist and socialist ideas were transmitted into Germany. In addition, because industrial workers constituted only a small portion of the population - and, as ex-artisans, they tend ed to long more for a nostalgic past than a socialist or communist future - the critique of capitalist social relations appealed more to members of the intellectual elite in Germany than to the industrial workers. As a result, the spread of ideas tended to take place through written exchanges in books, periodicals, newspapers, and circulars, and debate within associations and discussion groups, rather than emanating from the shop floor. For these reasons, it is not surprising that the Manifesto was commissioned and produced by an association - the Communist League - that had descended from the League of the Outlawed (Bund der Gechteten), comprised mainly of German artisans wh o had settled in Paris following an abortive uprising in Frankfurt in 1833. Inside the conspiratorial atmosphere existing in Paris during the late 1830s, a group with a more proletarian orientation broke away from the League of the Outlawed in 1836 to fo rm the League of the Just (Bund der Gerechten) which sought to free Germany from the yoke of abhorrent oppression, end the enslavement of humanity, and realize the fundamental rights of man. Although the new League s members shared certain basic idea s, they embraced a wide variety of socialist or communist beliefs and positions - Moses Hess, Wilhelm Weitling, Charles Fourier, Joseph-Pierre Proudhon, Auguste Blanqui, Etienne Cabet, Robert Owen, Ludwig Feuerbach, and the Left-Hegelians all had their ad herents and advocates - and there was considerable debate, tension and confrontation among members as the League tried to work out a unified outlook and programme. In 1838, for example, the League commissioned Weitling s Mankind As It Is and As It Ought To Be, which served as the League s first coherent theoretical statement and acted in the early years as a programme and a confession of faith, more or less as a Communist Manifesto . But the influence of the French communists such as Blanqui and his Socit des Saisons (1837-39) also exerted a strong, competing influence, while the French Utopian Socialists also continued to press their position. In the aftermath of a failed Blanquist uprising on May 12, 1839, many of the League s members were expel led from France - mostly to London - and any gains that had been made in the development of a uniform outlook were brought to a temporary close. Arriving in London, the majority of those who had belonged to the League of the Just in Paris now joined, along with numerous other German workers and artisans, the German Workers Educational Society, founded on February 7, 1840, while simultan eously reconstituting the League inside the Society in a semi-clandestine fashion. Carl Schapper, Heinrich Bauer, and Joseph Moll assumed the leadership of this London branch of the League, with Schapper looking after organization in London, Moll renew ing contacts with members in France, and Bauer establishing contacts with the Swiss members who had coalesced around the leadership of Weitling. The next few years were marked by intense debates over the Fourier-inspired ideas of Cabet, and the adoption and later rejection of Weitling s and Hermann Kriege s beliefs that the greatest deeds are accomplished by the emotions that move the masses. Equally significant were growing contacts with British trade unions, the Owenites, and the Chartists. Within the British left at that time there were two movements of particular note. One was the general appeal of the London Working Men s Association for increased international solidarity, which led William Lovett to found The Democratic Frien ds of all Nations under the slogan All Men are Brethren. But while Lovett was trying to draw the workers together through an appeal for international harmony, George Julian Harney, secretary to the republican and worker-oriented Democratic Associatio n, established a more radical group in 1846 - The Fraternal Democrats - which called to all oppressed classes of every land . . . to unite themselves for the triumph of their common cause. Divide and rule is the motto of the oppressor, Harney s group proclaimed; Unite yourselves for victory should be ours. Harney s Fraternal Democrats brought the left wing of the Chartists together with the revolutionary-oriented emigres from the continent (including the League of the Just) although it rem ained a very loose association of like-minded individuals and did not consolidate itself into a formal group. In view of its increased contact with Harney s and Lovett s groups, the German Workers Educational Society also adopted the slogan Alle Menschen sind Brder and placed central importance on the goal of emancipating the international proletariat . Equally important, thanks to the increasingly international orientation of the German Workers Educational Society, the Central Committee of the London-based branch of the League of the Just, operative within the Society, was able to eclipse the import ance of the groups in Paris, Switzerland, and Germany and assume the main leadership role for the League as a whole. Thus, between 1834 and 1846, the German communist movement had consolidated itself as an international organization, with its leadership in London, acting through the openly constituted German Educational Worker s Association and the smaller, semi -clandestine and more radical, League of the Just, and in association with the Democratic Friends of all Nations and Fraternal Democrats. Although the movement had originally been strongly influenced by the French revolutionary perspectives advocated by Blanqui and Barbs, as well as the imagery of Weitling, this had been tempered by contact with the British trade unions, the Owenites and the Chartists. By 1846, while the movement was still in search of a unified political and theoretical position on wh ich it could base its activities, it had made great strides in consolidating itself and making common cause with the rest of the international proletariat. It was at this point that the movement actively sought out Marx s inclusion in its membership. Marx s Development from 1836-1846 If the League of the Just underwent significant changes from 1834 to 1846, they pale in comparison to the transformation that Marx s ideas underwent in the same period. Switching from the University of Bonn to the University of Berlin in 1836, Ma rx took Eduard Gans course in jurisprudence, which led him to seriously address Gans liberal Hegelian world view and its implications. The result was the first major turn in Marx s intellectual life - an immersion into Hegel s philosophy and active inv olvement with the so-called Left-Hegelians, whose ideas were taken in a historical-materialist direction by Ludwig Feuerbach in The Essence of Christianity (and then more fully in his Provisional Theses for the Reform of Philosophy), and in another direct ion by Bruno Bauer and other members of the Doctors Club who focused on the phenomenological development of self-consciousness - a direction which ultimately led to the true socialism that Marx would reject and criticize vehemently in the mid-1840s. After receiving his doctoral degree from the University of Jena in April 1841, Marx worked with Bauer in Bonn to develop the Atheistic Archives, failed to get an anticipated university position, and was forced to return to Trier in December due to his father-in-law s grave illness. While in Trier, Marx began what would become a two-year association with Arnold Ruge when he submitted an article entitled Comments on the Latest Prussian Censorship Instruction for publication in Ruge s Deutsche Jah rbcher. In April 1842, Marx s intellectual orientation came to its second turning-point when he moved to Cologne and became involved with the city s liberal opposition movement and the Rheinische Zeitung. As the newspaper s editor, Marx found himself .. .in the embarrassing position of having to discuss what is known as material interests as well as being occupied with economic questions. In addition, as his journalistic involvement with concrete issues grew, Marx became increasingly disenchanted wit h the Left-Hegelians abstract ruminations about communism and atheism and formally broke from them in his article Herwegh s and Ruge s Relation to The Free . Before the year was over Marx also found himself dealing with the echo of French socialism a nd communism, slightly tinged by philosophy expressed by some contributors to the paper, forcing him to read, among other writings, Proudhon s Qu est ce que la proprit?, Thodore Dzamy s Calomnies et politique de M. Cabet, as well as Pierre Leroux and Considrent in his effort to thoroughly assess the communists position. By the end of 1842, the Prussian government had become increasingly apprehensive about the Rheinische Zeitung and, on January 21, 1843, scheduled the paper s closure for March 31 although Marx, ready to start up a new project with Ruge - the Deuts ch-Franzsische Jahrbcher - resigned as editor on March 18. Three further developments in Marx s life now followed closely upon one another. First, convinced that Germany would not permit the freedom of expression he required, Marx moved to Paris, wher e he came to know most of the leaders in the French workers movement, established contact with the Paris branch of the League of the Just, immersed himself in the French socialists and communists animated debates, and, most important, saw at firsthand the living and working conditions of the German immigrant workers in Paris as well as the spirit of solidarity that characterised their associations and meetings. Second, in early March 1843, Marx read Feuerbach s newly published Provisional Theses on the Reform of Philosophy and found in them a pivotal key to the genuine transcendence of Hegel s philosophy. Between March and August 1843, Marx used Feuer bach s work as his departure point for a thoroughgoing critique of paragraphs 261-313 of Hegel s Philosophy of Right. Third his work with Ruge on the Deutsch-Franzsische Jahrbcher brought him into contact with theoretical work - Engels Outlines of a C ritique of Political Economy, and Hess s work on the essence of money - that would lead him to draw together the insights he had derived from Feuerbach s critique of Hegelian philosophy, the material experiences of the French working class, and the materi al-economic questions he had first confronted at the Rheinische Zeitung. In the Introduction, to his Critique of Hegel s Philosophy of Right, Marx adopted the language of class struggle and identified the proletariat as the key agent in the creation of significant social change. Where then, Marx wrote in a text that was still aimed at a progressive, educated, philosophically-oriented German readership, is the positive possibility of a German emancipation? Answer: In the formation [Bildung] of a class with radical chains, a class of bourgeois society which is no class of bourgeois society, an estate which is the dissolution of all estates, a sphere which possesses a universal character by its univer sal suffering and claims no particular right because no particular wrong but wrong generally is perpetrated against it; which can no longer invoke an historical but only a human title; which does not stand in any one-sided opposition [Gegensatz] to the co nsequences but in an all-round opposition to the premises of the essence of the German state [Staatswesens]; a sphere, finally, which cannot emancipate itself without emancipating itself from all other spheres of society thereby emancipating all the other spheres of society, which, in a word, is the total sacrifice [vllig Verlust] of mankind, thus which can gain for itself only through the full recovery of mankind. This dissolution of society as a particular estate is the proletariat. Having reached this preliminary level of synthesis and identifying the crucial role of the proletariat in the project of human emancipation, Marx immersed himself in the study of political economy. Between April and August 1844, he assembled a dr aft of the results of that work - the so-called Paris Manuscripts - including a preface which indicated the scope of the undertaking he envisaged. In a plan formulated in similar terms in 1858, Marx proposed to move from his critique of political economy to produce separate critiques of the state, law, ethics, and civil life as well as a concluding pamphlet that would show their interconnection to political economy. While the Paris Manuscripts are a rich source of insight into Marx s ideas and their development, what is most significant in this particular context is the degree to which Marx, in a very short period of time, determined that a critical understan ding of the political economy of capitalist society was vitally important for the prospects of socialism. Indeed, by February 1, 1845, Marx was so confident about the importance of his Feuerbachian-Hegelian inspired critique of political economy and his ability to produce it that he signed a contract with Carl F. J. Leske to publish a two volume study - Kritik der Politik und National-konomie. Two further events of note must be added to this picture of Marx s intellectual development at this time. First, although Marx and Engels had had a rather cool encounter in November 1842, meeting again in Paris between August 28 and September 6, 1844, they found themselves in full agreement on a host of issues and positions. Second, on January 25, 1845, Marx was expelled from Paris and moved to Brussels. Not long after arriving in Brussels, stimulated perhaps by Max Stirner s Ego and His Own (i n which Marx and Engels are portrayed as communist disciples of Feuerbach), perhaps by word of Bauer s forthcoming reply to the Holy Family - Characteristics of Ludwig Feuerbach - and certainly by his own continued reflections on how to best present his critique of political economy to the public, Marx returned to a critical reflection upon Feuerbach s materialism. In March 1845, just before Engels also arrived in Brussels, Marx drafted his eleven Theses on Feuerbach which served as the basis for the full elaboration of their emerging historical and materialist position which Marx and Engels spent from September 1845 to April 1846 developing into a two volume study, The German Ideology. Marx and the League of the Just Marx s arrival in Brussels placed him in the centre of a strong socialist community - Moses Hess and Engels were his neighbours, while Hermann Kriege (a disciple of Weitling), Wilhelm Wolff, George Weerth and other socialists lived nearby. Electi ng to take advantage of the city s location in the middle of the Paris-London-Cologne triangle, its free atmosphere, and the presence of so many socialists with European contacts, Marx, Engels and a close friend, Philippe Gigot, founded a Communist Corre spondence Committee which would put European communists in touch with one another. While encountering some difficulty at the outset, Correspondence Committees were established in several European centres and began to exchange circulars. It was in this way that Marx, in the spring of 1846, first established contact with Schapper, Moll, and Bauer and the League of the Just in London. The relationship did not begin smoothly, however. At a March 1846 meeting of the Brussels Committee, Marx, in the presence of Weitling, launched into a stinging critique of the latter s Craft Workers Communism and of the German true socialis ts. According to Paul Annenkov, [Marx s] sarcastic speech boiled down to this: to rouse the population without giving them any firm, well-thought-out reasons for their activity would be simply to deceive them. ...To call to the workers without any strictly scientific ideas or constructive doctrine, especially in Germany, was equivalent to vain dishonest play at preaching which assumes an inspired prophet on the one side and on the other only gaping asses. In a similar fashion, Marx and the Brussels Correspondence Committee prepared and distributed a lithograph circular that denounced the communism of his socialist neighbour Kriege and his planned Phalanstery in America. On June 6,1846, in response to a letter in which Marx had invited the League of the Just to establish a Communist Correspondence Committee in London, he received a reply praising the idea of enhancing communication among communists and also indica ting that, like Marx, the London communists had rejected ideas of revolution through conspiracy or, la Weitling, through spiritual inspiration. On the other hand, the Londoners felt that Marx s vehement denunciations of both Weitling and Kriege were counter-productive; the goal of the League of the Just and the London Correspondence Committee, which they would found, was to encourage and facilitate the exchange of ideas, not destroy it. Eleven days later Schapper, Moll and Bauer wrote to Marx giving more details of their association and indicating where there was, and where there might not be, agreement with him. But the crux of their letter was the following: We believe that all these different orientations [to communism articulated above] must be expressed and that only through a communist congress, where all the orientations are represented in a cold-blooded and brotherly discussion, can unity be bro ught to our propaganda. ... If people from all the communist positions were sent, if intellectuals and workers from all lands met together, then there is no doubt that a lot of barriers, which still stand in the way, would fall. In this congress all of the different orientations and types of communism would be discussed peacefully and without bitterness and the truth would certainly come through and win the day. A letter from Harney to Marx three days later indicated that the Brussels Committee s correspondence with the London Committee had clarified the major misunderstandings that had existed and that they [had] received the adhesion of the London frie nds: Harney then added, of course after this I cannot hesitate to afford you every assistance in my power. Toward the end of January 1847 the tie was strengthened when Moll went to Brussels on behalf of the League of the Just to encourage Marx to join the League. Marx was attracted to the idea that he could play a significant role in a workers organization but he made his membership conditional upon the removal from the League s statues of anything that encouraged a superstitious attitude to author ity and the League s commitment to publishing a manifesto of its position. Moll agreed with the principles behind Marx s conditions, although he noted that there could be some resistance to Marx s ideas within the League and it would be his task to convi nce members at the congress to adopt them. Transforming the League of the Just into a more formal association which would advance the interests of the international workers movement was the logical outcome of the League s activities from its inception. That final step began when the Leag ue convened its first international congress in London from June 2nd to 9th, 1847. Engels attended as the representative of the Paris Communist Correspondence Committee and Wilhelm Wolff, in view of Marx s financial problems, represented the Brussels Com mittee. Until Andras s 1968 discovery of several key documents, it was thought that this first congress had accomplished little more than a name change to the Communist League, the adoption of the new slogan Proletarier aller Lnder vereinigt Euch! (Wor kers of all Countries, Unite!) and agreement that the London Committee would draft a new programme and set of rules after the congress. But we now know from the League s first two circulars and their associated documents that drafts for a new set of rul es and a programme statement - in the form of a Communist Confession of Faith (Glaubenbekenntnis) - were completed before the congress ended. These were then circulated for consideration so that they could be revised and adopted at a second congress sc heduled for November 29, 1847. Before these documents became available, most discussions of the history of the Manifesto had used Engels November 23-24 1847 letter to Marx in Brussels for insight into the drafting of the text. This has meant that certain differences and tensi ons still existing in the League were overlooked, thereby diminishing Engels and Marx s accomplishments in shaping the League s orientation, minimizing Marx s achievement in receiving the task of writing the Manifesto and underestimating the leadership r ole he assumed in the Communist League on the eve of the 1848 Revolution. Just prior to the second congress of the Communist League (on 23/24 November), Engels sent Marx the following from Paris. Give a little thought to the Confession of Faith [Glaubenbekenntnis]. I think we would do best to abandon the catechetical form and call the thing Communist Manifesto. Since a certain amount of history has to be narrated in it, the form hitherto adopted is quite unsuitable. I shall be bringing with me the one from here, which I did; it is in simple narrative form, but wretchedly worded, in a tearing hurry. Earlier accounts have confused the Confession of Faith with Engels October 1847 Basic Principles of Communism (Grundstze des Kommunismus), which is a different document - the one put together in a tearing hurry that he was taking with him to the second congress. The distinction is important for several reasons. First, by reading the original June 1847 Confession of Faith, one can see how successful Engels had already been in influencing the content of the League s programme statement, while also recognizing that he had not been totally successful in shaping some of its key aspects. Second, a lot was at stake since the League s request that the various communities and circles should debate and propose revisions to the Confession of Fa ith was not an idle suggestion, nor was it treated that way. Prior to Engels return to Paris in mid-October Moses Hess, for example, drafted and submitted for authorization to the Paris circle a significantly revised Confession which was undoubtedly much more consistent with his Utopian-infused vision of communism than the materialist position Engels had advocated at the first congress. One can appreciate that Engels desire to discard the catechetical form and change the name to something that woul d be more easily identified with his and Marx s position, rather than Hess s and the Fourierist positions within the League, was a matter of the most basic principles that would guide the League. This last point is worth following a bit further. In 1844, Hess had published in the Paris Vorwrts a Communist Confession in Questions and Answers [Kommunistisches Bekenntnis in Fragen und Antworten]. While the draft Communist Confession of Faith of June 1847 does not directly duplicate Hes s s Confession, there is little doubt that Hess s document played a central role in the drafting of the 1847 Confession of Faith. For example, the answer to one of the 1847 draft s most important questions - What is the aim of the communists? - is completely consistent with that of Hess and other Utopian Socialists and quite far removed from the position of Marx and Engels. The answer - [t]o organize society in such a way that each of its members can develop and utilize all his potentialities and powers in full freedom without jeopardizing the foundations of this society - directly captures the essence of the main theme in Hess s Confession - especially questions 20 to 40. By constituting the answer to this key question, Hess s Confession - which was Fourierist in tone and claimed that the loss of freedom and the separation of humankind from its natural capacities through the presence of a cash-based social system (recalling Hess s Essence of Money ) was the central problem of existing soc ial arrangements - strategically influenced the rest of the agenda in the League s initial programme statement. As a result of the influence of Hess s document, the goal of the communists in the 1847 draft Confession was the abolition of private property, replacing it by the community of goods. But while Hess s Confession appears to have played a dom inant influence in the 1847 draft Confession, its domination was tempered by Engels successes. For example, Hess s document includes questions and answers about marriage. These may initially appear to be a rather unconventional inclusion in a draft p rogramme until one remembers the centrality of sexual relationships in many of Fourier s utopian-socialist writings. The theme was included in the June 1847 Confession, as well as the later Manifesto, probably because of the influence of Hess s Confes sion but also because the goals of socialism had been, in the minds of many, closely associated with Fourier s writings and thus with the idea of the creation of a community of women. Hess s argument in his Confession followed Fourier - it is the existing property relations that prevent men and women from expressing their sexual relationships naturally; real marriage will only exist when genuine freedom exists in all social r elationships. But the implications of this theme as it was tied to the community of goods by Hess, was not consistent with the values and vision of the membership of the Communist League - quite the opposite. As a result, in response to the question, Will the community of women not be proclaimed at the same time as the community of goods? the 1847 draft Confession noted, Not at all. We shall interfere with the private relationship between husband and wife, and the family in general , only in s o far as the new order of society would be hampered by the preservation of the existing forms. And while there does not appear to be a copy of Hess s proposed revisions to the Confession, one can be sure that he would have wanted to reduce or eliminat e the discussion of the proletariat and replace it with a statement about humankind s natural powers and their expression through freedom of action; one can also understand how such revisions would have moved Engels to decide that some significant changes were needed to the 1847 draft Confession. Upon his return to Paris, Engels outmaneuvered Hess by going through Hess s draft in detail. One can imagine the response from an audience of workers as the committed materialist Engels, went through Hess s proposal. I dealt with this point by point, Engels wrote to Marx, and was not yet half way through when the lads declared themselves satisfaits. Completely unopposed, I got them to entrust me with the task of drafting a new one [i.e. Engels Basic Principles of Communism ] which would be discussed next Friday by the district and will be sent to London behind the backs of the communities [Engels emphases]. At about the same time Engels had been battling with Hess, the Central Authority of the Brussels Circle received a letter from the League s Central Committee in London emphasizing how important it was for Marx to attend the next congress. On Nov ember 27, therefore, Marx began his journey to London via Ostend, where he met Engels and the Belgian communist Victor Tedesco, to take an active role in the second Congress of the Communist League. Producing the Manifesto During the second congress - November 29 to December 10, 1847 - one can be certain that the League s new rules and the content of its programme statement were thoroughly debated. Marx s and Engels success in carrying the congress is clearly evid ent in the League s newly- stated aim. The June draft Rules of the Communist League had declared that the League aims at the emancipation of humanity by spreading the theory of the community of property and its speediest possible practical introductio n. The Rules adopted at the end of November show a fundamentally revised aim: The aim of the League is the overthrow of the bourgeoisie, the rule of the proletariat, the abolition of the old bourgeois society which rests on the antagonism of classes, and the foundation of a new society without classes and without private property. But although agreement had been reached, there was not enough time for the League to prepare a final version of its programme statement. This task was assigned to Marx. Marx arrived back in Brussels by mid-December but did not turn his attention immediately to drafting the Manifesto. Instead, he spent the rest of the month delivering lectures on wage- labour to the German Workers Educational Association. Engel s arrived in Brussels on December 17 but was in Paris four days later - where he stayed until the end of January - leaving Marx to write the Manifesto alone. On January 26, 1848, the following communication from Schapper, Bauer and Moll - In the name of and by order of the Central Committee - arrived in Brussels. The Central Committee charges its regional committee in Brussels to communicate with Citizen Marx, and to tell him that if the Manifesto of the Communist Party, the writing of which he undertook to do at the recent congress, does not reach London by February 1st of the current year, further measures will have to be taken against him. In the event of Citizen Marx not fulfilling his task, the Central Committee requests the immediate return of the documents placed at Citizen Marx s disposal. See M EGA, Pt. I, Vol. 6, p. 683 and B. Andras, Le Manifest Communiste de Marx et Engels, op. cit., p. 10. Marx, exercising his significant talents of synthesis, polemic, and rhetoric, pressed forward with his draft of the text. The Manifesto s opening salvo (which is improved rhetorically in the 1888 English translation) Ein Gespenst geht um in Euro pa - das Gespenst des Kommunismus was apparently derived from Wilhelm Schulz s article on Communism contained in an 1846 Staatslexikon. Schulz wrote, Seit wenigen Jahren ist in Deutschland vom Kommunismus die Rede, und schon is er zum drohenden Gespens t geworden, vor dem de Einen sich frchten, und womit die Andern Furcht einzujagen suchen (For a few years in Germany there is talk of Communism, and already it has become a threatening spectre for those who fear it and with which others seek to create fe ar). This set the stage for the Communist League s programme statement in a far more dramatic fashion than any of the earlier confessions of faith had ever managed. It also allowed Marx to move directly into his first dominant theme - [t]he history of all hitherto existing societies is the history of class struggles - and introduce the dramatic history that Engels had suggested and attempted to incorporate to a certain extent in his Basic Principles of Communism . In Parts I and II of the pamphle t, as Andras shows in considerable detail and Ryazanoff indicates in a different manner, Marx drew from ideas generally contained in his earlier writings although he relied particularly heavily upon their formulation in The Poverty of Philosophy, The Ge rman Ideology, The Holy Family, the notes to Wage-Labour and Capital, as well as Engels texts The Status Quo in Germany, The Condition of the Working Class in England, and The Basic Principles of Communism. Parts III and IV of the Manifesto indicate the extent to which the pamphlet was not simply a rallying cry for the workers of the world or a positive statement of the Communist League s position but also one that had emerged from a thorough debate about different socialist strategies and theories. Having established its position, the programme statement directly challenged those who might challenge its leadership of the international workers movement. In these parts of the Manifesto, Marx drew u pon the documents placed at Citizen Marx s disposal by the Central Committee, being particularly careful to answer questions posed in a November 1846 circular, while also amplifying upon the critique of other schools and systems of socialism presented i n a February 1847 circular, and in a September 1847 trial number of the Communist Journal. The first edition of the Manifesto was an anonymous pamphlet of 23 pages that went through four printings, with the first printing serving as the basis for the text that appeared in serial form in the Deutsche Londoner Zeitung from March 3 to Jul y 28, 1848. The second edition was a 30-page anonymous pamphlet, most likely published in April or May 1848 and this, along with an 1866 edition, served as the basis for all future editions of the Manifesto. It is interesting to note that although the p reamble to the Manifesto stated that it would soon appear in English, French, German, Italian, Flemish and Danish, with the exception of a Swedish translation in 1849, no translation appeared in 1848-49. Now published in more than 35 languages, in some 5 44 editions that appeared between 1848 and 1918 alone, and dispersed throughout the world, the Manifesto has carried the Communist League s message well beyond the wildest dreams of its most optimistic adherents. Conclusion What the inside story of the making of the Communist Manifesto shows is that while the document was drafted in its final form by Karl Marx, and the final credit for its organization and rhetorical style is due to him, the content and message of th e Manifesto were really the product of an extended, intense, but open debate among committed communist-internationalists as they sought to define their programme and understand the world they wanted to change. Moreover, the Manifesto was a document that was produced within the context of a political struggle by people who were directly embroiled in it. It is not a canon of eternal truths; it is a product of open debate and a search for solutions to the major problems confronting the working class of 18 47-48. The situation of the socialist movement today is not entirely different from the one it faced in 1847. Once again, it will not be by abstract analysis alone, but by the synthesis of theory with the thinking and practice of people engaged in effor ts to enhance the world, that effective new orientations will be given to contemporary struggles.