On the History of the Communist League

Engels’ introduction to the third German edition of Revelations Concerning the Communist Trial in Cologne, a brief history of the world’s first proletarian party, the Communist League. Written on October 8, 1885, first published in Der Sozialdemokrat, Nos. 46, 47 and 48, on November 12, 19 and 26, 1885, was later included in the pamphlet Revelations Concerning the Communist Trial in Cologne, published in Hottingen-Zurich in November 1885.

In 1885, Hermann Schlüter, the leader of the Volksbuchhandlung Publishing House, prepared to reprint Marx’s Revelations Concerning the Communist Trial in Cologne in the Sozialdemokratischen Bibliothek and asked Engels to write the preface. Engels hoped that the young socialists could understand the history of the early workers’ movement, and at the same time, he wrote this article to clarify the whole history of the Communist League and its historical position and role in the proletarian movement.

In On the History of the Communist League, Engels systematically expounded the background, process, and historical status and role of the Communist League in the international workers’ movement for the first time. “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.” “When in 1840 the police scented out a few sections in Germany, the main leaders of the League reassembled in London and secretly reorganized the League. The League soon had several communities, or, as they were then still called, “lodges”, in London, and then German “tailors” established branches in Switzerland, in London, in Paris. After the center of gravity had shifted from Paris to London, a new feature grew conspicuous, from being German, the League gradually became international. With the development of the workers’ movement, 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. Second, Engels elaborated on the programmes and tactics he and Marx formulated for the League. In the summer of 1847, the League held its first Congress in London and adopted its statute, and in the second congress held from the end of November to the beginning of December of the same year, the programmatic document of the League, The Communist Manifesto, came out and put forth “Proletarians of all countries, unite!” which is the battle-cry pointed out that the goal of overthrowing the bourgeois regime completely and establishing a new society without class and private property. Third, Engels made a strong discussion of the intellectual struggle within the League. Before the birth of scientific communism, the theory of egalitarian communism founded by Weitling played a positive role in the development of the workers’ movement. Engels pointed out: “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 Vorwärts 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 Weitling’s Guarantees of Harmony and Freedom? However, this primitive egalitarian communism soon became an obstacle to the further development of the workers’ movement. In May 1846, in the debate with the erroneous current of “true socialism” in Germany, Marx and Engels and their supporters completely broke away from the Weitling’s crude communism theory and established scientific socialism as their guiding ideology, which further promoted the development of the international workers’ movement.

On the History of the Communist League is an important document in the history of Marxist thought, and it systematically expounds the important position and historical role of the Communist League in the history of the development of proletarian political parties, and points out that as a product of the combination of the workers’ movement and scientific socialism, the existence of the Communist unity and alliance has promoted the development of the international workers’ movement and promoted the spread of scientific socialism.