1 This article deals with a meeting held in London on September 22. 1845 at which an international society of Fraternal Democrats was formed. The society embraced representatives of Left Chartists, German workers and craftsmen — members of the League of the Just — and revolutionary emigrants of other nationalities. During their stay in England in the summer of 1845, Marx and Engels helped in preparing for the meeting but did not attend it as they had by then left London. Later they kept in constant touch with the Fraternal Democrats trying to influence the proletarian core of the society, which joined the Communist League in 1847, and through it the Chartist movement. The society ceased its activities in 1853.
Engels’ article, written to show the significance of international unity of the proletarian and revolutionary democratic forces, was directed at the same time against “true socialism” — the petty-bourgeois socialist trend current among German intellectuals and craftsmen from the end of 1844 onwards. This was Engels’ second printed article against “true socialism”, the first being “A Fragment of Fourier’s On Trade” (see present edition, Vol. 4).
Engels describes the meeting of September 22, 1845 and cites speeches delivered at it according to the report published in The Northern Star No. 411, September 27, 1845. Excerpts from the article were published in English in The Plebs Magazine No. 2, March 1922.
2 Carmagnole — a song popular at the time of the French Revolution. Subsequent changes made in the words reflected mass sentiments at various stages of the popular movement.
The maximum laws and the law against buying up food supplies (June 26, 1793) were adopted by the Convention at the time of deepening food crisis under mass pressures and the campaign for fixed prices conducted by the so called rabid, representatives of the most radical plebeian trend in the revolutionary camp. The first maximum adopted on May 4, 1793, despite opposition on the part of the Girondists introduced fixed prices on grain; the decree of September 11, 1793, fixed a single price for grain, flour and fodder; fixed prices on other staple goods (second maximum) were introduced on September 29.
3 The Jacobin revolutionary government headed by Robespierre fell as a result of the coup of 9-10 Thermidor (July 27-28), 1794.
The conspiracy of equality organised by Babeuf and his followers aimed at provoking an armed uprising of the plebeian masses against the bourgeois regime of the Directory and establishing a revolutionary dictatorship as a transitional stage to “pure democracy” and “egalitarian communism”. The conspiracy was disclosed in May 1796. At the end of May 1797 its leaders were executed.
4 The period from May 31, 1793 to July 26, 1794 was one of the Jacobin revolutionary democratic dictatorship in France.
5 The reference is to associations for improving the conditions of the working classes set up in a number of Prussian towns in 1844-45 on the initiative of the liberal bourgeoisie who were frightened by the uprising of the Silesian weavers in the summer of 1844. The aim of their founders was to divert the German workers’ attention from the struggle for their class interests.
6 At Jemappes (November 6, 1792) and Fleurus (June 26, 1794) the French revolutionary army defeated the forces of the first coalition of the European counter-revolutionary monarchies.
7 Democratic Association — a workers’ organisation founded in London by the most revolutionary elements among the Chartists (George Julian Harney and others) in 1838; it advocated the revolutionary implementation of the Chartist programme. Many of its members were republicans and supported Babeuf’s trend of utopian communism.
8 Cosmopolitan — here and below is to be understood as meaning: free from all national limitations and national prejudices.
9 The reference is to the meeting of Chartists and heads of the London communities of the League of the Just with the leading figures of the democratic and revolutionary movements in a number of countries; the meeting took place in London in August 1845. Marx and Engels who were in London at the time took an active part in it. According to a report published in The Northern Star No. 406, August 23, 1845, the participants adopted the following resolution proposed by Thomas Cooper and supported by Engels: “That a public meeting of the democrats of all nations, residing in London, he called to consider the propriety of forming an Association for the purpose of meeting each other at certain times, and getting by this means a better knowledge of the movements for the common cause going on in their respective countries.”
This event marked an important step towards organising the international meeting held on September 22, 1845 and described by Engels in this article.
10 The reference is to revolutionary events of August 1842 in England when in conditions of economic crisis and increasing poverty violent working-class disturbances broke out in the industrial regions. In Lancashire and a large part of Cheshire and Yorkshire strikes became general, in some places growing into spontaneous insurrections. The government retaliated with massive arrests of Chartist leaders, who afterwards received severe sentences.
11 The reference is to the July revolution of 1830 in France which resulted in the overthrow of the Bourbon dynasty. Decisive events took place on July 27-29 in Paris.
12 August 10, 1792 — the day when the monarchy in France was overthrown as a result of a popular insurrection.
13 Julian Harney refers to calls for war against England raised in the French Chamber of Deputies and the French bourgeois press due to strained Anglo-French relations in the mid-forties caused by the colonial rivalry between the two powers in West Indies after the establishment of the French protectorate over Tahiti, the annoyance of the English bourgeoisie at French expansion in North Africa (war against Morocco) and the sharp British reaction against the projected Franco-Belgian-Luxembourg customs union. The planned marriage of the son of Louis Philippe to the Spanish Infanta, opening up the prospects for union of the two monarchies under the Orleans crown, added to the tension.
14 The trial of April 1834 — trial of 167 participants in the French workers’ and republican movement, accused of high treason in connection with the uprising in Lyons and revolutionary actions in Paris and other towns in April 1834. Among the accused were the leaders of the secret republican Société des droits de 1'homme.
15 The Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation was founded in 962 and lasted till 1806. At different periods it included the German, Italian, Austrian, Hungarian and Bohemian lands, Switzerland and the Netherlands, forming a motley conglomeration of feudal kingdoms and principalities, church lands and free towns with different political structures, legal standards and customs.
16 Imperial Court Chamber (Reichskammergericht) was the supreme court of the Holy Roman Empire. It was established in 1495 and abolished in 1806; initially it had no fixed seat, but from 1693 to 1806 was permanently located in Wetzlar.
17 Here the word “metaphysics” is used to denote philosophy as a speculative science transcending practical experience.
18 Constitution of 1791, approved by the Constituent Assembly, established a constitutional monarchy in France, giving the king full executive powers and the right of veto. This constitution was annulled as a result of the popular uprising of August 10, 1792, which brought about the fall of the monarchy. After the Girondist government (Girondists — the party of the big bourgeoisie) had been overthrown by the uprising of May 31-June 2, 1793 and the revolutionary dictatorship of the Jacobins established, the National Convention adopted a new democratic constitution of the French Republic.
19 The reference is to the Constituent Assembly’s decision to repeal feudal services, passed on the night of August 4, 1789 under the impact of peasant uprisings all over the country.
20 See Note 3.
21 ‘After the defeat of Austria in 1805 and of Prussia in 1806 by Napoleon and the establishment of the French protectorate over the German states the latter were obliged to declare war on Britain and join the continental blockade proclaimed by the French Emperor in November I806, which prohibited all trade with Britain.
22 In his articles “The State of Germany” Engels tried to refute the reactionary nationalistic interpretation of German history and, in particular, the glorification of the role played by the German ruling classes in the wars of 1813-14 and 1815 against Napoleonic France. But he gave a somewhat one-sided appraisal of the war itself. The war to liberate Germany from French domination following the defeat of Napoleon’s army in Russia in 1812 was, indeed, of a contradictory nature. Its character was affected by the counter-revolutionary and expansionist aims and policy of the ruling circles in the feudal monarchical states. But especially in 1813, when the struggle was aimed at liberating German territory from French occupation, it assumed the character of a genuinely popular national liberation war against foreign oppression. Later, when he once again considered that period in the history of Germany, Engels in a series of articles entitled “Notes on the War” (1870) stressed the progressive nature of the people’s resistance to Napoleon’s rule and in his work The Role of Force in History (1888) he wrote: “The peoples’ war against Napoleon was the reaction of the national feeling of all the peoples, which Napoleon had trampled on.”
23 The reference is to the Spanish Constitution of 1812 adopted at the time of the national liberation war against Napoleonic rule. Expressing the interests of the liberal nobility and liberal bourgeoisie the constitution limited the king’s power by the Cortes, proclaimed the supreme power of the nation and did away with certain survivals of feudalism. The overwhelming power of the feudal and clerical reactionary forces after Napoleon’s defeat in 18 14 led to the repeal of the constitution, which then became the banner of the liberal-constitutional movement in Spain and other European countries.
24 The Holy Alliance — an association of European monarchs founded on September 26, 1815 on the initiative of the Russian tsar Alexander I and the Austrian Chancellor Metternich to suppress revolutionary movements and preserve feudal monarchies in European countries.
25 Peterloo was the name given at the time (by analogy with the battle of Waterloo) to the massacre by the troops of unarmed participants in a mass meeting for electoral reform at St. Peter’s Field near Manchester, on August 16, 1819.
26 The Fundamental Federative Act (Bundesakte) — a part of the Final Act of the Congress of Vienna held by European monarchs and their ministers in 1814-15, which established the political organisation of Europe after the Napoleonic wars. This Act was signed on June 8, 1815 and proclaimed a German Confederation consisting initially of 34 independent states and four free cities. The Act virtually sanctioned the political dismemberment of Germany and the maintenance of the monarchical-estate system in the German states. From 1815 to 1866 the central organ of the German Confederation was the Federal Diet consisting of representatives of the German states.
The promise to introduce constitutions in all the states of the German Confederation, which was stated in Article 13 of the Bundesakte, was never fulfilled. Article 18 of the Act, which vaguely mentioned a forthcoming drafting of uniform instructions providing for “freedom of the press” in the states of the German Confederation, also remained on paper.
27 Vendée — a department in Western France; during the French Revolution a centre of largely peasant-based royalist uprising. The word “Vendée” came to denote counter-revolutionary actions.
28 The Corn Laws (first introduced in the 15th century) imposed high tariffs on agricultural imports in order to maintain high prices on agricultural products on the home market. By the Act of 1815 imports of grain were prohibited as long as grain prices in England remained lower than 80 sh. per quarter. Later further Acts were adopted (1822, 1828 and others) changing the terms for grain imports.
The struggle between the industrial bourgeoisie and the landed aristocracy over the Corn Laws ended in their repeal in June 1846.
29 The reference is to the revolution in Spain which began in January 1820, and also to revolutionary actions in Naples and Palermo in July 1820, in Portugal in August 1820 and Piedmont in March 1821 under the slogan of a constitution and bourgeois reforms. The revolutionary movements were suppressed by the Holy Alliance powers which sanctioned the Austrian intervention in Italy and the French intervention in Spain, and by domestic reaction.
The first secret society of carbonari in France was founded in late 1820-early 1821 after the pattern of the Italian societies of the same name. The society included representatives of diverse political trends and sought to overthrow the Bourbon monarchy. It was smashed by the police in 1822. Some carbonari organisations existed till the early 1830s, participated in the July revolution of 1830, and soon afterwards merged with republican societies.
In 1816-19 an upsurge of the democratic movement for an electoral reform took place in England. However, no reform was accomplished until 1832.
30 At the first stage of the national liberation uprising of the Greek people in 1821 the European governments were hostile to the insurgents. However, under pressure from public opinion and as a result of rivalries in the Balkans and the Middle East their attitudes changed. In 1827 Britain, France and Russia signed an agreement undertaking to demand jointly that the Turkish government should stop war in Greece and grant the country autonomy. The refusal of the Sultan to meet these demands led to a military conflict between the European powers and Turkey. The defeat of the Turks in the battle of Navarino (1827) was of great importance for the liberation of Greece. Finally the issue was decided by the Russo-Turkish war of 1828-29. The Sultan was compelled to recognise the autonomy of Greece, and soon afterwards its independence. However, the European powers imposed a monarchical form of government on the newly liberated country.
31 See Note 11.
32 The Polish national liberation uprising of November 1830-October 1831, whose participants belonged mostly to the revolutionary gentry and whose leaders were mainly from aristocratic circles, was crushed by tsarist Russia aided by Prussia and Austria — the states which had taken part in the partition of Poland at the end of the eighteenth century. Despite the defeat the uprising was of a major international significance as it diverted the forces of the counter-revolutionary powers and frustrated their plans to intervene against the bourgeois revolutions of 1830 in France and of 1830-31 in Belgium. As a result of the revolution, Belgium, which had been incorporated into Holland in 1815 by the decision of the Congress of Vienna, became an independent kingdom. For Marx’s and Engels’ appraisal of the Polish uprising of 1830-31 see pp. 545-52 of this volume.
33 The 1832 Reform Act in England granted the franchise, to property owners and leaseholders with no less than £ 10 annual income. The proletariat and the petty bourgeoisie, who were the main force in the struggle for the reform, remained unenfranchised.
34 The conference of the representatives of German states held in June 1834 in Vienna passed a decision which obliged the sovereigns to render mutual support in their struggle against liberal and democratic movements. This decision was recorded in the final protocol of the conference of June 12, 1834, the contents of which were long kept secret.
35 In 1844 the British Home Secretary, Sir James Graham, to please the Austrian government ordered the post office to let the police inspect the correspondence of Italian revolutionary immigrants.
36 The editorial board of The Northern Star altered the date from “February 20” to “March 20”. Harney gave this explanation to Engels in a letter of March 30, 1846: “On Saturday I received a long letter from you through We[e]rth, or rather two letters. The one for the Star I like very much, it will appear this week. I have altered the date from Febr. 20th, to March 20th, it will thereby not look so stale.”
37 This is a circular of the Brussels Communist Correspondence Committee founded by Marx and Engels early in 1846 for the propaganda of communist ideas and correspondence with advanced workers and revolutionary intellectuals in various countries of Europe (similar committees were founded shortly afterwards in London, Paris, Cologne and some other cities). The Brussels Communist Correspondence Committee made use of such circulars, as Engels stated later, “on particular occasions, when it was a question of internal affairs of the Communist Party in process of formation” (F. Engels, “On the History of the Communist League”, 1885).
The “Circular Against Kriege” was directed against “true socialism”, a trend followed by the German journalist Hermann Kriege who had emigrated to New York in the autumn of 1845. It was also to a considerable extent directed against the egalitarian communism of Weitling, which had found a number of advocates among the supporters of Kriege and the staff of Der Volks-Tribun of which he was editor.
It seems likely that the principal part of the “Circular Against Kriege”, which was written by Marx and Engels when they were completing the main part of the work on the manuscript of The German Ideology (see present edition, Vol. 5), was originally intended for inclusion in Vol. II of that work.
The document against Kriege was circulated in lithographic copies (in Wilhelm Wolff’s hand without title).
A copy was sent to New York with a covering letter written by Edgar von Westphalen: “To Herr Hermann Kriege, Editor of Der Volks-Tribun. — On behalf of the local communist society and as chairman of the meeting which took place on May 11, I am forwarding to you the decision in which our opinion of Der Volks-Tribun is expressed. In case you do not publish the decision together with its motivation in your paper it will nevertheless be published in the press of Europe and America. We, however, expect that in the nearest future you will send us the issue of Der Volks-Tribun containing our resolution to: M. Gigot, rue de Bodenbroek, No. 8, Brussels, May 16, 1846. Edgar van Westphalen.” Kriege was compelled to comply with this demand and publish the “Circular” in Der Volks-Tribun Nos. 23 and 24 of June 6 and 13, 1846, adding his own insinuations against the authors and the ironical title Eine Bannbulle. It was also published in the July issue of Das Westphälische Dampfboot under the title of “Der Volks-Tribun, redigirt von Hermann Kriege in New York” without the authors’ name. However, the editor of the journal, the “true socialists’ Otto Lüning subjected the document to biased re-editing, adding his own introduction and conclusion, in contradiction to the ideas and spirit of the original document and in some cases changing the text arbitrarily. The original text was for a long time unavailable to scholars; in the book Aus dem literarischen Nachlass van Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels und Ferdinand Lassalle, published by Franz Mehring, the document was printed according to the text in Das Westphälische Dampfboot. The authentic version was for the first time reproduced according to the lithographic copy of the “Circular” in Marx/Engels, Gesamtausgabe, Erste Abteilung, Bd. 6, Berlin, 1932.
In October 1846, the Brussels Communist Correspondence Committee issued a second circular against Kriege written by Marx, the text of which has not yet been found.
38 Young America — an organisation of American craftsmen and workers; it formed the nucleus of the mass National Reform Association founded in 1845. In the second half of the 1840s the Association agitated for land reform, proclaiming as its aim free allotment of a plot of 160 acres to every working man; it came out against slave-owning planters and land profiteers. It also put forward demands for a ten-hour working day, abolition of slavery, of the standing army, etc. Many German emigrant craftsmen, including members of the League of the Just, took part in the movement headed by the National Reform Association. By 1846 the movement among the German workers began to subside. One of the reasons for this was the activity of Kriege’s group whose “true socialism” diverted the German emigrants from the struggle for democratic aims.
39 The reference is to the following passage from Emmanuel Sieyès’ Quest-ceque le tiers-état? published in Paris in 1789 on the eve of the French Revolution: “1. What is the third estate? Everything. 2. What was it until now in the political respect? Nothing. 3. What is it striving for? To be something.”
40 Essenes — a religious sect in ancient Judea (2nd century B. C. — 3rd century A. D.).
41 The article was published with an introduction by The Northern Star editors informing readers of the supposedly forthcoming publication of the Prussian constitution (the interpretation given in the press to the intention of the King of Prussia to institute a state representative organ on the basis of the united provincial diets) and giving a brief account of the situation in Prussia. The introduction, in particular, stated: “Silesia is in a disordered state, the unhappy people showing every inclination to imitate the Polish peasantry in engaging in an agrarian revolt. Last, not least, financial difficulties add to the embarrassments of the Government and have given rise to a measure involving a further departure from the solemn pledges given by the Crown to the people. On this subject we have been favoured with the following communication from our German correspondent.”
42 According to Verordnung wegen der künftigen Behandlung des gesammten Staatsschulden-Wesens (Decree on the future handling of all state debts) issued in Prussia on January . 17, 1820, new loans and state debts had to be guaranteed by the forthcoming Prussian assembly of the estates as well as by the government.
43 The reference is to the Preussische Seehandlungsgesellschaft (Prussian sea trade society) — a trade credit society founded in Prussia in 1772 which enjoyed a number of important state privileges. It offered large credits to the government and actually played the part of banker and broker. In 1904 it was officially made the Prussian State Bank.
44 This letter was written by Marx and Engels on behalf of the Brussels Communist Correspondence Committee in reply to a statement by the Elberfeld socialist G. A. Köttgen, who tried to unite the supporters of socialist and communist views in Wuppertal (the joint name of Barmen and Elberfeld, in the Rhine province, which subsequently merged). Köttgen’s statement, written on May 24, 1846 was sent to Brussels only on June 10 with a covering letter to Engels.
Their internal dissension prevented the socialists and Communists of Wuppertal from following Marx’s and Engels’ advice concerning, in particular, the organisation of a communist correspondence committee.
45 The article was supplied with an editorial introduction beginning with the following words: “Again, rumours are rife in Germany, that the long projected Prussian Constitution is at last framed, and will be immediately published. For ourselves, we will believe when we see. The King of Prussia is such a liar that none but asses would repose faith in his most solemn promises. One thing is certain that, if a Constitution is granted, it will be so worthless as to be utterly inadequate to satisfy the popular demands. From our ‘German correspondent’ we have received the following brief but interesting communication which exhibits his Prussian kingship in a new but not very respectable character. He is about to turn swindler on a large scale. He will borrow, and then ‘repudiate’.”
46 The address of the Brussels Communist Correspondence Committee to the Chartist leader Feargus O'Connor was written in connection with his victory at the Nottingham election meeting early in July 1846, when he stood for erection to the House of Commons. Voting at such meetings (up to 1872) was by show of hands, and all present took part in it. However, only “legitimate” electors (those having property and other qualifications) could take part in subsequent ballot — in which, consequently, candidates who had been outvoted by show of hands could be declared elected. Despite this anti-democratic system, O'Connor was duly elected to Parliament at the August 1847 ballot.
The address of the Brussels Communists was read at a regular meeting of the Fraternal Democrats held on July 20, 1846 and was warmly received there (see The Northern Star No. 454, July 25, 1846).
47 The reference is to the Repeal of the Corn Laws passed in June 1846. (On the Corn Laws see Note 28.) The movement for the repeal of the Corn Laws was led by the Anti-Corn Law League founded in 1838 by the Manchester manufacturers Cobden and Bright. Acting under the slogan of unrestricted free trade the League fought to weaken the economic and political position of the landed aristocracy and at the same time to reduce workers’ wages.
48 The People’s Charter, which contained the demands of the Chartists, was published on May 8, 1838, in the form of a Bill to be submitted to Parliament. It consisted of six clauses: universal suffrage (for men of 21 years of age), annual elections to Parliament, secret ballot, equal constituencies, abolition of property qualifications for candidates to Parliament, and salaries for M.P.s. In 1839 and 1842 petitions for the Charter were rejected by Parliament. In 1847-48 the Chartists renewed a mass campaign for the Charter.
49 Early in June 1846 Thomas Cooper started a campaign against O'Connor. In particular he accused him of misusing the funds of the Chartist Cooperative Land Society (later called the National Land Company) founded by the Chartist leader in 1845 (see Note 162).
Cooper set forth his accusations in an open letter “To the London Chartists” (published in June 1846 in Lloyd’s Weekly Newspaper) and in other statements. In answer to this, O'Connor wrote two letters: “To the Members of the Chartist Cooperative Land Society” and “To the Fustian jackets, the Blistered Hands, and Unshorn Chins”, published in The Northern Star Nos. 448 and 449, of June 13 and 20, 1846. The latter issue carried also numerous statements by Chartist organisations expressing confidence in O'Connor.
50 The Tuileries Palace in Paris was the residence of the French monarchs.
51 The reference is to the rescripts by Frederick William IV of February 3, 1847 convening the United Diet — a united assembly of the eight provincial diets instituted in 1823. The United Diet as well as the provincial diets consisted of representatives of the estates: the curia of gentry (high aristocracy) and the curia of the other three estates (nobility, representatives of the towns and the peasantry). Its powers were limited to authorising new taxes and loans, to voice without vote during the discussion of Bills, and to the right to present petitions to the King. The dates of its sessions were fixed by the King.
The United Diet opened on April 11, 1847, but it was dissolved as early as June because the majority refused to vote a new loan.
52 See Note 28.
53 The Customs Union (Zollverein) of the German states (initially including 18 states), which established a common customs frontier, was founded in 1834 and headed by Prussia. By the 1840s the Union embraced most of the German states with the exception of Austria, the Hanseatic towns (Bremen, Lübeck, Hamburg) and some small states. Brought into being by the necessity for an all-German market the Customs Union subsequently promoted Germany’s political unification.
54 States-general — a body representing the estates in medieval France. It consisted of representatives of the clergy, nobles and burghers. They met in May 1789 — after a 175-year interval — at the time of maturing bourgeois revolution and on June 17 were transformed by the decision of the deputies of the third estate into the National Assembly which proclaimed itself the Constituent Assembly on July 9 and became the supreme organ of revolutionary France.
55 The reference is to the national liberation uprising in the Cracow republic which by the decision of the Congress of Vienna was controlled jointly by Austria, Russia and Prussia — who had partitioned Poland at the end of the eighteenth century. The seizure of power in Cracow by the insurgents on February 22, 1846 and the establishment of a National Government of the Polish republic, which issued a manifesto abolishing feudal services, were part of the plan for a general uprising in the Polish lands whose main inspirers were the revolutionary democrats (Dembowski and others). In March the Cracow uprising, lacking active support in other parts of Poland, was crushed by the forces of Austria and tsarist Russia; in November 1846, Austria, Prussia and Russia signed a treaty incorporating the “free town of Cracow “ into the Austrian Empire.
56 Karl Grün translated into German Proudhon’s work Système des contradictions économiques, ou Philosophie de la misère. The book was published in Darmstadt in 1847 under the title Philosophie der Staatsökonomie oder Nothwendigkeit des Elends.
57 The reference is to Proudhon’s letter to Marx of May 17, 1846 (published in Correspondance de P. J. Proudhon précédée d'une notice sur P. J. Proudhon par J. A. Langlois, T. II, Paris, 1875), which was an answer to Marx’s letter to him of May 5, suggesting that he correspond with the Brussels Communist Correspondence Committee in the capacity of a representative of the French proletariat. While in fact rejecting this proposal, Proudhon nevertheless wrote to Marx that he was eager to know Marx’s opinion of his latest work.
58 The review of Marx’s work in the Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher quoted here has been taken from Karl Grün’s article “Meine Stellung zur Judenfrage” published in the Neue Anekdota.
Neue Anekdota — a collection which appeared in Darmstadt late in May 1845 under the editorship of Karl Grün. It contained newspaper articles by Moses Hess, Karl Grün, Otto Lüning and others, written mainly in the first half of 1844 and banned by the censors. Soon after the publication of the collection Marx and Engels, as can be judged from Grün’s letters to Hess, made a number of severe critical remarks about its content.
59 Engels intended to publish this work in 1847 as a pamphlet. In the spring of 1847 he sent the manuscript from Paris (where he arrived in August 1846 to organise communist propaganda) to Marx in Brussels to be forwarded to the publisher C. G. Vogler, who had connections with communist circles. Vogler, however, had meantime been arrested (see Marx’s letter to Engels of May 15, 1847). Marx gave a high appraisal of this pamphlet, especially of its first part, but was of the opinion that the other two parts were lacking in precision. The extant manuscript is incomplete. Only seven sheets, each folded in four (28 pages altogether), with the author’s paging on the first page of each sheet (1, 5, 9, etc.) have been preserved. Pages 21-24 and the last sheets are missing. There is no title to the manuscript. The extant part was first published in the USSR in 1929 in the first edition of Marx’s and Engels’ Works in Russian under the title “The Constitutional Question in German Socialist Literature” and in 1932 in German in Marx/Engels, Gesamtausgabe under the title “Der Status quo in Deutschland”.
The present title is given according to Engels’ letter to Marx of March 9, 1847, in which this work was called “a pamphlet on the constitutional question”.
60 Réformistes — a political party grouped round the Paris newspaper La Réforme, which included radical opponents of the July monarchy-republican democrats and petty-bourgeois socialists. The leaders of the Réforme party, which also called itself “social-democratic”, were Ledru-Rollin, Louis Blanc and others (see K. Marx and F. Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party, this volume, p. 518).
61 Some of the French legitimists, advocates of the Bourbon dynasty overthrown in 1830, who upheld the interests of the big hereditary landowners (Villeneuve-Bargemont and others), resorted to social demagogy in their struggle against the financial and industrial bourgeoisie, passing themselves off as defenders of the working people.
Young England was a group of conservative writers and politicians, including Disraeli and Ferrand, who were close to the Tory philanthropists and founded a separate group in the House of Commons in 1841. Voicing the discontent of the landed aristocracy at the growing economic and political power of the bourgeoisie, they criticised the capitalist system and supported half-hearted philanthropic measures for improving the conditions of the workers. Young England disintegrated as a political group in 1845 and ceased to exist as a literary circle in 1848.
In the Communist Manifesto Marx and Engels describe the views of Young England and the above-mentioned ideologists of legitimism as “feudal socialism” (see this volume, pp. 507-08).
62 See Note 21.
63 See Note 53.
64 Apparently, the condition of the working classes of Germany, and primarily the German proletariat, was described in the third, non-extant part of the work.
65 See Note 5 1.
66 See Note 53.
67 The name of the Spandau fortress near Berlin — a drill hall and a place of imprisonment for “state criminals” in Prussia — is used here as a symbol of the Prussian political system.
68 The reference is to the Prussian Government’s consent to the incorporation of Cracow into the Austrian Empire after the suppression of the Cracow uprising of 1846 (see Note 55). This act led to the inclusion of Cracow within the Austrian customs frontier and to high import duties there on Prussian goods.
69 This document is the draft programme discussed at the First Congress of the Communist League in London on June 2-9, 1847.
The Congress was a final stage in the reorganisation of the League of the Just — an organisation of German workers and craftsmen, which was founded in Paris in 1836-37 and soon acquired an international character, having communities in Germany, France, Switzerland, Britain and Sweden. The activity of Marx and Engels directed towards the ideological and organisational unity of the socialists and advanced workers prompted the leaders of the League (Karl Schapper, Joseph Moll, Heinrich Bauer), who resided in London from November 1846, to ask for their help in reorganising the League and drafting its new program me. When Marx and Engels were convinced that the leaders of the League of the Just were ready to accept the principles of scientific communism as its programme they accepted the offer to join the League made to them late in January 1847.
Engels’ active participation in the work of the Congress (Marx was unable to go to London) affected the course and the results of its proceedings. The League was renamed the Communist League, the old motto of the League of the Just “All men are brothers” was replaced by a new, Marxist one: “Working Men of All Countries, Unite! “ The draft programme and the draft Rules of the League were approved at the last sitting on June 9, 1847.
The full text of the “Draft of a Communist Confession of Faith” (Credo) became known only in 1968. It was found by the Swiss scholar Bert Andréas together with the draft Rules and the circular of the First Congress to the members of the League (see this volume, pp. 585-600) in the archives of Joachim Friedrich Martens, an active member of the Communist League, which are kept in the State and University Library in Hamburg. This discovery made it possible to ascertain a number of important points in the history of the Communist League and the drafting of its programme documents. It had been previously assumed that the First Congress did no more than adopt a decision to draw up a programme and that the draft itself was made by the London Central Authority of the Communist League (Joseph Moll, Karl Schapper and Heinrich Bauer) after the Congress between June and August 1847. The new documents show that the draft was ready by June 9, 1847 and that its author was Engels (the manuscript found in Martens’ archives, with the exception of some inserted words, the concluding sentence and the signatures of the president and the secretary of the Congress, was written in Engels’ hand).
The document testifies to Engels’ great influence on the discussion of the programme at the Congress — the formulation of the answers to most of the questions is a Marxist one. Besides, while drafting the programme, Engels had to take into account that the members of the League had not yet freed themselves from the influence of utopian ideas and this was reflected in the formulation of the first six questions and answers. The form of a “revolutionary catechism” was also commonly used in the League of the Just and other organisations of workers and craftsmen at the time. It may he assumed that Engels intended to give greater precision to some of the formulations of the programme document in the course of further discussion and revision.
After the First Congress of the Communist League the “Draft of a Communist Confession of Faith” was sent, together with the draft Rules, to the communities for discussion, the results of which were to be taken into account at the time of the final approval of the programme and the Rules at the Second Congress. When working on another, improved draft programme, the Principles of Communism, in late October 1847 (see this volume, pp. 341-57), Engels made direct use of the “Confession of Faith”, as can be seen from the coincidences of the texts, and also from references in the Principles to the earlier document when Engels had apparently decided to leave formulations of some of the answers as they were.
The “Draft of a Communist Confession of Faith” was published in English for the first time in the book: Birth of the Communist Manifesto, International Publishers, New York, 1971.
70 In their works of the 1840s and 1850s, prior to Marx having worked out the theory of surplus value, Marx and Engels used the terms “value of labour”, “price of labour”, “sale of labour” which, as Engels noted in 1891 in the introduction to Marx’s pamphlet Wage Labour and Capital, “from the point of view of the later works were inadequate and even wrong”. After he had proved that the worker sells to the capitalist not his labour but his labour power Marx used more precise terms. In later works Marx and Engels used the terms “value of labour power”, “price of labour power”, “sale of labour power”
71 The Poverty of Philosophy. Answer to the “Philosophy of Poverty” by M. Proudhon is one of the most important theoretical works of Marxism and Marx’s principal work directed against P.J. Proudhon, whom he regarded as an ideologist of the petty bourgeoisie. Marx decided that he must criticise Proudhon’s economic and philosophical views and at the same time clear up a number of questions relating to the theory and tactics of the revolutionary proletarian movement from the scientific materialist standpoint at the end of 1846, as a result of his reading Proudhon’s Système des contradictions économiques, ou Philosophie de la misère, which had appeared a short time earlier. In his letter of December 28, 1846 to the Russian man of letters P. V. Annenkov Marx expounded a number of important ideas which later formed the core of his book against Proudhon. In January 1847, as can be judged from Engels’ letter of January 15, 1847 to Marx, the latter was already working on his reply to Proudhon. In writing this book Marx extensively used notes he had made in 1845-47 from works by various authors, primarily economists. (A description of Marx’s notebooks was published in Marx/Engels, Gesamtausgabe, Erste Abteilung, Bd. 6, Berlin, 1932.) By the beginning of April 1847 Marx’s work was completed in the main and had gone to press (see this volume, p. 72). On June 15, 1847 he wrote a short foreword.
The book was published in Brussels and Paris early in July 1847. Marx’s followers saw it as a theoretical substantiation of the platform of the proletarian party which was taking shape at the time. While establishing contact on behalf of this party in the autumn of 1847 with the French socialists and democrats grouped around the newspaper La Réforme, Engels, speaking to Louis Blanc, one of its editors, called Marx’s book against Proudhon “our programme” (see Engels’ letter to Marx of October 25-26. 1847). Ferdinand Wolff, a member of the Communist League, published a detailed review of The Poverty of Philosophy in Das Westphälische Dampfboot for January and February 1848.
The book was not republished in full during Marx’s lifetime. Excerpts from §5 (“Strikes and Combinations of Workers”) of Ch. If appeared in different years, mostly between 1872 and 1875, in workers’ and socialist publications such as La Emancipacion, Der Volksstaat, Social-Demokrat (New York) and others. In 1880 Marx attempted to publish his Poverty of Philosophy in the French socialist newspaper L'égalité, the organ of the French Workers’ Party, but only the foreword and §1 (“The Opposition Between Use Value and Exchange Value”) of Ch. 1 were published.
The first German edition was made in 1885. The translation was edited by Engels, who also wrote a special preface and a number of notes to it. He mentioned in the preface that while editing the translation he had taken into account corrections made in Marx’s hand in a copy of the 1847 French edition. (This copy, which contains also numerous underlinings and vertical lines in the margins, is kept in the library of the North-Eastern University at Sendai, Japan; and a photocopy was presented by Japanese scholars to the Institute of Marxism-Leninism in Moscow.) It is still not known when Marx made these corrections and alterations. But it was certainly prior to 1876, as a copy presented by Marx to Natalia Utina, wife of N. I. Utin, a member of the Russian Section of the First International, on January 1, 1876 is extant in which almost all of these corrections and alterations are reproduced in an unknown hand.
In 1886, the Russian Marxist Emancipation of Labour group published the first Russian edition of The Poverty of Philosophy in a translation made by Vera Zasulich from the German edition of 1885. In 1892 a second German edition appeared. It was provided with a short preface by Engels, dealing with corrections of certain inaccuracies in the text (see Note 75). Engels planned a second French edition for the mid-eighties. With this aim in view he made a list of necessary corrections to be inserted (“Notes et changements”) using for this purpose the copy bearing the corrections in Marx’s hand. However, this plan was implemented only after Engels’ death by Marx’s daughter Laura Lafargue in 1896. The corrections were made in the text according to the list drawn up by Engels.
In the present edition all corrections and changes made by Marx in the copy of the 1847 edition and reproduced in the copy presented to Natalia Utina, as well as the relevant corrections in the German 1885 and 1892 editions and in the French 1896 edition, have been taken into account. The changes affecting meaning and the stylistic improvements made in these copies and editions are introduced in the text itself, the original version being given in a footnote. Where the author’s corrections and remarks are intended to revise or give greater precision to the original formulations and terminology, owing to the further development of Marxist economic theory, they are given in footnotes, the original text being left unaltered. This will enable readers to appreciate actual level attained by Marxist economic theory by 1847.
Italics in quotations are as a rule Marx’s. In some cases the editors have inserted periods to indicate an omission by Marx in quotations and give in square brackets page references which are not in the original. References in square brackets are made to pages in the following English editions of works of English authors quoted by Marx Iron) French translations: D. Ricardo. On the Principles of Political Economy, and Taxation. Third edition. London, 1821; A. Smith. An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. Vol. I, London, 1835; Ch. Babbage. On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures. Second edition. London, 1832; A. Ferguson. An Essay on the History of Civil Society. Edinburgh, 1767; J. M. Lauderdale. An Inquiry into the Nature and Origin of Public Wealth. Edinburgh, 1804; J. Steuart. An Inquiry into the Principles o f Political Economy... Vol. I, London, 1767; A. Ure. The Philosophy of Manufactures.., Second edition. London, 1835.
The first English edition of The Poverty of Philosophy was published in London in 1900 by the Twentieth Century press. The translation was made by Harry Quelch. Since then the work has been republished several times in English.
72 The reference is to the period which followed the termination of the Napoleonic wars in 1815 and the restoration of the Bourbon dynasty in France.
73 See present edition, Vol. 3, pp. 424-31, 440-43 and Vol. 4, pp. 375-88.
74 See Note 70.
75 The 1847 edition and the German 1885 edition mistakenly have the name of Hopkins, and lower an inexact date of publication of W. Thompson’s book (1827 instead of 1824). This served as a pretext for the Austrian economist Anton Menger to reproach Marx with wrong quoting (see A. Menger, Das Recht auf den vollen Arbeitsertrag in geschichtlicher Darstellung, Stuttgart, 1886, S. 50). Engels corrected the mistakes by writing in the preface to the second German edition of The Poverty of Philosophy in 1892 the following: “For the second edition I have only to remark that the name wrongly written Hopkins in the French text has been replaced by the correct name Hodgskin and that in the same place the date of the work of William Thompson has been corrected to 1824. It is to he hoped that this will appease the bibliographical conscience of Professor Anton Menger. London, March 29, 1892. Frederick Engels.”
76 The Ten-Hours’ Bill was submitted to Parliament several times. In 1847 after a prolonged struggle the Bill was passed, and applied only to children and women. However, many factory owners ignored it.
77 Equitable-labour-exchange bazaars were organised by Owenites and Ricardian socialists (John Gray, William Thompson, John Bray) in various towns of England in the 1830s for fair exchange without a capitalist intermediary. The products were exchanged for labour notes, or labour money, certificates showing the cost of the products delivered, calculated on the basis of the amount of labour necessary for their production. The organisers considered these bazaars as a means for publicising the advantages of a non-capitalist form of exchange and a peaceful way — together with cooperatives — of transition to socialism. The subsequent and invariable bankruptcy of such enterprises proved their utopian character
78 The reference is to the following passage from Adam Smith’s work, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations: “In a tribe of hunters or shepherds a particular person makes bows and arrows, for example, with more readiness and dexterity than any other. He frequently exchanges them for cattle or for venison with his companions; and he finds at last that he can in this manner get more cattle and venison, than if he himself went to the field to catch them. From a regard to his own interest, therefore, the making of bows and arrows grows to be his chief business, and he becomes a sort of armourer.” (Vol. 1, Book 1, Chapter If.)
79 Marx refers to the first edition of Cooper’s book. In his notebook dating to July-August 1845, this passage is quoted from a second enlarged edition published in London in 1831.
80 The full text of the passage from Hegel’s Wissenschaft der Logik quoted here is as follows: “Die Methode ist deswegen als die ohne Einschränkung allgemeine, innerliche und äusserliche Weise, und als die schlechthin unendliche Kraft anzuerkennen, welcher kein Objekt, insofern es sich als ein Äusserliches, der Vernunft fernes und von ihr unabhängiges präsentiert — Widerstand leisten, gegen sie von einer besonderen Natur seyn und von ihr nicht durchdrungen werden könnte.... Sie ist darum die höchste Kraft oder vielmehr die einzige und absolute Kraft der Vernunft, nicht nur, sondern auch ihr höchster und einziger Trieb, durch sich selbst in Allem sich selbst zufinden und zu erkennen.” (Bd. III, Abschnitt 3, Kap. 3).
81 Marx refers to Chapter VIII “De la responsabilité de 1'homme et de dieu, sous la loi de contradiction, on solution du problème de la providence”.
82 Le Creusot (Burgundy) — since the 1830s a big centre of the French metallurgical, machine-building and war industry; at the time referred to, the Creusot works belonged to Schneider and Co. founded in 1836.
83 The reference is to the first cyclic crisis of overproduction which began in England in 1825. The crisis involved all branches of industry, textiles in particular. It was followed by stagnation in trade, reduction of exports by 16 per cent and imports by 15 per cent and the insolvency of several banks.
84 In partibus infidelium — beyond the realm of reality (literally “in the country of infidels”) — an addition to the title of Catholic priests appointed to a purely nominal diocese in non-Christian countries.
85 Quoting from the French edition of J. Steuart’s book published in 1789 (the first English edition: J. Steuart. An Inquiry into the Principles of Political OEconomy, being an Essay on the Science of Domestic Policy in Free Nations was published in two volumes in London in 1767), Marx made some explanatory additions and changes. Thus he added the words “impôt sur la production” (taxes on production), “impôts sur la consummation” (taxes on consumption) and the last sentence. “Chacun est imposé à raison de la dépense qu'il fait” (Everyone is taxed according to his expenditure). He changed the place of the sentence “Chacun est imposé à raison du profit qu'il est censé faire” (Everyone is taxed in proportion to the gain he is supposed to make), which Steuart has after “Ainsi le monarque met un impôt sur 1'industrie” (Thus the monarch imposes a tax upon industry). Instead of “le gouvernement limité” Marx used “le gouvernement constitutionnel”.
86 See notes 28 and 47.
87 In 1836-38 a new cyclic crisis of overproduction swept over Britain and other capitalist countries.
88 In 1824 under mass pressure Parliament repealed the ban on the trade unions. However, in 1825 it passed a Bill on workers’ combinations, which confirming the repeal of the ban on the trade unions at the same time greatly restricted their activity. In particular, mere agitation for workers to join unions and take part in strikes was regarded as “compulsion” and “violence” and punished as a crime.
89 The laws in operation at that time in France — the so-called Le Chapelier law adopted in 1791 during the bourgeois revolution by the Constituent Assembly, and the penal code elaborated under the Napoleonic empire in 1810 (Code pénal) — forbade workers to form labour unions or go on strike under pain of severe punishment. The prohibition of trade unions in France was abolished only in 1884.
90 The National Association of United Trades was established in England in 1845 by trade union delegates from London, Manchester, Sheffield, Norwich, Hull, Bristol, and other cities. Its activity was limited to the struggle for improved conditions of sale of labour power (“a fair wage for a fair day’s work”) and for improved factory legislation. The association existed until the early sixties, but it ceased to play any big part in the trade union movement after 1851.
91 The term “instruments of production” is still used by Marx in a broader sense here than in his later works. Subsequently he drew a more strict distinction between “forces of production” in general and “instruments of production” as a component part of the former.
92 Engels had in mind first of all Ferdinand Lassalle who widely used the term “workers’ estate” in his writings, in particular in his pamphlet Arbeiterprogramm (Workers’ Programme) published in 1862. The substitution of the terms “workers” or “fourth estate” for “working class’ was characteristic of a number of other representatives of petty-bourgeois socialism.
93 See Note 50.
94 The reference is to the conservative majority in the French Chamber of Deputies who supported Guizot.
Further on Engels used materials published in Le Moniteur Universel for June 4, 18, 23 and 26, 1847.
95 See Note 47.
96 This article was written by Marx in reply to the propaganda of feudal and Christian socialism carried on by the conservative Prussian newspaper Rheinischer Beobachter. This propaganda was aimed at diverting the popular masses from revolutionary struggle against the absolutist regime and at using them in the struggle against the bourgeois opposition. Such ideas permeated, in particular, the article criticised by Marx, which was published anonymously in the Rheinischer Beobachter No. 206, July 25, 1847 as the eighth part in the series Politische Gänge. On September 2, 1847 this article was reprinted in the Deutsche-Brüssseler-Zeitung without a title but with introductory words quoted by Marx. It is probable that the author of this article was Herr Wagener, a consistorial councillor in Magdeburg, subsequently a conservative leader, who enjoyed the protection of the Prussian Minister of Religious Worship, Education and Medicine, Eichhorn.
Later, in the mid-sixties, while exposing Lassalleans’ advances to Bismarck’s Government, Marx and Engels referred to this article by Marx as a document demonstrating the firm standpoint of the workers’ party in relation to “royal-Prussian government socialism” (see Statement by Marx and Engels to the editorial board of the newspaper Social-Demokrat, February 23, 1865).
The article “The Communism of the Rheinischer Beobachter” bore the sign = ‘instead of a signature. The publication of this article and also of the first part of Engels’ essays “German Socialism in Verse and Prose” (see this volume, pp. 220-49) marked the beginning of Marx’s and Engels’ regular contribution to the newspaper of the German emigrants, the Deutsche-Brüssseler-Zeitung. A special editorial note in the preceding issue of the newspaper of September 9, 1847 announced the forthcoming publication of these articles without mentioning, however, the authors’ names. Prior to this, Marx and Engels contributed only occasionally to the Deutsche-Brüssseler-Zeitung (see this volume, pp. 72-74, 92-95), though they approved their associates — Wilhelm Wolff and Georg Weerth and others — doing so. Prior to their regular contribution the paper followed mainly the
line of its editor-in-chief, the petty-bourgeois democrat Adalbert Bornstedt, who tried to combine eclectically various appositional ideological trends. But by the autumn of 1847 the influence of the proletarian revolutionaries in the paper gained momentum and soon it became a mouthpiece of the proletarian party which was being organised at the time, in fact the organ of the Communist League.
An excerpt from this article was published in English in K. Marx and F. Engels, On Religion, Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moscow, 1957.
97 See Note 51.
98 In his speech from the throne at the opening of the United Diet in Prussia on April 11, 1847, Frederick William IV declared that he would never let the “natural relations between the monarch and the people” turn into “conditioned, constitutional” relations and a “written sheet of paper” be a substitute for a “genuine sacred loyalty”.
99 Under this common title two essays by Engels were published in the Deutsche-Brüssseler-Zeitung in which he analysed the poetry and literary-critical work and also the aesthetic views of representatives of “true socialism”. The first essay dealt with Karl Beck’s book, Lieder vom armen Mann (Songs of the Poor Man), published at the end of November 1845 as a sample of the poetry of “true socialism”. There are grounds for assuming that Engels’ essay on Beck may initially have been included as Chapter 3, the manuscript of which is not extant, in Volume II of The German Ideology (see present edition, Vol. 5). This work was most probably written in the first half of 1846 in Brussels.
The second essay analysed Karl Grün’s book, Über Göthe vom menschlichen Standpunkte (About Goethe from the Human Point of View), published at the end of April 1846, as a sample of the prose or literary critique of “true socialism”. Engels’ letter of January 15, 1847 to Marx shows that he intended to revise it for Volume II of The German Ideology (judging by its contents it was to follow Chapter 4 devoted to the analysis of Karl Grün’s book: Die soziale Bewegung in Frankreich und Belgien, Darmstadt, 1845 [The Social Movement in France and Belgium] as a sample of the historiography of “true socialism”). This essay was most probably written by Engels after he had moved from Brussels to Paris, i.e., between August 15, 1846 and January 15, 1847.
100 The words “Wahrheit und Recht, Freiheit und Gesetz” (Truth and Right, Freedom and Law) were used as an epigraph to the progressive German newspaper Leipziger Allgmeine Zeitung, banned in Prussia in l842, and in Saxony early in 1843.
101 Restoration — see Note 72.
Carbonari — see Note 29. The carbonari held their meetings under the guise of charcoal sales (Ventes).
102 Ventrus — representatives of the “belly” of the French Chamber (see Note 94).
103 An allusion to “Young Germany” — a literary group which appeared in Germany in the 1830s and was under the influence of Heinrich Heine and Ludwig Börne. The group included such writers as Gutzkow, Wienbarg, Mundt, Laube and Jung, whose stories and articles voiced the opposition sentiments of petty-bourgeois and intellectual advocates of freedom of conscience and the press, the introduction of a constitution, emancipation of women, etc. Some of them advocated granting civil rights to Jews. Their political views were vague and inconsistent; most of them soon became ordinary liberals.
104 The reference is to a spontaneous rising of textile workers in Prague in the latter half of June 1844. The events in Prague led to workers’ uprisings in many other industrial centres of Bohemia. The workers’ movement, which was accompanied by factory and machine wrecking, was suppressed by government troops.
105 The Friends of Light — was a religious trend opposed to the pietism predominant in the official church and supported by Junker circles.
106 The first edition of P. H. Holbach’s Système de la nature, ou des loix du monde physique et du monde moral (London 1770) bore, for conspirational reasons, the name of the secretary of the French Academy J. B. Mirabaud, who died in 1760, as its author.
107 Joseph Addison’s tragedy Cato was written in 1713; Goethe’s Leiden des jungen Werthers in 1774.
108 The Federal Decrees of 1819 (the Karlsbad decisions) were drawn up on the insistence of the Austrian Chancellor Metternich at the conference of the German Confederation in Karlsbad in August 1819 and were endorsed by the Federal Diet on September 20, 1819. These decisions envisaged a number of strict measures against the liberal press, the introduction of preliminary censorship in all German states, strict surveillance over universities, prohibition of students’ societies, establishment of an investigation commission for the prosecution of participants in the oppositional movement (so-called demagogues).
109 9 Themidor — see Note 3. 18 Brumaire — the coup d'état of November 9, 1799 which completed the bourgeois counter-revolution and led to the personal rule of General Napoleon Bonaparte.
110 In one of the scenes in Goethe’s comedy Der Bürgergeneral a rural barber who pretended he was a Jacobin general drank a jug of milk and thus angered the master of the house.
111 See Note 53.
112 Ghibellines — a political party in Italy formed in the 12th century in the period of strife between the popes and the German emperors. It included mostly feudal lords who supported the emperors and furiously opposed the papal party of the Guelphs, which represented the upper trade and artisan strata of Italian towns. The parties existed till the 15th century. Dante, who hoped that the emperor’s rule would help to overcome the feudal dismemberment of Italy, joined the party of the Ghibellines in 1302.
113 The International Congress of Economists held in Brussels on September 16-18, 1847 discussed the attitude towards the movement for the repeal of trade restrictions between individual countries started by the British Anti-Corn Law League (see Note 47).
The Communist League members headed by Marx attended the congress, intending to use it for open criticism of bourgeois economics and for defence of working-class interests.
Marx’s name was put on the official list of the congress participants (see Journal des économistes, t. XVIII, October 1847, p. 275).
During the congress a sharp controversy arose between the bourgeois majority and a group of Brussels Communists, especially after Georg Weerth’s speech criticising the free traders’ statements about the benefits of free trade to the working class. The organisers of the congress did not let Marx make his speech and closed the discussion. In reply to this Marx and Engels and their followers carried on the polemic with bourgeois economists in the democratic and proletarian press.
114 An allusion to the fulfilment of Bentham’s will by John Bowring (Bentham bequeathed his body for use for scientific purposes).
115 The report on other sittings of the congress was not published in the Deutsche-Brüssseler-Zeitung. On these see Engels’ article “The Free Trade Congress at Brussels” (this volume, pp. 282-90).
116 This work is a part of a speech Marx intended to deliver at the International Congress of Economists in Brussels on September 18, 1847. Not being allowed to do so, Marx rewrote it for the press and sent it to a number of Belgian newspapers. It was published only in the Atelier Démocratique, September 29, 1847 in French. Announcing the publication of this article the Deutsche-Brüsseler-Zeitung wrote on October 7, 1847: “ Unfortunately, not a single big Belgian newspaper had the courage or intelligence to print the speech sent to it.” Extant are only a preliminary draft of the speech bearing the author’s heading “Protectionists” (see this volume, p. 573) and the German translation of its beginning published in Hamm in 1848 by J. Weydemeyer, a friend of Marx and Engels, together with another speech by Marx on the freedom of trade (see this volume, pp. 450-65). Weydemeyer omitted the end of the speech saying that it was repeated in the speech of January 9. Engels gives the content of Marx’s speech in his article “The Free Trade Congress at Brussels” (see this volume, pp. 282-90).
117 See Note 47.
118 The full text of Weerth’s speech (Engels quotes parts of it word for word, and gives a free account of others) was published in a number of newspapers, in particular, in French (the language in which it was delivered) in the Atelier Démocratique and in German in Die Ameise (Grimma) on October 15, 1847. The text published in Die Ameise is reproduced in the book: Georg Weerth, Sämtliche Werke, Zweiter Band, Berlin, 1956, S. 128-33. In some places the text differs from the passages cited by Engels. Apparently Engels recorded facts more exactly; in particular, in the first passage cited by him he corrected the number of the English proletariat (5 million instead of 3 million as in Weerth), and in the second passage the date on which the Chartists concluded an agreement with the free traders (1845 instead of 1843).
119 The reference is to provocations on the part of the Anti-Corn Law League which sought to use for its own ends the workers’ unrest in the industrial districts of England in August 1842. (On the general strike of 1842 see Note 10.) The free traders encouraged the workers’ action during the first stage of the strike hoping to direct their movement towards the struggle for the repeal of the Corn Laws. However, the independent class and political character which this strike assumed as it became general led to the direct and active participation of the free trade bourgeoisie. in suppressing the movement. p. 2 8,7)
120 See Note 46.
121 This refers to the movement for Parliamentary reform in England in 1830-31, to the July revolution of 1830 in France and the revolution of 1830-31 in Belgium which led to the separation of Belgium from Holland.
122 The reference is to the brutal suppression of workers’ risings in Lyons in 1831 and 1834 and to atrocities perpetrated by government troops against starving workers in Buzançais (Indre Department) who had looted corn shipments and storehouses belonging to profiteers early in 1847.
123 On the precision subsequently given by Marx and Engels to these terms which express the relations between the worker and the capitalist, see Note 70.
124 The two articles by Engels against Karl Heinzen were written in reply to this petty-bourgeois democrat’s slanderous attacks against the Communists and communism as a social trend. In particular, the Polemik column of the Deutsche-Brüsseler-Zeitung No. 77 for September 26, 1847 contained Heinzen’s statement in which, among other things, he accused the Communists of seeking to split the German revolutionary movement. Heinzen used as a pretext an editorial note in No. 73 of the Deutsche-Brüsseler-Zeitung, September 12, 1847, in which, while refuting the allegation of a certain German newspaper that the article “Der deutsche Hunger und die deutschen Fürsten” published in Deutsche-Brüsseler-Zeitung (No. 49, June 20, 1847) was of a communist character, the editors pointed out that the author of the said article was Heinzen who “as is known ... repeatedly attacked communism”. Publishing Heinzen’s reply to this note, Adalbert Bornstedt, the paper’s editor-in-chief, instead of refuting the insinuations it contained called for appeasement between “various shades of German revolutionaries abroad”; in particular he wrote on behalf of the editors: “We consider it our duty to advise both parties in case polemic arises in some other place to give it up.”
As is seen from Engels’ letter of September 30, 1847 to Marx the first article with a reply to Heinzen was submitted to the Deutsche-Brüsseler-Zeitung on September 27. However, Bornstedt, despite his agreement with Marx an Engels on their regularly contributing to the paper, did not publish Engels’ article in the next issue (No. 78) on the pretext of lack of space. Compelled to publish it in No. 79 on October 3, 1847 in the Polemik column he again repeated in the editorial note his appeal to both parties to avoid mutual accusations.
125 Heinzen visualised the future Germany as a republican federation of autonomous lands, similar to the Swiss Confederation. This was the meaning given by many petty-bourgeois democrats to the slogan of German unity, the symbol of which was the black-red-and-gold banner. Marx and Engels considered such an interpretation of the slogan inconsistent with the struggle against the survivals of medieval seclusion and political disunity. To oppose this they put forward the demand of a single, centralised democratic republic of Germany.
126 Engels enumerates some major peasant rebellions of the Middle Ages: the rebellions of Wat Tyler (1381) and Jack Cade (1450) in England, the peasant revolt in France in 1358 (Jacqueric) and the peasant war in Germany (1524-25). In later years as a result of studying the history of the peasant struggle against feudalism and drawing on the experience of revolutionary actions of the peasantry during the revolution of 1848-49 Engels changed his estimate of the peasant movements’ character. In The Peasant War in Germany (1850) and other works he showed the revolutionary liberation character of peasant revolts and their role in shaking the foundations of feudalism.
127 The Illuminati (from the Latin illuminatus) — members of a secret society founded in Bavaria in 1776, a variety of Freemasonry. The society consisted of appositional elements from the bourgeoisie and nobility, who were dissatisfied with princely despotism At the same time a characteristic feature of this society was the fear of the democratic movement, reflected in the rules, which made rank-and-file members blind tools of their leaders. In 1785 the society was banned by the Bavarian authorities. Similar societies existed also in Spain and France.
128 With this article Engels began contributing to the newspaper of the French republican democrats and petty-bourgeois socialists La Réforme. Determined to use the French radical press to spread communist ideas and to promote international unity of revolutionary proletarian and democratic circles in the European countries, Engels established close contacts with the editors of La Réforme in the autumn of 1847. In his letter to Marx of October [25-126, 1847 he wrote that he had made arrangements with Ferdinand Flocon, one of the editors, for the weekly publication of an article on the situation in England. Engels intended to popularise in France the Chartist movement and the material from the Chartist press, primarily The Northern Star. The article Engels proposed to Flocon (at first it was intended for Flocon’s personal information) was published, as Engels himself stated, without any alterations.
After this the newspaper carried almost every week Engels’ articles or summaries of The Northern Star reports on the Chartist movement which he translated into French. These summaries, as a rule, bore no title. Sometimes they were published in the column “The Chartist Movement”, or “The Chartist Agitation”, and usually began with the words “They write from London...... Engels contributed to La Réforme up to January 1848. Despite differences in views with the editors (in particular Louis Blanc and Alexandre-Auguste Ledru-Rollin), Engels’ articles and his propaganda of Chartism helped to overcome to some extent this paper’s national exclusiveness and had a revolutionising influence on its readers — the French working class and radical-minded middle sections.
129 The intended publication of the Chartist daily newspaper Democrat did not materialise.
130 Only a narrow circle of persons with electoral qualifications took part in the ballot (see Note 46).
131 On the general strike in England in 1842, see Note 10.
132 The editors of L'Atelier prefaced Engels’ article with the following note: “A German worker who has been living in England for a long time has sent us a letter we are giving below concerning one of the articles which was published last month. We hasten to print this letter which deserves being printed for a number of reasons.”
On his contacts with L'Atelier editors who were under the influence of Christian socialism Engels wrote to Marx on October [25-]26, 1847 in connection with the publication of this article: “I was ... at L'Atelier. I brought a correction to my article on the English workers in the last issue.... These gentlemen were very cordial.... They kept on suggesting to me to contribute. However, I shall agree only in the last resort..
This article was published in English in Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Articles on Britain, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1971.
133 The work is a continuation of the polemic with Karl Heinzen. The latter replied to Engels (see this volume, pp. 291-306) with a long article “Ein ‘Repräsentant’ der Kommunisten” full of rude abuse of his opponent and of the theory of scientific communism in general (Marx ironically called this article “Heinzen’s Manifesto Against the Communists”). After the publication of this article in full in the Deutsche-Brüsseler-Zeitung (No. 84, October 21, 1847) Bornstedt, the editor of the newspaper, again appealed to the contending parties to take the polemic elsewhere as the newspaper could not afford to publish such long articles. However, the editorial board had to agree to publish Marx’s reply to Heinzen in full. When they began to publish the reply in No. 86 on October 28, 1847 the editors even censured Heinzen in an editorial note for the harsh tone of his attacks. On November 14, before the whole of Marx’s article had appeared, the editors published a special note in answer to Heinzen’s attempt to continue the polemic: “We refuse to publish in the Deutsche-Brüsseler-Zeitung Heinzen’s letter of November 1 from Geneva in which he attacks the editorial board of this paper in an infamous way and tries to involve the paper and Karl Marx, for his first article in No. 86, without waiting for the continuation, in a vile private squabble. We declare that this is the way we shall deal with Heinzen’s subsequent letters, despite his philistine assertions that he has a right to use our paper to express his views. We shall reply to possible public accusations in the proper time and place if we deem it necessary.”
Marx’s work was published in the Polemik column in several issues. There were some editorial notes to the first part of it (to the expression “grobian literature”, literary personages “Solomon and Marcolph”, “goose preacher”). Subsequently, however, author’s notes were provided. Nos. 92 and 94 of November 18 and 25, 1847 contained errata. All the corrections, some of which are author’s improvements, have been taken into account in the present edition.
This work was published in English abridged in K. Marx, Selected Essays, Parsons, London, 1926.
134 This note (to the title of the second instalment of the article) published in the Deutsche-Brüsseler-Zeitung No. 87, October 31, 1847 was evidently written by Marx in reply to the editorial appeal to the contending parties (see Note 133) to abstain from private polemics.
135 Here and below Marx cites Shakespeare from August Schlegel and Ludwig Tieck’s edition: Shakespeare’s dramatics Werke, Th. 1-9), Berlin, 1825-33.
136 Communes — self-governing urban communities in medieval France and Italy. For their description see Engels’ note to the 1888 English edition and the 1890 German edition of the Manifesto of the Communist Party (this volume, p. 486).
137 By the German war of liberation is meant the struggle for liberation from Napoleonic rule in 1813-14 (for more details, see Note 22).In this war as well as in the campaign of 1815, after Napoleon’s short-lived restoration, the German states, including Austria and Prussia, which were members of the Holy Alliance (see Note 24), fought against Napoleonic France in the 6th anti-French coalition, the main organiser of which was Britain.
138 Marx refers to the “true Levellers” or “Diggers” who broke away from the democratic republican Levellers’ movement during the English bourgeois revolution of the mid-17th century. Representing the poorest sections of the population and suffering from feudal and capitalist exploitation in town and countryside, the Diggers, in contrast to the rest of the Levellers, who defended private property, carried on propaganda for community of property and other ideas of egalitarian communism, attempting to establish common ownership of the land through collective ploughing of commune] waste land.
139 On the struggle of the English bourgeoisie against the Corn Laws, see Note 47.
140 Marx cites the report of the commission under the chairmanship of William Morris Meredith to investigate the operation of the Poor Law. The report submitted to the Pennsylvania Congress on January 29, 1825 was published in The Register of Pennsylvania on August 16, 1828.
141 Apparently Marx is citing the following edition: Th. Cooper, Lectures on the Elements of Political Economy, London, 1831. (The first edition was published in Columbia in 1826.) This is proved by the coincidence of the pages referred to and the relevant passages in the above-mentioned edition, and also by the excerpts copied out by Marx (including the passage cited) in his preparatory notebooks (see MEGA, Abt. 1, Bd. 6, Berlin 1932, S. 604).
142 See Note 38.
143 The reference is to the failure of the Peasant War in Germany (1524-25)
144 Thirty Years’ War, 1618-48 — a European war, in which the Pope, the Spanish and Austrian Hapsburgs and the Catholic German princes rallied under the banner of Catholicism fought the Protestant countries: Bohemia, Denmark, Sweden, the Republic of the Netherlands and a number of German states which had become Protestant. The rulers of Catholic France — rivals of the Hapsburgs — supported the Protestant camp. Germany was the main arena of this struggle, the object of plunder and territorial claims. The Treaty of Westphalia concluded in 1648 scaled the dismemberment of Germany.
145 The September laws promulgated by the French government in September 1835, restricted the rights of jury courts and introduced severe measures against the press. They provided for increased money deposits for periodical publications and introduced imprisonment and large fines for publishing attacks on private property and the existing political system. The enactment of these laws in conditions of the constitutional July monarchy which had formally proclaimed freedom of the press, emphasised the anti-democratic nature of the bourgeois system.
146 Fontanel — an artificial ulcer practised in medieval medicine for the discharge of harmful tumours from the body.
147 The reference is to the uprising of the Silesian weavers on June 4-6, 1844 — the first big class battle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie in Germany, which assumed the greatest scope in the Silesian villages of Langenbielau and Peterswaldau, and to the uprising of the Bohemian workers in the second half of June 1844. (On this see Note 104.)
148 The reference is to the appeals for unity of all Germans against the German monarchs in the name of bourgeois freedoms and constitutional reforms, which were advanced by the participants in the Hambach festival — a political event that took place near the castle of Hambach in the Bavarian Palatinate on May 27, 1832.
149 Movement for the repeal of the Corn Laws — see Note 47. On the election of the Chartist leader Feargus O'Connor to Parliament — see Note 46.
150 The reference to Mably is not exact: the draft constitution for the Corsicans was drawn up by Rousseau and not by Mably. (J. J. Rousseau, Lettres sur la législation de la Corse, Paris, 1765). Mably, as well as Rousseau, drew up the draft constitution for the Poles. (G. Mably, “Du gouvernement et des lois de Pologne” in: Collection complète des oeuvres, t. 8, Paris, 1794 A 1795.)
151 An allusion to the conduct of the representatives of the party of the big bourgeoisie — the Girondists — after they had been removed from government and the Jacobins established their dictatorship in France following the popular uprising of May 31-June 2, 1793. In the summer of the same year the Girondists rose in revolt against the Jacobin government to defend the rights of the departments to autonomy and federation. After the revolt had been suppressed many Girondist leaders (Barbaroux among them) were sentenced by the revolutionary tribunal and executed.
152 Le Comité de salut public (The Committee of Public Safety) established by the Convention on April 6, 1793 during the Jacobin dictatorship (June 2, 1793-July 27, 1794) was the leading revolutionary government body in France. It lasted till October 26, 1795.
153 The reference is to the stories for children written by the German pedagogue J. H. Campe, in particular his book Die Entdeckung von Amerika, a section of which was devoted to the Peruvian Incas and the Spanish conquest of Peru.
154 An allusion to articles which appeared in the Allgemeine Zeitung, distorting the ideas of utopian communism and socialism and attempting to ascribe communist views to the radical organs of the German press. Marx exposed this attempt in his article “Communism and the Augsburg Allgemeine Zeitung” published in the Rheinische Zeitung of October 16, 1842 (see present edition, Vol. 1).
155 Engels’ work Principles of Communism reflects the next stage in the elaboration of the programme of the Communist League following the “Draft of a Communist Confession of Faith”. This new version of the programme was worked out by Engels on the instructions of the Paris circle authority of the Communist League. The decision was adopted after Engels’ sharp criticism at the committee meeting, on October 22, 1847, of the draft programme drawn up by the “true socialist” M. Hess, which was then rejected.
Comparison of the text of the Principles of Communism with that of the “Draft of a Communist Confession of Faith” proves that the document written by Engels at the end of October 1847 is a revised version of the Draft discussed at the First Congress of the Communist League. The first six points of the Draft were completely revised. Engels had felt compelled at that time to make some concessions in them to the as yet immature views of the League of the Just leaders. Some of these points were omitted in the Principles, others substantially changed and put in a different order. In the rest the arrangement of both documents coincides, though there are several new questions in the Principles.
The Principles of Communism constituted the immediate basis for the preliminary version of the Communist Manifesto. In his letter of November 23-24, 1847 to Marx Engels wrote about the advisability of drafting the programme in the form of a communist manifesto, rejecting the old form of a catechism. In writing the Manifesto the founders of Marxism used some propositions formulated in the Principles of Communism.
The Principles of Communism were published for the first time in English in The Plebs Magazine, London, in July 1914-January 1915; a separate edition was put out in Chicago in 1925 (The Daily Workers Publishing Co), in subsequent years they were published several times together with the Communist Manifesto.
156 See Note 70.
157 The reference is to class-divided societies. Subsequently Engels thought it necessary to make special mention of the fact that in their works written in the 1840s, while touching upon the problem of class antagonisms and class struggle in history, Marx and he made no mention of the primitive classless stage of human development because the history of that stage had as yet been but little studied. (See Engels’ note to the English edition of the Communist Manifesto, 1888, this volume, p. 482).
158 In the Appendix to the 1887 American edition of The Condition of the Working Class in England (first published in 1845) and also in the Preface to the English edition and in the Preface to the Second German edition (1892), Engels wrote about the recurrence of crises: “The recurring period of the great industrial crisis is stated in the text as five years. This was the period apparently indicated by the course of events from 1825 to 1842. But the industrial history from 1842 to 1868 has shown that the real period is one of ten years; that the intermediate revulsions were secondary, and tended more and more to disappear.”
159 The conclusion that the victory of the proletarian revolution was possible only simultaneously in the advanced capitalist countries, and hence impossible in one country alone, first made by Marx and Engels in The German Ideology (see present edition, Vol. 5, Ch. 1, 2[51) and most definitely formulated in the Principles of Communism, was arrived at in the period of pre-monopoly capitalism. However, in their later works Marx and Engels found it necessary to give this proposition a more flexible form stressing the fact that a proletarian revolution should be understood as a considerably prolonged and complex process which could develop initially in several main capitalist countries. See, for example, K. Marx, “Revelations about the Cologne Trial” (1853), Marx’s letter of February 12, 1870 to Engels and Engels’ letter of September 12, 1882 to Kautsky. Under new historical conditions, Lenin, proceeding from the law of the uneven economic and political development of capitalism in the era of imperialism, came to the conclusion that the socialist revolution could first triumph either in only a few countries or even in a single country. This conclusion was first formulated by Lenin in his article “On the Slogan of the United States of Europe” (1915).
160 See Note 38.
161 This article, written by Engels for La Réforme was reprinted in The Northern Star No. 524, November 6, 1847 with the following editorial introduction: “The following article, translated from the Réforme, the most able of the French journals, and a consistent supporter of the rights of labour in all countries, will cheer the working classes of England with the proud consolation, that henceforth the battle of universal liberty is not to be confined within the limits of our Sea-bound dungeon”.
162 The reference is to the Chartist Land Cooperative Society founded on the initiative of O'Connor in 1845 (later the National Land Company, it lasted till 1848). The aim of the Society was to buy plots of land with the money collected and to lease them to worker shareholders on easy terms. Among the positive aspects of the Society’s activity were its petitions to Parliament and printed propaganda against the aristocracy’s monopoly on land. However, the idea of liberating the workers from exploitation, of reducing unemployment, etc., by returning them to the land proved utopian. The Society’s activity had no practical success.
Subsequently, in the “Third International Review” written in autumn 1850 Marx and Engels stressed that the failure of the Land Society was inevitable. They emphasised at the same time that for a while the workers could mistake O'Connor’s project for a revolutionary measure only because objectively it was directed against big landownership and thus accorded with the tendency of bourgeois revolutions to break up the big landed estates; only the demand for nationalisation of land put forward somewhat later by the Chartists ‘ revolutionary wing (O'Brien, Ernest Jones and others) corresponded to the true interests of the working class (it was included into the Chartist programme of 1851).
Engels thought of sending a detailed report on the activities of the Land Society to La Réforme as can be seen from the second part of the article; but apparently he never wrote it, though he reproduced the content of petitions adopted later by this Society in his report “Chartist Agitation” (see this volume, pp. 412-14).
163 The banquet in London on October 25, 1847 was to celebrate the election of the Chartist leader Feargus O'Connor and a number of radicals to Parliament. The elections took place on August 5, 1847 in Nottingham. The account of the banquet used by Engels in this article was published in The Northern Star No. 523, October 30, 1847.
164 The demand for so-called complete suffrage, expressed vaguely in a way capable of varying interpretation, was proposed by the representatives of the English radical bourgeoisie in the early 1840s to counter the Chartist social and political programme laid down in the People’s Charter and the Chartist petitions. Early in 1842 the radical J. Sturge, who was close to the free traders, tried to found a universal suffrage league in Birmingham with the aim of diverting the workers from revolutionary struggle for the Charter. However, the efforts of Sturge and his adherents to influence the Chartist movement and use it for their own ends were resolutely rebuffed by the Chartist revolutionary wing.
Later, however, the radicals went on trying to replace the Chartists’ struggle for universal suffrage and fundamental reform of the parliamentary system with a movement for moderate parliamentary reforms.
165 The reference is to the July revolution of 1830 in France.
166 The National Chartist Association, founded in July 1840, was the first mass workers’ party in the history of the working-class movement. In the years of its upsurge it numbered up to 50,000 members. It was headed by an Executive Committee which was re-elected at congresses and conferences of delegates. The Association initiated many political campaigns and Chartists’ conventions. However, its work was hindered by lack of ideological and political unity and a certain organisational vagueness. After the defeat of the Chartists in 1848 and the ensuing split in their ranks the Association lost its mass character, but nevertheless under the Leader ship of the revolutionary Chartists waged a struggle for the revival of Chartism on a socialist basis. It ceased its activities in 1858.
167 On the parliamentary reform of 1831-32 in England see Note 33.
168 The reference is to the Constitution of the French Republic adopted by the Convention during the Jacobins’ revolutionary rule, the most democratic of bourgeois constitutions in the 18th and 19th centuries: it established the republican system, proclaimed freedom of the individual, of conscience, of the press, of petitioning, of legislative initiative, the right to education, social relief in case of inability, resistance to oppression.
169 The Northern Star No. 523, October 30, 1847, published excerpts from Alphonse Lamartine’s article “Déclaration de principes”, originally printed in the newspaper Le Bien Public in Mâcon.
170 See Note 18.
171 The reference is to comments of the Paris newspapers La Démocratie pacifique, October 25 and 26, 1847, La Presse, October 24, 1847 and others on Lamartine’s programme.
172 This article was occasioned by the civil war in Switzerland unleashed by the seven economically backward Catholic cantons which in 1843 formed a separatist union — the Sonderbund — to resist progressive bourgeois reforms and defend the privileges of the church and the Jesuits. The reactionary actions of the Sonderbund headed by the Catholics and the city patricians were opposed by bourgeois radicals and liberals who in the mid-40s were in the majority in most of the cantons and in the Swiss Diet, the supreme legislative body of the Swiss Confederation. In July 1847 the Diet decreed the dissolution of the Sonderbund, and this served as a pretext for the latter to start hostilities against other cantons early in November. On November 23 the Sonderbund army was defeated by the Federal forces. As a result of this victory and the adoption of a new constitution in 1848, Switzerland, formerly a union of states, became a federal state.
The struggle between radicals on the one side and reactionary patriarchal patricians and clericals on the other attracted Engels’ attention as early as 1844, when he described it in his article, “The Civil War in the Valais”, published in The Northern Star No. 344, June 15, 1844 (see present edition, Vol. 3).
In the present article Engels contrasted modern civilisation to patriarchal backwardness, exposing the Swiss reactionaries and their attempts to link counter-revolutionary separatist aims with the historical traditions of the Swiss people. Engels considered Switzerland’s past from this point of view. AS a result he presented a somewhat distorted picture of certain periods of its history, particularly the struggle against Austria and Burgundy in the Middle Ages which was anti-feudal on the whole. In his later works of 1856-59 on the history of warfare (“Mountain Warfare”, “Infantry”, etc.) Engels showed the great historical significance of Switzerland’s struggle for independence in the 14th and 15th centuries. Engels also changed his view of the peasants’ role in Norway (in the article the stress was laid on their patriarchal traditions). In “Reply to Herr Paul Ernest” (1890) Engels pointed out in particular that the existence of free peasants who had not experienced serfdom had a positive effect on Norway’s historical development though it was a backward country due to isolation and natural peculiarities.
173 In the battle of Sempach (Canton of Lucerne) on July 9, 1386 the Swiss defeated the Austrian troops of Prince Leopold III.
At Murten (Canton of Freiburg) on June 22. 1476 the Swiss defeated the troops of Carl the Bold, Duke of Burgundy.
174 Engels uses this term in relation to the mountain cantons which in the 13th and 14th centuries formed the nucleus of the Swiss Confederation.
175 The battle of Teutobord Forest (9 AA.D.) ended in the rout of the Roman legions by the Germanic tribes who had risen against the Roman conquerors.
176 The battle of Morgarten between the Swiss volunteers and the troops of Leopold of Hapsburg on November 15, 1315 ended in victory for the volunteers.
Marathon, Plataea and Salamis — sites of important battles won by the Greeks during the wars between Greece and Persia (500-449 B.C.).
177 The Grütli oath — one of the legends woven round the foundation of the Swiss Confederation, the origin of which dates back to the agreement of the three mountain cantons of Schwyz, Uri and Unterwalden in 1291. According to this legend representatives of the three cantons met in 1307 in the Grütli (Rütli) meadow and took an oath of loyalty in the joint struggle against Austrian rule.
178 At Granson (Canton of Vaud), on March 2, 1476, the Swiss infantry defeated Carl the Bold, Duke of Burgundy. At Nancy (Lorraine),on January 5, 1477, the troops of Carl the Bold were routed by the Swiss, the Lorrainians, the Alsatians and the Germans.
179 The account of the banquet at Château-Rouge was published in The Northern Star No. 508, July 17, 1847.
180 The quotation consists of extracts from the leading articles of the Journal des Débats, July 13, 15 ‘ 18, 19, and August 7, 1847.
181 See Note 90.
182 See Note 11.
183 The events described here took place in Paris at the end of August and the beginning of September 1847. They were provoked by a conflict between shoe-makers at a workshop in the Rue St. Honoré and their master, who tried to defraud one of the workers of part of his pay.
184 See Note 50.
185 This article was first published in English in: Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, On Britain, Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moscow, 1953.
186 The session of Parliament opened on November 18, 1847. The democratic forces were represented by the Chartist leader, Feargus O'Connor.
187 See Note 166.
188 See Note 1.
189 The International League, or the People’s International League, was founded in 1847 by English radicals and free traders. Among its foundation and active members were Thomas Cooper, Sir William Fox, Sir John Bowring and the democratic publicist, poet and engraver William James Linton. The League was also joined by several Italian, Hungarian and Polish emigrants, Giuseppe Mazzini in particular, who was one of its initiators. Its activity was limited to organising meetings and lectures on international problems and distributing pamphlets, and ceased completely in 1848.
190 In this article Engels used material from La Réforme, November 9, 13. 14 and 16, 1847. The banquets of Lille, Avesnes and Valenciennes were held on November 7, 9 and 11, 1847 respectively.
191 In 1840, under the pretext of fortifying the capital against the external enemy, the French Government began to erect a number of separate forts around Paris. The July monarchy intended them to help safeguard itself against people’s revolts. The democratic circles strongly protested against new “Bastilles” being built in Paris. Most of the bourgeois opposition, however, including the followers of the National, supported the construction of the forts, justifying it by national defence interests.
192 Marx’s and Engels’ participation in the international meeting organised by the Fraternal Democrats to mark the anniversary of the Polish uprising of 1830 showed their eagerness to use their stay in London during the Second Congress of the Communist League (end of November-beginning of December 1847) to strengthen contacts with the democratic and workers’ organisations in England. As Vice-President of the Brussels Democratic Association Marx was empowered to establish correspondence between the Association and the Fraternal Democrats and to enter into negotiations on the organisation of an international democratic congress (for details see Note 206).
Concerning the Polish meeting and the reception accorded the German democrats, see this volume, pp. 391-92.
Apart from the Deutsche-Brüsseler-Zeitung, the Deutsche Londoner Zeitung No. 140, December 3, 1847 and The Northern Star No. 528, December 4, 1847 also gave an account of the speeches made by Marx and Engels at the meeting.
193 This item was in the form of a letter to the editor of La Réforme.
194 The Democratic Association (Association démocratique) was founded in Brussels in the autumn of 1847 and united proletarian revolutionaries, mainly German emigrants and advanced ‘bourgeois and petty-bourgeois democrats. Marx and Engels took an active part in setting up the Association. On November 15, 1847 Marx was elected its Vice-President (the President was Lucien Jottrand, a Belgian democrat), and under his influence it became a centre of the international democratic movement. During the February 1848 revolution in France, the proletarian wing of the Brussels Democratic Association sought to arm the Belgian workers and to intensify the struggle for a democratic republic. However, when Marx was banished from Brussels in March 1848 and the most revolutionary elements were repressed by the Belgian authorities its activity assumed a narrower, purely local character and in 1849 the Association ceased to exist.
Fraternal Democrats — see Note 1.
195 See Note 189.
196 See Note 145.
197 The banquet of Dijon, described by Engels, was held on November 21, 1847 and a report on it was given in La Réforme on November 24 and 25. Engels repeated his criticism of Louis Blanc’s banquet speech somewhat later in the Deutsche-Brüssseler-Zeitung (see this volume, pp. 409-11).
198 The reference is to the military alliance concluded in 1778 between Louis XVI and the United States of America during the American War of Independence (1775-83) and to the participation of the French expeditionary corps and navy in the hostilities against England — France’s trade and colonial rival.
199 The reference is to the entry of the French republican army into the Netherlands in January 1795 in support of a local uprising against the aristocratic regime of the Stadholder Wilhelm V. The latter was deposed and the Batavian Republic was established (1795-1806), which soon became dependent on Napoleonic France.
200 For the meaning in which Engels uses the word “cosmopolitism” see Note 8.
201 In his polemic with Blanc Engels made no attempt to disclose the real nature of the bourgeois “civilisation” the capitalist states were spreading in the economically backward countries. He concentrated here on exposing Louis Blanc’s nationalistic bombast about France’s so-called civilising role. In their later articles and letters devoted to India, Ireland, China and Iran, Marx and Engels showed that these countries were drawn into the orbit of capitalist relations through their colonial enslavement by capitalist states. They were turned into agrarian and raw material appendages of the metropolis, their natural resources were plundered and their peoples cruelly exploited by the colonialists. The disastrous consequences of English rule in India were described by Marx, in particular, in his “Speech on the Question of Free Trade” (see this volume, pp. 460-61 and 464).
202 In the latter half of the 16th century the struggle between England and Spain caused by colonial rivalry was closely interwoven with the Netherlands revolution of 1566-1609. The defeat of the Invincible Spanish Armada in 1588 and other victories scored by England over Spain made it easier for the Dutch republic (the United Provinces) to resist the attempts of Spanish absolutism to restore its domination in that region of the Netherlands. In the war against Spain at that period the English and the Dutch often acted as allies.
203 The reference is to the English revolution of the mid-17th century which led to the eventual establishment of the bourgeois system in the country.
204 This rhyme was popular among the peasant rebels led by Wat Tyler in 1381 in England. It was widely used by John Ball, one of the leaders of the rebel peasants, in his sermons. It is apparently a paraphrase of the verse by the 14th-century English poet, Richard Rolle de Hampole:
When Adam dalfe and Eve spanne
To spire of Hou may spede,
Where was then the pride of man,
That now marres his meed?
205 Covenanters — the Scottish Calvinists of the 16th and 17th centuries who concluded special agreements and alliances covenants) to defend their religion against encroachments on the part of the aristocratic circles tending to Catholicism. On the eve of the 17th-century English revolution the Covenant became for the Scots the political and ideological rallying point of struggle against the absolutism of the Stuarts, for their country’s independence.
206 From the autumn of 1847 onwards the Brussels Democratic Association (see Note 194) discussed the question of convening an international democratic congress to rally the European revolutionary forces in view of impending revolutionary events. Marx and Engels took an active part in preparing for that congress. When in London, at the Second Congress of the Communist League, Marx had talks on the subject with the Chartist leaders and representatives of the proletarian and democratic emigrants. Engels apparently had similar talks with French socialists and democrats. In the beginning of 1848 an agreement was reached to convene the congress in Brussels. It was scheduled for August 25, 1848, the 18th anniversary of the Belgian revolution (see this volume, p. 640). These plans did not materialise, however, because in February 1848 a revolution began in Europe.
207 This item is Marx’s reply to an article by a Belgian publicist, Adolph Bartels, published in the Journal de Charleroi on December 12, 1847. Bartels distorted the activity of the revolutionary emigrants resident in Belgium and attacked in particular the communist views of the proletarian German emigrants, their Deutsche-Brüsseler-Zeitung and the international meeting which they helped to organise in London on November 29, 1847 to mark the 17th anniversary of the Polish uprising of 1830.
Bartels’ article reflected bourgeoisie’s dissatisfaction at the growing influence of the proletarian revolutionaries in the Belgian democratic movement, particularly in the Brussels Democratic Association (see Note 194; Bartels was a foundation member but soon broke away). The article coincided in time with a campaign of slander launched by the Belgian clerical and conservative press, and primarily by the Journal de Bruxelles, against the revolutionary German emigrants.
208 The German Workers’ Society was founded by Marx and Engels in Brussels at the end of August 1847, its aim being the political education of the German workers who lived in Belgium and dissemination of the ideas of scientific communism among them. With Marx, Engels and their followers at its head, the Society became the legal centre rallying the revolutionary proletarian forces in Belgium. Its best activists were members of the Communist League. The Society played an important part in founding the Brussels Democratic Association. It ceased to exist soon after the February 1848 revolution in France when the Belgian police arrested and banished many of its members.
209 The Journal de Bruxelles of December 14, 1847, gave a distorted account of Marx’s speech at the Polish meeting in London on November 29, 1847.
210 Congregatio de propaganda fide — a Catholic organisation founded by the Pope in 1622 with the aim of spreading Catholicism in all countries and fighting heresies.
211 Marx refers to the report published in The Northern Star of December 4, 1847 on the London meeting of November 29 in support of fighting Poland. Marx’s speech was abridged and inaccurately rendered.
212 Lamartine’s letter was published in a number of other papers besides Le Bien Public, in particular in La Presse, L'Union monarchique, and as a leaflet entitled Opinion du citoyen Lamartine sur le communisme. It was a reply to Etienne Cabet who through the newspaper Populaire requested Lamartine to give his opinion of Cabet’s communist views.
213 Engels’ articles in support of the newspaper La Réforme in its dispute with the moderate republicans of Le National drew the attention of the staff of La Réforme and met with their approval, especially that of Ferdinand Flocon, one of its editors. He praised Engels’ articles on this subject in The Northern Star (see this volume, pp. 375-82, 385-87, 438-44) and in the Deutsche-Brüsseler-Zeitung (this article), as Engels informed Marx in a letter of January 14, 1848 from Paris.
214 The dynastic opposition — an oppositional group in the French Chamber of Deputies during the July monarchy (1830-48). The group headed by Odilon Barrot expressed the sentiments of the liberal industrial and commercial bourgeoisie, arid favoured a moderate electoral reform, which they regarded as a means to prevent revolution and preserve the Orleans dynasty.
215 Octrois — city tolls on imported consumer goods, existed in France from the 13th century up to 1949.
216 The conspiratorial Society of Materialistic Communists was founded by French workers in the 1840s. Its members were influenced by the ideas of Théodore Dézamy, a representative of the revolutionary and materialist trend in French utopian communism.
The trial mentioned by Engels took place in July 1847. The members of the Society were sentenced to long terms of imprisonment.
217 The article “Louis Blanc’s Speech at the Dijon Banquet” is a version of Engels’ report “Reform Movement in France. — Banquet of Dijon” published in The Northern Star No. 530, December 18, 1847 (see this volume, pp. 397-401). The Deutsche-Brüsseler-Zeitung published its own version in the form of extracts from The Northern Star report. The introductory lines were written by Engels specially for this version, the rest of the text, including the quotation from Louis Blanc’s speech, was a translation into German of the part of the report where this speech was criticised. The translation was made almost word for word with but slight deviations which are reproduced here.
For comments on the text, see notes 197-203.
218 The translation of the National Petition was not published in La Réforme.
219 In the latter half of December 1847 Marx delivered several lectures on political economy in the German Workers’ Society in Brussels and intended to prepare them for publication in pamphlet form. However, as he later pointed out in the preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (1859), he did not manage to publish his work Wage-Labour, written on the basis of these lectures, because of the February 1848 revolution and his subsequent expulsion from Belgium. Marx’s intention to publish these lectures in the Deutsche-Brüsseler-Zeitung did not materialise either, though on January 6, 1848 the newspaper carried the following note: “At one of the previous meetings of the German Workers’ Society Karl Marx made a report on an important subject, ‘What Are Wages?’ in which the question was presented so clearly, pertinently and comprehensibly, the present situation so sharply criticised and practical arguments cited that we intend soon to make it known to our readers.”
Marx’s lectures appeared in their final form only in April 1849 in the Neue Rheinische Zeitung as the series of articles Wage-Labour and Capital (see present edition, Vol. 9). This series was not finished and did not embrace the whole content of Marx’s lectures.
Published below is a draft outline of the concluding lectures which Marx had no time to prepare for the press. The manuscript, whose cover bears the words: “Brussels, December 1847”, completes Wage-Labour and Capital.
The quotations cited in the original in German are either a free translation or paraphrase of writings by various economists and are taken by Marx, as a rule, from his notebooks of 1845-47.
For the use of terms “commodity labour”, “value of labour” and “price of labour”, see Note 70.
220 The first four points refer to those of Marx’s lectures which were published in the articles entitled Wage-Labour and Capital.
221 The data on the working hours and the number of weavers were taken by Marx from Th. Carlyle’s Chartism, London, 1840, p. 31, where we read: “Half-a-million handloom weavers, working fifteen hours a day, in perpetual inability to procure thereby enough of the coarsest food......
222 An excerpt from Bowring’s speech in the House of Commons was used by Marx in his “Speech on the Question of Free Trade"(see this volume, pp. 460-61).
223 Marx had in mind Carlyle’s words about the English Poor Laws: “If paupers are made miserable, paupers will needs decline in multitude. It is a secret known to all rat-catchers: stop up the granary-crevices, afflict with continual mewing, alarm, and going off of traps, your ‘chargeable labourers’ disappear, and cease from the establishment. A still briefer method is that of arsenic; perhaps even a milder...” (Th. Carlyle, Chartism, p. 17). The words “chargeable labourers” are in English in the manuscript.
224 Marx meant the following passage in J. Wade’s History of the Middle and Working Classes, p. 252: “The quantity of employment is not uniform in any branch of industry. It may be affected by changes of seasons, the alterations of fashion, or the vicissitudes of commerce.”
225 The reference is to piece-rate wages (see J. Wade, up. cit., p. 267).
226 Concerning the truck system (Marx used the English term in the manuscript) Babbage wrote: “Wherever the workmen are paid in goods, or are compelled to purchase at the master’s shop, much injustice is done to them, and great misery results from it The temptation to the master, in times of depression, to reduce in effect the wages which he pays (by increasing the price of articles at his shop), without altering the nominal rate of payment, is frequently too great to be withstood” (Ch. Babbage, On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures, second edition, 1832, p. 304). At the time Marx apparently used the French translation of Babbage’s book (Paris, 1833).
227 Marx gave part of this paragraph in a more extended form in his Wage-Labour and Capital, Article V.
228 See Note 225.
229 In his notes from Th. Carlyle’s Chartism, Marx quotes the following passage: “Ireland has near seven millions of working people, the third unit of whom, it appears by Statistic Science, has not for thirty weeks each year as many third-rate potatoes as will suffice them” (p. 25).
230 The reference is to the war waged by the German people against Napoleon’s rule in 1813-14.
231 Later, when Marx had worked out the theory of surplus value and made a more thorough study of the nature of wages, and the laws determining their rate and level, he came to the conclusion that, contrary to bourgeois economists’ opinion, the trade union struggle for higher wages and a shorter working day was of great economic importance and could obtain for the workers inure favourable terms for the sale of their labour power to the capitalists. Marx set forth his new point of view in Wages, Price and Profit (1865) and in Volume I of Capital (1867).
232 In 1846 the Guizot Government managed to arrange the marriage of the Spanish infanta and Louis Philippe’s youngest son and thwart England’s plans to marry Leopold of Coburg to Isabella If of Spain. In 1847, during the civil war in Switzerland, the British Foreign Secretary Palmerston avenged this failure of English diplomacy. He persuaded Guizot to espouse a project according to which the five powers were to interfere on the side of the Sonderbund but at the same time secretly assisted the latter’s defeat. Guizot’s diplomatic manoeuvres suffered a complete failure.
233 The workers were shot at Lyons during the weavers’ uprisings in 1831 and 1834.
Clashes between workers and troops at Preston took place in August 1842, when spontaneous Chartist disturbances swept through industrial England.
Langenbielau (Silesia) was a centre of the weavers’ uprising in June 1844. Government troops shot down the rebels.
In Prague government troops suppressed the workers’ revolt in the summer of 1844.
234 The reference is to the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (Déclaration des droits de 1'homme et du citoyen) — the first part of the French republican constitution of 1793 adopted by the National Convention after the overthrow of the monarchy on August 10, 1792.
235 Chant du depart (Marching Song) — one of the most popular songs of the French Revolution (its authors were Chénier and Méhull). It also remained popular later.
236 See Note 191.
237 The reference is to the Constitutional Charter (Charte constitutionnelle) adopted after the 1830 revolution. It was the fundamental law of the July monarchy.
238 This article was first published in English in the book, Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Ireland and the Irish Question, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1971.
239 King’s County was the name given by the English conquerors to the county of Offaly (Central Ireland) in honour of Philip II of Spain, husband of Mary Tudor, Queen of England. At the same time the neighbouring county of Laoighis (Leix) was renamed Queen’s County.
240 The Anglo-Irish Union was imposed on Ireland by the English Government after the suppression of the Irish rebellion of 1798. The Union, which came into force on January 1, 1801, abrogated the autonomy of the Irish Parliament and made Ireland even more dependent on England. After the 1820s the demand for the repeal of the Union was a mass issue in Ireland, but the Irish liberals who headed the national movement, O'Connell among them, regarded agitation for the repeal only as a means to wrest concessions from the English Government in favour of the Irish bourgeoisie and landowners. In 1835, O'Connell came to an agreement with the English Whigs and discontinued agitation altogether. Under the pressure of the mass movement, however, the Irish liberals were compelled in 1840 to set up the Repeal Association, which they tried to direct towards compromise with the English ruling classes.
The repeal of the Union was put up for discussion in Parliament on November 18, and the Coercion Bill on November 29, 1847. Accounts of O'Connor’s part in the debates, his suggestions and petitions demanding the repeal of the Union and protesting against the Coercion Bill were given in The Northern Star Nos. 528 and 529, December 4 and 11, 1847.
241 This article was first published in English in the book, Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Ireland and the Irish Question, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1971.
242 Repealers were advocates of the repeal of the Anglo-Irish Union and restoration of the Irish Parliament’s autonomy.
243 See Note 240.
244 Conciliation Hall — a public hall in Dublin where meetings were often organised by the Repeal Association.
245 The reference is to the second national petition presented to Parliament by the Chartists in May 1842. Together with the demand for the adoption of the People’s Charter, the petition contained a number of other demands, including that of the repeal of the Union of 1801. The petition was rejected by Parliament.
246 The basis of this “Speech on the Question of Free Trade” was the material Marx prepared for a speech he was to have delivered at the Congress of Economists in September 1847 (see this volume, pp. 270-81 and 287-90 and also Note 116), with the addition of new facts and propositions. The Deutsche-Brüsseler-Zeitung of January 6 announced in advance that Marx was to speak on free trade. At the same meeting of January 9 at which Marx made his speech, the Brussels Democratic Association decided to have it published in French and Flemish at the Association’s expense. On January 16, 1848, the Deutsche-Brüsseler-Zeitung published a report on the meeting and a detailed summary of Marx’s speech. “Thanks to Karl Marx’s speech on the question of free trade,” the report said, “this meeting turned out to be one of the most interesting of all held by the Association. The report in French took more than an hour, and the audience listened with unflagging attention all the time.” La Réforme of January 19, 1848, also carried an item by Bornstedt on Marx’s speech.
The speech was published as a pamphlet in French at the end of January 1848. The Flemish edition apparently did not materialise. The Deutsche-Brüsseler-Zeitung published its first notification of the publication on February 3. That same year the pamphlet was translated into German and published in Hamm (Germany) by Joseph Weydemeyer together with the beginning of the speech Marx was to have delivered at the Congress of Economists (Zwei Reden über die Freihandels- und Schutzzollfrage von Karl Marx. Aus dem Französischen übersetzt und mit einem Vorwort und erläuternden Anmerkungen versehen von J. Weydemeyer. Hamm, 1848). In 1885 this work was republished on Engels’ wish as a supplement to the first German edition of The Poverty of Philosophy which he had prepared, and since then it has repeatedly been republished with that work.
“The Speech on the Question of Free Trade” was first published in English in 1888 in Boston (USA) under Engels’ supervision. He actually edited the translation made by Florence Kelley-Wischnewetzky, an American socialist. In a letter of May 2, 1888, Engels wrote to her that he had brought her translation, made from the German version of 1885, nearer to the French original and in several places had “for the sake of clearness taken more liberties”. Engels wrote a preface for this edition which was published earlier (July 1888) in German in the journal Die Neue Zeit as an article entitled “Protectionism and Free Trade”. The American edition of the pamphlet appeared in September 1888 (1889 on the title page). Its title was: Free Trade. A Speech Delivered before the Democratic Club, Brussels, Belgium, Jan. 9, 1848. With Extract from La Misère de la Philosophie by Karl Marx. Engels was satisfied with the edition (see his letter of September 18, 1888 to Kelley-Wischnewetzky). In this volume “The Speech on the Question of Free Trade” is given in the English translation edited by Engels, except for the title which corresponds to the original. Retained are some technical peculiarities of the Boston edition, e.g., paragraphing which somewhat differs in this respect from the French edition of 1848. Where the texts of the 1888 and 1848 editions differ in meaning this is pointed out in a footnote. Pages of sources quoted by Marx are given in brackets. Reference is also made for the reader’s convenience to the English editions of Ricardo and Ure (Third Edition, London, 1821 and Second Edition, London, 1835 — respectively) which Marx made use of in French translations at that time.
247 See Note 28.
248 See Note 47.
249 See Note 76.
250 The address “The Fraternal Democrats (assembling in London), to the working classes of Great Britain and Ireland” was adopted at the Society’s meeting on January 3, 1848 and published in The Northern Star No. 533, January 8, 1848. It is quoted below abridged.
251 Luneau’s interpellation in the Chamber of Deputies concerning the sale of appointments in the Finance Ministry was answered in the negative by the then Minister of Finance, Lacave-Laplagne, on June 13, 1846. The publication of Petit’s pamphlet and the sharp reaction to it on the part of the public caused La Réforme to publish extracts from the above interchange between Luneau and the Minister of Finance, and also the speech on this subject made by H. M. Dupin, an opposition deputy (quoted by Engels below).
252 The liberation struggle of the Algerians led by Emir Abd-el-Kader against the French colonialists lasted with short interruptions from 1832 to 1847. Between 1839 and 1844, the French used their considerable military superiority to conquer Abd-el-Kader’s state in Western Algeria. However, he continued guerrilla warfare relying on the help of the sultan of Morocco, and when the latter was defeated in the Franco-Moroccan war of 1844, Abd-el-Kader hid in the Sahara oases. The last stage of this struggle was an insurrection in Western Algeria in 1845-47 which was put down by the French colonialists.
In one of his reports published in The Northern Star in 1844 Engels commanded the resistance of the local population to the French colonisation of Algeria (see present edition, Vol. 3, pp. 528-29). In this article (1847) Engels considered the Algerian movement under Abd-el-Kader f rum a different angle. As the text below shows, he denounced the barbaric methods used by bourgeois France in the conquest of Algeria, but saw this as the inevitable way in which capitalist relations superseded more backward feudal and patriarchal ones and regarded any opposition to this process as doomed to failure. Engels’ judgment was undoubtedly influenced by the ideas he then had of the proximity of a socialist revolution in the developed countries, which was to put an end for ever to all social and national oppression. He thought that favourable preconditions for this revolution were created by backward countries being drawn into the orbit of capitalism with its centralising and levelling tendencies, despite all their negative aspects. This judgment was not final, however. Later, after a deeper study of the history of colonial conquests and the resistance of the oppressed masses to colonial domination, Engels emphasised the liberating and progressive nature of the struggle of oppressed peoples against the capitalist colonial system which helped create favourable conditions for the working class to overthrow the capitalist system. It was from this point of view, in particular, that he described the liberation movement of the Algerians in the article “Algeria” written for the New American Encyclopaedia in 1857.
253 Here the editors of The Northern Star gave the following note: “This letter should have reached us last week, but was only delivered to us, by the friend who brought it from Paris, on Tuesday fast. Before this time our correspondent will have discovered his error in imagining for a moment the possibility of Louis Philippe, or his man of all work, performing a just or generous action. Abd-el-Kader will not be sent to Egypt; he is to be kept a close prisoner in France. Another specimen of the honour of kings’ — the honour of Philippe the Infamous!”
Abd-el-Kader was held in France as a prisoner for about five years. Only in 1852 was he permitted to move to Damascus, Syria.
254 See Note 162.
255 St. Stephen’s Chapel, where the House of Commons sat since 1547, was destroyed by fire in 1834.
256 ‘Change Alley — a street in London. where the Board of South Sea Company (founded in the beginning of the 18th century) had its offices; a place where all kinds of money operations and speculative deals were conducted.
257 The Manifesto of the Communist Party was written by Marx and Engels as the Communist League’s programme on the instruction of its Second Congress (London, November 29-December 8, 1847), which signified a victory for the followers of the new proletarian doctrine who had upheld its principles during the discussion of the programme questions.
When Congress was still in preparation, Marx and Engels arrived at the conclusion that the final program me document should be in the form of a Party manifesto (see Engels’ letter to Marx of November 23-24, 1847). The catechism form usual for the secret societies of the time and retained in the “Draft of a Communist Confession of Faith” and Principles of Communism (see this volume, pp. 96-103 and 341-57), was not suitable for a full and substantial exposition of the new revolutionary world outlook, for a comprehensive formulation of the proletarian movement’s aims and tasks. (See Demands of the Communist Party in Germany, by contrast.)
Marx and Engels began working together on the Manifesto while they were still in London immediately after the congress, and continued until about December 13 when Marx returned to Brussels; they resumed their work four days later (December 17) when Engels arrived there. After Engels’ departure for Paris at the end of December and up to his return on January 31, Marx worked on the Manifesto alone.
Hurried by the Central Authority of the Communist League which provided him with certain documents (e.g., addresses of the People’s Chamber (Halle) of the League of the Just of November 1846 and February 1847, and, apparently, documents of the First Congress of the Communist League pertaining to the discussion of the Party programme), Marx worked intensively on the Manifesto through almost the whole of January 1848. At the end of January the manuscript was sent on to London to be printed in the German Workers’ Educational Society’s printshop owned by a German emigrant J. E. Burghard, a member of the Communist League.
The manuscript of the Manifesto has not survived. The only extant materials written in Marx’s hand are a draft plan for Section III, showing his efforts to improve the structure of the Manifesto, and a page of a rough copy (both are published in this volume in the section “From the Preparatory Materials”, pp. 576 and 577-78).
The Manifesto came off the press at the end of February 1848. On February 29, the Educational Society decided to cover all the printing expenses.
The first edition of the Manifesto was a 23-page pamphlet in a dark green cover. In April-May 1848 another edition was put out. The text took up 30 pages, some misprints of the first edition were corrected, and the punctuation improved. Subsequently this text was used by Marx and Engels as a basis for later authorised editions. Between March and July 1848 the Manifesto was printed in the Deutsche Londoner Zeitung, a democratic newspaper of the German emigrants. Already that same year numerous efforts were made to publish the Manifesto in other European languages. A Danish, a Polish (in Paris) and a Swedish (under a different title: “The Voice of Communism. Declaration of the Communist Party”) editions appeared in 1848. The translations into French, Italian and Spanish made at that time remained unpublished. In April 1848, Engels, then in Barmen, was translating the Manifesto into English, but he managed to translate only half of it, and the first English translation, made by Helen Macfarlane, was not published until two years later, between June and November 1850, in the Chartist journal The Red Republican. Its editor, Julian Harney, named the authors for the first time in the introduction to this publication. All earlier and many subsequent editions of the Manifesto were anonymous.
The growing emancipation struggle of the proletariat in the ’60s and ’70s of the last century led to new editions of the Manifesto. ‘The year 1872 saw a new German edition with minor corrections and a preface by Marx and Engels where they drew some conclusions from the experience of the Paris Commune of 1871. This and subsequent German editions (1883 and 1890) were entitled the Communist Manifesto. In 1872 the Manifesto was first published in America in Woodhull & Claflin’s Weekly.
The first Russian edition of the Manifesto, translated by Mikhail Bakunin with some distortions, appeared in Geneva in 1869. The faults of this edition were removed in the 1882 edition (translation by Georgi Plekhanov), for which Marx and Engels, who attributed great significance to the dissemination of Marxism in Russia, had written a special preface.
After Marx’s death, the Manifesto ran into several editions. Engels read through them all, wrote prefaces for the 1883 German edition and for the 1888 English edition in Samuel Moore’s translation, which he also edited and supplied with notes. This edition served as a basis for many subsequent editions of the Manifesto in English — in Britain, the United States and the USSR. In 1890, Engels prepared a further German edition, wrote a new preface to it, and added a number of notes. In 1885, the newspaper Le Socialiste published the French translation of the Manifesto made by Marx’s daughter Laura Lafargue and read by Engels. He also wrote prefaces to the 1892 Polish and 1893 Italian editions.
The 1888 English edition is taken as the basis for the present publication. All the differences in reading between this and the German editions and also Engels’ notes to it and to the 1890 German edition are given in footnotes.
258 See Note 70.
259 The Ten-Hours’ Bill, the struggle for which was carried on a number of years, was passed in 1847 (see Note 76) in the atmosphere of acute contradictions between the landed aristocracy and the industrial bourgeoisie caused by the repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846 (see notes 28 and 47). To avenge themselves on the industrial bourgeoisie some of the Tories supported this Bill. A detailed description of the stand taken by various classes on the problem of limiting the working day was given by Engels in his articles “The Ten Hours Question” and “The English Ten-Hours’ Bill” (present edition, Vol. 10).
260 In the Preface to the 1872 German edition of the Communist Manifesto the authors particularly pointed out that “no special stress is laid” on the transitional revolutionary measures proposed at the end of Section If, and that the concrete character and practical application of such measures would always depend on the historical conditions of the time.
261 See Note 61.
262 An allusion to Immanuel Kant’s Kritik der praktischen Vernunft (Critique of Practical Reason), published just before the French Revolution (1788).
263 Réformistes (referred to below as Social-Democrats, this volume, p. 518) — see Note 60.
264 See Note 38.
265 See Note 55.
266 This article was first published in English in the book, K. Marx and F. Engels, The Communist Manifesto, Lawrence, London, 1930.
267 The reference is to the Prussian United Diet convened in April 1847 (see Note 51), which the Prussian ruling circles considered as the maximum constitutional concession to the liberal bourgeoisie. To counter the demands of the opposition the Prussian king and his supporters tried to substitute this assembly representing the estates for a genuinely representative one. The fact that the majority of the Diet refused to vote the new loans and taxes showed, however, how far the conflict between the monarchy and the bourgeoisie had gone.
268 See Note 172.
269 The reference is to the bourgeois revolution in Belgium (autumn 1830) which resulted in Belgium’s secession from the Kingdom of the Netherlands and the establishment there of the constitutional monarchy of the Coburg dynasty.
After the July 1830 revolution in France, the movement for liberal reforms intensified also in Switzerland. In a number of cantons, the liberals and radicals succeeded in having the local constitutions revised in a liberal spirit.
270 See Note 32.
271 In the beginning of February 183 1, revolts took place in a number of provinces of the Papal states — Romagna, Marca and Umbria — and also the dukedoms of Modena and Parma. They were instigated by the carbonari, members of bourgeois and aristocratic revolutionary secret societies. In the course of this bourgeois revolution in Central Italy an attempt was made to abolish the absolute monarchy (in Modena and Parma), to deprive the Pope of temporal power (in Romagna) and to form a new, larger state — an Alignment of Italian Provinces. The revolt was suppressed by the Austrian army at the end of March 1831.
272 From 1833 a moderately liberal constitution was in force in Hanover. A prominent part in drawing it up was played by the historian Dahlmann. In 1837 the King of Hanover, supported by the landowners, abolished the constitution and in 1840 passed a new constitutional Act, which reproduced the main principles of the State Law of 1819 and minimised the rights of the representative institutions.
273 The Vienna Conference of ministers of a number of German states was called in 1834 on the initiative of the Austrian Chancellor Metternich and the ruling circles of Prussia to discuss measures to be taken against the liberal opposition and the democratic movement. The conference decided to restrict the rights of the representative institutions which existed in some German states, to intensify censorship, to introduce more strict control over universities and to repress appositional students’ organisations.
274 On July 12, 1839, the English Parliament rejected the Chartist petition demanding the adoption of the People’s Charter. The Chartists failed in their attempt to organise in reply a general strike and other revolutionary actions, including armed struggle. The miners’ revolt in Newport (Wales) in early November 1839, which the Chartists organised, was crushed by troops, and severe repressions followed.
275 See Note 28.
276 Sans-Souci (literally “Without Care”) — a summer residence of the Prussian kings in Potsdam (near Berlin).
277 The reference is to the so-called United Committees consisting of the representatives of the Provincial Diets which met in January 1848 to discuss the draft of a new criminal code. Convening these committees, the Prussian government hoped that the apparent preparation of reforms would calm down the growing public unrest. The work of the committees was interrupted by the revolutionary outbursts that swept over Germany at the beginning of March.
278 Engels alludes to the speech of Frederick William IV at the opening of the United Diet on April 11, 1847: “As the heir to air unimpaired crown which I must and will preserve unimpaired for those that shall succeed me......
279 The reference is to the patriotic and reform movement among the liberal nobility and bourgeoisie in Prussia during the country’s dependence on Napoleonic France.
280 Roman consulta, or Roman State Council — a consultative body inaugurated by Pope Pins IX in the end of 1847. It included representatives of the liberal landowners and the commercial and industrial bourgeoisie.
281 Pifferari (from “piffero” — pipe) — herdsmen in the Apennines in Central Italy; a common name for Italian wandering singers.
Lazzaroni — a contemptuous nickname for declassed proletarians, primarily in the Kingdom of Naples. Lazzaroni were repeatedly used by the absolutist governments in their struggle against the liberal and democratic movements.
282 Pietists — adherents of a mystical Lutheran trend which arose in Germany in the 17th century and placed religious feeling above religious dogmas. Pietism was directed against the rationalist thinking and philosophy of the Enlightenment and in the 19th century was distinguished by extreme mysticism and hypocrisy.
283 The reference is to the war of 1846-48 between the United States of America and Mexico, as a result of which the USA seized almost half the Mexican territory, including the whole of Texas, Upper California, New Mexico and other regions.
In assessing these events in his article Engels proceeded from the general conception that it was progressive for patriarchal and feudal countries to be drawn into the orbit of capitalist relations because, he thought, this accelerated the creation of preconditions tor a proletarian revolution (see Note 252). In subsequent years however, he and Marx investigated the consequences of colonial conquests and the subjugation of backward countries by large states in all their aspects. In particular, having made a thorough study of the US policy in regard to Mexico and other countries of the American continent, Marx in an article, “The Civil War in the North America” (1861), described it as expansion in the interests of the then dominant slave-owning oligarchy of the Southern States and of the bourgeois elements in the North which supported it, whose overt aim was to seize new territories for spreading slavery.
284 The project of connecting the Pacific Ocean with the Gulf of Mexico by means of a canal through the Isthmus of Tehuantepec was repeatedly put forward in the USA, which strove to dominate the trade routes and markets in Central America. However, in the 1870s the American capitalists rejected this project, preferring to invest their capital in less expensive railway construction in Mexico.
285 The reference is to the French army’s invasion of Austria during the wars of the European coalitions against the French Republic and Napoleonic France. In March 1797 General Bonaparte’s troops defeated the Austrian army in Northern Italy, invaded Austria and launched an offensive on Vienna. This impelled the Austrian government to sign an armistice. In 1805, during the war of England, Austria and Russia against Napoleonic France, most of Austria was occupied by French troops following the capitulation of the Austrian army at Ulm (October 1805). During the Austro-French war of 1809 hostilities took place mainly on Austrian territory and ended in the defeat of the Austrians at Wagram (near Vienna), on July 5 and 6, 1809.
286 In July 1820 the carbonari, aristocratic and bourgeois revolutionaries, rose in revolt against the absolutist regime in the Kingdom of Naples and succeeded in having a moderate liberal constitution introduced. In March 182 1, a revolt took place in the Kingdom of Sardinia (Piedmont). The liberals who headed it proclaimed a constitution and attempted to make use of the anti-Austrian movement in Northern Italy for the unification of the country under the aegis of the Savoy dynasty then in power in Piedmont. Interference by the powers of the Holy Alliance and the occupation of Naples and Piedmont by Austrian troops led to the restoration of absolutist regimes in both states.
For details about the suppression of the revolt in Romagna in 1831 by the Austrians, see Note 271.
During the Polish uprising in the free city of Cracow in 1846 (see Note 55) the Austrian authorities provoked clashes between Ukrainian peasants and detachments of the insurgent nobles in Galicia.
In July 1847, fearing the people’s movement in the Papal states, the Austrian authorities brought in troops to the frontier town of Ferrara. In Rome itself they supported the circles which strove to abolish the liberal reforms of Pins IX. However, the general discontent in Italy caused by the occupation of Ferrara forced the Austrians to withdraw their troops.
287 The Sonderbund, a separatist alliance of patriarchal and aristocratic cantons, which unleashed civil war in Switzerland in November 1847 (see Note 172), received money and armaments from Austria and France, under the pretext that they were guarantors of Switzerland’s neutrality (under the Paris Treaty of 1815), and counted on their military interference on its side.
288 In the atmosphere of growing revolutionary unrest in Hungary the Austrian government attempted to seize from the progressive national opposition the initiative in carrying through a number of bourgeois reforms with the aim of splitting its ranks. In 1843 and 1844 Bills were introduced on the development of credit, road construction, the abolition of customs barriers between Austria and Hungary, the regulation of navigation on the Danube, greater representation of cities in the assemblies of the estates, etc. The manoeuvres of the Austrian government could not, however, halt the national movement or make the opposition renounce its demands for radical changes.
289 Prater — a park in Vienna.
290 Below Marx gives a critical analysis of the article, “Les Associations démocratiques. — Leur principe. — Leur but” (“Democratic Associations. — Their Principles. — Their Aim”), published in the Belgian radical newspaper Débat social (editor-in-chief A. Barrels) on February 6. 1848.
About the Brussels Democratic Association, see Note 194.
291 Alliance (founded in 1841) and Association libérale (founded in 1847) — liberal bourgeois political organisations in Belgium.
292 Marx basin mind Robert Peel’s speech in the House of Commons on June 29, 1846, when the government’s resignation was discussed.
293 The reference is to the People’s Charter — the main programme of political changes proposed by the Chartists (see Note 48).
294 The reference is to the discussion on free trade held at the meetings of the Brussels Democratic Association in January and early February 1848. It was initiated by Marx’s speech on the question of free trade on January 9 (see this volume, pp. 450-65), in which he opposed the tendency of certain bourgeois democrats to idealise free trade. In this speech Marx expressed the opinion not only of the proletarian section but of the majority of the Democratic Association.
295 Marx refers to the articles published in the Débat social of February 6, 1848: “Opinion de M. Cobden, sur les dépenses de la guerre et de la marine” (“M. Cobden’s opinion of the Expenses on the War and the Navy”) and “Discours prononcé par M. Le Hardy de Beaulieu, A la dernière séance de l'Association Belge pour la liberté commercials” (“Speech by M. Le Hardy de Beaulieu at the Last Meeting of the Belgian Association in Defence of Free Trade”).
296 In November 1847 the King of Sardinia, the Pope and the Duke of Tuscany agreed to convene a conference of Italian states to form a Customs Union. The project of a Customs Union met the interests of the bourgeois circles which strove to unite [lie country “from above” in the form of a federation of states under the Pope or the Savoy dynasty. However, this plan was frustrated by the 1848-49 revolution in Italy and its defeat in 1849.
297 On the events of 1823 and 1831 in Italy, see notes 271 and 286.
298 Prior to the 1848 revolution the movement among the German population in the duchies of Schleswig and Holstein against a common constitution with Denmark (the draft constitution was made public on January 28, 1848) was a separatist one and did not go beyond moderate bourgeois opposition. Its aim was to create in the north of Germany yet another small German state dependent on Prussia. During the 1848-49 revolution the situation changed. The events in Germany imparted to the national movement in Schleswig and Holstein a revolutionary, liberation character. The struggle for the secession of these duchies from Denmark became an integral part of the struggle for the national unification of Germany and was resolutely supported by Marx and Engels.
299 See Note 26.
300 The reference is to the rescripts of Frederick William IV convening a United Diet in Prussia (see Note 51).
301 The report on the meeting in Brussels to mark the second anniversary of the Cracow uprising (see Note 55) was published in the Deutsche-Brüsseler-Zeitung on February 24, 1848 (see this volume, p. 644). After the meeting a pamphlet in French was issued, containing the reports of the main speakers. The letters of C. G. Vogler, a German publisher in Brussels, member of the communist League. to Marx, who on March 5, 1848 moved to Paris after his expulsion from Belgium, show that Marx and Engels took a direct part in the publication of this pamphlet. It came out about March 15, 1848 under the title: “Célébration, à Bruxelles, du deuxième anniversaire de la Révolution Polonaise du 22 février 1846. — Discours. prononcés par MM. A. J. Senault, Karl Marx, Lelewel, F. Engels et Louis Lubliner, Avocat, Bruxelles, C. G. Vogler, Libraire-Editeur, 1848.” The pamphlet was prefaced with the following short introductory note (possibly written by Marx or Engels):
“Together with the Polish democrats, the Brussels Democratic Association consisting of representatives of various nations celebrated at a public meeting the second anniversary of the Polish revolution of 1846. The hall was crowded out, and the public most enthusiastically expressed its sympathy for the event.
“Unfortunately, we were unable to reproduce the ardent speeches in Flemish made by two workers, MM. Kats and Pellering. M. Wallau, President of the German Workers’ Society in Brussels, himself a working man, spoke in German. His extemporaneous and highly enthusiastic speech testified that the German workers fully share the sentiments of their brothers in France and in England.
“The speeches are given here in the order they were made. They are preceded by the Manifesto of the Provisional Government formed in Cracow on February 22, 1846.”
Extracts from Marx’s speech were first published in English in the journal Labour Monthly, February 1948, and in the collection, Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Ireland and the Irish Question Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1971.
302 The reference is to the constitution of May 3, 1791 adopted by the Four Years’ Diet (1788-92). “The Party of Patriots” which constituted a majority in the Diet strove, through a new constitution and reforms, to undermine the rule of feudal anarchy and the domination of the magnates, to strengthen the Polish state (demands to establish a hereditary constitutional monarchy, to abolish the right of every deputy of the nobility to veto the decisions of the Diet) and also to adapt the feudal system to the needs of bourgeois development (the demand to extend the rights of the urban population, and recognise a moderate form of certain bourgeois freedoms). The constitution preserved serfdom, but gave the peasants a certain opportunity to establish state-guaranteed contractual relations with the landowners. The constitution was opposed by the big land magnates, on whose call Prussia and Russia occupied Poland in 1793 and partitioned it for the second time (it was first partitioned by Prussia, Russia and Austria in 1772). After the suppression of the Polish insurrection of 1794 (the insurgents aimed at restoring the 1791 constitution), the Polish state ceased to exist in .1795 as a result of the third partition of Poland by Austria, Prussia and tsarist Russia.
303 The Congress of Vienna (September 1814-June 1815) composed of European monarchs and their ministers established, after the war of the European powers against Napoleonic France, a system of general treaties embracing the whole of Europe (with the exception of Turkey). The Congress decisions helped to restore feudal order and a number of former dynasties in the states previously conquered by Napoleon, sanctioned the political fragmentation of Germany and Italy, the incorporation of Belgium into Holland and the partition of Poland and outlined repressive measures to be taken against the revolutionary movement.
304 See Note 172.
305 See Note 72.
306 On the Reform Bill of 1832 in England — see Note 33; on the abolition of the Corn Laws — see Note 28.
307 An allusion to the results of the liberation war of 1813-15 against Napoleon’s rule. The victory was taken advantage of by the aristocracy and nobility of the German states to help preserve the political fragmentation of Germany (see Note 26).
308 The reference is to the Irish Confederation founded in January 1847 by the radical and democratic elements in the Irish national movement who had broken away from the Repeal Association (see Note 240). The majority of them belonged to the Young Ireland group which was formed in 1842 by the Irish bourgeois and petty-bourgeois intellectuals. The Left, revolutionary wing of the Irish Confederation advocated a people’s uprising against English rule and tried to combine the struggle for Irish independence with the campaign for democratic reforms. The Irish Confederation ceased to exist in the summer of 1848 after the English authorities crushed the uprising in Ireland.
309 See note 32.
310 , rite Congress of Vienna in 1814-15 liquidated the so-called duchy of Warsaw which depended on Napoleonic France. It was formed by Napoleon in 1807, after the defeat of Prussia, on the Polish territory seized by Prussia as a result of the three partitions of Poland. The Congress repartitioned the duchy between Prussia, Austria and Russia with the exception of the free city of Cracow, which was under the joint protection of the three powers up to 1846. The part incorporated into Russia was called the Kingdom of Poland with Warsaw as its capital.
311 Engels refers to the editorial in La Riforma No. 14, February 11, 1848 in reply to the article “Von der italienischen Gränze” published in the Augsburg Allgemeine Zeitung No. 3 1, January 31, 1848.
312 Treaties of 1815 — see Note 303; on the liberation wars against Napoleonic France and Engels’ opinion of them in the forties and subsequent years — see Note 22.
313 The reference is to the plan of deployment and operation of government troops in case of a revolt in Paris. It was adopted in 1840.
314 When the Guizot government fell on February 23, 1848, the supporters of the House of Orleans attempted to form a ministry consisting of moderate monarchists (the Orleanists) Thiers, Billault, and others and headed by Count Molé. The victorious people’s insurrection in Paris, however, thwarted the plan to retain the Orleans monarchy.
315 The posts in the French Provisional Government formed on February 24, 1848, were held mainly by moderate republicans (Lamartine, Depont de l'Eure, Crémieux, Arago, Marie, and the two men mentioned by Engels from the National, Marrast and Garnier-Pagès). There were three representatives of the Réforme in the government — Ledru-Rollin, Flocon and Louis Blanc, and a mechanic Albert (real name Martin).
316 The editor George Julian Harney added the following introductory note when publishing this letter in The Northern Star, March 25, 1848: ... The following letter was received at the time the editor was in Paris; hence its non-appearance until now. Thank God, the days of the contemptible, ‘constitutional’ tyranny of Belgium are numbered. Leopold is packing his carpet bag.”
317 The Brussels Association Démocratique and the Alliance — see notes 194 and 291.
318 See Note 208.
319 The reference is to the double-faced policy of the French Orleanists on the Belgian question in the 1830s. Du ring the period of the 1830-31 revolution they fostered plans of annexing Belgium and incited the Belgians to fight for secession from Holland. Simultaneously, at the London Conference of the five powers (Britain, France, Russia, Austria and Prussia) held with intervals in 1830 and 183 1, they colluded, at the expense of Belgium, with the powers supporting Holland. As a result the Belgians had to accept the unfavourable terms of the agreement with the Dutch King (finally signed in May 1833) and cede part of their territory to him.
320 By order of the French authorities Marx was expelled from France at the beginning of February 1845 together with other. editors of the radical newspaper Vorwärts! published in Paris. Its closure was demanded by the Prussian ruling circles. For details about Marx’s expulsion and his move to Belgium, see present edition, Vol. 4, p. 235.
321 In this article Marx used notes which he had made at the beginning of March 1848 on the arrest, maltreatment and expulsion of Wilhelm Wolff by the Brussels police (see this volume, pp. 581-82).
322 The laws on suspects — the decree passed by the French Convention on September 17, 1793 and other measures of the Jacobin revolutionary government which declared suspect and subject to arrest all persons who in one way or another supported the overthrown monarchy, including all former aristocrats and royal officials who had not testified their loyalty to the revolution. These laws were drawn up in such a form that even people not involved in counter-revolutionary activity could be placed in the category of “suspects”.
323 This article was written by Engels shortly before he left Brussels for Paris and was apparently intended for La Réforme. However, it was never published and survived only as a manuscript.
324 This is apparently a rough outline of a speech Marx intended to make on September 18, 1847 at the Congress of Economists in Brussels (see this volume, pp. 287-89 and notes 113 and 116).The outline was written on the last page of the tenth notebook containing extracts Marx made in the latter half of 1845 and in 1846. Some places in the manuscript are indecipherable because of ink blots (in the text they are marked by periods in square brackets). At the bottom of the text itself and in the margins there are several drawings by Engels apparently of participants in the Congress (see illustration between p. 578 and p. 579).
325 This extract is in Marx’s notebook which contains his manuscript “Wages” and is dated December 1847. There is no direct indication of its purpose in the extant manuscripts or letters. It might have been a preparatory outline either for the “Speech on the Question of Free Trade” which Marx delivered on January 9, 1848 at the meeting of the Brussels Democratic Association, or for lectures on political economy which he delivered in December 1847 to the German Workers’ Society in Brussels (see notes 219 and 246). It may also have been intended for a non-extant economic work by Marx.
Marx made a few references in the text to one of his notebooks of excerpts dating to the summer of 1847. The notebook contains a synopsis of G. Gülich’s book, Geschichtliche Darstellung des Handels, der Gewerbe und des Ackerbaus der bedeutendsten handeltreibenden Staaten unserer Zeit, Bd. 1-5, Jena, 1830-45. The passages referred to are in Vol. 1. Marx usually wrote the authors name as Jülich and in the manuscript used only the initial letter “J” to denote the author.
326 The draft plan is written on the cover of Marx’s notebook containing the manuscript “Wages” (see this volume, pp. 415-37) and dated “Brussels, December 1847”.
327 In the final version of the Communist Manifesto points 5 and 6 were not elaborated.
328 This is the only extant page of the rough version of the Communist Manifesto. The fair copy sent to London at the end of January 1848 to be printed did not survive. The page of the rough copy refers in part to the first and mainly to the second section of the Manifesto.
329 Petits Carmes — a prison in Brussels.
330 See Note 208.
331 Permanence — a police station at the Town Hall in Brussels open all round t he clock. Amigo — a preliminary detention jail in Brussels, situated near the Town Hall (it derived its name from the Flemish word “vrunte” — a fenced place, interpreted by the Spaniards during their domination in the Netherlands as “vriend” — friend, and rendered in Spanish as “amigo”).
332 This document is a draft of the Rules of the Communist League adopted at its First Congress in the beginning of June 1847 (see Note 69) and distributed among the circles and communities for discussion. It shows the reorganisation work done by the League of the Just leaders as agreed with Marx and Engels, who consented early in 1847 to join the League on the condition that it would he reorganised on a democratic basis and all elements of conspiracy and sectarianism in its structure and activity would be eliminated. Engels, who was present at the Congress, took a direct part in drawing up the Rules. The draft recorded the change in the League’s name, and it is referred to here as the Communist League for the first time. The new motto, “Working Men of All Countries, Unite!” was also used for the first time. The former leading body, the narrow People’s Chamber (Halle), was replaced by the supreme body — the Congress, composed of delegates from local circles; the executive organ was to be the Central Authority. The relations between all the League organisations were based on principles of democratism and centralism. At the same time a number of points in the draft showed that the reorganisation was not yet complete and that former traditions were still alive, namely: Art. 1 formulating the aims of the League; one of the points in Art. 3, making the sectarian stipulation that members were not to belong to any other political organisation; Art. 21, limiting the powers of the Congress by the right of the communities to accept or reject its decisions, etc. On the insistence of Marx and Engels these points were later deleted or altered. The Second Congress (November 29-December 8, 1847) adopted the Rules in an improve(] and more perfect form, which finally determined the structure of the Communist League according to the principles of scientific communism.
This document was discovered, together with the “Draft of a Communist Confession of Faith” in 1968 among the papers of Joachim Friedrich Martens, a member of the Communist League in Hamburg.
333 The Circular, or report of the First Congress of the Communist League to its members, also discovered among Martens’ papers, brings to light important details of the convening and proceedings of the Congress and gives an idea of the process of reorganising the League of the Just.
334 In February 1847 the leading body of the League of the Just — the People’s Chamber (in November 1846 its seat was transferred from Paris to London) — called upon the League’s local organisations to elect delegates to the congress which was to assemble in London on June 1. The People’s Chamber address also defined the agenda of the congress. London remained the seat of the League’s executive body which, however, in accordance with the adopted draft Rules, then began to function as the Central Authority.
335 Being an illegal organisation, the Communist League could not hold its congresses openly or publish their materials.
336 The London German Workers’ Educational Society was founded in February 1840 by Karl Schapper, Joseph Moll and other members of the League of the Just. After the Communist League had been founded the leading role in the Society belonged to the League’s local communities. At various periods of its activity the Society had branches in the workers’ districts in London. In 1847 and 1849-50 Marx and Engels took an active part in the Society’s work. But on September 17, 1850, Marx, Engels and a number of their followers withdrew because the Willich-Schapper sectarian and adventurist faction had increased their influence in the Society. In the late 1850s Marx and Engels resumed work in the Educational Society. It existed up to 1918, when it was closed down by the British Government.
Fraternal Democrats — see Note 1.
337 The reference is to the French secret workers’ societies of the 1840s in which utopian ideas, both socialist and communist, were current. Some of the societies’ members were influenced by the pacifist communism of Cabet, some supported the revolutionary utopian Communists Théodore Dézamy and Auguste Blanqui.
338 The description given below of the situation in the Paris communities of the League of the Just in 1845-46 corresponds to the information which Engels (he had been in Paris since August 15, 1846) sent to Marx and other members of the Communist Correspondence Committee in Brussels (see Engels’ letters of August 19, September 18, October 18 and 23, and December 1846 to Marx and of August 19, September 16, October 23, 1846 to the Brussels Communist Correspondence Committee). This part of the report was apparently based on information received from Engels, whose role was decisive in overcoming the ideological confusion within the League’s Paris communities and in drawing the demarcation line between their revolutionary wing. and the petty-bourgeois elements tending towards “true socialism” and Weitling’s egalitarian utopian communism. Possibly this section as a whole was written by Engels.
339 This refers apparently to the money collected by the Paris members of the League of the Just for the Cracow insurgents of 1846.
340 The reference is to the revolutionary conspiratorial organisation of German emigrants in Switzerland in the 1830s and 1840s. Initially it consisted mainly of petty-bourgeois intellectuals. Later members of the workers’ unions gained influence in Young Germany. In the mid-30s, under pressure from Austria and Prussia, the Swiss government expelled the German revolutionaries and the (:raftsmen’s unions were closed down. Young Germany actually ceased to exist, but its followers remained in the cantons of Geneva and Vaud. In the 1840s Young Germany was resurrected. Influenced by the ideas of Ludwig Feuerbach, its members cart ie(l on mainly atheist propaganda among the German emigrants and resolutely opposed communist trends, especially that of Weitling. In 1845 Young Germany was again suppressed.
341 The reference is apparently to the proposal made to Marx and Engels by the leaders of the League of the Just to join the League and take part in its reorganisation on the basis of the principles of scientific communism. On behalf of the People’s Chamber, Joseph Moll had talks with Marx in Brussels and with Engels in Paris at the end of January and the beginning of February 1847.
342 This reference is apparently to the circumstances which led to the formation of the League of the Just as a result of a split in the Outlaws’ League, a secret conspiratorial organisation of German emigrants. The latter was set up in Paris in 1834 and headed by petty-bourgeois democrats (Jakob Venedey and others) and socialists (Theodor Schuster and others). The conflict which arose in the Outlaws’ League between the artisan-proletarian elements tending towards utopian communism and the petty-bourgeois republican democrats led to the withdrawal of the supporters of communism, who founded the League of the Just.
343 The reference is to the changes in the Rules of the League of the Just which were in force prior to the First Congress where it was reorganised into the Communist League. The Rules of the League of the Just have come down to us in the versions of 1838 and 1843, which contained very vague and immature formulations typical of purely conspiratorial organisations. There was possibly yet another, later version of the Rules which is referred to here.
344 The attempt made by the London Central Authority to arrange for the publication of a regular newspaper or journal of the Communist League failed through lack of funds. It managed to put out only a specimen number of Kommunistische Zeitschrift, which appeared in London early in September 1847. It was printed in the printshop of the London German Workers’ Educational Society owned by J. E. Burghard. The influence of Marx and Engels can be traced in its contents. The articles by Wilhelm Wolff, Karl Schapper and others were critical of “true socialising and various utopian socialist trends, gave a rebuff to Karl Heinzen’s attacks on the Communists and expounded a number of points concerning the tactics of the proletarian movement. It was in the specimen number that the motto, “Working Men of All Countries, Unite!”, was first used in the press as the epigraph of the journal. When the editing of the Deutsche-Brüsseler-Zeitung devolved to a considerable extent upon Marx and Engels (see Note 96), this newspaper became in fact the Communist League’s regular organ.
345 Art allusion to the crude egalitarian tendencies in the views of Weitling and his supporters and also utopias of “true socialists”.
346 The Address of the Central Authority of the Communist League dated September 14, 1847 is a quarterly report on the activity of the League after the First Congress (June 1847). It describes the situation in the League in general and the measures taken by the Central Authority to prepare for the Second Congress. Giving important data on the discussion of the draft Rules and the “Draft of a Communist Confession of Faith”, the Address reveals the ideological struggle in the local communities between the supporters of Marx and Engels and those of Weitling and Grün. The document testifies to the growing activity of the Brussels circle authority headed by Marx, and to its influence on the affairs of the League as a whole and the elaboration of its programme and organisational principles.
This document, like other documents of the First Congress of the Communist League, was discovered in Hamburg among the papers of J. F. Martens. A note made by Karl Schapper on the last page and addressed to Martens shows that this copy was intended for the Hamburg community, of which he was a member (it is not reproduced in this volume).
347 The reference is to the letter which the Communist League’s Central Authority elected at the First Congress sent with other Congress documents, in particular its Circular (see this volume, pp. 589-600), to the League’s communities in various countries in June 1847. Extant is a version of the letter addressed to the Hamburg community and dated June 24. In this letter the Central Authority asked the Communist League members in the localities whether they were satisfied with the decisions of the First Congress, whether they accepted or rejected the new Rules, whether they could allot funds for the general needs of the organisation, whether they had formed circles in compliance with the Rules, how many copies of the Kommunistische Zeitschrift then being prepared they. could distribute and to what extent they had managed to launch communist propaganda among the masses. The letter also proposed that the League members should discuss the “Draft of a Communist Confession of Faith’ and give their opinion of this programme document, and also take steps to appoint delegates to the next congress.
348 See Note 344.
349 The reference is to the documents of the leading body of the League of the Just — the People’s Chamber — issued prior to its reorganisation as the Communist League at the First Congress in June 1847: the address of the People’s Chamber of the League of the Just to the League, November 1846 and February 1847.
350 The Scandinavian Society — a radical democratic society in the latter half of the 1840s. It was in contact with the Communist League and consisted mainly of workers and craftsmen. Its chairman was the League member Per Görtrek, a translator, publisher and bookseller.
351 According to the Communist League’s Rules adopted at the First Congress, individual communities in a given locality had either to form a circle or, if there were no other communities, join a circle already in existence (see this volume, p. 586).
352 Johann Dohl, sent to Amsterdam in August 1847, reported to the Central Authority in October on the foundation in Amsterdam of a Communist League community of eight members.
The Workers’ Educational Society in Amsterdam was set up on February 14, 1847. Members of the Communist League played an active part in its foundation and work. In March 1848 the London German Workers’ Educational Society sent its counterpart in Amsterdam a hundred copies of the Communist Manifesto. The leaders of the Educational Society in Amsterdam, who were also Communist League members, were subjected to severe police persecution for organising a mass meeting in Amsterdam on March 24, 1848 in support of the revolution in France and Germany.
353 The reference is to Karl Grün’s propaganda of Proudhon’s views among German workers in Paris and to his free translation into German of Proudhon’s Système des contradictions économiques, ou Philosophie de La misère, which he published in Darmstadt in 1847 (see Note 56).
354 Marx’s intention to publish a German translation of The Poverty of Philosophy did not materialise. During his lifetime only extracts from Chapter II were published in German (see Note 71). The first German edition of this work, edited by Engels, appeared in 1885.
355 By the autumn of 1847 a complicated situation had arisen in the League’s communities in Paris. The followers of Weitling, expelled by the First Congress, allied themselves with those of Grün. A split took place in October. One of the communities opposed the communist principles and was expelled from the League by a decision of the Central Authority. Engels, then in Paris, wrote to Marx on October 25-26, 1847: “A few days before my arrival the last Grün followers were thrown out, a whole community, half of which, however, will come back. We are only 30 strong. I have at once organised a propaganda community and have been running around all day and beating the drums. I have at once been elected to the circle authority and entrusted with correspondence. Some 20-30 candidates have been nominated for admission. We shall soon be stronger again.”
356 The reference is to the former members of Young Germany, a secret democratic organisation of German emigrants in Switzerland, suppressed by the police in 1845 (see Note 340). They fought against the adherents of communist ideas.
357 The reference is to the communist groups in Cologne, Westphalia, Elberfeld, which had earlier been in contact with the Brussels Communist Correspondence Committee founded by Marx and Engels, and set up Communist League communities after the League’s First Congress.
358 The reference is to the German Workers’ Society in Brussels (see Note 208).
359 The amendments made by the Brussels circle authority to the draft Rules of the Communist League were adopted at the League’s Second Congress. They revealed Marx’s efforts to work out better organisational principles of the proletarian party and overcome survivals of sectarianism in its structure. The article concerning the approval of Congress decisions by the communities was deleted and the ban of League members belonging to other political organisations was restricted to organisations hostile to the League (see this volume, p. 633).
By aristocrats in the Convention are probably meant the counter-revolutionary elements who opposed the Jacobin centralisation measures aimed at strengthening the revolutionary government.
360 The reference is to the London German Workers’ Educational Society (see Note 336).
361 The “Draft of a Communist Confession of Faith” and the Rules adopted by the First Congress were regarded as preliminary drafts to be discussed in the localities, improved and finally approved at the next congress.
362 The reference is to the trial of the members of the League of the Just arrested in Berlin in the spring of 1847. The main witness, Friedrich Mentel, who betrayed the League, withdrew his previous evidence (see this volume, pp. 593-95) and the court was compelled to pass only light sentences on some of the accused and to acquit others.
363 The Chartist Northern Star published a report on the international meeting in London organised by the Fraternal Democrats at the premises of the London German Workers’ Educational Society (about these organisations, see notes 1 and 336). It was entitled “The Polish Revolution. Important Meeting”. Speeches by Marx and Engels were reported rather abridged (for the. authorised publication of these speeches, see this volume, pp. 388-90). The report gave details about the meeting which supplemented Engels’ short correspondence about it published in La Réforme (see this volume, pp. 391-92).
364 The Manifesto issued by the National Government set upon February 22, 1846 in the course of the national liberation uprising in the Cracow republic (see Note 55) called upon the people to fight resolutely for national independence, proclaimed democratic rights, the abolition of feudal services, and the transfer of land allotments to the peasants.
365 See Note 286.
366 The reference is to the victory of the progressive forces in the civil war in Switzerland (see Note 172) and to the failure of the Sonderbund’s attempts to secure military interference by the European powers in its own interests.
367 See Note 194.
368 Marx counterposes the proposal to call an international democratic congress (on the preparations for it, see Note 206) to the International Congress of Economists held in Brussels from September 16 to 18, 1847 (see this volume, pp. 274-90 and Note 113).
369 In 1845 Ludwik Mieroslawski, in his capacity as a member of the “Centralisation” (the governing body of the Polish Democratic Society), was sent to Posen to organise an uprising in the Polish lands. He was arrested by the Prussian authorities shortly before the scheduled time of the uprising (February 1846) and sentenced to death. The sentence was later commuted to life imprisonment. He was set free after the revolution began in Germany in March 1848.
370 About the civil war in Switzerland, see this volume, pp. 367-74 and Note 172.
371 The reference is to the attempts to organise diplomatic and military interference by the five European powers (France, Britain, Russia, Austria and Prussia) in the civil war in Switzerland in the interests of the Sonderbund. They were initiated by the Austrian Chancellor Metternich and supported by the Guizot ‘ government. Metternich and Guizot planned to call a conference of the five great powers on the Swiss question to dictate peace terms to the belligerent parties in Switzerland. However, the speedy rout of the Sonderbund’s troops and the negative attitude of the British government thwarted these plans.
372 The reference is to the German Workers’ Society in Brussels (see Note 208).
373 DuringtheirstayinLondonasdelegatestotheSecondCongressoftheCommunist League in late November and early December 1847, Marx and Engels also took part in the meetings of the London German Workers’ Educational Society (see Note 336). They made several reports to the members of the Society. The extant records of their speeches, very laconic and of poor quality, are given here and below in the same sequence as in the Minutes of the Society.
374 See Note 208.
375 These Rules of the Communist League are based on the draft Rules elaborated by the League’s First Congress (see this volume, pp. 585-88). Marx and Engels, who exerted considerable influence on the elaboration of the League’s new organisational principles, greatly contributed to improving the text of the Rules and gave it greater precision. In particular, it was they, in all probability, who drew up the new formulation of Article 1 defining the aim of the League. The Rules in their present version were adopted by the Second Congress of the Communist League.
This document was first published in English in the book: Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, The Communist Manifesto, Lawrence, London, 1930.
376 Proposals to establish more regular contacts between the democrats of different countries and to prepare an international democratic congress were discussed by the representatives of the Fraternal Democrats with Marx acting on behalf of the Committee of the Democratic Association, during his and Engels’ stay in London at the end of November and the beginning of December 1847 (see also notes 192 and 206).
377 The Democratic Association’s deputation sent to Ghent for the opening of the Association’s local affiliation included Marx.
378 In mid-December 1847 Engels arrived in Brussels from London, where he had spent some time after the Second Congress of the Communist League, and at the end of December he returned to Paris with the authority of the Brussels Democratic Association to represent it in the capital of France. The French authorities were alarmed by Engels’ resumption of revolutionary propaganda among the Paris workers and craftsmen. At the end of January 1848 the Paris police proceeded against Engels under the pretext that his speech at the New Year’s Eve banquet of the German revolutionary emigrants on December 31, 1847 contained political allusions hostile to the French government. On January 29, 1848 Engels was ordered to leave France within 24 hours under the threat of extradition to Prussia. Simultaneously with Engels’ expulsion and the police breaking into his flat at night, arrests were made among the German emigrant workers. Despite the slander circulated by the governmental press (accusations of defiant behaviour, and of fighting duels), information about the real reasons behind Engels’ expulsion filtered into the appositional newspapers.
379 The original of this document is kept in the National Archives in Paris among the papers of the Provisional Government of the French Republic of 1848. The Address was published in the Belgian Le Débat social on March 1, 1848, and reprinted in La Réforme on March 4. The texts differ slightly. In this edition use is made of the text in La Réforme.
In English the Address was published with abbreviations in the Labour Monthly No. 2, February 1948.
380 The Second Congress of the Communist League retained the scat of the Central Authority in London. However, in view of the revolution starting in France, Schapper, Bauer, Moll and other members of the London Central Authority intended to move to the Continent and decided to transfer their powers of general guidance of the League to the Brussels circle authority headed by Marx. But the persecution of revolutionaries which had begun in Belgium, the order for Marx’s expulsion and the arrest of other activists of the League compelled the Brussels Central Authority that had been formed to adopt the decision (published below) to dissolve itself and to em power Marx to form a new Central Authority in Paris. Marx arrived in Paris on
March 5 and wrote to Engels (he still remained in Brussels for some time) around March 12, 1848 that the new Central Authority had been recently set up and consisted of Marx (chairman), Schapper (secretary), Wallau, Wolff, Moll, Bauer (members). Engels was appointed in his absence.
An abridged version of this document was first published in French in Annales parlementaires belges. Session 1847-1848. Chambre des représentants, séance du 31 mars 1848, p. 1203. This document was first published in English in the Labour Monthly No. 3, March 1948.
381 The German Workers’ Club was founded in Paris on March 8 and 9, 1848 on the initiative of the Communist League’s leaders. The leading role in it belonged to Marx. The Club’s aim was to unite the German emigrant workers in Paris, explain to them the tactics of the proletariat in a bourgeois-democratic revolution and also to counter the attempts of the bourgeois and petty-bourgeois democrats (among them, Herwegh, Venedey and Decker, the last two being mentioned in the minutes) to stir up the German workers by nationalist propaganda and enlist them into the adventurist march of volunteer legions into Germany. The Club was successful in arranging the return of German workers one by one to their own country to take part in the revolutionary struggle there.
382 The German Democratic Society, formed in Paris after the February revolution of 1848, held its meetings in a riding school. The Society was headed by petty-bourgeois democrats, Herwegh, Bornstedt, Decker and others who campaigned to raise volunteer legions of German emigrants with the aim of marching into Germany. In this way they hoped to carry out a revolution in Germany and establish a republic there. Marx and Engels resolutely condemned this adventurist plan of “exporting revolution”.