purpose we also made use of various lithographed
circulars, which we dispatched to our friends and
correspondents throughout the world on particular
occasions, when it was a question of the internal affairs
of the Communist Party in process of formation. In
these, the League itself sometimes came to be dealt
with. Thus, a young Westphalian student, Hermann
Kriege, who went to America, came forward there as
an emissary of the League and associated himself
with the crazy Harro Harring for the purpose of using
the League to turn South America upside down. He
founded a paper* in which, in the name of the League,
he preached an extravagant communism, of love
dreaming, based on “love” and overflowing with love.
Against this we let fly with a circular that did not fail of
its effect. Kriege vanished from the League scene.
Later, Weitling came to Brussels. But he was no
longer the naive young journeyman-tailor who,
astonished at his own talents, was trying to clarify in
his own mind just what a communist society would look
like. He was now the great man, persecuted by the
envious on account of his superiority, who scented
rivals, secret enemies and traps everywhere—the
prophet, driven from country to country, who carried
a recipe for the realization of heaven on earth ready-
made in his pocket, and who was possessed with the
idea that everybody intended to steal it from him. He
had already fallen out with the members of the League
in London; and in Brussels, where Marx and his wife
welcomed him with almost superhuman forbearance,
he also could not get along with anyone. So he soon
afterwards went to America to try out his role of prophet
there.
All these circumstances contributed to the quiet
revolution that was taking place in the League, and
especially among the leaders in London. The
inadequacy of the previous conception of communism,
both the simple French equalitarian communism and
that of Weitling, became more and clearer to them.
The tracing of communism back to primitive
Christianity introduced by Weitling—no matter how
brilliant certain passages to be found in his Gospel of
Poor Sinners—had resulted in delivering the
movement in Switzerland to a large extent into the
hands, first of fools like Albrecht, and then of exploiting
fake prophets like Kuhlmann. The “true socialism” dealt
in by a few literary writers—a translation of French
socialist phraseology into corrupt Hegelian German,
and sentimental love dreaming (see the section on
German or “True” Socialism in the Communist
Manifesto*)—that Kriege and the study of the
corresponding literature introduced in the League was
found soon to disgust the old revolutionists of the
League , if only because of its slobbering feebleness.
As against the untenability of the previous theoretical
10
views, and as against the practical aberrations
resulting there from, it was realised more and more in
London that Marx and I were right in our new theory.
This understanding was undoubtedly promoted by the
fact that among the London leaders there were now
two men who were considerably superior to those
previously mentioned in capacity for theoretical
knowledge; the miniature painter Karl pfander from
Heilbronn and the tailor Georg Eccarius from
Thuringia.**
It suffices to say that in the spring of 1847 Moil
visited Marx in Brussels and immediately afterwards
me in Paris, and invited us repeatedly, in the name of
his comrades, to enter the League. He reported that
they were as much convinced of the general
correctness of our mode of outlook as of the necessity
of freeing the League from the old conspiratorial
traditions and forms. Should we enter, we would be
given an opportunity of expounding out critical
communism before a congress of the League in a
manifesto, which would then be published as the
manifesto of the League; we would likewise be able
to contribute our quota towards the replacement of
the obsolete League organisation by one in keeping
with the new times and aims.
We entertained no doubt that an organisation
within the German working class was necessary, if only
for propaganda purposes and that this organisation,
in so far as it would not be merely local in character,
could only be a secret one, even outside Germany.
Now, there already existed exactly such an
organisation in the shape of the League. What we
previously objected to in this League was now
relinquished as erroneous by the representatives of
the League themselves; we were even invited to
cooperate in the work of reorganisaion. Could we say
no? Certainly not. Therefore, we entered the League;
Marx founded a League community in Brussels from
among our close friends, while I attended the three
Paris communities.
In the summer of 1847, the first League Congress
took place in London, at which W. Wolff represented
the Brussels and I the Paris communities. At this
congress the reorganisation of the League was
carried through first of all. Whatever remained of the
old mystical names dating back to the conspiratorial
period was now abolished; the League now consisted
of communities, circles, leading circles, a Central
Committee and a Congress, and henceforth called
itself the “Communist League.” “The aim of the League
is the overthrow of the bourgeoisie, the rule of the
proletariat, the abolition of the old, bourgeois society
based on class antagonisms and the foundation of a
new society without classes and without private
property”—thus ran the first article. The organisation
Class Struggle