appendage which was passing into the modern
proletariat and which did not yet stand in direct
opposition to the bourgeoisie, that is, to big capital—
in that these artisans were capable of instinctively
anticipating their future development and of
constituting themselves, even if not yet with full
consciousness, the party of the proletariat. But it was
also inevitable that their old handicraft prejudices
should be a stumbling block to them at every moment,
whenever it was a question of criticising existing
society in detail, that is, of investigating economic facts.
And I do not believe there was a single man in the
whole League at that time who had ever read a book
on political economy. But that mattered little; for the
time being “equality,” “brotherhood’ and “justice”
helped them to surmount every theoretical obstacle.
Meanwhile a second, essentially different
communism was developing alongside that of the
League and of Weitling. While I was in Manchester, it
was tangibly brought home to me that the economic
facts, which have so far played no role or only a
contemptible one in the writing of history, are, at least
in the modern world, a decisive historical force; that
they form the basis of the origination of the present-
day class antagonisms; that these class antagonisms,
in the countries where they have become fully
developed, thanks to large-scale industry, hence
especially in England, are in their turn the basis of
the formation of political parties and of party struggles,
and thus of all political history. Marx had not only
arrived at the same view, but had already, in the
German-French Annuals (1844), 50 generalised it to the
effect that, speaking generally, it is not the state which
conditions and regulates civil society, but civil society
which conditions and regulates the state, and,
consequently, that policy and its history are to be
explained from the economic relations and their
development, and not vice versa. When I visited Marx
in Paris in the summer of 1844, our complete
agreement in all theoretical fields became evident and
our joint work dates from that time. When, in the spring
of 1845, we must again in Brussels, Marx had already
fully developed his materialist theory of history in its
main features from the above-mentioned basis and
we now applied ourselves to the detailed elaboration
of the newly-won mode of outlook in the most varied
directions.
This discovery, which revolutionised the science
of history and, as we have seen, is essentially the
work of Marx—a discovery in which I can claim for
myself only a very insignificant share- was, however,
of immediate importance for the contemporary
workers’ movement. Communism among the French
and Germans, Chartism among the English, now no
longer appeared as something accidental which could
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just as well not have occurred. These movements now
presented themselves as a movement of the modern
oppressed class, the proletariat, as the more or less
developed forms of its historically necessary struggle
against the ruling class, the bourgeoisie; as forms of
the class struggle, but distinguished from all earlier
class struggles by this one thing, that the present-
day oppressed class, the proletariat, cannot achieve
its emancipation without at the same time
emancipating society as a whole from division into
classes and, therefore, from class struggles. And
communism now no longer meant the concoction, by
means of the imagination, of an ideal society as perfect
as possible, but insight into the nature, the conditions
and the consequent general aims of the struggle
waged by the proletariat.
Now, we were by no means of the opinion that the
new scientific results should be confided in large
tomes exclusively to the “learned” world. Quite the
contrary. We were both of us already deeply involved
in the political movement, and possessed a certain
following in the educated world, especially of western
Germany, and abundant contact with the organised
proletariat. It was our duty to provide a scientific
foundation for our view, but it was equally important
for us to win over the European and in the first place
the German proletariat to our conviction. As soon as
we had become clear in our own minds, we set about
the task. We founded a German workers’ society in
Brussels 52 and took over the deutsche-Brusseler-
Zeitung, 53 which served us as an organ up to the
February Revolution. We kept in touch with the
revolutionary section of the English Chartists through
Julian Harney, the editor of the central organ of the
movement, The Northern Star, 134 to which I was a
contributor. We entered likewise into a sort of cartel
with the Brussels democrats (Marx was vice-president
of the Democratic Society 135 ) and with the French
Social-Democrats of the Reforme 136 which I furnished
with news of the English and German movements. In
short, our connections with the radical and proletarian
organisations and press organs were quite what one
could wish.
Our relations with the League of the Just were as
follows: The existence of the League was, of course,
known to us; in 1843 Schapper had suggested that I
join it, which I at that time naturally refused to do. But
we not only kept up our continuous correspondence
with the Londoners but remained on still closer terms
with Dr. Everbeck, then the leader of the Paris
communities. Without going into the League’s internal
affairs, we learnt of every important happening. On
the other hand, we influenced the theoretical views of
the most important members of the League by word
of mouth, by letter and through the press. For this
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