'The Communist Manifesto (1848)

In 1846 several Brussels-based radicals, led by Marx and Engels, formed the Communist Correspondence Committee with the aims of producing propaganda and organizing like-minded European activists. Meanwhile, the interests of the Paris and London-based League of the Just, which had abandoned its Christian-based communism, came to resemble those of Marx’s committee. In the following year the two groups merged to form the small but international Communist League, which commissioned Marx and Engels to produce a campaigning pamphlet (Stedman Jones, 2017: 212-22). Having written two drafts Engels wrote to Marx in November 1847 anticipating a discussion at their next meeting a few days later. ‘Give a little thought to the Confession of Faith,’ Engels asked with reference to the first draft, suggesting that ‘we would do best to abandon the catachetical form and call the thing Communist Manifesto!’ (Engels 1982a: 149).