Manifesto of the Communist Party

The Principles of Communism

In 1847 Engels wrote two draft programmes for the Communist League in the form of a catechism,

one in June and the other in October. The latter, which is known as Principles of Communism, was

first published in 1914. The earlier document "Draft of the Communist Confession of Faith", was only

found in 1968. It was first published in 1969 in Hamburg, together with four other documents

pertaining to the first congress of the Communist League, in a booklet entitled Gründungs Dokumente

des Bundes der Kommunisten (Juni bis September 1847) [Founding Documents of the Communist

League].

At the June 1847 Congress of the League of the Just, which was also the founding conference of the

Communist League, it was decided to issue a draft "confession of faith" to be submitted for discussion

to the sections of the League. The document which has now come to light is almost certainly this

draft. Comparison of the two documents shows that Principles of Communism is a revised edition of

this earlier draft. In Principles of Communism, Engels left three questions unanswered, in two cases

with the notation "unchanged" (bleibt); this clearly refers to the answers provided in the earlier draft.

The new draft for the programme was worked out by Engels on the instructions of the leading body of

the Paris circle of the Communist League. The instructions were decided on after Engels' sharp

criticism at the committee meeting, on October 22, 1847, of the draft programme drawn up by the

"true socialist" Moses Hess, which was then rejected.

Still considering Principles of Communism as a preliminary draft, Engels expressed the view, in a

letter to Marx dated November 23-24 1847, that it would be best to drop the old catechistic form and

draw up a programme in the form of a manifesto.

At the second congress of the Communist League (November 29-December 8, 1847) Marx and Engels

defended the fundamental scientific principles of communism and were trusted with drafting a

programme in the form of a manifesto of the Communist Party. In writing the manifesto the founders

of Marxism made use of the propositions enunciated in Principles of Communism.

Engels uses the term Manufaktur, and its derivatives, which have been translated "manufacture",

"manufacturing", etc., Engels used this word literally, to indicate production by hand, not factory

production for which Engels uses "big industry". Manufaktur differs from handicraft (guild production

in mediaeval towns), in that the latter was carried out by independent artisans. Manufacktur is carried

out by homeworkers working for merchant capitalists, or by groups of craftspeople working together

in large workshops owned by capitalists. It is therefore a transitional mode of production, between

guild (handicraft) and modern (capitalist) forms of production.