Communist League
공산주의자동맹 (1847–1852)
An international revolutionary-socialist organisation founded in London in 1847 as a secret society. It was the League of the Just of Wilhelm Weitling reorganised under the influence of Marx, Engels and Wilhelm Wolff, and it commissioned Marx and Engels to write the Communist Manifesto. It was dissolved on Marx's motion in 1852 after the Cologne Communist Trial.
In depth
The League of the Just had emerged in Paris in 1836 from the League of Outlaws on Weitling's initiative. After two congresses in 1847 it renamed itself the Communist League, and Marx and Engels, who joined that year, drew up with Wilhelm Wolff a programme stressing its internationalist character; Marx's motto 'Proletarians of all countries, unite!' became its watchword. The second congress, from 29 November to 8 December 1847, was attended by delegates of 30 local groups from France, the Netherlands, the German Confederation, Sweden, Switzerland, Britain and the United States, and Marx and Engels produced the Communist Manifesto in February 1848. Most of its roughly 500 members were journeymen who had emigrated or been expelled from the German states.
In 1848 the League's centre moved from London to Brussels and then to Paris, where Marx and Engels formally took over its leadership. After the March Revolution the centre moved to Cologne in April 1848, where Marx founded the Neue Rheinische Zeitung. Wilhelm Wolff represented the League in the Frankfurt National Assembly, many members took part in the May uprisings of 1849, and Engels fought in the defence of the Baden republic.
After the revolution's defeat the League was reorganised in London under a new Central Authority, and Wilhelm Liebknecht joined at this time. A conflict over revolutionary prospects split off the group around Karl Schapper and August Willich, which expelled Marx and Engels from the League in September 1850. In March 1851 League documents fell into the hands of the authorities, a wave of arrests followed, and in autumn 1852 leading members received long sentences in the Cologne Communist Trial. In November 1852 the League was dissolved on Marx's motion.