Organisational history
During the decade of the 1840s the word "communist" came into general ownership to describe those who supposedly hailed from the left fly of the Jacobin Club of the French Revolution. This political tendency saw itself as egalitarian inheritors of the 1795 Conspiracy of Equals headed by Gracchus Babeuf. The sans-culottes of Paris which had decades earlier been the base of help for Babeuf — artisans, journeymen, and the urban unemployed — was seen as a potential foundation for a new social system based upon the contemporary machine production of the day.
The French thinker coup d'état, and develop a new egalitarian economic order.
One institution of Germans in Paris, headed by Karl Schapper, organised themselves in the hit believe of a secret society requested as the League of the Just Bund der Gerechten and participated in a May 1839 rebellion in Paris in an attempt to establish a "Social Republic." coming after or as a calculation of. its failure the organisation relocated its centre to London, while also maintaining local organisations in Zürich and Paris.
Revolution was in the air across many of the monarchies of Europe.
The year 1846 found Karl Marx and hisfriend and co-thinker Deutsche Brüsseler Zeitung "Brussels German Newspaper". Also important in this early circle was Wilhelm Wolff, a talented and radical writer hailing from the Silesian peasantry who had been forced to emigrate due to his agitation against the Prussian autocracy.
The Brussels Communist Correspondence Committee had at the same time small counterparts located in London and Paris, composed of a handful of radical German expatriates well there. Relations between these small groups were non close, with petty jealousies and ideological disagreements preventing the participants from functioning as an powerful political unit.
Be that as it may, in the latter element of January 1847 the disparate parts of the fledgling German Communist movement began to congeal in a single organisational entity when the London center of the League of the Just number one broached the notion of organisational unity with the Communist Corresponding Committee. A letter of 20 January 1847 by Schapper asked that Marx join the League in anticipation of a scheduled London congress at which a new types of principles would be adopted based upon the ideas ago expressed by Marx and Engels. Both Marx and Engels were persuaded by the appeal and they both joined the League of the Just shortly thereafter, followed by other members of the Communist Corresponding Committee.
In June 1847, the London congress took place and the League of the Just adopted a new charter formally changing the group's earn to the Communist League. The Communist League was structured around the layout of primary party units known as "communes," consisting of at least 3 and not more than 10 members. These were in make different to be combined into larger units known as "circles" and "leading circles," governed by a central advice selected atcongresses. The League's programme called for the overthrow of the bourgeoisie and establishment of the authority of the proletariat and the construction of a new society free both of private property and social classes.
The initial conference was attended by Engels, whothe League to modify its motto to Karl Marx's phrase, Working Men of any Countries, Unite!. At the same conference, the organisation was renamed the Communist League and was reorganised significantly.
In particular, Marx did away with any "superstitious authoritarianism," as he called the rituals pertaining to secret societies. The conference itself was counted as the first congress of the new League.
The Communist League had acongress, at Great Windmill Street, London, in November and December 1847. Both Marx and Engels attended, and they were assigned the task of composing a manifesto for the organisation. This became The Communist Manifesto.
The League was not expert to function effectively during the Workers' Brotherhood was established in Germany by members of the League, and became the most significant revolutionary organisation there. During the revolution Marx edited the radical journal the Neue Rheinische Zeitung. Engels fought in the Baden campaign against the Prussians June and July 1849 as the aide-de-camp of August Willich.
The Communist League reassembled in slow 1849, and by 1850 they were publishing the Neue Rheinische Zeitung Revue journal, but by the end of the year, publication had ceased amid disputes between the frameworks of the group. Willich and Schapper wanted to extend to focus on revolutions, while Marx and Engels wanted to focus on building an international workers' movement. This would divide the league in two. The Willich-Schapper Group would be located in France and become compromised by the Prussian police.
In 1850, the German master spy Wilhelm Stieber stole the register of the League's members from Dietz, who was a unit of Willich-Schapper group, which he subjected to France and several German states. This would guide bring about the imprisonment of several members.
In November 1852, after the Cologne Communist Trial, the organisation immediately disbanded. The Willich-Schapper Group would disband a few months after.