# The Life and Work of Friedrich Engels/Chapter 6

​ The Communist Manifesto
In the summer of 1847 the League met in congress in London to adopt a new constitution and program. Engels was present as the representative of the Paris group. In November of the same year the Congress met again to discuss the question of issuing a manifesto of its ideas and aims. The draft suggested by Marx and Engels was discussed very fully for ten days, and finally they were commissioned to prepare it for publication.
From a letter from Engels to Marx in November, 1847, we see that it was Engels who was responsible for the title of the manifesto. "Reflect a bit on the confession of faith," he writes. "I think we would do best to do away with the catechism form and entitle the thing 'Communist Manifesto.' Since a certain amount of history must be related therein, the form we have so far adopted is quite unsuitable. I am bringing along the copy I have drawn up; it is simply a statement, but wretchedly put together in very great haste. …" Then follows the headings of the various points with which the manifesto deals.
Under their influence the sentimental cry of the old Utopians—"All men are brothers’"—was replaced by the living battle-cry of "Workers of all countries unite." The manifesto was published in 1848, and it meant the public unfurling of the banner of modern Socialism. In the Marx pamphlet we have already dealt with this manifesto. We shall, therefore, not stop to analyse it again here—only one quotation ​we should like to give from the Introduction to it written by Engels for the 1888 edition, merely to show how the wheel of time, and the present revolutionary era through which we are passing, has, so far as of party names are concerned, brought us back very much to the position of 1848. After pointing out that at that time (1888) the manifesto was undoubtedly the most widespread, the most international production of all Socialist literature, Engels says: "Yet when it was written we could not have called it a Socialist manifesto. By Socialists, in 1847, were understood, on the one hand, the adherents of the various Utopian systems: Owenites in England, Fourierists in France, both of them already reduced to the position of mere sects and gradually dying out; on the other hand, the multifarious social quacks, who, by all manners of tinkering, professed to redress, without any danger to capital and profits, all sorts of social grievances; in both cases, men outside the working-class movement and looking rather to the educated classes for support.
"Whatever portions of the working class had become convinced of the insufficiency of mere political revolutions and had proclaimed the necessity of a total social change, that portion then called itself Communist. It was a crude, rough-hewn, purely instinctive Communism; still, it touched the cardinal point. Thus, Socialism was in 1847 a middle-class movement. Socialism was on the Continent at least 'respectable,' Communism was the very opposite; and as our notion from the very beginning was that 'the emancipation of the working class must be the act of the working class itself,' there could be no doubt as to which of the two names we must take. Moreover, we have ever since been far from repudiating it."
Do not the last lines strike a familiar note? When we reflect how most of the official Socialist parties have dragged Socialism through the mud of Jingoism, Nationalism, and Opportunism during and since the war, and how, on the contrary, the glorious Russian Revolution has sanctified for us the name and idea of Communism, and how all that is best and most virile in the Socialist movement of nearly all the countries of the world have instinctively readopted the Communist title, we see that we have as much, indeed more, reason to drop the too "respectable" title Socialist and proudly proclaim ourselves Communists.
We shall have occasion later to make one more quotation from this preface. For the present we need say no more.