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138
VIOLENCE AND THE LABOR MOVEMENT
munist Manifesto. Every essential idea of modern socialism
is contained in that brief declaration. Unfortunately,
however, outside of Germany, the Communist
League was an exotic organization that could make little
use of such a program. Its members were mostly exiles,
who, by the very nature of their position, were hopelessly
out of things. Little groups, surrounded by a foreign
people, exiles are rarely able to affect the movement
at home or influence the national movement amid
which they are thrust. There is little, therefore, noteworthy
about the Communist League. It had, to be sure,
gathered together a few able and energetic spirits, and
exercised considerable influ-
some of these in later years
ence in the International. But, as a rule, the groups of
the Communist League were little more than debating
societies whose members were filled with sentimental,
visionary, and insurrectionary ideas. Marx himself
finally lost all patience with them, because he could not
drive out of their heads the idea that they could revolutionize
the entire world by some sudden dash and
through the exercise of will power, personal sacrifice, and
heroic action. The Communist League, therefore, is
memorable only because it
gave Marx and Engels an
opportunity for issuing their epoch-making Manifesto,
that even to-day
is read and reread by the workers in all
lands of the world. Translated into every language,
it is
the one pamphlet that can be found in every country as
a part of the basic literature of socalism.
There are certain principles laid down in the Communist
Manifesto which time cannot affect, although the
greater part of the document is now of historic value
only. The third section, for instance, is a critique of the
various types of socialism then existing in Europe, and
this part can hardly be understood to-day by those un-