KARL MARX

BRUSSELS r 53
critical position we had taken would be adopted in a public manifesto as
the doctrine of the League. Antiquated and dissident views could only be
counteracted by our personal collaboration, but this was only possible if
we joined the League.' 114 Another condition that Marx laid down before
joining was 'that everything that encouraged a supersititious attitude to
authority be banished from the Statutes of the League'. 115 Several other
Brussels communists joined the League at the same time, as did Engels,
whom Moll went on to visit in Paris. The London Central Committee
demonstrated its willingness to change its ideas by issuing an Address to
members of the League in which they now called for a stricter definition
of aims, rejected socialism based on pure sentiment and condemned
conspiratorial approaches to revolution.
The promised congress, which had in fact been summoned by the
London Central Committee as early as November 1846 along extremely
democratic lines, assembled in London from 2 to 9 June 1847. Marx did
not attend, pleading lack of money, so Wolff went as a delegate of the
Brussels communists, and Engels represented the Parisians. It was decided
to reorganise the democratic basis of the League, to change the name of
the League to 'The Communist League', to emphasise the inappropriateness
of the conspiratorial approach, and to issue a periodical. The first
and last issue of this periodical, written mainly by Schapper and entitled
Kommunistische Zeitung, appeared in September. In the new statutes, the
previous slogan 'All Men are Brothers' was replaced by 'Proletarians of
all Countries - Unite'. (Marx was said to have declared that there were
many men whose brother he wished on no account to be.) Yet the statutes
as a whole still represented a compromise between Marx's views and those
of the London communists; their first article read: 'The League aims at
the abolition of man's enslavement by propagating the theory of the
community of goods and by its implementation as soon as possible.' 116 A
three-tiered structure was now proposed for the League: the Commune,
the Circle Committee (comprising the chairman and treasurers of the
relevant communes) and the Central Committee, together with an annual
congress, all officials being elected for one year and subject to instant
recall. A draft 'Confession of Faith', drawn up by Engels, was circulated
to the branches to be discussed at a second Congress in the following
November.
The success of the June Congress inspired Marx in early August
formally to turn the Brussels Correspondence Committee into a branch
of the Communist League with himself as President. It was the general
practice of the League (which was a secret society) to set up nonclandestine
'Workers' Associations'. In late August a German Workers'
Association was formed in Brussels with Karl Wallau (a typesetter) as