The Communist Manifesto was published on the eve of a revolutionary wave that spread right across Europe in 1848, demanding democratic rights and an end to monarchy. In February, with the workers of Paris to the fore, the French king Louis-Philippe was overthrown. Across the various states that now make up Germany, a similar struggle broke out in March, demanding a unified democratic republic.  Marx and Engels, aged 29 and 27 respectively, played their part in this revolutionary movement, through both written agitation and active participation.

Their initial hopes that these struggles might swiftly lead to the victory of the working class, and the defeat of not just the monarchy but capitalism itself, were soon tempered by experience. The treacherous capitalist class proved that they were far more concerned about crushing the threat of the workers’ movement than they were about clearing away the landlords, kings and queens left over from mediaeval feudalism. A new period of capitalist upswing cut across the revolutionary storm of 1848-49.

Nevertheless, the heroic role played by the workers of Europe in these revolutionary struggles confirmed that Marx and Engels had been absolutely correct in one of the key ideas contained in the Communist Manifesto. This was that the working class (or, to use the term they often used, the ‘proletariat’) would have the key role to play in overthrowing capitalism.

Marx and Engels had begun their life-long political collaboration in 1844. Together, they rejected terrorism and the methods of some of the other revolutionary groups of their time who aimed at carrying out conspiratorial plots and coups. Instead, Marx and Engels understood the necessity of building a mass movement based on the working-class that had been created by the rapid rise of capitalist industrial production.

They worked continuously to bring their ideas to the most politically advanced members of the working class. For Marx and Engels, ‘theory’ could not be separated from ‘practice’. They knew that the ideas that they were soon to set out in the pages of the Communist Manifesto had to be linked to the struggles of the working class.

They sought out what Engels later described as the “most extreme, chiefly proletarian ¹” secret revolutionary league – the ‘League of the Just,’ which had been set up by German political refugees in the 1830s, first in Paris, before then basing themselves in London. It had built support in a number of European cities, its membership based mainly on workers in small workshops, particularly tailors. Marx and Engels set out to try and steer the League away from its conspiratorial roots and towards their ideas, stressing the importance of building support amongst the working-class.

Engels later explained how, from 1843 onwards, he and Marx kept up: “continuous correspondence… influenced the theoretical views of the most important members of the league by word of mouth, by letter and through the press… we also made use of various lithographed circulars…¹”.

In 1847, having convinced the key leaders of the League of their ideas, they joined it themselves. Marx founded a branch of the League in Brussels while Engels attended the three Paris branches. At its Congress in London that summer, it changed its name to the ‘Communist League’. It adopted a democratic structure based on branches, an elected Central Committee and delegates to regular Congresses.

At its second Congress in December 1847, Marx and Engels were commissioned to draw up a Manifesto in order to explain the League’s ideas to the workers of the world. And so, the ‘Communist Manifesto’ was written and sent to the printers in London, just a few weeks before those revolutionary upheavals broke out in Paris in February.