Marx and Engels return to the German states during revolution

At its first congress, the League adopted a more explicitly communist program and the slogan “Workers of all countries, unite!” Marx and Engels helped shape the organization, whose international...

Marx’s polemic against Pierre-Joseph Proudhon challenged attempts to imagine social justice without analyzing production, class, and historical change. The book’s dialogue with French socialism was...

Engels wrote a question-and-answer outline for the Communist League, clarifying positions on class, industry, and political change. It became a working precursor to the Manifesto and shows Engels’s...

At its second congress, the League asked Marx and Engels to prepare a public program. The decision followed collective debate among delegates and members; it was not a solitary authorship moment, even...

Commissioned by the Communist League and written principally by Marx with Engels’s collaboration, the Manifesto analyzed capitalism’s globalizing power and called for working-class political action....

Marx edited the paper and Engels contributed reporting and analysis. It supported democratic revolution, criticized compromise with monarchies, and treated workers as political actors, while working...

Marx was tried for alleged press offenses connected with the revolutionary newspaper. His acquittal did not end repression: the paper was closed months later and he was expelled. The episode shows...

The lectures, delivered to workers in 1847, were published as a series in the Neue Rheinische Zeitung. Marx explained wages as the price of labor-power and linked workers’ bargaining to the wider...

After the defeat of revolutionary movements and state repression, the paper was forced to close. Its final issue printed in red ink symbolized the defeat of the democratic uprising; Marx was...

Engels fought with revolutionary forces during the final phase of the 1848-49 uprisings. His military participation reflected a belief that political rights and social change would face armed state...