PRINCIPLES
OF
  COMMUNISM  

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  ^[1] In 1847 Engels wrote two draft programmes for the Communist League in the form of a catechism, one in June and the other in October. The latter, which is known as Principles of Communism, was first published in 1914. The earlier document, Draft of the Communist Confession of Faith, was found only in 1968. It was first published in 1969 in Hamburg, together with four other documents pertaining to the first congress of the Communist League, in a booklet entitled Gründungsdokumente des Bundes der Kommunisten (Juni bis September 1847 ) (Founding Documents of the Communist League ).
    At the June 1847 Congress of the League of the Just, which was also the founding congress of the Communist League, it was decided to issue a draft "confession of faith" to be submitted for discussion to the sections of the League. The document which has now come to light is almost certainly this draft. Comparison of the two documents shows that Principles of Communism is a revised version of this earlier draft. In Principles of Communism, Engels left three questions unanswered, in two cases with the notation "unchanged" (bleibt ); this clearly refers to the answers provided in the earlier draft.
    The new draft for the programme was worked out by Engels on the instructions of the leading body of the Paris circle of the Communist League. The instructions were decided on after Engels' sharp criticism at the committee meeting, on October 22, 1847, of the draft programme drawn up by the "true socialist" Moses Hess, which was then rejected.
    Still considering Principles of Communism as a preliminary draft, Engels expressed the view, in a letter to Marx dated November 23-24, 1847, that it would be best to drop the old catechistic form and draw up a

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programme in the form of a manifesto. At the second congress of the Communist League (November 29- December 8, 1847) Marx and Engels defended the fundamental scientific principles of communism and were entrusted with drafting a programme in the form of a manifesto of the Communist Party. In writing the Manifesto, the founders of Marxism made use of propositions enunciated in Principles of Communism.    [p.1]

  ^[2] In their works written in later periods, Marx and Engels substituted the more accurate concepts of "sale of labour power," "value of labour power" and "price of labour power" (first introduced by Marx) for "sale of labour," "value of labour" and "price of labour."    [p.1]

  ^[3] In the Draft of the Communist Confession of Faith, the answer to the same question (Number 12) reads as follows: "In contrast to the proletarian, the so-called handicraftsman, as he still existed almost everywhere in the past [eighteenth] century and still exists here and there at present, is a proletarian at most temporarily. His goal is to acquire capital himself wherewith to exploit other workers. He can often achieve this goal where guilds still exist or where freedom from guild restrictions has not yet led to the introduction of factory-style methods into the crafts nor yet to fierce competition. But as soon as the factory system has been introduced into the crafts and competition flourishes fully, this perspective dwindles away and the handicraftsman becomes more and more a proletarian. The handicraftsman therefore frees himself by be coming either bourgeois or entering the middle class in general, or becoming a proletarian because of competition (as is now more often the case). In which case he can free himself by joining the proletarian movement, i.e., the more or less conscious communist movement."    [p.6]

  ^[4] Engels' notation "unchanged" obviously refers to the answer to this question in the June draft under No. 21 which reads as follows: "The nationalities of the peoples associating themselves in accordance with the principle of community will be compelled to mingle with each other as a result of this association and thereby to dissolve themselves, just as the various estate and class distinctions must disappear through the abolition of their basis, private property."    [p.21]

  ^[5] Similarly, this refers to the answer to Question 22 in the June draft which reads: "All religions so far have been the expression of historical stages of development of individual peoples or groups of peoples. But communism is the stage of historical development which makes all existing religions superfluous and brings about their disappearance."    [p.21]

  ^[6] The Chartists were participants in the political movement of the British workers which lasted from the 1830s to the middle 1850s and

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had as its slogan the adoption of a People's Charter, demanding universal franchise and a series of conditions guaranteeing voting rights for all workers. Lenin defined Chartism as the world's "first broad, truly mass and politically organized proletarian revolutionary movement." (Collected Works, Eng. ed., Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1965, Vol. 29, p. 309.) The decline of the Chartist movement was due to the strengthening of Britain's industrial and commercial monopoly and the bribing of the upper stratum of the working class ("the labour aristocracy") by the British bourgeoisie out of its super-profits. Both factors led to thc strengthening of opportunist tendencies in this stratum as expressed, in particular, by the refusal of the trade union leaders to support Chartism.    [p.23]