319 The reference is to the double-faced policy of the French Orleanists on the Belgian question in the 1830s. Du ring the period of the 1830-31 revolution they fostered plans of annexing Belgium and incited the Belgians to fight for secession from Holland. Simultaneously, at the London Conference of the five powers (Britain, France, Russia, Austria and Prussia) held with intervals in 1830 and 183 1, they colluded, at the expense of Belgium, with the powers supporting Holland. As a result the Belgians had to accept the unfavourable terms of the agreement with the Dutch King (finally signed in May 1833) and cede part of their territory to him.

320 By order of the French authorities Marx was expelled from France at the beginning of February 1845 together with other. editors of the radical newspaper Vorwärts! published in Paris. Its closure was demanded by the Prussian ruling circles. For details about Marx’s expulsion and his move to Belgium, see present edition, Vol. 4, p. 235.

321 In this article Marx used notes which he had made at the beginning of March 1848 on the arrest, maltreatment and expulsion of Wilhelm Wolff by the Brussels police (see this volume, pp. 581-82).

322 The laws on suspects — the decree passed by the French Convention on September 17, 1793 and other measures of the Jacobin revolutionary government which declared suspect and subject to arrest all persons who in one way or another supported the overthrown monarchy, including all former aristocrats and royal officials who had not testified their loyalty to the revolution. These laws were drawn up in such a form that even people not involved in counter-revolutionary activity could be placed in the category of “suspects”.

323 This article was written by Engels shortly before he left Brussels for Paris and was apparently intended for La Réforme. However, it was never published and survived only as a manuscript.

324 This is apparently a rough outline of a speech Marx intended to make on September 18, 1847 at the Congress of Economists in Brussels (see this volume, pp. 287-89 and notes 113 and 116).The outline was written on the last page of the tenth notebook containing extracts Marx made in the latter half of 1845 and in 1846. Some places in the manuscript are indecipherable because of ink blots (in the text they are marked by periods in square brackets). At the bottom of the text itself and in the margins there are several drawings by Engels apparently of participants in the Congress (see illustration between p. 578 and p. 579).

325 This extract is in Marx’s notebook which contains his manuscript “Wages” and is dated December 1847. There is no direct indication of its purpose in the extant manuscripts or letters. It might have been a preparatory outline either for the “Speech on the Question of Free Trade” which Marx delivered on January 9, 1848 at the meeting of the Brussels Democratic Association, or for lectures on political economy which he delivered in December 1847 to the German Workers’ Society in Brussels (see notes 219 and 246). It may also have been intended for a non-extant economic work by Marx.

Marx made a few references in the text to one of his notebooks of excerpts dating to the summer of 1847. The notebook contains a synopsis of G. Gülich’s book, Geschichtliche Darstellung des Handels, der Gewerbe und des Ackerbaus der bedeutendsten handeltreibenden Staaten unserer Zeit, Bd. 1-5, Jena, 1830-45. The passages referred to are in Vol. 1. Marx usually wrote the authors name as Jülich and in the manuscript used only the initial letter “J” to denote the author.

326 The draft plan is written on the cover of Marx’s notebook containing the manuscript “Wages” (see this volume, pp. 415-37) and dated “Brussels, December 1847”.

327 In the final version of the Communist Manifesto points 5 and 6 were not elaborated.

328 This is the only extant page of the rough version of the Communist Manifesto. The fair copy sent to London at the end of January 1848 to be printed did not survive. The page of the rough copy refers in part to the first and mainly to the second section of the Manifesto.

329 Petits Carmes — a prison in Brussels.

330 See Note 208.

331 Permanence — a police station at the Town Hall in Brussels open all round t he clock. Amigo — a preliminary detention jail in Brussels, situated near the Town Hall (it derived its name from the Flemish word “vrunte” — a fenced place, interpreted by the Spaniards during their domination in the Netherlands as “vriend” — friend, and rendered in Spanish as “amigo”).

332 This document is a draft of the Rules of the Communist League adopted at its First Congress in the beginning of June 1847 (see Note 69) and distributed among the circles and communities for discussion. It shows the reorganisation work done by the League of the Just leaders as agreed with Marx and Engels, who consented early in 1847 to join the League on the condition that it would he reorganised on a democratic basis and all elements of conspiracy and sectarianism in its structure and activity would be eliminated. Engels, who was present at the Congress, took a direct part in drawing up the Rules. The draft recorded the change in the League’s name, and it is referred to here as the Communist League for the first time. The new motto, “Working Men of All Countries, Unite!” was also used for the first time. The former leading body, the narrow People’s Chamber (Halle), was replaced by the supreme body — the Congress, composed of delegates from local circles; the executive organ was to be the Central Authority. The relations between all the League organisations were based on principles of democratism and centralism. At the same time a number of points in the draft showed that the reorganisation was not yet complete and that former traditions were still alive, namely: Art. 1 formulating the aims of the League; one of the points in Art. 3, making the sectarian stipulation that members were not to belong to any other political organisation; Art. 21, limiting the powers of the Congress by the right of the communities to accept or reject its decisions, etc. On the insistence of Marx and Engels these points were later deleted or altered. The Second Congress (November 29-December 8, 1847) adopted the Rules in an improve(] and more perfect form, which finally determined the structure of the Communist League according to the principles of scientific communism.

This document was discovered, together with the “Draft of a Communist Confession of Faith” in 1968 among the papers of Joachim Friedrich Martens, a member of the Communist League in Hamburg.

333 The Circular, or report of the First Congress of the Communist League to its members, also discovered among Martens’ papers, brings to light important details of the convening and proceedings of the Congress and gives an idea of the process of reorganising the League of the Just.

334 In February 1847 the leading body of the League of the Just — the People’s Chamber (in November 1846 its seat was transferred from Paris to London) — called upon the League’s local organisations to elect delegates to the congress which was to assemble in London on June 1. The People’s Chamber address also defined the agenda of the congress. London remained the seat of the League’s executive body which, however, in accordance with the adopted draft Rules, then began to function as the Central Authority.

335 Being an illegal organisation, the Communist League could not hold its congresses openly or publish their materials.

336 The London German Workers’ Educational Society was founded in February 1840 by Karl Schapper, Joseph Moll and other members of the League of the Just. After the Communist League had been founded the leading role in the Society belonged to the League’s local communities. At various periods of its activity the Society had branches in the workers’ districts in London. In 1847 and 1849-50 Marx and Engels took an active part in the Society’s work. But on September 17, 1850, Marx, Engels and a number of their followers withdrew because the Willich-Schapper sectarian and adventurist faction had increased their influence in the Society. In the late 1850s Marx and Engels resumed work in the Educational Society. It existed up to 1918, when it was closed down by the British Government.

Fraternal Democrats — see Note 1.

337 The reference is to the French secret workers’ societies of the 1840s in which utopian ideas, both socialist and communist, were current. Some of the societies’ members were influenced by the pacifist communism of Cabet, some supported the revolutionary utopian Communists Théodore Dézamy and Auguste Blanqui.

338 The description given below of the situation in the Paris communities of the League of the Just in 1845-46 corresponds to the information which Engels (he had been in Paris since August 15, 1846) sent to Marx and other members of the Communist Correspondence Committee in Brussels (see Engels’ letters of August 19, September 18, October 18 and 23, and December 1846 to Marx and of August 19, September 16, October 23, 1846 to the Brussels Communist Correspondence Committee). This part of the report was apparently based on information received from Engels, whose role was decisive in overcoming the ideological confusion within the League’s Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire   Paris communities and in drawing the demarcation line between their revolutionary wing. and the petty-bourgeois elements tending towards “true socialism” and Weitling’s egalitarian utopian communism. Possibly this section as a whole was written by Engels.

339 This refers apparently to the money collected by the Paris members of the League of the Just for the Cracow insurgents of 1846.

340 The reference is to the revolutionary conspiratorial organisation of German emigrants in Switzerland in the 1830s and 1840s. Initially it consisted mainly of petty-bourgeois intellectuals. Later members of the workers’ unions gained influence in Young Germany. In the mid-30s, under pressure from Austria and Prussia, the Swiss government expelled the German revolutionaries and the (:raftsmen’s unions were closed down. Young Germany actually ceased to exist, but its followers remained in the cantons of Geneva and Vaud. In the 1840s Young Germany was resurrected. Influenced by the ideas of Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire  Ludwig Feuerbach, its members cart ie(l on mainly atheist propaganda among the German emigrants and resolutely opposed communist trends, especially that of Weitling. In 1845 Young Germany was again suppressed.

341 The reference is apparently to the proposal made to Marx and Engels by the leaders of the League of the Just to join the League and take part in its reorganisation on the basis of the principles of scientific communism. On behalf of the People’s Chamber, Joseph Moll had talks with Marx in Brussels and with Engels in Paris at the end of January and the beginning of February 1847.

342 This reference is apparently to the circumstances which led to the formation of the League of the Just as a result of a split in the Outlaws’ League, a secret conspiratorial organisation of German emigrants. The latter was set up in Paris in 1834 and headed by petty-bourgeois democrats (Jakob Venedey and others) and socialists (Theodor Schuster and others). The conflict which arose in the Outlaws’ League between the artisan-proletarian elements tending towards utopian communism and the petty-bourgeois republican democrats led to the withdrawal of the supporters of communism, who founded the League of the Just.