Communist League in the context of "Cologne Communist Trial"

Karl Marx (German: [ˈkaʁl ˈmaʁks]; 5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883) was a German philosopher, political theorist, economist, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. He is best-known for the 1848 pamphlet The Communist Manifesto (written with Friedrich Engels), and his three-volume Das Kapital (1867–1894), a critique of classical political economy which employs his theory of historical materialism in an analysis of capitalism, in the culmination of his life's work. Marx's ideas and their subsequent development, collectively known as Marxism, have had enormous influence.

Born in Trier in the Kingdom of Prussia, Marx studied at the University of Bonn and the University of Berlin, and received a doctoral degree in philosophy from the University of Jena in 1841. A Young Hegelian, he was influenced by the philosophy of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, and both critiqued and developed Hegel's ideas in works such as The German Ideology (written 1846) and the Grundrisse (written 1857–1858). While in Paris, Marx wrote his Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 and met Engels, who became his closest friend and collaborator. After moving to Brussels in 1845, they were active in the Communist League, and in 1848 they wrote The Communist Manifesto, which expresses Marx's ideas and lays out a programme for revolution. Marx was expelled from Belgium and Germany, and in 1849 moved to London, where he wrote The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (1852) and Das Kapital. From 1864, Marx was involved in the International Workingmen's Association (First International), in which he fought the influence of anarchists led by Mikhail Bakunin. In his Critique of the Gotha Programme (1875), Marx wrote on revolution, the state and the transition to communism. He died stateless in 1883 and was buried in Highgate Cemetery.

The Communist Manifesto (German: Das Kommunistische Manifest), originally the Manifesto of the Communist Party (Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei), is a political pamphlet written by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. It was commissioned by the Communist League and published in London in 1848. The text represents the first and most systematic attempt by the two founders of scientific socialism to codify for wide consumption the historical materialist idea, namely, that "the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles", in which social classes are defined by the relationship of people to the means of production. Published amid the Revolutions of 1848 in Europe, the manifesto has become one of the world's most influential political documents.

In the Manifesto, Marx and Engels combine philosophical materialism with the Hegelian dialectical method in order to analyze the development of European society through its modes of production, including primitive communism, antiquity, feudalism, and capitalism, noting the emergence of a new, dominant class at each stage. The text outlines the relationship between the means of production, relations of production, forces of production, and mode of production, and posits that changes in society's economic "base" affect changes in its "superstructure". The authors assert that capitalism is marked by the exploitation of the proletariat (working class of wage labourers) by the ruling bourgeoisie, which is "constantly revolutionising the instruments [and] relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society". They argue that capital's need for a flexible labour force dissolves the old relations, and that its global expansion in search of new markets creates "a world after its own image".

Friedrich Engels (/ˈɛŋɡəlz/ ENG-gəlz; German: [ˈfʁiːdʁɪç ˈɛŋl̩s]; 28 November 1820 – 5 August 1895) was a German philosopher, political theorist, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. He was also a businessman and Karl Marx's lifelong friend and closest collaborator, serving as the co-founder of Marxism.

Born in Barmen in the Kingdom of Prussia, Engels was the son of a wealthy textile manufacturer. Despite his bourgeois background, he became a staunch critic of capitalism, influenced by his observations of industrial working conditions in Manchester, England, as published in his early work The Condition of the Working Class in England (1845). He met Marx in 1844, after which they jointly authored works including The Holy Family (1844), The German Ideology (written 1846), and The Communist Manifesto (1848), and worked as political activists in the Communist League and First International. Engels also supported Marx financially for much of his life, enabling him to continue his writing in London. After Marx's death in 1883, Engels edited from his manuscripts to complete Volumes II and III of his work Das Kapital (1885 and 1894).

Proletarian internationalism, sometimes referred to as international socialism, is the perception of all proletarian revolutions as being part of a single global class struggle rather than separate localized events. It is based on the theory that capitalism is a world-system and therefore the working classes of all nations must act in concert if they are to replace it with communism.

Proletarian internationalism was strongly embraced by the first communist party, the Communist League, as exercised through its slogan "Proletarians of all countries, unite!", later popularized as "Workers of the world, unite!" in English literature. This notion was also embraced by the Bolshevik Party. After the formation of the Soviet Union, Marxist proponents of internationalism suggested that country could be used as a "homeland of communism" from which revolution could be spread around the globe. Though world revolution continued to figure prominently in Soviet rhetoric for decades, it no longer superseded domestic concerns on the government's agenda, especially after the ascension of Joseph Stalin, who was a proponent of socialism in one country. Despite this, the Soviet Union continued to foster international ties with communist and left-wing parties and governments around the world. It played a fundamental role in the establishment of several socialist states in Eastern Europe after World War II and backed the creation of others in Asia, Latin America, and Africa. The Soviets also funded dozens of insurgencies being waged against colonialist governments by leftist guerrilla movements worldwide. A few other states later exercised their own commitments to the cause of world revolution. Cuba frequently dispatched internationalist military missions abroad to defend communist interests in Africa and the Caribbean.

The League of the Just (German: Bund der Gerechten) or League of Justice was an international revolutionary organization. It was founded in 1836 by branching off from its ancestor, the League of Outlaws, which had formed in Paris in 1834. The League of the Just was largely composed of German emigrant artisans.

In 1847, the League of the Just merged with the Communist Correspondence Committee, an organization led by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, creating the Communist League. The new group tasked Marx and Engels with writing a political platform for itself. The resulting document was The Communist Manifesto.

Joseph Arnold Weydemeyer (February 2, 1818 – August 20, 1866) was a military officer in the Kingdom of Prussia and the United States as well as a journalist, politician and Marxist revolutionary.

At first a supporter of "true socialism", Weydemeyer became in 1845–1846 a follower of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels and a member of the League of Communists, heading its Frankfurt chapter from 1849 to 1851. He visited Marx in Brussels, staying there for a time to attend Marx's lectures. He participated in the 1848 Revolution. He was one of the "responsible editors" of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung from 1849 to 1850. He acted on Marx's behalf in the failed publication of the manuscript of The German Ideology.