The Birth of the Communist Manifesto
Marx and Engels published their Communist Manifesto as the official programmatic statement of the Communist Party—or Communist League, as it was then called. The Communist League was a small group of almost exclusively white European men, mostly German. Its members knew they needed a statement of what they as communists envisioned. That is what the Communist Manifesto really was, namely: a manifesto for a movement which, at that point, had lacked a single written statement laying out communist beliefs.
Marx and Engels viewed the initial draft of their manifesto as a revolutionary “catechism” for an awaiting world. They saw it and referred to it, certainly in the initial draft stage, as a literal Communist Confession of Faith, before opting for the title that stuck. “Think over the Confession of Faith a bit,” Engels wrote to Marx in November 1847. “I believe we had better drop the catechism form and call the thing: Communist Manifesto.”
Even then, the document was, for these proud atheists, very much a catechetical confession of faith. Their communism became their religion, even as they scoffed at religion as something for superstitious idiots. Truly, their manifesto was and became their bible.
And hence, these communists’ confession of faith became the one and only Communist Manifesto.
