Karl Marx: A biography by David McLellan

LONDON

and to submit these classes to the dictatorship of the proletariat by

maintaining the revolution in permanence until the realisation of com-

munism, which will be the last organisational form of the human

family.^24

The statutes were written in French and drawn up by Willich. The
Universal Society also began to issue revolutionary propaganda: Bar-
thelemy, one of the most flamboyant of Blanqui's disciples, reported to
his leader: 'We have begun, together with the German communists,
to draw up a revolutionary manual containing a numbered list of all
the measures that the people will have to take immediately after the
revolution.'^25 The Society did not survive the split in the Communist
League when most of the Blanquists sided with Willich. It did, however,
achieve a temporary unification of the European Left after 1848 and as
such was a forerunner of the First International.
A key factor in all Marx's political activities in 1849 and 1850 was his
effort to establish a newspaper that would continue the role played by
the Neue Rheinische Zeitung in the 1848-4 9 revolutions. Before he left
Paris he already had specific plans for a journal which would act as a
rallying point for his scattered 'party'. Its title of Neue Rheinische Zeitung

• Politisch-Oekonomisch Revue indicated, firstly, the continuity with the
  previous paper, secondly, the intention to transform it into a daily as soon
  as 'circumstances allow its return to Germany'^26 and, finally, the close
  link that Marx saw between socio-economic investigation and political
  activity.
  The last months of 1849 were taken up in the search for contributors
  and a publisher. In December Theodor Hagen, a member of the Com-
  munist League, informed Marx that the Hamburg publisher Schuberth
  was willing to take on the review. Schuberth took fifty per cent of all the
  income to defray the cost of publication while the rest of the arrange-
  ments, including that of distribution (through agents who took a
  commission), were left to Marx, who bore the cost of them. Shares were
  advertised in the hope of raising £50 0 and Conrad Schramm was to go
  to the United States with the support of the Chartists and Blanquists to
  raise money there: but neither scheme was realised. There were also
  delays in publication: the intended date was 1 January, but Schuberth
  received no manuscript at all during the whole of January, partly owing
  to Marx's illness at the end of the month. The manuscript did arrive in
  early February but with the printer's lack of paper and his difficulty
  in deciphering Marx's 'frightful handwriting'^27 publication was further
  delayed. In addition, Schuberth was also worried by the possibility of
  prosecution and thought that Marx, as editor, should tone down the