Karl Marx called the Communist League. Both Marx and Engels participated in drawing up the programme and organisational principles of the new Communist League. In late 1847, Marx and Engels began writing what was to become their most famous work – a programme of action for the Communist League. Written jointly by Marx and Engels from December 1847 to January 1848, "The Communist Manifesto" was first published on 21 February 1848. "The Communist Manifesto" laid out the beliefs of the new Communist League. No longer a secret society, the Communist League wanted to make aims and intentions clear to the general public
The Communist Manifesto and non-socialist trade unions. Marx himself, later in his life, acknowledged that the middle-class was not disappearing in his work "Theories of Surplus Value" (1863). The obscurity of the later work means that Marx's acknowledgement of this error is not well known. George Boyer described the "Manifesto" as "very much a period piece, a document of what was called the 'hungry' 1840s." Many have drawn attention to the passage in the "Manifesto" that seems to sneer at the stupidity of the rustic: "The bourgeoisie ... draws all nations ... into civilisation ... It has created enormous cities ... and thus