Minutes of the Meeting of the Paris Community of the Communist League, March 8, 1848

Author(s)	Communist League (Marx-Engels) Karl Marx Karl Schapper
Written	8 March 1848

First published in Marx/Engels, Gesamt-ausgäbe, I. Abteilung, Bd. 7, 1935
Printed according to the manuscript
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 6

MINUTES OF THE COMMUNITY MEETING OF MARCH 8, 1848

Elected Chairman: K. Schapper. Secretary: K. Marx.

Schapper: proposes to constitute ourselves the Paris Circle, no longer a single community.

Supported by Marx and others. Agreed.

Admitted: Hermann.

Discussion on the re-admission of removed community members;

Born gives a report on the meeting in the café l'Europe; so does Sterbitzki. Resolved by a large majority not to go into this café, where Decker and Venedey hold a meeting.

Engler, Buchfink and Vogler (Weitlingians) unanimously admitted.

Unanimously resolved: the three above-named League members instructed to admit members of the Weitling community whom they consider suitable.

Schilling unanimously admitted.

Admitted to the public workers' society as:

President: H. Bauer.

Vice-president: Hermann.

2 secretaries: Born and Vogel.

Treasurer. Moll.

3 organisers: Buchfink, Schapper, Home.

Agreed that the President shall use the form of address: Friends; anybody else as he likes.

Marx to submit draft Rules for the workers' society.

The public society shall be called German Workers' Club.^[1]

Wilhelm Höger admitted as League member (proposed by Schapper, supported by H. Bauer).

The meeting place of the public society shall be in the centre of the city. Some members are instructed to look for suitable premises.

The League meeting is to be held at No. 6, St. Louis St. Honoré.

Sterbitzki proposes Hermann, who is admitted.

Secretary K. Marx	Chairman K. Schapper

↑ The German Workers' Club was founded in Paris on March 8 and 9, 1848 on the initiative of the Communist League's leaders. The leading role in it belonged to Marx. The Club's aim was to unite the German emigrant workers in Paris, explain to them the tactics of the proletariat in a bourgeois-democratic revolution and also to counter the attempts of the bourgeois and petty-bourgeois democrats (among them, Herwegh, Venedey and Decker, the last two being mentioned in the minutes) to stir up the German workers by nationalist propaganda and enlist them into the adventurist march of volunteer legions into Germany. The Club was successful in arranging the return of German workers one by one to their own country to take part in the revolutionary struggle there.

[1] The German Workers' Club was founded in Paris on March 8 and 9, 1848 on the initiative of the Communist League's leaders. The leading role in it belonged to Marx. The Club's aim was to unite the German emigrant workers in Paris, explain to them the tactics of the proletariat in a bourgeois-democratic revolution and also to counter the attempts of the bourgeois and petty-bourgeois democrats (among them, Herwegh, Venedey and Decker, the last two being mentioned in the minutes) to stir up the German workers by nationalist propaganda and enlist them into the adventurist march of volunteer legions into Germany. The Club was successful in arranging the return of German workers one by one to their own country to take part in the revolutionary struggle there.

[1]