In Paris, where Marx had very intimate intercourse with Hein rich Heine, who always speaks of him with the greatest respect, and some of whose poems were suggested by him, he contributed to a Radical magazine, the V orwarts; but at the request of the Prussian government, nearly the whole staff got orders to leave France. Marx now went to Brussels, where he shortly afterwards was joined by Engels. In Brussels he published his second great work, La Misere de la philosophie, a sharp rejoinder to the Philosophie de la misere on contradictions economiques of P. J. Proudhon. In this he deals with Proudhon, whom in the former work he had defended against the Bauers, not less severely than with the latter. It is shown that in many points Proudhon is inferior to both the middle-class economists and the socialists, that his somewhat noisily proclaimed discoveries in regard to political economy were made long before by English socialists, and that his main remedies, the "constitution of the labour-value" and the establishment of exchange bazaars, were but a repetition of what English socialists had already worked out much more thoroughly and more consistently. In justice to Proudhon, it must be added that it is more often his mode of speaking than the thought underlying the attacked sentences that is hit by Marx's criticism. In Brussels Marx and Engels also wrote a number of essays in which they criticized the German literary representatives of that kind of socialism and philosophic radicalism which was mainly influenced by the writings of Ludwig Feuerbach, and deduced its theorems or postulates from speculations on the "nature of man." They mockingly nicknamed this kind of social ism "German or True Socialism," and ridiculed the idea that by disregarding historical and class distinctions a conception of soci ety and socialism superior to that of the English and French workers and theorists could be obtained. Some of these essays were published at the time, two or three by one of the attacked writers in his own magazine ; one, a criticism of Feuerbach him self, was in a modified form published by Engels in 1885, but others have remained in manuscript. They were at first intended for publication in two volumes as a criticism of post-Hegelian German philosophy, but the revolution of 1848 postponed for a time all interest in theoretical discussions.
In Brussels Marx and Engels came into still closer contact with the socialist working-class movement. They founded a Ger man workers' society, acquired a local German weekly, the Briis seller deutsche Zeitung, and finally joined a communistic society of German workers, the "League of the Just," a secret society which had its main branches in London, Paris, Brussels and sev eral Swiss towns. For this league, which till then had adhered to the rough-and-ready communism of the German workman Wil helm Weitling, but which now called itself "League of the Com munists" and became an educational and propagandist body, Marx and Engels at the end of 1847 wrote their famous pamphlet, Manifest der Kommunisten. It was a concise exposition of the history of the working-class movement in modern society ac cording to their views, to which was added a critical survey of the existing socialist and communist literature, and an explanation of the attitude of the Communists towards the advanced oppo sition parties in the different countries.
At first he tried to reorganize the Communist League; but soon a conflict broke out in its ranks, and after some of its members had been tried in Germany and condemned for high treason, Marx, who had done everything to save the accused, dissolved the Com munist League altogether. Nor was a literary enterprise, a review, also called the Neue rheinische Zeitung, more successful ; only six numbers of it were issued. It contained, however, some very remarkable contributions; and a series of articles on the career of the French Revolution of 1848, which first appeared there, was in 1895 published by Engels in book form under the title of Die KlassenkiimPf e in Frankreich von 1848 "by Karl Marx." Carlyle's Latter Day Pamphlets, published at that time, met with a very vehement criticism in the Neue rheinische Zeitung. The endeav ours of Ernest Jones and others to revive the Chartist movement were heartily supported by Marx, who contributed to several of the Chartist journals of the period, mostly, if not wholly, without getting or asking payment.
He lived at this time in great financial straits, occupying a few small rooms in Dean street, Soho, and all his children then born died very young. At length he was invited to write letters for the New York Tribune, whose staff consisted of advanced democrats and socialists of the Fourierist school. For these letters he was paid at the rate of a guinea each. Part of them, dealing with the Eastern Question and the Crimean War, were republished in 1897 (London, Sonnenschein). Some were even at the time reprinted in pamphlet form. The co-operation of Marx, who was deter minedly anti-Russian, since Russia was the leading reactionary power in Europe, was obtained by David Urquhart and his fol lowers. A number of Marx's articles were issued as pamphlets by the Urquhartite committees, and Marx wrote a series of articles on the diplomatic history of the 18th century for the Urquhartite Free Press (Sheffield and London, 1856-1857).