Marx and Engels write: "A spectre is haunting Europe — the spectre of communism. All the powers of old Europe have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this spectre: Pope and Tsar, Metternich and Guizot, French Radicals and German police-spies.
Where is the party in opposition that has not been decried as communistic by its opponents in power? Where is the opposition that has not hurled back the branding reproach of communism, against the more advanced opposition parties, as well as against its reactionary adversaries?
Two things result from this fact:
I. Communism is already acknowledged by all European powers to be itself a power.
II. It is high time that Communists should openly, in the face of the whole world, publish their views, their aims, their tendencies, and meet this nursery tale of the Spectre of Communism with a manifesto of the party itself.
To this end, Communists of various nationalities have assembled in London and sketched the following manifesto, to be published in the English, French, German, Italian, Flemish and Danish languages." Was communism already a political force before the publication of the Communist manifesto, or are they referring to the general idea of labor movements?
The Communist Manifesto was written for the Communist League, a political party established in 1847 in London that is widely regarded as the first Communist political party. However, while communism as distinct political parties hadn't necessarily existed, communism as an extension of workers' movements internationally certainly did. The roots of Communism as a political current trace back to the French Revolution, and include the writings of Jean Jacques Rousseau and Gracchus Babeuf, and are generally tied to the left wing of the Jacobin party. By the time that Marx had written the Manifesto, the word Communist was thrown around in a similar vein as "liberal" today, identifying a set of beliefs (pejoratively or supportively) but not necessarily a political party or bloc. This is to what Marx is referring.
To follow up on this, would a Landsgemeinde like the Peasant's Republic of Dithmarschen be considered by figures like Marx and Engels to be the precursor to the communist state?