Friedrich Engels (1820 - 1895) was a German philosopher, economist and social theorist who, with Karl Marx, founded the body of thought known as Marxism. His study The Condition of the Working Class in England documented industrial poverty in Manchester, and the two men jointly wrote The Communist Manifesto in 1848. [1] A partner in his family's textile business, Engels financed Marx for decades and after his death edited the second and third volumes of Das Kapital from his manuscripts. [2]
Early life
Engels was born on 28 November 1820 in Barmen, in the Prussian Rhine Province and now part of Wuppertal, into a wealthy family of Protestant textile manufacturers. He left the gymnasium before completing his studies to train in commerce at his father's insistence, working in Bremen while reading widely and publishing journalism under a pseudonym. [1]
During military service in Berlin he attended lectures at the university and joined the Young Hegelians, the circle of radical students and writers who applied Hegel's philosophy to criticism of religion and the Prussian state. [2]
Manchester and the condition of the working class
In 1842 Engels was sent to work at the family firm Ermen and Engels in Manchester, then the centre of the world cotton industry. There he observed industrial working conditions at first hand, assisted by Mary Burns, an Irish working-class woman who became his lifelong companion. [1]
The Condition of the Working Class in England, published in German in 1845, described housing, sanitation, child labour and mortality in the industrial districts and argued that these conditions were produced by the structure of industrial capitalism rather than by individual misfortune. It remains a significant source for social historians of the period. [3]
Partnership with Marx
Engels met Karl Marx in Paris in 1844, beginning a collaboration that lasted until Marx's death. Together they wrote The Holy Family and The German Ideology, setting out the materialist conception of history, and in 1848 produced The Communist Manifesto for the Communist League. [2]
Both were involved in the revolutions of 1848 and 1849; Engels took part in the armed uprising in Baden and the Palatinate before escaping to Switzerland and then to England. He returned to the Manchester business, remaining there until 1870, and used his income to support the Marx household in London. [1]
Later writings and role
Engels wrote extensively in his own right. Anti-Dühring and the derived pamphlet Socialism: Utopian and Scientific presented Marxist theory in accessible form and shaped the outlook of European socialist parties. The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State analysed the historical development of family structures and argued that the subordination of women was bound up with the rise of private property. [3]
After Marx died in 1883, Engels devoted much of his remaining years to organising and editing the unfinished manuscripts of Das Kapital, publishing volume two in 1885 and volume three in 1894. He corresponded widely with socialist leaders across Europe and was a central figure in the founding of the Second International. [2]
Death and legacy
Engels died of cancer in London on 5 August 1895, aged 74, and his ashes were scattered off Beachy Head at his request. [1]
His writings shaped the development of socialist and communist movements in the twentieth century, and his work on dialectics and on the history of the family remains a subject of scholarly debate. Later interpreters have disagreed over how far his systematising of Marx's ideas represented them faithfully. [4]
