Friedrich Engels

Engels, Friedrich (1820–95), German socialist, philosopher, and associate of Karl Marx, with whom he founded modern communism. Born into a wealthy family, he went to England in 1842 to work in his father's textile mill. There he wrote his first major work, The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844 (published 1845). Engels became a socialist as a result of his exposure to the negative effects of capitalism, and in 1844 he and Marx began a collaboration that lasted until Marx's death. In 1848 they published The Communist Manifesto, setting forth the principles of communism. After being active in revolutionary groups in France, Belgium, and Germany during the unsuccessful revolutions of 1848, Engels returned to England in 1850. He supported Marx financially while Marx worked on writing his greatest work, Das Kapital, and after Marx's death, he completed the second and third volumes of that work. Among his other works are The Origins of the Family, Private Property, and the State (1844) and Anti-Dühring (1878), a philosophical polemic that laid the basis for Marxism's claim to be a “scientific,” as opposed to utopian, socialism.

See also: Communism; Marx, Karl.