Engels, Friedrich (frē`drĭkh ĕng`əls), 1820–95, German socialist; with Karl Marx Marx, Karl, 1818–83, German social philosopher, the chief theorist of modern socialism and communism .

Early Life

Marx's father, a lawyer, converted from Judaism to Lutheranism in 1824.
..... Click the link for more information. , one of the founders of modern Communism. The son of a wealthy Rhenish textile manufacturer, Engels went in 1842 to take a position in a factory near Manchester, England, in which his father had an interest. In 1844, while passing through Paris, he met Marx, and their lifelong association began. Engels's first major book was The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844 (1845, tr. 1887), which attracted wide attention. From 1845 to 1850 he was active in Germany, France, and Belgium, organizing revolutionary movements and collaborating with Marx on several works, notably the Communist Manifesto (1848). The failure of the revolutions of 1848 caused his return (1850) to England, where he lived the rest of his life. He was a successful businessman, and from his income he enabled Marx to devote his life to research and writing. Engels played a leading role in the First International International, any of a succession of international socialist and Communist organizations of the 19th and 20th cent.

The First International

The First International was founded in London in 1864 as the International Workingmen's Association.
..... Click the link for more information. and the Second International. After Marx's death, Engels edited the second and third volumes of Das Kapital from Marx's drafts and notes. The intimate intellectual relationship between Marx and Engels leaves little doubt that there was complete harmony of thought between them, although critics have sometimes questioned their full agreement. Marx's personality has overshadowed that of Engels, but the influence of Engels on the theories of Marxism Marxism, economic and political philosophy named for Karl Marx . It is also known as scientific (as opposed to utopian) socialism. Marxism has had a profound impact on contemporary culture; modern communism is based on it, and most modern socialist theories derive
..... Click the link for more information. , and particularly on the elaboration of dialectical materialism dialectical materialism, official philosophy of Communism, based on the writings of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels , as elaborated by G. V. Plekhanov , V. I. Lenin , and Joseph Stalin .
..... Click the link for more information. , can scarcely be overestimated. Engels's Anti-Dühring (1878, tr. 1934) and The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State (1884, tr. 1902) rank among the fundamental books in Communist literature and profoundly influenced Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. Among his other works is The Peasant War in Germany (tr. 1926).

Bibliography

See selected correspondence with Marx, ed. by D. Torr (1942); the Collected Works of Marx and Engels (40 vol., 1975–83); his Socialism, Utopian and Scientific (1883, tr. 1892) and Dialectics of Nature (1925, tr. 1940); biography by G. Mayer (1936, repr. 1969); The Marx-Engels Reader, ed. by R. C. Tucker (1972); S. Marcus, Engels, Manchester and the Working Class (1974); J. Sayers et al., ed., Engels Revisited: New Feminist Perspectives (1987); W. O. Henderson, Marx and Engels and the English Workers and Other Essays (1989).

Engels, Friedrich

(born Nov. 28, 1820, Barmen, Rhine Province, Prussia—died Aug. 5, 1895, London, Eng.) German socialist philosopher. Son of a factory owner, he eventually became a successful businessman himself, never allowing his criticism of capitalism to interfere with the profitable operations of his firm. As a young man, he developed an interest in the philosophy of G.W.F. Hegel as expounded by the Young Hegelians, and he became persuaded that the logical consequence of Hegelianism and dialectic was communism. In 1844 he published The Condition of the Working Class in England. With Karl Marx, whom he met in Cologne, he formed a permanent partnership to promote the socialist movement. After persuading the second Communist Congress to adopt their views, the two men were authorized to draft the Communist Manifesto (1848). After Marx's death (1883), Engels served as the foremost authority on Marx and Marxism. Aside from his own books, he completed volumes 2 and 3 of Das Kapital on the basis of Marx's uncompleted manuscripts and rough notes.