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Friedrich Engels (28 November 1820 – 5 August 1895), was a German philosopher, historian, political scientist and revolutionary socialist. Together with his friend and long time collaborator Marx, they developed the materialist scientific explanation of history and economics, what later became known as Marxism.
Karl Marx’s dearest friend and inseparable comrade in arms, co-founder of dialectical materialism and scientific socialism and co-author with Marx of the Communist Manifesto; one of the founders of the Communist League and the International Association of Workingmen or First International. After Marx’s death (1883), he became the recognized spiritual leader and the greatest authority of the international workers’ movement. His principal merit lies in his exposition and development of dialectical materialism. Among his theoretical works primary importance should be assigned to his philosophical pamphlets. These are masterpieces whose influence on proletarian thought has been long-lasting and whose importance continues to grow. In them Engels demonstrates with an incomparable mastery and clarity the dialectical relations between philosophy and social class struggles and between philosophy and the development of productive forces and the parallel progress of the natural sciences. Thus he leads the reader along ever-new paths to the truth that the philosophy which truly liberates all of humanity can only be that of dialectical materialism, for only it is capable of preserving theoretical thought from the Scylla and Charybdis of idealism and vulgar, mechanistic materialism and of assuring the victory of a consistent materialist theory of knowledge. His fundamental works are: Anti-Dühring, a polemical work composed in a style like Lessing’s, full of freshness, spunk and fighting vigor, a remarkably rich defense of the materialist concept of the world; and Ludwig Feuerbach and the Outcome of Classical German Philosophy, a brilliant essay on the development of philosophy from Hegel to Marx. A less-known work, but one which possesses all the qualities which make it, along with Anti-Dühring, the essential weapon of Marxists in the struggle against new idealistic systems of philosophy is Dialectics of Nature, a collection of articles and fragments written between 1873 and 1892. Even if in some areas it has become obsolete due to recent scientific discoveries, it constitutes an inexhaustible resource for all those who are interested in the struggle for dialectical materialism and for its correct interpretation and who are convinced of the necessity of harmoniously incorporating into Marxism the results of modern natural science. Among his important theoretical and methodological works, let us mention: The Condition of the Working Class in England (1845), the Communist Manifesto (1848)—written in collaboration with Marx, the Bourgeois Democratic Revolution in Germany (1850-1852)—containing “The Peasant War,” “Revolution and Counter-revolution in Germany” and “The Campaign for the Constitution of the Reich”; Socialism: Utopian and Scientific (1880), The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State (1884), The Housing Question (1872), Contribution to the History of Primitive Christianity (reprinted in the collection Marx-Engels: On Religion), Engels on Capital and The Critique of the Erfurt Program (1891).
The study of Engels’ correspondence is equally indispensable: above all, the Karl Marx-Frederick Engels Correspondence. (See Karl Marx, Frederick Engels, Collected Works, New York: International Publishers, 1975-1976.)
Personal life
Engels was born in the city of Barmen in Rhenish Prussia, which at the time was a rapidly industrializing city. He was the son of a rich and very conservative industrial capitalist, Friedrich Engels Sr.
At the age of 20, Engels had many talents and developed many abilities; he practiced sports, studied music and foreign languages, including English, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese.