Everything about Friedrich Engels totally explained
Friedrich Engels (
November 28,
1820 –
August 5,
1895) was a
German social scientist and
philosopher, who developed
communist theory alongside his better-known collaborator,
Karl Marx, co-authoring
The Communist Manifesto (1848). Engels also edited the second and third volumes of
Das Kapital after Marx's death.
Biography
Early Years
Friedrich Engels was born in
Barmen,
Rhine Province of the kingdom of
Prussia (now a part of
Wuppertal in
North Rhine-Westphalia,
Germany) as the oldest son of a German textile manufacturer, with whom he'd a strained relationship. Due to family circumstances, Engels dropped out of
High school and was sent to work as a nonsalaried office clerk at a commercial house in
Bremen in 1838. During this time, Engels began reading the philosophy of
Hegel, whose teachings had dominated German
philosophy at the time. In September of 1838, he published his first work, a poem titled
The Bedouin, in the
Bremisches Conversationsblatt No. 40. He also engaged in other literary and journalistic work. In 1841, Engels joined the Prussian Army as a member of the Household Artillery. This position moved him to Berlin where he attended university lectures, began to associate with groups of Young Hegelians and published several articles in the
Rheinische Zeitung Engels' father thought working in at the Manchester firm might make Engels reconsider the radical leanings that he'd developed in high school In Manchester, Engels met
Mary Burns, a young woman with whom he began a relationship that lasted until her death in 1862. Mary acted as a guide through Manchester and helped introduce Engels to the English working class. The two maintained a lifelong relationship; they never married, as Engels was against the institution of marriage which he saw as unnatural and unjust.
During his time in Manchester, Engels took notes and personally observed the horrible working conditions of English workers. These notes and observations, along with his experience working in his father's commercial firm, formed the basis for his first book
The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844. Whilst writing
Conditions of the Working Class, Engels continued his involvement with radical journalism and politics. He frequented some members of the
English labour &
Chartist movements and wrote for several different journals, including
The Northern Star,
Robert Owen’s
New Moral World & the
Democratic Review newspaper When the uprising was crushed, Engels managed to escape by traveling through
Switzerland as a
refugee and returned to England
He started off as an office clerk, the same position he held in his teens, but eventually worked his way up to become a joint proprietor in 1864. Five years later, Engels retired from the business to focus more on his studiesMarx's first London residence was a cramped apartment at 28 Dean Street, Soho. From 1856 he lived at 9 Grafton Terrace, Kentish Town and subsequently in a tenement at 41 Maitland Park Road from 1875 till his death.
Later years
After Marx's death, Engels devoted much of his remaining years to editing and translating Marx's unpublished works. However, he also contributed significantly to other areas, such as
feminist theory. Engels believed that the concept of
monogamous marriage was created from the domination of men over women. Engels would tie this particular argument to communist thought by arguing that men have dominated women just as the
capitalist class has dominated workers. One of the best examples of Engels' thoughts on these issues are in his work
The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State.
Engels died of
throat cancer in London in 1895. Following cremation at
Brookwood Cemetery near
Woking, his ashes were scattered off
Beachy Head, near
Eastbourne as he'd requested.
Major Works
The Holy Family (1844)
The Holy Family was a book written by
Marx & Engels in November 1844. The book is a critique on the
Young Hegelians and their trend of thought which was very popular in
academic circles at the time. The title was a suggestion by the
publisher and is meant as a sarcastic reference to the
Bauer Brothers and their supporters. The book created a controversy with much of the
press and caused
Bruno Bauer to attempt to refute the book in an article which was published in Wigand's
Vierteljahrsschrift in 1845. Bauer claimed that Marx and Engels misunderstood what he was trying to say. Marx later replied to his response with his own article that was published in the journal
Gesellschaftsspiegel in January 1846. Marx also discussed the argument in chapter 2 of
The German Ideology[.
]The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844 (1844)
The Condition of the Working Class is a detailed description and analysis of the appalling conditions of the working class in Britain and Ireland during Engels' stay in England. It was considered a classic in its time and still widely available today. This work also had many seminal thoughts on the state of socialism and its development.
Socialism: Utopian and Scientific (1880)
In this essay, Engels critiques the utopian socialists, such as Fourier and Owen, and provides an explanation of the socialist framework for understanding capitalism.
The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State (1884)
The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State is an important and detailed seminal work connecting capitalism with what Engels argues is an unnatural institution - family - designed to "privatize" wealth and human relationships contrary to the way animals and early humans evolved. It was written when Engels was 64 years of age and at the height of his intellectual power and contains a comprehensive historical view of the family in relation to the issues of class, female subjugation and private property.
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