Engels, Friedrich

(1820-95)

A nineteenth-century philosopher, socialist, manufacturer, and co-founder of Marxism . The best introduction to his life and work is Terrell Carver's Engels (1981).

Born into a family of well-to-do mill-owners in Rhineland, Engels very soon took up a critical stance against the conservatism of his background, and went on to establish the intellectual partnership with Karl Marx for which he is most well-known. So close was the cooperation between them that it is often difficult to be sure what should be attributed to either partner. Their early influences in the radical Young Hegelian circle, and conversion to socialism and communism in the early 1840s, ran in close parallel. It seems to have been’s ‘Outlines of a Critique of Political Economy’ (1844) which set Marx off on his life-long researches into that subject. The culmination of this research was Marx's Capital. Only one volume of this was published in Marx's lifetime, and it was Engels's contribution, after Marx's death, to prepare for publication the drafts of the remaining two volumes.

Following their (relatively minor) involvement in the unsuccessful uprisings of 1848, both Marx and Engels went into exile in England. Until 1869 Engels was preoccupied with the family business in Manchester, but he was at least able to offer Marx's family desperately needed financial support, while Marx continued with his studies. From the 1870s onwards Engels was able to give more time to intellectual and political work. His advice was much sought by the leaders of the international working-class movement, and he was particularly closely involved with the development of the German socialist movement from 1875 onwards. The books and pamphlets in which he expounded his and Marx's approach to history, politics, and philosophy were extremely widely read, and were more influential even than Marx's own work in forming the image of Marxism as a systematic world-view held by successive generations of socialist and communist militants.

However, Engels's contribution went well beyond merely popularizing the work of his mentor. His Condition of the Working Class in England (1845) remains a classic work of social and economic investigation. It is particularly noteworthy for its pioneering exposition of the links between poverty, environmental degradation, and ill-health, consequent upon modern industrialism. Engels's late work also contained much originality. His Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State (1884) extended the range of historical materialism to engage with current work in anthropology. This work was especially significant in its attempt to explain the history of women's subordination ‘materialistically’ in terms of the institutions of private property and monogamy. Despite its flaws, this work is still considered worthy of serious attention by many contemporary feminists. Engels's later years were also much taken up with following developments in the natural sciences and engaging with the political and philosophical implications of those developments. Dialectical materialism was the term invented by Engels to encapsulate his attempt to sustain a form of materialism which was sufficiently open and flexible to address these new developments. Ironically, Engels's ideas were subsequently converted into a dogmatic ideology by the leadership of the Soviet state. See also embourgeoisement ; matriarchy.