Friedrich Engels (1820-1895) was an German social and political philosopher, a friend of, and collaborator with, Karl Marx on The Communist Manifesto in 1848 and other key works.

Short Biography:

His later interpretations of Marxism, and his own philosophical and historical studies such as Origins of the Family, Private Property, and the State in 1884 (which linked patriarchy with the development of private property), developed such concepts as historical materialism.

His use of positivism and Darwinian ideas gave Marxism a scientific and deterministic flavour which was to influence Soviet thinking.

In 1842 Engels's father sent him to work in the cotton factory owned by his family in Manchester, England, where he became involved with the working-class Chartist reform m ovement.

In 1844 began his lifelong friendship with Karl Marx, and together they worked out the materialist interpretation of history and in 1847-1848 wrote the Communist Manifesto.

Engels's first book was The Condition of the Working Classes in England in 1845. The lessons of 1848 he summed up in The Peasants' War in Germany in 1850 and Revolution and Counter-Revoluuon in Germany in 1851. After Marx's death Engels was largely responsible for the wider dissemination of his ideas; he edited the second and third volumes of Marx's Capital in 1885 and in 1894.

Although Engels himself regarded his ideas as identical with those of Marx, discrepancies between their works are the basis of many modem Marxist debates.

Why is Friedrich Engels famous?

Friedrich Engels was a German industrialist, social scientist, author, political theorist, philosopher.

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Tags: industrialist, scientist, author, theorist

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Category: Philosophers  - ( Philosophers Archive)

Date Added: 24 February '12

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