Biographical Information
Frederick Engels was born in Barmen, in the Rhine province of the kingdom of Prussia, on November 28, 1820. While still at school, he developed a profound hatred for autocracy and political despotism. Like Marx, he was a follower of the revolutionary teachings of Hegel, but, like Marx, he soon rejected Hegel's idealist views and used the dialectical approach in making a materialist analysis of the world. He used this outlook and approach when he carried out a comprehensive study of the conditions of the English working class after he settled in Manchester, in the heartland of British industry, in 1842 and saw firsthand the poverty and misery of the workers. The fruit of his studies and observations was a work of tremendous revolutionary and scientific value: The Conditions of the Working Class in England. In it, Engels was the first to point out the revolutionary side to the deplorable plight of the proletariat: that the conditions of the working class were irrevocably leading it to fight for its complete emancipation. The political movement of the working class would inevitably bring the workers to the conclusion that their interests demand the destruction of the very foundations of capitalist society, the rule of the minority of exploiters and private property, and that there was no way forward except through socialism.
Engels also showed on the basis of the dialectical materialist analysis of human society
that socialism would only become a force when it became the aim of the political struggle of
the working class. It was in England during this period that Engels became a socialist.
In 1844, Engels met Marx for the first time, with whom he had already begun to
correspond, and they embarked in a life-long collaboration which was to provide the working
class with the revolutionary science for its emancipation. That very year, they worked together
to write The Holy Family, or a Criticism of Critical Criticism, in which the
rudiments of revolutionary materialist socialism are enunciated. This work incisively criticizes
the philosophy of the Bauer brothers and their "critical" approach to the situation in the world,
and points out that the issue is not to contemplate the world but to struggle for a better order
of society.
From 1845 to 1847, Engels continued his revolutionary work among German workers in Paris and Brussels where both he and Marx established contact with the secret German Communist League which commissioned them to enunciate the main principles of socialism as they had worked them out. In November 1847, having taken up this task, Engels completed the first draft of the Manifesto of the Communist Party.
The Manifesto of the Communist Party,
written by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels in 1848, presented
communism to the world as the necessary condition to complete the
emancipation of the working class. Engels dedicated his entire life to
the advance of the working class movement, despite relentless attacks on
his person by the German, French and other states and political
personalities. Above is the cover of the first edition of the Communist Manifesto, in German and the cover of the English edition.
In this immortal work published in 1848, Marx and Engels brilliantly put forward the communist doctrine, the program for the emancipation of the working class and the building of the new communist society. They placed the proletariat at the centre of social development and as the leader, inspirer, organizer and mobilizer in the irreconcilable class struggle against the bourgeoisie, its grave-digger. They pointed out: "its fall and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable;" the working class must become the ruling class, it must use violence to counter the violence of the bourgeois state as it works to achieve the transformation of society and it must establish its dictatorship to emancipate itself and all humankind.
Marx and Engels issued the clarion call, Workers of All Countries, Unite! This call embodies the principles of proletarian internationalism and shows the international character of the proletariat's struggle for liberation from capitalist exploitation and wage-slavery so as to overthrow the capitalist order and its state power on the world scale.
The revolutions of 1848 in countries throughout Europe brought both Marx and Engels back to Germany. In Cologne, in Rhenish Prussia, they put out the democratic newspaper Neue Rheinische Zeitung and became the central figures in the revolutionary democratic struggle against the forces of reaction there. Reaction gained the upper hand, the paper was suppressed. After Marx was deported, Engels continued to fight, actively participating in the armed popular uprising in which he fought in three battles. Finally he too was forced to leave the country following the defeat of the revolutionary forces.
Shortly thereafter, he settled in England where Marx also settled, and their close revolutionary collaboration continued until Marx's death in 1883, yielding a wealth of revolutionary material. Having lost none of its validity and value, their life's work continues to be an indispensable guide to the revolutionary proletariat in its struggles to this day.
It was while living in England that Marx was to write the greatest work ever done on political economy -- Capital. While Marx carried out his tremendous work on the analysis of the complex phenomena of capitalist economy, Engels took up the elaboration of science and outlook on a wide range of questions, often writing simple, concise works in a polemical style. Among his major contributions to the theory of communism during this period are the famous polemical work Anti-Dühring, in which he deals with fundamental questions of philosophy, natural science and social science; The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, The Housing Question and Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy. It was Engels too, who carried out the major task of preparing and publishing the second and third volumes of Capital after Marx died leaving this work only in draft form.
Engels' revolutionary work, however, went beyond this invaluable enunciation of the revolutionary theory of the proletariat. Like Marx, he too was active in the international working class movement, including his active participation in the International Working Men's Association founded by Marx in 1864. Even after the dissolution of the Internationale and the death of Marx, Engels continued to pay great attention to the development of the international working class movement. The correspondence which he conducted with communists and working class leaders throughout Europe and North America is rich in principles and in the enunciation of the revolutionary strategy and tactics of the proletariat. This correspondence is among the treasures which Engels left the international proletariat.
In all his work, the revolutionary essence of this brilliant fighter for the interests of the working class is always apparent. He never for a moment lost sight of the interests for which he was fighting, never lapsed into empty theorizing but, on the contrary, repeatedly pointed out that "Marxism is not a dogma, but a guide to action." His writings to this day form an integral and essential part of the theory of communism -- an indispensable and invaluable guide in the struggle of the working class for its emancipation, for socialism and communism.
Founding meeting of the International Working Men's Association, London,
September 1864.
This article was published in
Volume 55 Number 22 - August 5, 2025
Article Link:
https://cpcml.ca/Tmlm2025/Articles/TS55222.HTM
Website: www.cpcml.ca Email: editor@cpcml.ca