Friedrich Engels (28 November 1820 – 5 August 1895) was a German philosopher and Marxist theorist who co-authored The Communist Manifesto with Karl Marx in 1848. Engels was instrumental in the creation of socialism, which would later evolve into communism.
Biography[]
Friedrich Engels was born on 28 November 1820 in Barmen, Prussia (present-day Wuppertal, Germany), and he dropped out of high school and became an atheist when he was young. While in Bremen, he criticized industrialization, and he became an intellectual while serving in the Prussian Army in the 1840s. In 1842, his parents sent him to work in Manchester, England at a sewing thread mill, with his father thinking that he would reconsider his liberal views if exposed to working-class life. However, he befriended Karl Marx while he was in England, and Engels wrote for Marx's publication, Rheinische Zeitung, criticizing child labor and becoming involved in radical journalism and politics. Engels and Marx travelled across Western Europe, and they joined the German Communist League. When Engels and Marx were asked to publish a pamphlet outlining the views of the league, they wrote The Communist Manifesto, publishing it in 1848. Their newspaper was suppressed following the 1849 coup in Prussia during the 1848 Revolutions, and Engels took part in the 1849 uprisings. He escaped to Switzerland, and from there to England, where he rejoined Marx in exile. Engels would help in financing the book Das Kapital, and he died in London in 1895 at the age of 74.