Friedrich Engels

Friedrich Engels (1820–1895) was a German philosopher, political theorist, historian, and journalist, best known as a close associate of Karl Marx and a co-author of Marxist theory. He was born in Barmen (now part of Wuppertal) to a wealthy Protestant industrialist family.

Although he was the heir to a textile factory in Manchester, Engels showed an early interest in philosophy and social injustice. In England, he encountered the horrors of industrial capitalism, which inspired him to write The Condition of the Working Class in England (1845).

His collaboration with Karl Marx began in 1844, culminating in the publication of The Communist Manifesto in 1848, in which they outlined the foundations of communist ideology. After Marx's death in 1883, Engels edited and published the second and third editions of Capital, as well as many of Marx's unpublished writings.

Engels wrote a number of important works independently, including Anti-Dühring, On the Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, and Dialectics of Nature, in which he developed dialectical materialism and a critique of bourgeois society.

He was a polyglot, well-versed in military matters, natural sciences and philosophy. His bibliography includes hundreds of articles, letters and books that have influenced political movements around the world.