Engels, Friedrich

Engels, Friedrich
born Nov. 28, 1820, Barmen, Rhine Province, Prussia
died Aug. 5, 1895, London, Eng.

German socialist philosopher.

Son of a factory owner, he eventually became a successful businessman himself, never allowing his criticism of capitalism to interfere with the profitable operations of his firm. As a young man, he developed an interest in the philosophy of G.W.F. Hegel as expounded by the Young Hegelians, and he became persuaded that the logical consequence of Hegelianism and dialectic was communism. In 1844 he published The Condition of the Working Class in England. With Karl Marx, whom he met in Cologne, he formed a permanent partnership to promote the socialist movement. After persuading the second Communist Congress to adopt their views, the two men were authorized to draft the Communist Manifesto (1848). After Marx's death (1883), Engels served as the foremost authority on Marx and Marxism. Aside from his own books, he completed volumes 2 and 3 of Das Kapital on the basis of Marx's uncompleted manuscripts and rough notes.

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▪ German philosopher
Introduction
born November 28, 1820, Barmen, Rhine Province, Prussia
died August 5, 1895, London
 German Socialist philosopher, the closest collaborator (Marxism) of Karl Marx (Marx, Karl) in the foundation of modern communism. They co-authored the Communist Manifesto (1848), and Engels edited the second and third volumes of Das Kapital after Marx's death.

Early life
      Engels grew up in the environment of a family marked by moderately liberal political views, a steadfast loyalty to Prussia, and a pronounced Protestant faith. His father was the owner of a textile factory in Barmen and also a partner in the Ermen & Engels cotton plant in Manchester, Eng. Even after Engels openly pursued the revolutionary goals that threatened the traditional values of the family, he usually could count on financial aid from home. The influence of his mother, to whom he was devoted, may have been a factor in preserving the tie between father and son.

      Aside from such disciplinary actions as the father considered necessary in rearing a gifted but somewhat rebellious son, the only instance in which his father forced his will on Engels was in deciding upon a career for him. Engels did attend a Gymnasium (secondary school), but he dropped out a year before graduation, probably because his father felt that his plans for the future were too undefined. Engels showed some skill in writing poetry, but his father insisted that he go to work in the expanding business. Engels, accordingly, spent the next three years (1838–41) in Bremen acquiring practical business experience in the offices of an export firm.

      In Bremen, Engels began to show the capacity for living the double life that characterized his middle years. During regular hours, he operated effectively as a business apprentice. An outgoing person, he joined a choral society, frequented the famed Ratskeller, became an expert swimmer, and practiced fencing and riding (he outrode most Englishmen in the fox hunts). Engels also cultivated his capacity for learning languages; he boasted to his sister that he knew 24. In private, however, he developed an interest in liberal and revolutionary works, notably the banned writings of “Young German” authors such as Ludwig Börne, Karl Gutzkow, and Heinrich Heine. But he soon rejected them as undisciplined and inconclusive in favour of the more systematic and all embracing philosophy of Hegel (Hegelianism) as expounded by the “Young Hegelians,” a group of leftist intellectuals, including the theologian and historian Bruno Bauer and the anarchist Max Stirner. They accepted the Hegelian dialectic—basically that rational progress and historical change result from the conflict of opposing views, ending in a new synthesis. The Young Hegelians were bent on accelerating the process by criticizing all that they considered irrational, outmoded, and repressive. As their first assault was directed against the foundations of Christianity, they helped convert an agnostic Engels into a militant atheist, a relatively easy task since by this time Engels' revolutionary convictions made him ready to strike out in almost any direction.

      In Bremen, Engels also demonstrated his talent for journalism by publishing articles under the pseudonym of Friedrich Oswald, perhaps to spare the feelings of his family. He possessed pungent critical abilities and a clear style, qualities that were utilized later by Marx in articulating their revolutionary goals.

      After returning to Barmen in 1841, the question of a future career was shelved temporarily when Engels enlisted as a one-year volunteer in an artillery regiment in Berlin. No antimilitarist disposition prevented him from serving commendably as a recruit; in fact, military matters later became one of his specialties. In the future, friends would often address him as “the general.” Military service allowed Engels time for more compelling interests in Berlin. Though he lacked the formal requirements, he attended lectures at the university. His Friedrich Oswald articles gained him entrée into the Young Hegelian circle of The Free, formerly the Doctors Club frequented by Karl Marx. There he gained recognition as a formidable protagonist in the philosophical battles, mainly directed against religion.

Conversion to communism
      After his discharge in 1842, Engels met Moses Hess (Hess, Moses), the man who converted him to communism. Hess, the son of wealthy Jewish parents and a promoter of radical causes and publications, demonstrated to Engels that the logical consequence of the Hegelian philosophy and dialectic was communism. Hess also stressed the role that England, with its advanced industry, burgeoning proletariat, and portents of class conflict, was destined to play in future upheavals. Engels eagerly seized the opportunity to go to England, ostensibly to continue his business training in the family firm in Manchester.

      In England (1842–44), Engels again functioned successfully in business. After hours, however, he pursued his real interests: writing articles on communism for continental and English journals, reading books and parliamentary reports on economic and political conditions in England, mingling with workers, meeting radical leaders, and gathering materials for a projected history of England that would stress the rise of industry and the wretched position of the workers.

      In Manchester, Engels established an enduring attachment to Mary Burns, an uneducated Irish working girl, and, though he rejected the institution of marriage, they lived together as husband and wife. In fact, the one serious strain in the Marx–Engels friendship occurred when Mary died in 1863 and Engels thought that Marx responded a little too casually to the news of her death. In the future, however, Marx made a point of being more considerate, and, when Engels later lived with Mary's sister Lizzy, on similar terms, Marx always carefully closed his letters with greetings to “Mrs. Lizzy” or “Mrs. Burns.” Engels finally married Lizzy, but only as a deathbed concession to her.

      In 1844 Engels contributed two articles to the Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher (“German-French Yearbooks”), which were edited by Marx in Paris. In them Engels put forth an early version of the principles of scientific socialism. He revealed what he regarded as the contradictions in liberal economic doctrine and set out to prove that the existing system based on private property was leading to a world made up of “millionaires and paupers.” The revolution that would follow would lead to the elimination of private property and to a “reconciliation of humanity with nature and itself.”

Partnership with Marx
      On his way to Barmen, Engels went to Paris for a 10-day visit with Marx, whom he had earlier met in Cologne. This visit resulted in a permanent partnership to promote the socialist movement. Back in Barmen, Engels published Die Lage der arbeitenden Klasse in England (1845; The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844, 1887), a classic in a field that later became Marx's specialty. Their first major joint work was Die deutsche Ideologie (1845; The German Ideology), which, however, was not published until more than 80 years later. It was a highly polemical critique that denounced and ridiculed certain of their earlier Young Hegelian associates and then proceeded to attack various German socialists who rejected the need for revolution. Marx's and Engels' own constructive ideas were inserted here and there, always in a fragmentary manner and only as corrective responses to the views they were condemning.

      Upon rejoining Marx in Brussels in 1845, Engels endorsed his newly formulated economic, or materialistic, interpretation of history, which assumed an eventual communist triumph. That summer he escorted Marx on a tour of England. Thereafter he spent much time in Paris, where his social engagements did not interfere significantly with his major purpose, that of attempting to convert various émigré German worker groups—among them a socialist secret society, the League of the Just—as well as leading French socialists to his and Marx's views. When the league held its first congress in London in June 1847, Engels helped bring about its transformation into the Communist League.

      Marx and he together persuaded a second Communist Congress in London to adopt their views. The two men were authorized to draft a statement of communist principles and policies, which appeared in 1848 as the Manifest der kommunistischen Partei (Communist Manifesto, The) (commonly called the Communist Manifesto). It included much of the preliminary definition of views prepared earlier by Engels in the Grundsätze des Kommunismus (1847; Principles of Communism) but was primarily the work of Marx.

      The Revolution of 1848 (1848, Revolutions of), which was precipitated by the attempt of the German states to throw off an authoritarian, almost feudal, political system and replace it with a constitutional, representative form of government, was a momentous event in the lives of Marx and Engels. It was their only opportunity to participate directly in a revolution and to demonstrate their flexibility as revolutionary tacticians with the aim of turning the revolution into a communist victory. Their major tool was the newspaper Neue Rheinische Zeitung, which Marx edited in Cologne with the able assistance of Engels. Such a party organ, then appearing in a democratic guise, was of prime importance for their purposes; with it they could furnish daily guidelines and incitement in the face of shifting events, together with a sustained criticism of governments, parties, policies, and politicians.

      After the failure of the revolution, Engels and Marx were reunited in London, where they reorganized the Communist League and drafted tactical directives for the communists in the belief that another revolution would soon take place. But how to replace his depleted income soon became Engels' main problem. To support both himself and Marx, he accepted a subordinate position in the offices of Ermen & Engels in Manchester, eventually becoming a full-fledged partner in the concern. He again functioned successfully as a businessman, never allowing his communist principles and criticism of capitalist ways to interfere with the profitable operations of his firm. Hence he was able to send money to Marx constantly, often in the form of £5 notes, but later in far higher figures. When Engels sold his partnership in the business in 1869, he received enough for it to live comfortably until his death in 1895 and to provide Marx with an annual grant of £350, with the promise of more to cover all contingencies.

      Engels, who was forced to live in Manchester, corresponded constantly with Marx in London and frequently wrote newspaper articles for him; he wrote the articles that appeared in the New York Tribune (1851–52) under Marx's name and that were later published under Engels' name as Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany in 1848 (1896). In the informal division of labour that the two protagonists of communism had established, Engels was the specialist in nationality questions, military matters, to some extent in international affairs, and in the sciences. Marx also turned to him repeatedly for clarification of economic questions, notably for information on business practices and industrial operations.

      Marx's Das Kapital (Kapital, Das) (Capital), his most important work, bears in part a made-in-Manchester stamp. Marx similarly called on Engels' writing facility to help “popularize” their joint views. While Marx was the brilliant theoretician of the pair, it was Engels, as the apt salesman of Marxism directing attention to Das Kapital through his reviews of the book, who implanted the thought that it was their “bible.” Engels almost alone wrote Herrn Eugen Dührings Umwälzung der Wissenschaft (1878; Herr Eugen Dühring's Revolution in Science [Anti-Dühring]), the book that probably did most to promote Marxian thought. It destroyed the influence of Karl Eugen Dühring, a Berlin professor who threatened to supplant Marx's position among German Social Democrats.

Last years
      After Marx's death (1883), Engels served as the foremost authority on Marx and Marxism. Aside from occasional writings on a variety of subjects and introductions to new editions of Marx's works, Engels completed volumes 2 and 3 of Das Kapital (1885 and 1894) on the basis of Marx's uncompleted manuscripts and rough notes. Engels' other two late publications were the books Der Ursprung der Familie, des Privateigenthums und des Staats (1884; The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State) and Ludwig Feuerbach und der Ausgang der klassischen deutschen Philosophie (1888; Ludwig Feuerbach and the Outcome of Classical German Philosophy). All the while he corresponded extensively with German Social Democrats and followers everywhere, so as to perpetuate the image of Marx and to foster some degree of conformity among the “faithful.” His work was interrupted when he was stricken with cancer; he died of the disease not long after.

      During his lifetime, Engels experienced, in a milder form, the same attacks and veneration that fell upon Marx. An urbane individual with the demeanour of an English gentleman, Engels customarily was a gay and witty associate with a great zest for living. He had a code of honour that responded quickly to an insult, even to the point of violence. As the hatchetman of the “partnership,” he could be most offensive and ruthless, so much so that in 1848 various friends attempted unsuccessfully to persuade Marx to disavow him.

      Except for the communist countries, where Engels has received due recognition, posterity has generally lumped him together with Marx without adequately clarifying Engels' significant role. The attention Engels does receive is likely to be in the form of a close scrutiny of his works to discover what differences existed between him and Marx. As a result, some scholars have concluded that Engels' writings and influence are responsible for certain deviations from, or distortions of, “true Marxism” as they see it. Yet scholars in general acknowledge that Marx himself apparently was unaware of any essential divergence of ideas and opinions. The Marx-Engels correspondence, which reveals a close cooperation in formulating Marxist policies, bears out that view.

Oscar J. Hammen

Additional Reading
Biographical and critical studies include Gustav Mayer, Friedrich Engels: A Biography (1936, reissued 1969); W.O. Henderson, The Life of Friedrich Engels, 2 vol. (1976); Terrell Carver, Engels (1981, reissued 1991), on the development of Engels' materialist interpretation of history, Marx & Engels (1983), on Engels' revisionism, and Friedrich Engels: His Life and Thought (1989); and J.D. Hunley, The Life and Thought of Friedrich Engels: A Reinterpretation (1991).

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Universalium. 2010.

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