Friedrich Engels: life, work, and political philosophy

Friedrich Engels, 1820-1895, was a nineteenth century German political philosopher, who together with his partner Karl Marx, developed communist theory and wrote the Communist Manifesto, 1848 (Friedrich pp).

Shocked by the widespread poverty in Manchester England, Engels wrote an account called Condition of the Working Class in 1844 that was published in 1945 (Friedrich pp). He then began contributing to a journal called the Franco-German Annals, which was edited and published by Karl Marx in Paris (Friedrich pp). When Marx and Engels met they realized that they shared the same views on capitalism and when Marx was deported from France in 1845, they moved to Belgium and in 1846 set up the Communist Correspondence Committee in Brussels (Friedrich pp). The intent was to unite socialist leaders from all over Europe, and in fact, the Communist League in London was formed due to the influence of Engels and Marx (Friedrich pp). Then in 1847, they began writing a pamphlet based on Engels' The Principles of Communism, which was written in such a manner as to allow a wider audience to understand communism (Friedrich pp). The pamphlet was called The Communist Manifesto and was published in 1848, leading to both Engels and Marx being expelled from Belgium (Friedrich pp). They then moved to Cologne, Germany and began publishing a radical newspaper called the New Rhenish Gazette (Friedrich pp). Engels took an active part in the Revolution of 1848, and fought in the Baden campaign against the Prussians, 1849, as the aide-de-camp of August Willich, who was leader of a Free Corps in the Baden-Palatinate uprising (Friedrich pp).

Socialism is an ideology based on the organized working class with the aim of building a classless society (Friedrich pp). By the time of the Revolution of 1848 there were several competing "socialisms," ranging from the socialism of Charles Fourier to the self-described "scientific" socialism of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels (Friedrich pp). A socialist society will be controlled by the working class, the proletariat, whose familiarity with large, collective undertakings will be reflected in the character of the society, it will be a dictatorship of the proletariat, "in the sense that it is contrasted with the existing dictatorship of the bourgeoisie" (Friedrich pp). Marx and Engels saw socialism as a transitional phase to eventually be replaced by a classless communist society in which the existing forms of government would no longer be needed (Friedrich pp). Engels believed that the state was destined to wither away as the "representative democracy of socialism slowly turned into the direct democracy of socialism, and economic life would be re-organized on a basis of freedom and equality" (Friedrich pp).