International Encyclopedia of Revolution and Protest

Extract

Friedrich Engels was a nineteenth-century revolutionary who, along with collaborator Karl Marx , articulated the theory of communism in their 1848 work, The Communist Manifesto. To Engels, the capitalist system needed to be overthrown by a revolution from the proletariat, which would subsequently establish a classless society, thereby ending exploitation and misery. Engels was born in 1820 in Barmen-Elberfeld, in the Rhine province of Prussia (now Germany), the eldest son of a prosperous textile family. He was raised in a pious Protestant environment both at home and in school, but he rejected religion as a teenager. In 1838, without finishing school, Engels was sent to Bremen for business training as an unsalaried clerk. From 1841 to 1842 he served in the Household Artillery of the Prussian army and attended lectures at the University of Berlin. Engels joined a group of young Hegelian radicals called “The Free,” where he first met Karl Marx. He became involved in radical journalism, and wrote belles-lettres, philosophy, and politics under the nom-de-plume of Oswald. At the age of 22 he left Germany to take a management position at his father's cotton factory in Manchester, England, where he learned about laissez-faire economics. Witnessing the rampant poverty and misery of the workers prompted Engels to produce The Condition of the Working Class in England (1845). In 1845 ... log in or subscribe to read full text