Friedrich Engels: biography of this revolutionary philosopher

This philosopher born in 19th century Prussia had a significant influence on many workers' revolutions.

Friedrich Engels (1820-1895) was the German philosopher and politician who founded modern communism together with Karl Marx. Some authors consider that the key to understanding the thought of Friedrich Engels is precisely his biography, because it was his youthful development that marked much of his work.

We will now take a brief look at his biography a brief review of the biography of Friedrich Engelsand we point out some of his main works and contributions to the philosophical, political and economic thought of the twentieth century.

Friedrich Engels, biography of a revolutionary.

Friedrich Engels was born on November 28, 1820. He was the eldest of eight siblings and belonged to a mill-owning family in Barmen, an area of northern Prussia that is now part of Germany, which was undergoing significant industrial development at the time.

The son of a textile manufacturer, Engels soon became concerned about the general conditions in the manufacturing industries and the situation of the working class.. During his adulthood he worked in this sector, which inspired him to begin writing some of his major works.

Although he had been raised in a Protestant family, Engels came closer to atheistic beliefs. The latter caused him some conflicts with his parents and especially with his mother.

The same happened when he had to leave school and his father sent him to work as a clerk in a commercial house. Both his mother and father expected him to develop a business career, just as they had done. Nevertheless, Engels was already developing some activities activities that were considered revolutionary and inciting to collective organization, which disappointed his parents again.which disappointed his parents again.

In 1844 he met Karl Marx, in Paris, just before settling in England after some failures of the revolutions of the same decade. In fact, during his stay in England, Engels worked for the textile industry where his parents worked for the textile industry where his father was a shareholder.. The latter considered that perhaps if Engels worked in that industry, this would serve to appease the radical teachings he had received at school.

Engels continued to work together with Marx many years laterIt even helped him to finance the first volume of his main work, Das Kapital, in 1867 and provided him with a livelihood, since Marx had serious difficulties to live autonomously because of the beto imposed on him by the great families with power over the economy and politics.

Most important intellectual work and contributions

There is much debate about Engels' relationship to Hegelian philosophy before 1850, as well as before 1850, as well as his relationship to his working-class capitalist family. He even signed some of his works under the pseudonym Friedrich Oswald, to avoid connecting his Protestant and entrepreneurial family with the provocative nature of his writings.

Among other things, Friedrich Engels contributed very important discussions on some notions of nationality, military and scientific affairs, industrial operations. And perhaps two of his great contributions to the Western philosophical to the philosophical tradition of the West are historical materialism and dialectical materialism..

Engels also took a stand against the institution of marriage because he considered it to be unnatural and unjust. He maintained this conviction in spite of his long relationship with Mary Burns, who also helped to introduce him to the working class in England.

Several of the observations and notes he made on the British working class provided key insights into the terrible working conditions they faced. From there he also became involved with politicians and journalists with whom he shared radical thoughts for the time.

It was not until 1845, when he began to formulate, together with Marx, a materialist interpretation of history, in which he proposed the eventual consolidation of a communist society. They spread the same through various groups, mainly working class, within Germany, France and England.

Finally, the London Communist Congress adopted several of his ideas, and authorized him to begin to outline the principles of communism. Thus the first part of the Communist Manifesto (The Manifest der kommunististischen Partei) was published on February 21, 1848. This text is mainly written by Marx, but includes many of Engels' definitions of communism.

Other key texts and important books by Engels

Engels' first published work was not a scholarly text, but was a poem entitled The Bedouinwhich was included in the 1838 edition of Bremisches Conversationblastt.

His most popular work began in the 1840s, with The Holy Family (1844), which was a critique of the "Young Hegelians", a popular academic circle evidently influenced by the philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel Hegel.which was a very popular academic circle evidently influenced by the philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel Hegel. Subsequently he published The Situation of the Working Class in England (1845), which contains several of the beginnings of socialism and its development, so it is considered one of the classic texts.

Later he published the work From Utopian Socialism to Scientific Socialism (1880), in which he criticizes socialist utopias and offers an explanation of capitalism. offers an explanation of capitalism from the point of view of social development and progression from the point of view of social and economic development and progression as understood by historical materialism.

Finally, he publishes The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State (1884), where he contextualizes capitalism with the institution of the family. This work was developed in the stage that is considered the peak of Engels' intellectual development, and it contains a powerful historical view of the family in relation to the issues of class, gender and private property.