Friedrich Engels

Socialism: Utopian and Scientific (Dodo Press) Friedrich Engels

Friedrich Engels (1820-1895) was a German social scientist and philosopher, who developed communist theory alongside his better-known collaborator, Karl Marx. In 1841, he published several articles in the Rheinische Zeitung, where he met Karl Marx for the first time. In 1842, he was sent to Manchester, England to work for the textile firm of Ermen and Engels in which his father was a shareholder. In England, Engels took notes and personally observed the horrible working conditions of English workers which formed the basis for his first book The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844. From 1845 to 1848, Engels and Marx lived in Brussels, spending much of their time organizing the city's German workers. Shortly after their arrival, they contacted and joined the underground German Communist League and were commissioned by the League to write a pamphlet explaining the principles of communism. This became The Manifesto of the Communist Party (1848), better known as the Communist Manifesto.