This week in history: Birth of Frederick Engels

On November 28, 1820, Frederick Engels was born in Barmen-Elberfeld (now Wuppertal, Germany). The young Karl Marx's interest in political economy was sparked by reading Engels' 1843 work Outlines of a Critique of Political Economy. Engels and Marx became lifelong friends and collaborators, and the most famous of the works co-authored by the two pioneers of modern socialism was the Manifesto of the Communist Party, more often known as the Communist Manifesto.

Engels went on to author a number of classic works in socialist theory and history, including The Condition of the Working Class in England, Socialism: Scientific and Utopian, and The Origins of the Family, Private Property and the State. When Engels died in 1895, the Russian revolutionary V.I. Lenin wrote, "After his friend Karl Marx, Engels was the finest scholar and teacher of the modern proletariat in the whole civilised world".

From Green Left Weekly, November 23, 2005.

Visit the Green Left Weekly home page.

From GLW issue 650