Friedrich Engels

Born in Barmen, Prussia, in 1820, Friedrich Engels grew up in a prosperous textile-manufacturing family but became deeply critical of the social conditions created by industrial capitalism. Time spent in Manchester, where his family had business interests, gave him a close view of factory life and urban poverty, experiences that fed into The Condition of the Working Class in England, one of his best-known early works.

Engels is most often remembered for his lifelong intellectual and political partnership with Karl Marx. Together they wrote The Communist Manifesto, and Engels remained one of Marx’s closest collaborators for decades, supporting him personally as well as philosophically. He also wrote major works of his own, including Anti-Dühring and The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State.

After Marx’s death, Engels played a crucial role in preparing later volumes of Capital for publication, helping preserve and spread ideas that would have enormous influence around the world. He died in London in 1895, leaving behind a body of work that still matters to readers interested in politics, economics, history, and the human cost of industrial change.