Friedrich Engels

• 1. The Boy From Barmen

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  Friedrich Engels was born on the 28th of November 1820 in Barmen, Prussia. He grew up in a house surrounded by factories and workers' tenements within the Wupper valley. His family belonged to the Pietist movement, a form of German Lutheranism that stressed personal devotion and practical faith. This background instilled in him a deep religiosity during his youth. Yet he also absorbed a Calvinist work ethic that fused worldly success with signs of divine grace. The family business, Ermen & Engels, expanded from bleaching yarn to include spinning mills and lace-knitting factories. Despite the strict ethos of his home life, his mother introduced him to classical mythology and gave him the complete works of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe as a Christmas present. At fourteen, he attended the municipal Gymnasium in nearby Elberfeld under Dr. Johann Clausen. There he developed an interest in ancient Germania and liberal nationalism. His father withdrew him from school in September 1837 just nine months before graduation. The decision reflected both authoritarianism and Engels's desire to pursue literature alongside business.

• 2. Manchester And The Working Class

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  In 1842, his father sent him to Manchester, England, to work in a cotton mill where the family had an investment. He arrived in the aftermath of the 1842 Plug Plot riots, a massive wave of strikes brutally suppressed by authorities. Manchester served as the shock-city of the Industrial Revolution for him. He began a relationship with Mary Burns, a young Irish factory worker who became his guide to the city's underworld. She escorted him through the slums of Salford and the Irish ghetto known as Little Ireland. Their partnership lasted twenty years until her death in 1863. This arrangement allowed him to document unmixed working peoples' quarters that would have been unsafe for a bourgeois German to enter alone. He cultivated connections with Chartist activists like George Julian Harney and James Leach. He frequented the Owenite Hall of Science where he was impressed by the articulacy of working-class socialists. His research culminated in The Condition of the Working Class in England published in German in 1845. The book combined personal observation with official reports to create a harrowing portrait of industrial capitalism. It presented a wholly unflattering account of the possessing class and its role in a competitive economic system.

• 3. The Partnership In Paris

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  In August 1844, Engels stopped in Paris on his way back to Germany and met Marx at the Café de la Régence. This meeting sealed their lifelong friendship and collaboration. Over ten days they discovered complete agreement in all theoretical fields. Their first joint project was a polemic against former Young Hegelian associates Bruno Bauer and his circle published in 1845 as The Holy Family. Marx greatly expanded his own sections turning the planned pamphlet into a book-length work. They moved to Brussels in 1845 to work on The German Ideology which developed their materialist conception of history. The manuscript argued that social structures are determined by the economic base rather than abstract concepts. It famously declared that life determines consciousness not the other way around. The Communist League commissioned them to write a program for the organization in 1847. Engels drafted two versions in catechism format before suggesting they call it The Communist Manifesto. The final text written primarily by Marx but drawing heavily on Engels's drafts was published in February 1848. It declared that the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.

• 4. The Double Life Of Businessman

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  After the defeat of the 1848 revolutions, Engels made a momentous decision in November 1850. He reconciled with his family to return to Manchester and resume his position at Ermen & Engels office. This move provided financial support for the impoverished Marx family in London. He endured this purgatory for nearly twenty years while leading a double life. As a respectable middle-class businessman he became a partner in the firm in 1864. His income grew substantially reaching over £1,000 a year by 1860. Over two decades he sent a constant stream of funds totaling between £3,000 and £4,000 to Marx. This arrangement required elaborate arrangements where he maintained an official residence in suburbs while living secretly with Mary Burns. In public life he became a stalwart of Manchester society as a member of the Royal Exchange. He regularly rode with the Cheshire Hounds which he considered practical training for cavalry service. On the 30th of June 1869 at age 49 he finally retired from business after negotiating a settlement giving him £12,500 capital sum.

• 5. Guardian Of The Movement

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  In September 1870 Engels moved to London settling at 122 Regent's Park Road in Primrose Hill. His retirement allowed him to return fully to political life as corresponding secretary for several European countries. He played a key role in internal struggles particularly the bitter conflict with anarchist faction leader Mikhail Bakunin. Engels deployed organizational skills to defend Marx's authority leading to Bakunin's expulsion at the Hague Congress in 1872. His home earned the nickname Grand Lama of the Regent's Park Road becoming the intellectual center of international socialism. During the 1870s and 1880s he wrote Anti-Dühring published in 1878 as a comprehensive explanation of their shared scientific socialism. A section was later published separately as Socialism: Utopian and Scientific circulating in ten languages by 1892. After Marx died on the 14th of March 1883 Engels devoted the remainder of his life to editing Marx's literary estate. He published Volume II in 1885 and Volume III in 1894 completing Das Kapital from near-illegible manuscripts. This Sisyphean task involved deciphering Marx's notes to provide structure and form to the books.

• 6. Dialectics And The Natural World

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  Engels worked on Dialectics of Nature originating in a letter to Marx on the 30th of May 1873 outlining dialectical ideas on natural sciences. It was an unfinished attempt to rescue conscious dialectics from German idealist philosophy. He sought to outline a unified worldview encompassing nature and society under the same dialectical laws of motion. He engaged with contemporary scientific developments including detailed studies of electricity which he believed heralded a tremendously revolutionary new era. The work remained a torso after being compelled to set it aside to write Anti-Dühring. It was published posthumously in the Soviet Union in 1925 though its science was obsolete by then. In Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy written in 1886 he argued that dialectical laws were identical in substance between nature and society but different in expression. Engels wrote that human consciousness could be applied in history but not in nature where change occurs through gradual merging of opposites. His ecological insights warned that humanity does not rule over nature like a conqueror over a foreign people.