Friedrich Engels, b. Nov. 28, 1820, d. Aug. 5, 1895, was a German socialist who collaborated with Karl MARX in developing the revolutionary social philosophy known as MARXISM. Engels was educated to follow in the footsteps of his father, a German textile manufacturer. In 1842 he went to Manchester, England, to serve as an apprentice in his father's factory there. By that time, however, he had already shed the fundamentalist Protestant faith of his youth and passed through Hegelianism to radicalism.

In Manchester, Engels combined business with journalism, writing on social topics for Robert OWEN's New Moral World and Karl Marx's Rheinische Zeitung. In 1845 he published The Condition of the Working Class in England, a searing criticism of social misery among the factory workers of the industrial cities.

Engels and Marx met in 1844 in Paris, and found themselves in complete agreement on all basic social questions. A close relationship began that was to last until Marx's death 40 years later. Marx contributed his considerable analytical skills, while Engels supplied erudition, quick intelligence, and first-hand experience of the conditions of the British working class. Engels also helped support Marx's family. Their first joint work was The German Ideology, not published during their lifetimes, in which they criticized the ideas of nonrevolutionary German socialists. In 1848, Engels collaborated with Marx on the COMMUNIST MANIFESTO, a stirring call for revolution that summarized their views on history and the class struggle.

During the REVOLUTIONS OF 1848 in Germany, Engels helped Marx edit the liberal Neue Rheinische Zeitung. Returning to England after the failure of the revolutions, Engels resumed work in the Manchester factory and eventually became a partner in the firm. Meanwhile, he continued his literary and political activities, propagating both the Marxist view of society and the workers' movement. His most influential work was Herr Eugen Duhring's Revolution in Science (1873; trans., 1934), popularly known as Anti-Duhring. After Marx's death in 1883, Engels edited the complete second and third volumes of Marx's Das KAPITAL.