Friedrich Engels, friend and collaborator of Karl Marx, is largely responsible for developing and expounding the concept of dialectical materialism within the Marxist framework. His book The Condition of the Working Class in England (1840) is a masterpiece of social observation and an important historical record.
Brief Biography of Friedrich Engels
Friedrich Engels (1820-1895) was a German political writer and Socialist. He was a disciple of Karl Marx, with whom he collaborated in formulating the theory of dialectical materialism. Both Marx and Engels are credited as the first to argue that the working class and its demands will drive capitalist economics to socialism, its necessary outcome.
In England, Engels became an agent of his father’s textile business (1842-44.) As such, he took an interest in the workers’ conditions and under the influence of the Chartist movement, he wrote The Condition of the Working Classes in England. This brought him in to touch with Karl Marx, then an exile in England. Together they wrote the Communist Manifesto (1848.) While Marx was doing research and writing in London, Engels supported him. From 1870 until Marx’s death in 1883, Engels helped Marx with his writings as well as financial support. He completed Das Kapital (1894), which Marx left unfinished.
Philosophy of Marx and Engels
Marx and Engels believed that the more workers there are, the greater their strength as a force for revolution, and the increasing size of the proletariat hastens the rise of socialism – the very condition of the working class which will drive it to help itself - when they realize that socialism should be their political ideal.
Hegel’s Law of Dialectics to Engel’s Dialectical Materialism
Engels determined his ideas of dialectics from reading The Science of Logic of George Hegel. He is generally regarded as the one who developed one of Hegel’s concepts that the universe is undergoing a constant process of change and development into the doctrine of “dialectical materialism.”
Engels was a materialist, who claims that what is undergoing the dialectic process is not ideas but matter. And, just as material causes undergo natural phenomena, it follows that the development of society is conditioned by the development of material forces, which he construed as the forces of material production.
To him, the social conditions of the working class are so appalling that dialectic process could have but one possible outcome, socialism. According to him, what is true of London is true of Manchester, Birminghan, Leeds, is true of all towns. He further records that that starvation and other human needs were common occurrences among the unemployed. But even the employed should not rest content, as no one is certain of the future.
Hegel with Marx and Communism
For their ideas and philosophies, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels have been regarded fathers of the communist revolution. The advocates to communism, in a way, put an end to the fear of unemployment, but how far they are able to satisfy the needs of their citizens, only history and time will tell.
Books by Friedrich Engels
- The Condition of the Working Class in England, 1844
- The Communist Manifesto, 1848 (Co-written with Karl Marx)
- The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, 1884
Sources:
McGovern, Una, Ed. Biographical Dictionary. Chambers, 2002.
Stokes, Philip. Philosophy, The Great Thinkers. Capella, 2007.
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