Friedrich Engels.

In 1820, Friedrich Engels was born in Barmen, Prussia, to Elisabeth Franziska Mauritia van Haar. Growing up in a manufacturing town, he witnessed the harsh realities of industrialization, which later fueled his political writings. He pursued studies at the University of Berlin, where he engaged with radical philosophy and began developing his critique of capitalism.

In 1845, Engels published The Condition of the Working Class in England after conducting firsthand research in Manchester factories. Three years later, in 1848, he co-authored The Communist Manifesto with Karl Marx, a foundational text of modern communism. Engels provided financial support for Marx to write Das Kapital. After Marx’s death in 1883, Engels edited and published the second and third volumes of Das Kapital and organized Marx’s notes into the fourth volume, Theories of Surplus Value.

Engels married Lizzy Burns, an Irish working-class woman, and they lived in Manchester and later London. He maintained a close intellectual partnership with Karl Marx, supporting him financially during the writing of Das Kapital. Engels’s sibling Rudolf Engels also shared his family background. He died of throat cancer in London on August 5, 1895.

Friedrich Engels co-founded Marxist theory alongside Karl Marx. The Communist Manifesto 1848 remains one of the most influential political texts, and The Condition of the Working Class in England 1845 pioneered the study of urban poverty. His editorial work ensured the completion of Das Kapital. Engels’s ideas continue to shape sociology, economics, and political movements worldwide.