Friedrich Engels
For Engels, nature, history and thought all develop through contradictions, and the misery of workers under capitalism can be documented and must be ended.
Placement
Marx’s collaborator: worked out a materialist dialectics of nature and history (later called “dialectical materialism”) and described the condition of the working class in England.
Key ideas
- Dialectics of nature
- Condition of the working class
Influence
Influenced by 6
Henri de Saint-Simon
influenced by
Engels credited Saint-Simon with foreseeing that the government of persons would give way to the administration of things (Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, 1880). F. Engels, Die Entwicklung des Sozialismus von der Utopie zur Wissenschaft (French 1880, German 1882); Anti-Dühring (1878)
Evidence: AI draft
Henri de Saint-Simon › 1760–1825
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
influenced by ✓
Engels separated Hegel’s revolutionary method from his conservative system (Ludwig Feuerbach, 1886) and drew from the Logic the laws of dialectics set out in Dialectics of Nature. F. Engels, Ludwig Feuerbach (1886); Dialektik der Natur (written 1873–83, publ. 1925); Anti-Dühring (1878)
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel › 1770–1831
Ludwig Feuerbach
influenced by ✓
Engels recalled that Feuerbach’s Essence of Christianity (1841) made ‘us all’ Feuerbachians at once and restored materialism against Hegel’s system (Ludwig Feuerbach, 1886). F. Engels, Ludwig Feuerbach und der Ausgang der klassischen deutschen Philosophie (1886); L. Feuerbach, Das Wesen des Christentums (1841); SEP “Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach”
Ludwig Feuerbach › 1804–1872
Charles Darwin
influenced by
Engels likened Marx’s law of history to Darwin’s law of organic nature (graveside speech, 1883) and drew on Darwin for an essay on labour in human evolution (1876). F. Engels, speech at Marx’s grave (1883); “Anteil der Arbeit an der Menschwerdung des Affen” (1876, publ. 1896); letter to Marx (Dec. 1859)
Evidence: AI draft
Charles Darwin › 1809–1882
Johann Jakob Bachofen
influenced by
Engels drew on Bachofen’s Mother Right (1861) in The Origin of the Family (1884), calling the overthrow of mother right the ‘world-historical defeat of the female sex’. F. Engels, Der Ursprung der Familie, des Privateigenthums und des Staats (1884), preface to the 4th ed. (1891); J. J. Bachofen, Das Mutterrecht (1861)
Evidence: AI draft
Johann Jakob Bachofen › 1815–1887
Karl Marx
influenced by ✓
After Marx’s death Engels edited Capital II (1885) and III (1894) from the manuscripts and credited the materialist conception of history mainly to Marx (Ludwig Feuerbach, 1886). F. Engels, Ludwig Feuerbach (1886); K. Marx, Das Kapital II (ed. Engels, 1885), III (ed. Engels, 1894); SEP “Karl Marx”
Evidence: also in Wikidata · Wikidata
Karl Marx › 1818–1883
Influenced 4
Antonio Labriola
influenced
Labriola turned from Herbart to historical materialism around 1890 and discussed its questions with Engels in a correspondence lasting until 1895. A. Labriola, correspondence with F. Engels (1890–95); L. Kołakowski, Main Currents of Marxism II (1978)
Evidence: AI draft
Antonio Labriola › 1843–1904
Georgi Plekhanov
influenced
Plekhanov translated Engels’ Ludwig Feuerbach (1886) into Russian with his own notes (1892) and built on it and Anti-Dühring his systematic account of dialectical materialism. F. Engels, Ludwig Feuerbach und der Ausgang der klassischen deutschen Philosophie (1886), Russian tr. G. Plekhanov (1892); S. H. Baron, Plekhanov: The Father of Russian Marxism (1963)
Evidence: AI draft
Georgi Plekhanov › 1856–1918
Rosa Luxemburg
influenced
In the Junius Pamphlet (1916) Luxemburg invoked Engels for the alternative ‘transition to socialism or regression into barbarism’, a wording scholars trace rather to Kautsky (1892). R. Luxemburg, Die Krise der Sozialdemokratie (Junius-Broschüre, written 1915, publ. 1916); K. Kautsky, Das Erfurter Programm (1892); I. Angus, “The Origin of Rosa Luxemburg’s Slogan ‘Socialism or Barbarism’”, Climate & Capitalism (2014)
Evidence: also in InPhO · InPhO
Rosa Luxemburg › 1871–1919
Alexandra Kollontai
influenced
Kollontai took from Engels’ Origin of the Family (1884) the thesis that women’s subordination arose with private property (The Social Basis of the Woman Question, 1909). A. Kollontai, Social’nye osnovy ženskogo voprosa (1909); F. Engels, Der Ursprung der Familie (1884); R. Stites, The Women’s Liberation Movement in Russia (1978)
Evidence: AI draft
Alexandra Kollontai › 1872–1952
Criticism
Criticized by 2
Marianne Weber
criticised by
Marianne Weber rejected Engels’s scheme of an original communist, mother-right stage overturned by private property, seeing legitimate marriage as a contract protecting wives (Ehefrau und Mutter, 1907). Marianne Weber, Ehefrau und Mutter in der Rechtsentwicklung (1907); E. Höbenreich, “In the Red Light of Emotion”, Rivista di Diritto Romano 5 (2005)
Evidence: AI draft
Marianne Weber › 1870–1954
Simone de Beauvoir
criticised by
Beauvoir objected that Engels never explains why private property should have meant women’s subjugation, reducing an existential situation to economics (The Second Sex, 1949). S. de Beauvoir, Le Deuxième Sexe (1949), vol. I, Part I, ch. 3; F. Engels, Der Ursprung der Familie (1884); SEP “Simone de Beauvoir”
Evidence: AI draft
Simone de Beauvoir › 1908–1986
Criticizes 3
Adam Smith
criticised
Engels called Smith the ‘economic Luther’ whose liberal economics replaced open mercantilist greed with hypocrisy, leaving private property unquestioned (Outlines of a Critique of Political Economy, 1844). F. Engels, “Umrisse zu einer Kritik der Nationalökonomie”, Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher (1844)
Evidence: AI draft
Adam Smith › 1723–1790
Immanuel Kant
criticised
Engels held that practice, experiment and industry refute Kant’s unknowable thing-in-itself: once chemistry produces alizarin, the thing-in-itself becomes a thing for us (Ludwig Feuerbach, 1886). F. Engels, Ludwig Feuerbach und der Ausgang der klassischen deutschen Philosophie (1886), part II
Evidence: AI draft
Immanuel Kant › 1724–1804
Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling
criticised
Attending Schelling’s Berlin lectures, the young Engels defended Hegel against him and attacked his philosophy of revelation for subordinating reason to faith (Schelling und die Offenbarung, 1842). F. Engels, “Schelling über Hegel”, Telegraph für Deutschland (1841); Schelling und die Offenbarung (1842)
Evidence: AI draft
Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling › 1775–1854
Works
Social reportage from Manchester and other English industrial towns, based on Engels’s own observations and official reports.
A spectre is haunting Europe.
Position
Engels’ first major work was a vivid report on the misery of the industrial working class in England, an early classic of empirical social research. Together with Marx he wrote the Communist Manifesto and developed historical materialism. Already in Marx’s lifetime, in Anti-Dühring (1877–78, with a chapter by Marx) and in the unfinished Dialectics of Nature (written mainly 1873–83, published 1925), he presented dialectics as general laws of nature, history and thought, laying the ground for later “dialectical materialism”. After Marx’s death he did much to systematise and popularise their thought; in The Origin of the Family (1884) he linked the rise of private property and the state to the subordination of women. His accessible versions became the Marxism of the socialist parties of his day – and were later criticised as too schematic.
Life & context
Son of a textile manufacturer from Barmen, Engels was sent to the family firm in Manchester, where he saw industrial poverty at first hand. From 1844 he was Marx’s closest collaborator and for decades supported him financially from his work in the business. After Marx’s death he edited the second and third volumes of Capital and became the leading voice of international socialism.
Further main works
- Anti-Dühring (1878)
- The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State (1884)
- Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy (1886)
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