Friedrich Engels

Gareth Stedman Jones

pp. 159-164

in: John Eatwell, Murray Milgate, Peter Newman (eds), Marxian economics, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 1990

Abstract

Born in Barmen, the eldest son of a textile manufacturer in Westphalia, Engels (1820–1895) was trained for a merchant's profession. From school onwards however, he developed radical literary ambitions which eventually brought him into contact with the Young Hegelian circle in Berlin in 1841. In 1842, Engels left for England to work in his father's Manchester firm. Already converted by Moses Hess to a belief in "communism" and the imminence of an English social revolution, he used his two-year stay to study the conditions which would bring it about. From this visit, came two works which were to make an important contribution to the formation of Marxian socialism: "Outlines of a Critique of Political Economy" (generally called the "Umrisse") published in 1844 and The Condition of the Working Class in England, published in Leipzig in 1845.

Cited authors

Hegel Georg Wilhelm Friedrich

Marx Karl

Engels Friedrich

Engel Friedrich

Hess Moses