Biography Friedrich Engels

The Russian -speaking department Friedrich Engels - August 5th of the new style on July 24, died in London Friedrich Engels. After his friend Carl Marx, who died in Engels, was the most remarkable scientist and teacher of the modern proletariat in the entire civilized world. Since fate has clashed Karl Marx with Friedrich Engels, the life of both friends has become a common thing.

Therefore, in order to understand what Friedrich Engels did for the proletariat, it is necessary to clearly learn the significance of the teachings and activities of Marx in the development of a modern labor movement. Marx and Engels were the first to show that the working class with its requirements is a necessary product of the modern economic order, which, together with the bourgeoisie, inevitably creates and organizes the proletariat; They showed that not benevolent attempts by individual noble personalities, but the class struggle of an organized proletariat will save humanity from its depressing disasters.

Marx and Engels in their scientific works were the former explained that socialism is not a fiction of dreamers, but the ultimate goal and necessary result of the development of productive forces in modern society. The whole written story has still been the history of the class struggle, the change of dominance and victories of some social classes over others. And this will continue until the foundations of class struggle and class domination - private property and random public production.

The interests of the proletariat require the destruction of these foundations, and therefore a conscious class struggle of organized workers should be directed against them. And every class struggle is a political struggle. These views of Marx and Engels are now learned to all the proletariat that fights for their liberation, but when the two friends in the 10th years took part in the socialist literature and social movements of their time, such views were perfect news.

Then there were many talented and mediocre, honest and dishonest people who, fond of the struggle for political freedom, the struggle against the autocracy of the kings, the police and priests, did not see the opposite of the interests of the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. These people did not allow thoughts that the workers act as an independent social force. On the other hand, there were many dreamers, sometimes brilliant, thinking that it was only necessary to convince the rulers and the prevailing classes of the injustice of modern public order and then it is easy to put peace and universal well -being on Earth.

They dreamed of socialism without a struggle. Finally, almost all the then socialists and in general friends of the working class saw only an ulcer in the proletariat, they watched with horror how this ulcer was growing with an increase in industry. Therefore, they all thought about how to stop the development of industry and the proletariat, to stop the "Wheel of History". In contrast to the general fear of the development of the proletariat, Marx and Engels assigned all their hopes on the continuous growth of the proletariat.

The more proletarians, the greater their strength, as a revolutionary class, the closer and more possible socialism. In a few words, the merits of Marx and Engels before the working class can be expressed as follows: they taught the working class self -knowledge and self -awareness and science was put in place of dreams. That is why the name and life of Engels should be familiar to every worker, which is why in our collection, the purpose of which, like all of our publications, wake up class self -consciousness in Russian workers, we must give an outline of the life and activities of Frederick Engels, one of the two great teachers of the modern proletariat.

Engels was born in the year in the city of Barten, in the Rhine province of the Prussian kingdom. His father was a manufacturer. In the year, Engels was forced to enter the clerks of one Bremen trading house without ending the gymnasium. Classes did not prevent Engels from working on his scientific and political education. He also hated the autocracy and arbitrariness of officials with a gymnasium student.

Classes of philosophy led him further. At that time in German philosophy, Hegel's teachings dominated, and Engels became his follower. Although Hegel himself was a fan of the autocratic Prussian state, in whose service he was as a professor at the University of Berlin, Hegel's teachings were revolutionary. Hegel's faith in the human mind and its rights and the main position of Hegelian philosophy, that the world is in a constant process of change and development, led those students of the Berlin philosopher who did not want to put up with reality, to the thought, that the struggle against reality, the fight against the existing untruth and reigning evil is rooted in the world law of eternal development.

If everything develops, if some institutions are replaced by others, why will the autocracy of the Prussian king or the Russian king, enrich the insignificant minority at the expense of the vast majority, the dominance of the bourgeoisie over the people? Hegel's philosophy spoke of the development of spirit and ideas, it was idealistic.From the development of the spirit, it deduced the development of nature, man and human, social relations.

Marx and Engels, holding Hegel's thought about the eternal process of development, discarded the biased idealistic view; Turning to life, they saw that not the development of the spirit explains the development of nature, but on the contrary - the spirit should be explained from nature, matter, as opposed to the Hegel and other Hegelians, Marx and Engels were materialists.

Looking materialistic at the world and humanity, they saw that as the basis of all the phenomena of nature, the causes of material, so the development of human society is determined by the development of material, productive forces. The relations in which people become each other in the production of objects necessary to satisfy human needs depend on the development of productive forces.

And in these relations - an explanation of all the phenomena of social life, human aspirations, ideas and laws. The development of productive forces creates social relations based on private property, but now we see how the same development of productive forces takes property from the majority and concentrates it in the hands of an insignificant minority. It destroys property, the basis of modern public order, it itself strives for the same goal that the socialists set for themselves.

Socialists only need to understand what social power, in their position in modern society, is interested in the realization of socialism, and to inform this force of the consciousness of its interests and a historical task. Such a force is the proletariat. Engels met him in England, in the center of the English industry, Manchester, where he moved in a year, entering the service of a trading house, one of the shareholders of which was his father.

Here, Engels not only sat in the factory office - he walked through the dirty quarters, where the workers huddled, he himself saw their poverty and disasters with his own eyes. But he was not pleased with personal observations, he read everything that was found before him about the position of the English working class, he carefully studied all the official documents available to him.

The fruit of these studies and observations was the book published in the year: "The position of the working class in England." We have already mentioned above what the main merit of Engels as the author of the “position of the working class in England”. And before Engels, many depicted the suffering of the proletariat and pointed out the need to help him.

Engels first said that the proletariat is not only a suffering class; That exactly the shameful economic situation in which the proletariat is located irresistibly pushes him forward and makes him fight for his final liberation. And the struggling proletariat will help itself. The political movement of the working class will inevitably lead the workers to the consciousness that they have no way out of socialism.

On the other hand, socialism will be only then by force when it becomes the goal of the political struggle of the working class. These are the main thoughts of Engels’s book on the situation of the working class in England, thoughts now learned by all the thinking and fighting proletariat, but then completely new. These thoughts were set forth in a book, excitingly written, full of the most reliable and amazing pictures of the disasters of the English proletariat.

This book was a terrible accusation of capitalism and bourgeoisie. The impression made by her was very great. Engels began to refer everywhere, as the best picture of the situation of the modern proletariat. Indeed, not a single bright and truthful image of the disasters of the working class appeared before the year or later. The socialist Engels became only in England.

In Manchester, he entered into contact with the figures of the then English labor movement and began to write in English socialist publications. In the year, returning to Germany, he met on the way in Paris with Marx, with whom he had already had a correspondence. Marx in Paris, under the influence of French socialists and French life, also became a socialist.

Here, friends together wrote the book: "The Holy Family, or Criticism of Critic Criticism." In this book, published a year before the “position of the working class in England” and written for the most part, Marx, the foundations of that revolutionary materialist socialism, whose main thoughts we stated above are laid down. These gentlemen preached criticism, which stands above any reality, above parties and politics, denies any practical activity and only “critically” contemplates the world around him and the events taking place in it.

The gentlemen of the Bauer were judged by the proletariat as an uncritical mass. Marx and Engels resolutely rebelled against this absurd and harmful direction. In the name of the actual human person - a worker trampled by the dominant classes and the state, they require not contemplation, but the struggle for the best structure of society. The force capable of conducting such a struggle and interested in it, they see, of course, in the proletariat.Even before the "Holy Family", Engels printed in the "German-French magazine" Marx and Ruga "Critical Essays on Political Economy", in which, from the point of view of socialism, he considered the main phenomena of the modern economic order, as the necessary consequences of the dominance of private property.

Communication with Engels undoubtedly contributed to the fact that Marx decided to engage in political economy, the science in which his works made a whole revolution. Engels spent time in Brussels and Paris, combining scientific classes with practical activities among German workers of Brussels and Paris. Here, Engels and Marx had a relationship with the secret German "Union of Communists", which instructed them to state the main principles of socialism they developed.

So the famous “Manifesto of the Communist Party” of Marx and Engels appeared in the year. This small book costs whole volumes: its whole organized and struggling proletariat of the civilized world lives and still lives in its spirit. The revolution of G. Both friends were the soul of all revolutionary democratic aspirations in Rhine Prussia. Until the last opportunity, they defended the interests of the people and freedom from reactionary forces.

The latter, as you know, have been overcome. Marx also settled there. Engels soon again became a clerk, and then a shareholder of that trading house in Manchester, in which he served in the X years. He lived in Manchester up to a year, and Marx in London, which did not prevent them from being in the most living spiritual communication: they corresponded almost daily. In this correspondence, friends exchanged their views and knowledge and continued to communicate with scientific socialism.

In the city of Engels, he moved to London and to the city of her fruit - from Marx - "Capital", the greatest political and economic work of our century, from Engels - a number of large and small works. Marx worked on analysis of complex phenomena of the capitalist economy. Engels in very easily written, often polemic works covered the most general scientific issues and different phenomena of the past and present - in the spirit of a materialistic understanding of the history and economic theory of Marx.

From these works of Engels, we will call: the polemic essay against Dühring here the greatest questions from the field of philosophy, natural science and social sciences [2], “the origin of the family, property and the state” was translated into Russian, published in S. Zasulich, Geneva, Marx died, not having time to finally process his huge work on the capital.

In black, however, he was already ready, and now, after the death of a friend, Engels set for hard work of processing and publication of the II and III volume of “Capital”. III Volume IV Tom, he did not manage to process. There were a lot of work on these two volumes. The Austrian Social Democrat Adler correctly noted that Engels built a magnificent monument to his brilliant friend with the edition of the II and III volumes of Capital, on which he unwittingly indelible features cut his own name.

Indeed, these two volumes of "capital" are the work of two: Marx and Engels.