We remember the legendary Friedrich Engels on the 130th anniversary of his passing (5 August 1895). Engel’s life works gave us the tools to understand and challenge the exploitation of the capitalist class. The world still grapples with economic crises and class struggle written over 150 years ago. His words continue to shed a light on the world through a materialist lens, wherever workers organize, gender oppression runs rife, or capitalism runs roughshod over nature.
The partnership between Marx and Engels began in 1844 in a cafe in Paris. Over four decades, their relationship revolved from initial philosophical alignment to a profound working bond that survived political exile, crushing poverty, and the relentless pressures of revolutionary work. This collaboration stands as one of history’s most important and transformative collaborations. While Marx often overshadows Engels in socialist theory by providing the theoretical foundation, Engels served as both the popularizer and the practical strategist, grounding these theories in reality. Engels’ sharp critiques of capitalism and visionary ideas continue to influence movements fighting inequality today.
Engels played a crucial role in the development of both what we would now call dialectical materialism & historical materialism. Quite simply, without him, Marxism in the way it has been seen throughout the 20th and 21st centuries would not exist. Engels both finished and edited Das Kapital after Marx’s death. Engels’ work remains vital for analyzing capitalism and fighting for a socialist future. His dedication to workers’ liberation continues to inspire movements worldwide. Lenin – heavily inspired by works such as ‘Anti Dühring’ and the ‘Dialectics of Nature’ was able to further both Marx’s and Engels’ writing leading to the ability to carry out the Bolshevik revolution.
Engels’ radicalization did not emerge from theory, but from the realities of industrial England. At 22 he was sent to Manchester to work at his father’s textile firm. There he saw first-hand what he would later write about in The Condition of the Working Class in England, a work that still resonates today in analyses of conditions of ‘gig workers.’ In this workplace he witnessed workers some as young as six working 16-hour days. Engels noted missing fingers from unguarded machinery, workers coughing themselves to death by 40 from cotton dust, and families crammed into small rooms with sewerage seeping through the floors.
Witnessing the Irish Famine further cemented his understanding of capitalism’s brutal paradoxes of how it could produce starvation amidst abundance. Even his military service later informed his strategic thinking about revolutionary organizing.
Engels’ 1884 work The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State revolutionized how we understand and fight against gender oppression by tracing its roots to the rise of class society. He analyzed how capitalism transforms marriage into an economic contract and relegated women’s unpaid domestic labor to the shadows of “a natural” duty.
As workers today battle union-busting algorithms, climate injustice, and the compounding crises of capitalism, Engels’ method remains indispensable. His greatest lesson endures – that history is made through collective class struggle.
While these conflicts have changed in their nature over time, the necessity of his insights has not. Early 20th-century strikers relied on Engels’ texts, which exposed the brutality of industrial capitalism and helped win child labor laws and the eight-hour workday.
Today, unions still draw from foundational works like The Condition of the Working Class in England, while
his analysis of exploitation echoes in the strikes of gig workers and beyond. Engels didn’t just describe exploitation; he gave workers the tools to fight it. Engels also cast an eye over the history of socialism in the short, but deep work Socialism Utopian and Scientific, well worth reading since the utopians are still very much with us.
On this anniversary, we do not merely remember Engels. We continue the unfinished revolution he helped to
define.
By Zdzislaw Z, retrieved from The Guardian – Guardian2158_18-08-2025.pdf
