Friedrich Engels

Friedrich Engels ( ; ; 28 November 1820 – 5 August 1895) was a German philosopher, political theorist, historian, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. He was also a businessman and Karl Marx's closest friend and collaborator.

Engels's family was wealthy and owned large cotton-textile mills in Prussia and England. He met Marx in 1844, and they jointly authored a number of works, including ''The Holy Family'' (1844), ''The German Ideology'' (written 1846), and ''The Communist Manifesto'' (1848), and worked as political organizers and activists in the Communist League and First International. Engels also helped Marx financially, allowing him to continue his writing after moving to London in 1849. After Marx's death in 1883, Engels compiled Volumes II and III of ''Das Kapital'' (1885 and 1894), helped found the Second International, and was the leading authority on Marxism.

Engels also wrote wide-ranging works of his own, including ''The Condition of the Working Class in England'' (1845), ''Anti-Dühring'' (1878), ''Dialectics of Nature'' (1878–1882), ''The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State'' (1884), and ''Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy'' (1886).

His philosophical writings on materialism, idealism, and dialectics supplied Marxism with an ontological and metaphysical foundation. Provided by Wikipedia