Mudabicara.com_ The thoughts of a philosopher usually have links with other philosophers. Just say like Marx and Engels who were friends for life.
Even though their thoughts have a lot in common, there are still big differences between the two. This time, I want to talk more about the biography of Friedrich Engels, an English philosopher. For more details, please read the following article:
Short Biography of Friedrich Engels
Friedrich Engels is not yet 30 years old, but he already has almost everything that many people dream of. Tristram Hunt (2009) describes this young man with a high lifestyle with elegant makeup and relatively above average looks.
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He is also a connoisseur of all that is good, from “lobster salad, Chateau Margaux, Pilsener beer, to expensive women.” Engels was also “a textile tycoon and fox hunter, a member of the Manchester Royal Exchange, and President of the Schiller Institute”—two elite associations at the time.
But with all his privileges, Engels is not the typical rich jerk who hates seeing the poor. He’s the opposite.
He admits he chose to “leave the company and the mid-range dinner parties, wine and champagne” to interact with ordinary workers, visiting their beds.
Engels did this in order to “see you in your own home, watch you go about your daily life, chat with you about your conditions and problems.”
Friedrich Engels was born in Barmen, Germany on November 28, 1820. His father was a successful textile industrialist. This makes him included in the upper middle class. In an industrialized country like England, of course the owner of a textile factory is an influential person.
As the textile mill leader at the time, Engels did not want to remain silent. Poverty in the UK is considered a real inequality. This is due to his own background including the upper class.
Buku Condition of The Working Classes in England
Then he wrote and then published under the title “The Conditions of the Working Classes in England” or in the original language “Condition of the Working Classes in England”.
This writing is the background of his philosophical thinking. Engels’ analysis of reality made him a great English philosopher.
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Engels was delighted, and more than proud to do so. “Glad to thus spend happy time gaining knowledge of the realities of life—when others squander it in foaming at the exhausting talk of fashion and etiquette; proud to have the opportunity to do something fair for the oppressed.
He wrote these sympathetic sentences in the introduction to The Condition of the Working Class in England, a book written based on down-to-earth notes or turba with strict ethnographic methods during 1842-1844, and published a year later—when he was only 25 years old. . At that time, Engels was assigned by his father to work in one of the family companies.
This book depicts the lives of ordinary people in Manchester, the heart of the industrial revolution.
Engels slickly describes how in a location just a stone’s throw from a comfortable, clean, magnificent house, and smells good of rich people, snotty children are forced to work with only three potatoes for wages, beds filled with laborers who sleep lined up like anchovies, as well as people with lifelong disabilities due to work accidents lying on the side of the road.
David McLellan called the book a “classic work on the effects of early industrial capitalism and the struggle against it.”
Although not the first to write about it, but Engels was the first to explicitly not stop at calling for people who are affluent to help them.
It goes beyond that, that the workers themselves will improve their conditions by revolt. The condition of the Working Class is still widely read today.
And in some cases, Engels’ notes can still be found in many places, after this work was published almost two centuries ago.
Engels and Marx meeting
Engels and Marx were two philosophers who maintained friendly relations until the end of their lives. Their meeting started from the city of Paris.
At that time, it was Marx who was forced to leave Germany in order to go to Paris. The goal is to get a more radical thought.
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As a result, it is true that Marx incorporated a lot of new ideas there. It was in that city, Engels and Marx met.
They have many conversations that form the basis of their lifelong friendship. Engels then followed Marx, who at that time worked as a writer for a liberal and radical media newspaper. In the end, the two together wrote about the radical politics of the city.
Ten years working, his friend, Marx became editor-in-chief there. However, it did not last long, the local government dissolved the newspaper because its political thinking was too radical.
Engels and Marx eventually wrote their own works. Their famous work is Das Kapital.
Father of Communism
Engels and Marx are known as the “Father of Communism”. Their thinking that leads to Communism is the reason for this mention.
When Marx died, Engels continued his work by publishing the book they co-authored, the Manifesto of the Communist Party . The book was published in 1848.
Various Works by Friedrich Engels
Although Engels spent much of his life exchanging ideas with Marx, he did have a number of his own works.
These works discuss a lot about Communism. This is of course because Friedrich Engels has an interest in that one school. Engels’ works include the following.
- Political Manifesto
- The Origin of Family
- The Condition of The Working Class in England
- Socialism
- German ideology
- Principles of Communism
- Dialetic of Nature
- The Holy Family
Friedrich Engels died on August 5, 1895 in London, England. He ended his life at the age of 74 years. He has dedicated part of his life to writing various books.
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In the biography of Friedrich Engels above, a number of the great works of the British philosopher have been mentioned.
The immediate aim of the Communist is the same as that of all the other proletarian parties: formation of the proletariat into a class, overthrow of the bourgeois supremacy, conquest of political power by the proletariat.
The example of this figure is not much different from that of Karl Marx. Their lifelong friendship led them both to share the same ideas.