Date: Fri, 31 Jan 1997 16:39:11 -0800 (PST)
From: oldmole-AT-pseud.pseud
Subject: M-INTRO: Frederick Engels


Frederick Engels was born in Barmen, Westphalia, in 1820 and died
in London, England in 1895. He was Karl Marx's closest
collaborator for nearly 40 years, and in many cases it's
impossible to tell which of them wrote what. He was the co-author
of _The Communist Manifesto_, and wrote a very interesting first
draft in question-and-answer form which has been published as
"Principles of Communism" and is well worth reading.

Engels' family were textile manufacturers in both Germany and
Britain, and he worked in the family firm in the early 1840s
(where he got the information which led to his book _The
Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844_) and from 1850
to 1870, where he made enough money to help support Marx during
the period he was writing _Capital_ and then to retire and devote
himself fulltime to socialist activity.

Throughout their period of joint work, Marx and Engels not only
talked with each other frequently, but exchanged letters, drafts
of publications, etc. Some of the things published under the name
of one of them were written or partly written by the other. They
also worked closely together organizationally in the
International Working Men's Association (the "First
International") from 1864 to 1876, and Engels played a major role
in the founding of the Socialist International (the "Second
International") in 1889 and its development after that.

Besides his collaboration with Marx, Engels did a lot of
independent writing and thinking. His book _Revolution and
Counterrevolution in Germany_ is the best contemporary account of
the 1848 revolution in Germany, and his pamphlet "Socialism:
Utopian and Scientific" is one of the basic introductory
pamphlets for socialists.

When Marx died in 1883, only part of _Capital_ (Volume 1) had
been published. The rest was in manuscript form and some of it
just rough notes. Engels edited and published volumes two and
three and was beginning work on Volume 4 (_Theories of Surplus
Value) when he died.



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