Friedrich Engels Friedrich Engels Friedrich Engels (; ; sometimes anglicised Frederick Engels; 28 November 1820 – 5 August 1895) was a German philosopher, communist, social scientist, journalist and businessman. His father was an owner of a large textile factory in Salford, England. Engels founded Marxist theory together with Karl Marx and in 1845 published "The Condition of the Working Class in England", based on personal observations and research in Manchester. In 1848, Engels co-authored "The Communist Manifesto" with Marx and also authored and co-authored (primarily with Marx) many other works. Later, Engels supported Marx financially to do research and write "Das Kapital".
The Communist Manifesto of the spectre of communism with a manifesto of the party itself". The first section of the "Manifesto", "Bourgeois and Proletarians", elucidates the materialist conception of history, that "the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles". Societies have always taken the form of an oppressed majority exploited under the yoke of an oppressive minority. In capitalism, the industrial working class, or "proletariat", engage in class struggle against the owners of the means of production, the "bourgeoisie". As before, this struggle will end in a revolution that restructures society, or the "common ruin of the contending