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 in theory; Marxist works such as the "Manifesto" or "Das Kapital" were read primarily by party theoreticians. On the other hand, small, dedicated militant parties and Marxist sects in the West took pride in knowing the theory; Hobsbawm says "This was the milieu in which 'the clearness of a comrade could be gauged invariably from the number of earmarks on his Manifesto. Following the October Revolution of 1917 that swept the Vladimir Lenin-led Bolsheviks to power in Russia, the world's first socialist state was founded explicitly along Marxist lines. The Soviet Union, which Bolshevik Russia would become a part of,