Friedrich Engels

Friedrich Engels was a German philosopher, political theorist, historian, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. He was also a businessman and Karl Marx's closest friend and collaborator, serving as a leading authority on Marxism. Engels, the son of a wealthy textile manufacturer, met Marx in 1844.

They jointly authored works including The Holy Family (1844), The German Ideology, and The Communist Manifesto (1848), and worked as political organisers and activists in the Communist League and First International. Engels also supported Marx financially for much of his life, enabling him to continue writing after he moved to London in 1849. After Marx's death in 1883, Engels compiled Volumes II and III of his Das Kapital.

Engels wrote eclectic 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 writings on materialism, idealism, and dialectics supplied Marxism with an ontological and metaphysical foundation.