Friedrich Engels

21 quotes

Economist · Died Aug 5, 1895 · Germany · Male

Friedrich Engels (English /ˈɛŋɡəlz/ or /ˈɛŋəlz/; German: [ˈfʁiːdʁɪç ˈɛŋəls]; 28 November 1820 – 5 August 1895) was a German philosopher, social scientist, journalist, and businessman. He founded Marxist theory together with Karl Marx. In 1845, he published The Condition of the Working Class in England, based on personal observations and research in Manchester. In 1848, he co-authored The Communist Manifesto with Marx, though he also authored and co-authored (primarily with Marx) many other works, and later he supported Marx financially to do research and write Das Kapital. After Marx's death, Engels edited the second and third volumes. Additionally, Engels organised Marx's notes on the Theories of Surplus Value, which he later published as the "fourth volume" of Capital. He also made contributions to family economics. 2Biography 3Early years Friedrich Engels was born on 28 November 1820 in Barmen, Province of Jülich-Cleves-Berg, Prussia (now Wuppertal, Germany). Barmen was an expanding industrial metropolis, and Friedrich was the eldest son of a wealthy German cotton textile manufacturer. His father, Friedrich, Sr., was a Pietistic Protestant, and Engels was raised accordingl

All Inequality (5)poor (4)ruling class (4)Wealth (3)Communism (2)Women (2)Labor (2)workers (2)Freedom (2)Marriage (2)monarchies (1)Revolution (1)Oppresion (1)Living (1)Marxism (1)

From “The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State (Penguin Classics)”

“Capitalist production...was necessary to develop the productive forces of society to a level which will make possible an equal development worthy of human beings for all members of society. All earlier forms of society were too poor for this.”

From “The Communist Manifesto”

“Political power, properly so called, is merely the organised power of one class for oppressing another.”

Tagged: Political Power, Oppresion, ruling class, Power

“Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communistic revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win.”

Tagged: Communism, Revolution, ruling class, Proletarians

“In this sense, the theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property.”

Tagged: Communism, Abolition, Private Property, Equality of Goods

“Do you charge us with wanting to stop the exploitation of children by their parents? To this crime we plead guilty.”

Tagged: Exploitation, Child Abuse, Child Labor

“The free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.”

Tagged: Development, condition, Free

From “Collected Works ”

“If there were no Frenchwomen, life wouldn't be worth living.”

Tagged: french, Life, Living, Worth

From “Socialism”

“Thus, as far as he is a scientific man, as far as he knows anything, he is a materialist; outside his science, in spheres about which he knows nothing, he translates his ignorance into Greek and calls it agnosticism.”

Tagged: Agnosticism, Science, Marxism, Ignorance

From “The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State”

“That the mutual affection of the people concerned should be the one paramount reason for marriage, outweighing everything else, was and always had been absolutely unheard of in the practice of the ruling classes; that sort of thing only happened in romance – or among the oppressed classes, which did…”

Tagged: affection, Marriage, ruling class, poor, romance

“Naked greed has been the moving spirit of civilization from the first day of its existence to the present time; wealth, more wealth, and wealth again; wealth not of society, but of this shabby individual was its sole and determining aim.”

Tagged: Political Theory, Money, Wealth

“With the pairing family, therefore, the abduction and barter of women began—widespread symptoms, and nothing but that, of a new and much more profound change.”

Tagged: Women, Abuse, Inequality, Barter, Marriage

“What is good for the ruling class, is alleged to be good for the whole of society with which the ruling class identifies itself.”

Tagged: Oligarchs, ruling class, Class, Society

“The emancipation of woman will only be possible when woman can take part in production on a large, social scale, and domestic work no longer claims anything but an insignificant amount of her time.”

Tagged: Women, Labor, Equality, rights

From “Principles of Communism”

“Everywhere the proletariat develops in step with the bourgeoisie. In proportion, as the bourgeoisie grows in wealth, the proletariat grows in numbers.”

Tagged: Proletariat, Bourgeoisie, poor, Inequality, Wealth

“The capitalists soon had everything in their hands and nothing remained to the workers.”

Tagged: Capitalists, Labor, workers, Inequality

“There have always been poor and working classes; and the working class have mostly been poor. But there have not always been workers and poor people living under conditions as they are today.”

Tagged: poor, Working Class, workers, laborer, Conditions

From “Anti-Dühring”

“Freedom does not consist in any dreamt-of independence from natural laws, but in the knowledge of these laws, and in the possibility this gives of systematically making them work towards definite ends.”

Tagged: Freedom, Laws, Knowledge, system

From “The Part Played by Labour in the Transition from Ape to Man ”

“Labour is the source of all wealth, the political economists assert. And it really is the source -- next to nature, which supplies it with the material that it converts into wealth. But it is even infinitely more than this. It is the prime basic condition for all human existence, and this to such an…”

Tagged: Labour, Source, Wealth, Materialism, Human Existence

From “Introduction to 1891 edition of Karl Marx's, The Civil War in France”

“People think they have taken quite an extraordinarily bold step forward when they have rid themselves of belief in hereditary monarchy and swear by the democratic republic. In reality, however, the state is nothing but a machine for the oppression of one class by another, and indeed in the…”

Tagged: monarchies, Democracy, Opression, oligarchy

From “The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844”

“The way in which the vast mass of the poor are treated by modern society is truly scandalous. They are herded into great cities where they breathe a fouler air than in the countryside which they have left.”

Tagged: poor, Modern Society, Inequality, Treatment

Friedrich Engels

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