Engels, Frederick, socialist, born in Barmen on Nov. 28, 1820, the son of a well-to-do manufacturer. Took up commerce, but already at an early age began propagating radical and socialist ideas in newspaper articles and speeches. After working for some time as a clerk in Bremen and serving for one year as an army volunteer in Berlin in 1842, he went for two years to Manchester, where his father was co-owner of a cotton mill.

In 1844 he worked for the Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher published by Arnold Ruge and Karl Marx in Paris. In 1844 he returned to Barmen and in 1845 addressed communist meetings organised by Moses Hess and Gustav K?ttgen in Elberfeld. Then, until 1848, he lived alternately in Brussels and Paris; in 1846 he joined, with Marx, the secret Communist League, a predecessor of the International, and represented the Paris communities at the two League congresses in London in 1847. On the League's instructions, he wrote, jointly with Marx, the Communist Manifesto addressed to the "working men of all countries", which was published shortly before the February revolution [1848] (a new edition appeared in Leipzig in 1872).

In 1848 and 1849 E. worked in Cologne for the Neue Rheinische Zeitung edited by Marx, and after its suppression he contributed, in 1850, to the Politisch-oekonomische Revue. He witnessed the uprisings in Elberfeld, the Palatinate and Baden and took part in the Baden-Palatinate campaign as aide-de-camp in Willich's volunteer corps. After the suppression of the Baden uprising E. returned as a refugee to England and re-entered his father's firm in Manchester in 1850.

He retired from business in 1869 and has lived in London since 1870. He assisted his friend Marx in providing support for the international labour movement, which arose in 1864, and in carrying on social-democratic propaganda. Engels was Secretary for Italy, Spain and Portugal on the General Council of the International. He advocates Marxian communism in opposition to both "petty bourgeois" Proudhonist and nihilistic Bakuninist anarchism. His main work is The Condition of the Working-Class in England :england-cool: , which, although one-sided, possesses undeniable scientific value. His Anti-Dühring is a polemic of considerable size (2nd ed. Zurich, 1886). E.'s other published works include Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy (Stuttgart, 1888), The Origin of the Family, Socialism: Utopian and Scientific (4th ed., Berlin, 1891). E. also published Vols 2 and 3 of Karl Marx's Capital and the 3rd and 4th editions of Vol. I, and contributed many articles to the Neue Zeit.

After Marx's death in 1883, Engels became the undisputed leader of German Social Democracy, of the Second International and of world socialism, safeguarding the essentials of Marxism, to which he himself had contributed nuances related to the future disappearance of the State, to the dialectic and the complex relationships between the economic infrastructure and the political, legal and cultural superstructures.

Engels didnt reconcile with the reformist evolution of the revolutionary movement, reissuing the Critique of the Gotha program or The Civil Wars in France and finally publishing the Critique of the (German) social-democratic program of 1891. It thus led to the revision that led to the Erfurt Program, with which he did identify. His collaborator Eduard Bernstein and other leaders led the German Social Democracy towards parliamentary reformism, drawing from Engels' legacy a legitimacy that is denied by another part of the movement, which led to the formation of the Communist parties and the Third International.

Resources for Organizing your workplace/community :sabo:

Resources for Palestine :palestine-heart:

Buy coffee and learn more about the Zapatistas in Chiapas here :EZLN:

Here are some resourses on Prison Abolition :brick-police:

Foundations of Leninism :USSR:

:lenin-shining: :unity: :kropotkin-shining:

Anarchism and Other Essays :ancom:

Remember, sort by new you :LIB:

Follow the Hexbear twitter account :comrade-birdie:

THEORY; it’s good for what ails you (all kinds of tendencies inside!) :RIchard-D-Wolff:

COMMUNITY CALENDAR - AN EXPERIMENT IN PROMOTING USER ORGANIZING EFFORTS :af:

Come listen to music with your fellow Hexbears in Cy.tube :og-hex-bear:

Queer stuff? Come talk in the Queer version of the megathread ! :sicko-queer:

Monthly Neurodiverse Megathread and Monthly ND Venting Thread :Care-Comrade:

Join the fresh and beautiful batch of new comms:

!worldbuilding@hexbear.net :european-soviet:

!labour@hexbear.net :iww:

!cars@hexbear.net :cringe:

  • SoyViking [he/him]
    ·
    3 years ago

    East German women had twice as many orgasms as west German. Gender equality, a sense of community and material safety will objectively make your sex life better.

    Capitalism is the real volcel pledge.

      • SoyViking [he/him]
        ·
        3 years ago

        The claim seems to originate from the 2006 German documentary film "Do Communists Have Better Sex?":

        https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Do_Communists_Have_Better_Sex%3F

        The documentary depicts and compares the sexual lives of people from West and East Germany during the period from the division in 1949 to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. The comparison uses statistical data collected in the months following the fall of the wall on sex practice, age of start, partner numbers and orgasm achievement, and through opinions on abortion, dating, divorce, marriage, the pill, pornography and sex education. The main theories advanced are that sex in the East was "earlier, better, [and] more often" than in the West, and that women had more pleasure in the communist state, as evidenced by the fact that East German women reported having twice as many orgasms as their West counterparts.

        • SoyViking [he/him]
          ·
          3 years ago

          In addition even though it was far from acceptable by modern standards East Germany was significantly more developed than West Germany on LGBT issues.