Holy Family, ridiculing the ruling establishment in
Germany. This began a lifelong partnership between
Marx and Engels, in which they co-authored many of
the classic texts of COMMUNISTtheory (including The
Communist Manifesto, 1848; The German Ideology,
1846; and Capital,1867, 1885, 1994). Engels sup-
ported Marx financially, as Karl was unemployed and
living in London. Engels would cut a money note in
half and mail the separate halves to Marx to avoid their
being stolen.
Engels wrote several books on economic history
and theory, the most famous being The Condition of the
Working Class in England(1845), which depicted the
wretched living and working conditions of factory
laborers in Manchester. The unfairness and cruelty of
this early industrial system led Engels to advocate a
collectivist, planned, socialist economy, owned and
operated by the workers themselves. Such was the
only way to have a humane society, in his view.
Engels developed the philosophy of DIALECTICAL
materialism, which was implicit in MARXISMand stated
that history is impelled by economic forces. Even nature
and science (e.g., Darwinism) follow this dialectical
process of clashing opposites, destruction, and progress.
Conflict and opposition, then, become the inevitable
sources of advancement in the world and society. In The
Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State
(1884) Engels provides an anthropological treatment of
human development, extolling primitive tribal commu-
nism and identifying all social evils with the emergence
of private PROPERTY. Here, he critiques “the bourgeois
family” of Western CHRISTIAN society and advocates
women’s liberation and “open” relationships. They pro-
vide the basis for LEFTISTattacks on the traditional fam-
ily and culture by assigning them to a particular
historical/economic era, rather than a perennial nature
or God-given values. With this approach, socialist the-
ory often dismisses the traditional Judeo-Christian fam-
ily and allows easy divorce and “free love.”
Scholars argue over how similar Marx’s and Engels’s
ideas were, some Marxists claiming that Engels lacked
the philosophical subtlety and sophistication of Karl
Marx. For example, Engels’s insistence of a strict de-
termination of the “superstructure” of society (law,
government, education, art, etc.) by the economic
“structure” is seen by CRITICAL-THEORY Marxists as
mechanical and false. This formality of Engels’s materi-
alism is sometimes blamed for the rigid, brutal com-
munism of the SOVIET UNION and other communist
countries.
Engels served as the literary executor of Karl Marx
after the latter’s death in 1883. He edited the last two
volumes of Das Kapitaland many shorter works of
Marx. Through the spread of socialist and communist
ideas in the 19th and 20th centuries, Marx and Engels
became the two most prominent founders of that
movement.Further Readings
Carver, T. Engels.New York: Hill and Wang, 1981.
———. Marx and Engels: The Intellectual Relationship.Bloom-
ington: Indiana University Press, 1983.
Engels, F. The Condition of the Working Class in England. Hen-
derson,W. O. and Chaloner, W. H., transls. and eds. Stan-
ford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1971.
Henderson, W. O. The Life of Friedrich Engels,2 vols. London: F.
Cass, 1976.
Lichtheim, G. Marxism.London: Routledge, 1964.
Marcus, S. Engels, Manchester and the Working Class.New York:
Random House, 1974.
McLellan, D. Engels.Sussex, Eng.: Harvester Press, 1977.Enlightenment, The
An intellectual and political movement in Europe and
the United States in the 18th century that optimisti-
cally believed that human reason and goodness could
create a peaceful, prosperous society and perfect peo-
ple. Thinkers associated with the Enlightenment are
Frenchmen Jean-Jacques ROUSSEAU, François-Marie
VOLTAIRE, and Charles de MONTESQUIEU (the philo-
sophes); Englishmen John LOCKEand Jeremy BENTHAM;
German philosopher Immanuel KANT; Scots David
HUMEand Adam SMITH; and Americans Thomas JEFFER-
SON, Benjamin FRANKLIN, and Thomas PAINE. Enlight-
enment thinkers were critical of TRADITION, the past,
religion, HIERARCHY, and CONSERVATISM. They believed
in progress—that humans and society can progress
and improve (economically, morally, politically) by
using their reason. Hence, the Enlightenment empha-
sized education as important to social and individual
progress. They saw shaping the political (along REPUB-
LICAN lines) and economic (with technology and
INDUSTRIALISM) environment as vital to progressive
improvement of humanity. Consequently, they
rejected past institutions: agrarian FEUDALISM, ARISTO-
CRATICand monarchical government, traditional CHRIS-
TIANreligion (especially CATHOLIC), and the patriarchal
family. Often, Enlightenment thinkers were atheists or
deists, rejecting all religion and spiritual matters as
“superstition” or “metaphysical.” This reflected their
faith in science, empiricism, and materialism. For94 Enlightenment, The