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Friedrich Engels: organiser, thinker and joint author of the Communist Manifesto
JOHN FOSTER pays tribute to Friedrich Engels on the 200th anniversary of his birth
Engels (right) with Marx, statue in Berlin [Manfred Bruckels/cc]

IN CELEBRATING the 200th anniversary of the birth of Friedrich Engels it is difficult to overestimate his contribution both to the development of the international working-class movement or to Marx’s own theoretical work and its wider dissemination.  

Engels was an organiser. He was a profound critic of capitalist society. He developed a pathbreaking analysis of the origins of class societies and of gender relations.  

And he did this in a close working partnership with Marx — a partnership that ensured Marx’s own work of transcendent genius was fully preserved and made available to our movement.
 
First and foremost, I want to stress the importance of Engels’s first book The Condition of the English Working Class. 

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