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Kompass

Thinkers and political figures

Photographic portrait of Friedrich Engels with a trimmed beard, in a dark jacket.

Portrait: Via Wikimedia Commons (opens in a new tab) · Public domain

Friedrich Engels

Country
Prussia, later England
Era
1820–1895
Tradition
Communism

Documented industrial poverty in Manchester in detail, co-wrote the Communist Manifesto, and argued that the subordination of women had material and historical rather than natural causes.

01

Documented positions

Documented positions come from the sources listed. Similarity is this project’s inference from those positions, and is a much weaker claim.

  • Empirical documentation of working-class conditions in industrial England (1845)
  • Co-authored the Communist Manifesto with Marx
  • Argued the family and women’s subordination arose from property relations, not nature
  • Held that the state would eventually "wither away" rather than be permanently expanded
02

Where it sits on each dimension

Wealth and inequality

4

Evidence: Well documented

The state in the economy

12

Evidence: Documented

Tradition and change

86

Evidence: Well documented

Nation and the world

12

Evidence: Documented

Religion and the state

6

Evidence: Well documented

Dimensions left unscored, for want of evidence: Environment and growth, Crime and punishment, Power and its limits, Personal liberty

Sources

  • Friedrich Engels, The Condition of the Working Class in England · 1845
  • Friedrich Engels, The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State · 1884

Last verified: