This Day in History: 5 August 1895
German author, political theorist and philosopher, Friedrich Engels died in London on 05 August 1895 after a long battle with a throat cancer. The son of a successful industrialist, he was sent to England to help manage his father's cotton factory. Upon his arrival in Manchester Engels was stunned by the high levels of poverty among the working class. He wrote an account entitled Conditions of the Working Class in England.
On his return to Germany in 1844, he met Karl Marx in Paris. They formed a friendship and decided to work together. The two relocated to Belgium after Marx was expelled from France. In 1846, Engels and Marx set up a Communist Correspondence Committee, entitled The Communist Manifesto and began to write a pamphlet together, which was published in 1884. The ideology of Communism was to have a profound influence on political activists in South Africa during the liberation struggle, as it resonated with the challenges faced by the South African working class.
Most of the works of Friedrich Engels can be found here: https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/
