Friedrich Engels

Friedrich Engels described himself as “second fiddle” to his friend and comrade Karl Marx. Marx is rightly counted among the most influential thinkers the world has ever seen. But what role did Engels play in the founding of Marxism?

Marx himself said he would not have been able to produce Capital without the support of Engels.

There is a common assertion that Marxism as a set of ideas does not or cannot account for oppression. Some argue, for example, that Marxism is a form of economic determinism that reduces all the complexity of human interaction down to production; because we see workers' revolution as the solution, we see all other struggles - against racism or gender oppression - as subordinate to the struggle in the workplace.

This comes from the right - they want to attack revolutionary ideas, full stop.

They reserve particular opprobrium for the very small number of socialists from rich backgrounds who campaign and argue against their own class interests, using their wealth to help them do so.

The appearance of this volume should be a cause for celebration for all English-speaking socialists. It represents the completion of a Herculean 30-year effort to translate and publish virtually everything that Marx and Engels ever wrote. Few people are going to have the time and energy to read through all or even most of the 50 volumes (those of us who got them one by one as they came out are probably privileged in this respect).

The English translation of the Marx-Engels collected works is nearly complete, with the letters Engels wrote in the last years of his life, and there are still wonderful treats to be found in them.