Friedrich Engels understood even earlier than Karl Marx the centrality of the critique of political economy. In fact, at the time the two radicals were first getting to know one another, Engels had published many more articles on the topic than his friend.

Born two hundred years ago, on November 28, 1820, in Barmen, Germany (today a suburb of Wuppertal), Friedrich Engels was a promising young man whose father, a textile industrialist, had denied him a chance to study at university and instead guided him into his private firm. Engels, an atheist, was self-taught and had a voracious appetite for knowledge. He signed his pieces with a pseudonym to avoid conflict with his conservative, strongly religious family.

The two years he spent in England — where he was sent at the age of twenty-two to work in Manchester, at the offices of the Ermen & Engels cotton mill — were decisive for the maturation of his political convictions. It was there that he personally observed the effects of capitalist exploitation of the proletariat, private property, and competition between individuals. He made contact with the Chartist movement and fell in love with an Irish working woman, Mary Burns, who played a key role in his development.