Friedrich Engels
1820-1895 · Marxism · Household name
Engels managed his family's cotton mill in Manchester and used the profits to keep Marx writing. The two argued that history runs on matter and class conflict, and Engels pushed the claim out into nature. Matter in motion, uncreated, changes through the conflicts inside it, with no God, soul or purpose anywhere. He cast communism as a science forecasting the end of classes and the withering away of the state.
Signature
The position Engels is most identified with in the Profiler:
- Opposition
- leans Sublation
- Economy
- Stateless Communism
Positions on the 10 axes the sources answer
- Natural Processes
- leans Mechanistic (20 on a 0–100 scale from Mechanistic to Purposeful)
- Society
- leans Collectivism (25 on a 0–100 scale from Collectivism to Individualism)
- Mind
- leans Brain Only (25 on a 0–100 scale from Brain Only to Beyond Brain)
- Nature of Reality
- leans Unity (25 on a 0–100 scale from Unity to Multiplicity)
- Ground of Being
- strongly leans Immanence (0 on a 0–100 scale from Immanence to Transcendence)
- Truth
- leans Objective (75 on a 0–100 scale from Subjective to Objective)
- Opposition
- leans Sublation (13 on a 0–100 scale from Sublation to Concurrence)
- War
- leans Militarism (81 on a 0–100 scale from Pacifism to Militarism)
- Ignorance
- leans Bondage (25 on a 0–100 scale from Bondage to Bliss)
- Conviction
- leans Uncertain (25 on a 0–100 scale from Uncertain to Certain)
10 of 20 axes are left blank: the sources do not answer them, or Engels refused the framing. Nothing is imputed; a blank is not a middling score.
Foundational questions
- Theology
- Atheism
What is your position on the existence and nature of God or gods? - Government
- Communal Order
What is your ideal form of government? - Highest Good
- Freedom
What is the highest good? - Good and Evil
- Genealogical / Dialectical
What is the fundamental nature of good and evil? - End of Things
- Eternal Return
What is the ultimate end of all things? - Knowledge
- Sense Experience / Pragmatic Test
What is the ultimate foundation of knowledge? - Agency
- Compatibilism
What is the nature of human agency and freedom? - Beginning of Things
- Eternal Cosmos
What is the origin of reality? - Economy
- Stateless Communism
What is the ideal organization of economic life? - Paradox
- Dialectical Sublation
What is the status of paradox? - Death
- Annihilation
What happens at death? - Human Nature
- Evolved Animal
What is human nature? - Primary Bond
- Class
What is your primary bond and loyalty?