Continuing to inherit and promote Engels’s legacy

Today, November 28, the working class and working people around the world are celebrating the 200th anniversary of the birth of Friedrich Engels – a great German revolutionary, philosopher, thinker, political theorist and educator who, together with Karl Marx, founded and developed the doctrine of communism, as well as theories on the revolutionary and scientific way to build a new socio-economic form that no longer oppresses classes.

Continuing to inherit and promote Engels’s legacy

For more than a century, due to his immense dedication, Engels has been honoured as a working-class genius leader. The great ideological legacy of Marx and Engels has always been the leading light for the revolutionary movement of the working class under the leadership of the Communist Parties, striving to achieve the lofty goal of the human race to eliminate the situation of people exploiting people, liberate the working people, build a new democratic, equal and more and more civilised society, in which everyone can live happily and have opportunities to develop.

Born on November 28, 1820, in the Kingdom of Prussia (a constituent part of the birth of Germany), since childhood, Friedrich Engels witnessed the brutal exploitation of the ruling class and the life of poverty and impoverishment of working people. That situation influenced Engels's thinking, helping him to soon form an independent personality. In him gradually formed a political consciousness, and he decided not to become a businessman but a champion of social progress. Engels' life was the journey of a thinker and pragmatist. Regardless of any circumstance or conditions he lived in, he always was attached to reality to discover and find the cause, as well as generalising the nature, of each problem, event and phenomenon, thus finding the most common laws of the development process and determining a worldview and methodological principles to solve all posed problems scientifically and effectively.

From newspaper articles to excellent works, such as The Condition of the Working Class in England, Outlines of a Critique of Political Economy, Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany, Anti-Dühring, Military Writings, The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy, Dialectics of Nature, and writings with Karl Marx, such as The Holy Family and The Communist Manifesto, as well as perfecting the manuscript of volumes II and III of Capital, Friedrich Engels became a man with intelligence and vision beyond his time. He gradually became aware of the issue of the progressive movement of human history to higher forms with a dialectic view of history and phenomena in social life. He came to materialism, participated in the development and defence of the idea of ​​uniting the world, the internal inevitability and the regularity, as well as the appearance of classes in society. He asserted that the conflict between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie was irreversible, and the struggle of the classes was hidden behind the struggle of the parties. He applied the dialectic method to the analysis of the economic relations of bourgeois society, showing the unity and struggle of the opposites, considering it as the basis of development, while pointing out that capitalist regime is the basis of all material and spiritual activities of bourgeois society.

In August 1844, his meeting with Karl Marx became an important milestone in Friedrich Engels' life and career. Sharing the same will, the two men built a noble and moving friendship, as Vladimir Lenin wrote, from the day when fate had attached Marx to Engels, their lifelong careers became their common career. The two men inherited the most progressive ideological currents of mankind until the 19th century, summarising the practice of their time to create a complete, coherent, unified, scientific and revolutionary theory. Together with Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels defended and developed materialistic philosophy, created dialectical materialism, opened a fundamental turning point in philosophy, and provided a new perspective, a sharp tool to explain, perceive and reform the world. Historical materialism is a great achievement of scientific thought as he discovered the normality of social development and the inevitability of the transition from lower socio-economic form to the other higher. Together with Marx, Engels relied on classical political economics to construct a new economic theory that brought about a real revolution in political economics. Researching and discovering the law of surplus value, they found a way to exploit capitalism, scientifically justifying the inevitable destruction of capitalism and the triumph of communism. Together with Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels analysed capitalism in order to discover its laws of movement and development, affirming that class struggle is the driving force for the development of a caste society, indicating that the only force capable of building a new society is the working class led by the Communist Party. Therefore, the ideological socialism of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels is scientific socialism.

Combined results from the ideological achievement of Friedrich Engels is with Karl Marx, he found the "key" to help humanity open the door to a new age. With the Vietnamese revolution, from the very beginning, Marxism-Leninism, including Friedrich Engels' genius ideology, was identified as the foundation of ideology, promoted by President Ho Chi Minh and the Communist Party of Vietnam, to use creatively in successfully completing the task of national liberation and unification and conduct a comprehensive renovation in the direction of socialism. In the struggle for independence and defence of the Fatherland today, Engels' ideological legacy and military theory have greatly influenced the view of building an all-people defence, the people's war policy, and the people's armed forces of the Party and State of Vietnam, helping to analyse and grasp the origin and nature of war, solve the problem of human relations with weapons, and assert the role of the people and political - spiritual factors in wartime.

Today, Friedrich Engels' thoughts on philosophy, political economy and scientific socialism remain current and have important implications for Vietnam’s renewal cause, especially in raising awareness and clarifying the inevitable development advocacy rule of the Vietnamese revolution, helping to more fully realise the relationship between the goal of the revolution and means of economic development in the choice to go up to socialism that skipping the capitalist regime, while still absorbing and inheriting the achievements achieved under the capitalist regime, especially in science and technology.

Celebrating the 200th anniversary of Friedrich Engels' birth, we affirm and remember his great merits, while emphasising the materialistic dialectic and scientific methodological principles that always require us to identify Marxism-Leninism as an open system, and the application of the principles of Marxism-Leninism must be associated with the movement of practice, while further research is needed to supplement the scientific basis and summarise practice and theoretical research, thereby clarifying more the theory of socialism and the path to socialism in our country, as well as strengthening the spiritual foundation for the entire Party and people to make efforts to achieve the goal of “a rich people, a strong country, a democratic, equitable and civilised society.”

NHAN DAN