Friedrich Engels owned multiple factories. Did he manage them based on communist principles?

by byzantine_meme
TonyGaze

The simple answer to this is "No, he did not". Now, this is not because Engels was a hypocrite,but rather because of the following two reasons:

a) Friedrich Engels never actually owned any factories.

There were plenty of factories within the Engels estate, both in Germany and Britain, but because of Friedrichs radical views, his father decided against Friedrich ever getting ownership of any of the factories. The closest Friedrich got, was when he in 1864 made partner in the enterprise.

b) Throughout all of Marx' and Engels' writings, they never wrote anything about how to manage industries, or how the Socialist mode of production would function. After Marx' death, Engels and Kautsky attempted to do so, but never finished any coherent works on the issue. To this day, Orthodox and Classical Marxism has always been more of a critique of the Capitalist mode of production, than a prescriptive ideology about how society should function

Sources:

Green, John; Engels: A Revolutionary Life; 2008

Hunt, Tristram; The Frock-Coated Communist: The Revolutionary Life of Friedrich Engels; 2009

Kautsky, Karl; Friedrich Engels: His Life, His Work and His Writings; 1899