stylistic:style_transfer
Later years

Later in their lives, Marx and Engels came to argue that in some countries workers might be able to achieve their aims through peaceful means. In following this, Engels argued that socialists were evolutionists, although they remained committed to social revolution. Similarly, Tristram Hunt argues that Engels was sceptical of "top-down revolutions" and later in life advocated "a peaceful, democratic road to socialism ". Engels also wrote in his introduction to the 1891 edition of Marx's The Class Struggles in France that "rebellion in the old style, street fighting with barricades, which decided the issue everywhere up to 1848, was to a considerable extent obsolete", although some such as David W. Lowell empashised their cautionary and tactical meaning, arguing that "Engels questions only rebellion 'in the old style', that is, insurrection: he does not renounce revolution. The reason for Engels' caution is clear: he candidly admits that ultimate victory for any insurrection is rare, simply on military and tactical grounds".

In his introduction to the 1895 edition of Marx's The Class Struggles in France, Engels attempted to resolve the division between reformists and revolutionaries in the Marxist movement by declaring that he was in favour of short-term tactics of electoral politics that included gradualist and evolutionary socialist measures while maintaining his belief that revolutionary seizure of power by the proletariat should remain a goal. In spite of this attempt by Engels to merge gradualism and revolution, his effort only diluted the distinction of gradualism and revolution and had the effect of strengthening the position of the revisionists. Engels's statements in the French newspaper Le Figaro, in which he wrote that "revolution" and the "so-called socialist society" were not fixed concepts, but rather constantly changing social phenomena, and argued that this made "us socialists all evolutionists", increased the public perception that Engels was gravitating towards evolutionary socialism. Engels also argued that it would be "suicidal" to talk about a revolutionary seizure of power at a time when the historical circumstances favoured a parliamentary road to power that he predicted could bring " social democracy into power as early as 1898". Engels's stance of openly accepting gradualist, evolutionary and parliamentary tactics while claiming that the historical circumstances did not favour revolution caused confusion. Marxist revisionist Eduard Bernstein interpreted this as indicating that Engels was moving towards accepting parliamentary reformist and gradualist stances, but he ignored that Engels's stances were tactical as a response to the particular circumstances and that Engels was still committed to revolutionary socialism. Engels was deeply distressed when he discovered that his introduction to a new edition of The Class Struggles in France had been edited by Bernstein and orthodox Marxist Karl Kautsky in a manner which left the impression that he had become a proponent of a peaceful road to socialism. On 1 April 1895, four months before his death, Engels responded to Kautsky:

I was amazed to see today in the Vorwärts an excerpt from my 'Introduction' that had been printed without my knowledge and tricked out in such a way as to present me as a peace-loving proponent of legality. Which is all the more reason why I should like it to appear in its entirety in the Neue Zeit in order that this disgraceful impression may be erased. I shall leave Liebknecht in no doubt as to what I think about it and the same applies to those who, irrespective of who they may be, gave him this opportunity of perverting my views and, what's more, without so much as a word to me about it.

After Marx's death, Engels devoted much of his remaining years to editing Marx's unfinished volumes of Das Kapital, but also contributed significantly in other areas. Engels made an argument using anthropological evidence of the time to show that family structures changed over history, and that the concept of monogamous marriage came from the necessity within class society for men to control women to ensure their own children would inherit their property. He argued a future communist society would allow people to make decisions about their relationships free of economic constraints. Some of the best examples of Engels's thoughts on these issues are in his work The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State. On 5 August 1895, Engels died of throat cancer in London, aged 74. Following cremation at Woking Crematorium, his ashes were scattered off Beachy Head, near Eastbourne, as he had requested. He left a considerable estate to Eduard Bernstein and Louise Freyberger (wife of Ludwig Freyberger), valued for probate at £25,265 0s. 11d, equivalent to £ 3,686,193 in 2023.