The early works of Karl Marx—especially the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right, On the Jewish Question, and Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts—have played a pivotal role in the debates concerning the character and nature of Marx's political theory, though, of course, not without controversy. Of particular note, the resurrection and publication of the notebook fragments, Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, were heralded by certain participants within the Western Marxist tradition as a whole new way of understanding Marx's political theory, in which a sclerotic “scientific” Marx could finally be put aside for a figure more Hegelian and humanist in its concerns. Whatever one's perspective on the importance of this work for defining the overall position of Marx, these early works have consistently raised important dilemmas and conundrums for Marx studies: In what way are these works linked to his more mature writings? Are these works representative of a unique position on his part, or are they just brilliant echoes of early predecessors like Bruno Bauer, Ludwig Feuerbach, and, of course, Hegel? More specifically, is there a distinct political theory that lies within these opaque, dense, and oftentimes fragmentary writings, one that may have some relevance for our current understandings of politics?

Thankfully, in this thoughtful and well-argued book, David Leopold does not deal with all of these issues. Although he mentions these debates, his focus is actually more straightforward, and, for that reason, it provides an important foundation upon which scholars and students of Marx's political theory can begin to tackle the larger and more contentious metatheoretical issues themselves. While the early works of Marx have always provided an exciting entry point for interrogating the nature of his contributions to political theory, what has been less clear is the way in which they provide any consistent analysis of the nature of the state and its relationship to the flowering of human potentiality. Leopold sets his sights on actually providing a clarification and explication of these “suggestive,” yet “opaque” (p. 1) texts, with the intent of offering a clear view of Marx's “account of the emergence, the character, and the (future) replacement of the modern state” (p. 11). What is important about these early works, he argues, is that they exhibit a concern with problems of the modern state, informed by a suggestive philosophical anthropology, that was eclipsed once Marx began to more rigorously develop his materialist conception of history.

To perform this exegesis of Marx's political theory, Leopold devotes separate chapters to “German Philosophy,” “Modern Politics,” and “Human Flourishing,” each of which deals primarily with a particular, renowned text from Marx's early works. As may be expected in a book that appears in this eminent series devoted to “Ideas in Context” (coedited by Quentin Skinner), the main interpretative strategy is to clarify Marx's concepts via attentiveness to the intellectual and cultural context within which they developed. This hermeneutic orientation has clear advantages for the task Leopold sets himself (explication and clarification), and it produces extensive and helpful interpretations of Marx's well-known intellectual forebears and contemporaries (e.g., Hegel, Heine, Bauer, Feuerbach), not to mention a deeper understanding of relevant historical debates concerning the nature of German anti-Semitism and arguments about the political emancipation of the Jews in Europe.

In the chapter on German philosophy, Leopold primarily engages Marx's Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right, a text rarely read by even the most devoted Marx scholars, and one that is notoriously difficult given its fragmentary and exegetical form. (This is a completely separate text from the well-known companion piece, “Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right,” which contains Marx's famous comments on religion and the relation of philosophy to political practice.) For Leopold, this text is important because it presents both Marx's critique of Hegel's metaphysics (which would be developed as well in the last section of the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts) and also Marx's clear support for Hegel's empirical claims concerning the emergence and character of the modern state: that modern social life is built upon the antagonistic separation of the state and civil society; that civil society is imbued with an atomistic and individualist ethos, and is thereby not a rich place for developing the necessary communal being of humans; and that under these conditions, the modern state is increasingly “abstract,” that is, remote from the influence and ordinary concerns of citizens.

In the following chapter, entitled “Modern Politics,” Leopold carefully discusses Marx's critical engagement with Bauer's ideas concerning political emancipation in On the Jewish Question. As he rightly notes, this work has been particularly difficult for students of Marx because its full understanding relies upon a fairly deep knowledge of Bauer's work and then-current debates concerning Jews in political and civic life. After carefully reconstructing Bauer's position, Leopold finds that Marx's critique of Bauer provides an interesting avenue for expressing a growing sense of the inadequacy of all forms of political emancipation (be it related to civil rights or human rights): Bauer's misplaced antagonism toward Jewish emancipation within a “Christian state” shows the limitations of all forms of political emancipation, which leaves civil society as a sphere of self-interest and antagonism.

At this point, Leopold argues, it is now possible to more clearly understand the contours of Marx's conception of “human emancipation” (versus “political emancipation”), the form of political community he believed would allow human species-being to flourish. While most interpretations claim that Marx envisioned the dissolution of politics in his ideal society (a position implied by the very critique of the modern state just discussed), Leopold correctly points out that this is not necessarily the case. Focusing primarily on the famous Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, though drawing upon other early writings as well, Leopold shows that Marx assumed the importance of an underlying form of participatory communal life, a modernized version of Aristotle's notion of political life.

On the whole, Leopold's important contribution to Marx studies lies in his unerring focus on this political dimension of the early works, tracing the emergence of a provocative, yet embryonic, theory of the modern state and politics. At the same time, his way of developing this interpretation sometimes works against his overarching goals. Let me raise two issues in this respect.

First, as noted previously, Leopold engages in lengthy discussions of the intellectual and cultural context behind and within Marx's writings, offering a depth of meaning that would otherwise be hidden by a straight textual reading. Yet Leopold's context is a particular type of context, namely, one oftentimes defined strictly in intellectual and cultural terms. What is generally missing—strangely, given the ostensible focus on Marx's political dimension—is the political context in which Marx was articulating his theory. As is well established by Marx scholars like Alan Gilbert (Marx's Politics: Communists and Citizens, 1981) and August Nimtz (Marx and Engels: Their Contribution to the Democratic Breakthrough, 2000), even the early Marx was intimately involved in engaging the political world (not just interpreting it), and an attentiveness to aspects of that engagement allows one to understand the particular character and nature of Marx's arguments in the writings on which Leopold spends so much time.

Secondly, if one could argue that there might not be enough political context in Leopold's discussions, one might also argue that there is too much context in his overall approach. As critics have noted, practitioners of the Cambridge School sometimes place so much emphasis on the linguistic context of texts that they lose sight of their broader theoretical and normative importance. While Leopold does not lose sight of the big picture, at times the very density of his contextual analysis of Marx leaves the reader wanting more of the very texts themselves, and also further reflection on their implications for understanding the modern state and the future of modern politics.