The Young Karl Marx is an innovative and important study of Marx's early writings. These writings provide the fascinating spectacle of a powerful and imaginative intellect wrestling with complex and significant issues, but they also present formidable interpretative obstacles to modern readers. David Leopold shows how an understanding of their intellectual and cultural context can illuminate the political dimension of these works. An erudite yet accessible discussion of Marx's influences and targets frames the author's critical engagement with Marx's account of the emergence, character, and (future) replacement of the modern state. This combination of historical and analytical approaches results in a sympathetic, but not uncritical, exploration of such fundamental themes as alienation, citizenship, community, anti-semitism, and utopianism. The Young Karl Marx is a scholarly and original work which provides a radical and persuasive reinterpretation of Marx's complex and often misunderstood views of German philosophy, modern politics, and human flourishing.

'This is by far the best book on the young Marx that I have read since the pioneering studies of the 1960s and 1970s. In scholarly terms, it is incomparably better. I can only hope that the book will have the success it deserves not least because it has upgraded the level of scholarship and intellectual nuance that future discussions of Marx will require, in particular the need to get to grips in detail with the political context through which Marx's early writings emerged.'

Terrell Carver - University of Bristol

'The book is refreshingly free of a number of misplaced redemptive compulsions, especially on the heels of insistent gestures to the early Marx in the work of many Hegelian Marxists …'

Source: Journal of Politics

'This book provides useful insights into the evolution of Marx's ideas and I would recommend it to those with some previous knowledge of this subject.'

Source: Chartist