Abstract

This book is quite simply the best study of the "young Marx" (pre-1848) and his immediate predecessors I have ever read. For supporters of the ancient régime in the first half of the nineteenth century, the failure of the French Revolution meant that everything could now go back to “normal.” But for the thinkers Kouvelakis examines — Kant, Hegel, Heine, Hess, Engels, and Marx — the Revolution’s promise of emancipation was merely deferred, not defeated. What exactly did that mean? Answers differed greatly.