The political doctrine of Karl Marx is to be found in a broad range of both published and unpublished writings. This volume, the first of two which together span his entire output, presents his early texts of 1843-7, which predate the Communist Manifesto. Excerpts from the 'Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right' and from the Paris Notebooks, 'Points on the State and Bourgeois Society' and other writings are newly translated and arranged in a sequence that illuminates the development of Marx's thought, while the introduction discusses the circumstances surrounding the composition of the text, the development of his 'materialist' theory of history and politics, the question of his contemporary relevance, and the relationship between the apparently utopian and millennialist elements in his thought and his concept of democracy. A chronology of Marx's life and career and an annotated bibliography complete a volume which will be an invaluable guide to the formation of one of the most influential doctrines in the history of political thought.