This work is a somewhat neglected, albeit pivotal, text by the young Marx. It was written when he was 25 years old in response to the conditions set by Bruno Bauer for the emancipation of the Jews.

However, triggered by this issue, Marx already critically addresses, in terms of historical and dialectical materialism, the dominant class and thought, specifically questioning the ability of political revolution and bourgeois democracy to lead to emancipation. He sets as prerequisites for the latter the social revolution and the overcoming of the contradictions of bourgeois society of private individuals and more specifically of private property and commodity production that dominate it, envisioning a radical society of universal emancipation.

This is a text that, viewed from the essentially racist perspective of the partiality-particularity-superiority of the Jewish race, stirred a storm of reactions as a supposed anti-Semitic libel, while in reality it denounced and posited their overcoming as a prerequisite for emancipation, the worldly values of Jewish merchants, bankers, and usurers, and more specifically their worldly god, money.

One hundred sixty-six years after its writing, this book remains multifacetedly relevant, both as an integral part of the most timely Marxist worldview ever and for its critical spirit and the truths it contains.

This edition, beyond the theoretically reprinted historical edition of 1932, includes an extensive introductory study by George Rousis, through which an effort is made to thoroughly highlight the value of this work itself as well as its contribution to the evolution of Marxist thought, and on the other hand to refute its alleged anti-Semitism.

[Excerpt from the text on the back cover of the edition]