This work is a rather neglected, yet pivotal, text by the young Marx. It was written when he was 25 years old as a response to the conditions set by Bruno Bauer for the emancipation of Jews. However, in relation to this issue, Marx already critically addresses, in terms of historical and dialectical materialism, the dominant class and thought, questioning more specifically the ability of political revolution and bourgeois democracy to lead to emancipation. He sets as prerequisites for the latter social revolution and the overcoming of the contradictions of bourgeois society, particularly private property and commodity production that dominate it, envisioning already a stateless society of universal emancipation.

It is a text that, seen from the essentially racist perspective of the partiality-distinctiveness-superiority of the Jewish race, stirred up a storm of reactions as if it were an anti-Semitic libel, while in reality it denounced and posed their transcendence as a prerequisite for emancipation, the worldly values of Jewish merchants, bankers, and usurers, and more specifically their worldly god, money.

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

This edition, in addition to the esteemed reprint of the historical 1932 edition, includes an extensive introductory study by George Roussis, through which an attempt is made, on the one hand, to thoroughly highlight the value of this work itself and its contribution to the evolution of Marxist thought, and on the other hand, to refute the alleged anti-Semitism.