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The astonishingly rich body of works produced in 1833-4, when Marx was hardly twenty-five, formed the basis for his subsequent development. Commentators had long assumed that Marx's own solutions to the underlying philosophical problems of Marxism could be found in the late works of Engels; it was only when the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts were published in 1932 that they discovered a radically different - and far more interesting - young Marx. Equally challenging are his controversial essay On the Jewish Question and the studies that brilliantly criticize and transform Hegel's political ideas. It was here that Marx first made clear his views on alienation, the state, representative government, democracy and human nature, here that Marx first laid the foundations of 'historical materialism'. The early Marx may not yet be the author of Capital and The Communist Manifesto, yet the sheer intellectual power and insight of these writings make them as stimulating now as the day they were written.
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