Democracy Against the State: Marx and the Machiavellian Movement

In the "Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right,” the young Marx elliptically alludes to a "true democracy" whose advent would go hand in hand with the disappearance of the state. Miguel Abensour’s rigorous interpretation of this seminal text reveals an “unknown Marx” who undermines the identification of democracy with the state and defends a historically occluded form of politics.

True democracy does not entail the political and economic power of the state, but it does not dream of a post...