ABSTRACT
The first work which I undertook to dispel the doubts assailing me was a critical re-examination of the Hegelian philosophy of right. . .. My enquiry led me to the conclusion that neither legal relations nor political forms could be comprehended whether by themselves or on the basis of a so-called general development of the human mind, but that on the contrary they originate in the material conditions of life, the totality of which Hegel, following the example of English and French thinkers of the eighteenth century, embraces within the term 'civil society'; that the anatomy of this civil society, however, has to be sought in political economy. (CCPE,19-20).
