Includes bibliographical references (p. 183-184) and index.

Preliminary Material -- Introduction -- Marx’s Analysis of the Commodity and the Phenomenology of Spirit -- The Realm of Culture and the Historical Process in which the Proletarian Becomes Self-Aware -- Marx’s Analysis of the Commodity and Hegel’s Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts -- Hegel’s Determination of Value at the Level of Abstract Right in the Light of Marx’s Criticism -- The System of Needs in the Light of Marx’s Criticism -- Wage Labor and the Corporation: Obstacles for the Free Market? -- Capital as Community of Value -- Modern Society and the Ongoing Revision of the Good Life -- Mediating Institutions between Market and State -- The Identity of the Sustainable State and the Adequate Determination of Value -- Literature -- Index.

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Marx’s analysis of the commodity results in his conception of Capital as substance in the form of alienation. While Hegel claims that substance can be understood as the realization of freedom, Marx shows this freedom to be alienated labor: abstract labor, which Marx identifies as the capitalist conception of value. The book clarifies why Marx’s so-called materialist criticism of Hegel can be conceived of as an immanent criticism of Hegel: Marx’s criticism explicates that the realization of freedom in the Philosophy of Right contradicts Hegel’s basic point of departure. The adequate realization of freedom not only leads to an alternative (non-alienated) conception of value, but also explains why this conception of value is fully compatible with the free market.