Religion and Right in Marx

Abstract

Karl Marx—a German of Jewish parentage, heir to generations of rabbis both on his mother’s and his father’s side, some of them famous. He had studied law, his father, who had converted to Protestantism in the Roman Catholic town of Trier, was practising law. So Marx knew what he was speaking about when he spoke of religion and law, like his friend Friedrich Engels who had grown up among Pietists. The complete edition of their works (Gesamtausgabe) which is to comprise more than one hundred double volumes, contains thousands of passages on religion and law, some of them extensive.¹