A number of philosophical themes run throughout Marx’s corpus. Foremost is his focus on free social and political relations – on emancipated people governing themselves together rather than being mastered by others. There is no doubt, however, that Marx was a sharp critic of law, justice, and right (Recht) – which Kant had argued can only be realized in a state – and that Marx’s communist social ideal is nonjuridical. A second theme is that although Marx rejects the modern deontic conception of morality, he is very much aware that his own ideal of freedom is a modern conception, which is based, like modern morality, in a view of the unique value of human persons – the “self-worth of men” as “free.” A third is Marx’s communitarian emphasis on “a community of people [organized] for their highest ends”: a “democratic” society of free people, whether organized as a state or not. It is important that Marx does not ground his democratic conception as orthodox liberal moderns do in a deontic conception of fundamental equal human authority. Ultimately, Marx’s ideas must be understood as a liberal egalitarianism of the good rather than of the right.