At the center of this introductory volume is the concept of legal form, i.e., the abstract, general rule without regard to the person as an achievement of civil society, in contrast to immediate, personal rule such as through personal command. Stefan Krauth recapitulates the viable Marxist critiques of legal form, particularly Eugen Paschukanis and his depiction of freedom and equality as a material necessity of commodity-producing society. Accordingly, law is not to be understood as a fundamentally neutral tool that is perverted in the hands of the ruling class, but rather as a form in which the reproduction of the conditions of production takes place. Finally, law is questioned on two levels from a critical perspective on power: first, as an objective rule of abstract generality, which the law mechanically enforces.