Moses Hess, the socialist journalist and organizer and intellectual precursor of Zionism, often called the father of German socialism, was born in Bonn of Jewish parents. A left-Hegelian, he was a mentor and coworker of Friedrich Engels, Karl Marx, and Ferdinand Lassalle. He led radical workers' groups in Paris and Belgium, edited the famous Rheinische Zeitung, and was the leader of the "true," or "philosophical," German socialists of the 1840s. Later he became Lassalle's chief organizer in the Rhineland and a foreign correspondent for European and American newspapers. His published books and countless essays include works on the philosophy of history and on socialism, a famous call for a Jewish state, and a comprehensive theory of the laws of science, society, and socialism.

Hess used the principles of Benedict de Spinoza, G. W. F. Hegel, and Johann Gottlieb Fichte to demonstrate the inevitability and...