The Introduction discusses why, to draw out a genuinely critical social theory from Hegel’s thought, we must turn away from his official social and political philosophy in the Philosophy of Right, and instead use the logic of essence in the Science of Logic. The logic of essence, I suggest, does not present a historically invariant ontology, but sets out an ontology that is specific to capitalism. Finally, I introduce the central thesis of the book, namely, that the categories of the logic of essence give expression to the general structure of social domination in capitalism.