ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that Marxian theory is attenuated when Marxists do not comprehend Karl Marx's ambivalences towards Political Economy, i.e. the existence of conceptual contradictions and, much more important, of a second, non-Marxist, discourse in his writings. Every "sanctifying" attitude towards Marx, presenting him, as the inculpable master who never made a single false step, practically blurs the scientific and heuristic kernel of Marx's analysis, as it identifies it with the Ricardian element, present in some of his elaborations. This "sanctifying" approach to Marx's work is though as old as Marxism itself: It starts with Friedrich Engels, Marx's closest collaborator and also co-author of many texts. Exposition of the basic points of the Marxist theory of value and its ideological implications, of money, of social capital and of crises makes it clear that the theoretical analysis in question is not compatible with other currents in political economy.
