ABSTRACT
Marx's predominant form of theoretical discourse is the critique. His central and most famous work is labelled a critique: Capital: A Critique of Political Economy. There is one sense of "critique" for which Marx is notorious: vitriolic destruction or devastation of the theoretical formulations of fellow socialists, would-be allies, and bourgeois opponents. Marx's critique of political economy is, as he wrote his friend Weydemeyer, "a scientific victory for our party". For Marx, the proof of the effective unity of science and revolution is the transformation of society. Almost immediately after Marx's death, one important segment of his "disciples," dissolved Marxism into a dogmatic economics that eliminated most dimensions of "critique" found in his thought, retaining only critique in the sense of polemics based on preestablished dogma. To follow through on Marx's critique in the late twentieth century poses the same challenge that Hegel put, in the Preface to the Philosophy of Right: "The Rhodus, hic salta!".
