Abstract

In this lecture I claim that the work of Karl Marx (1818-1883) was not only a science of revolution but also a revolutionary science, constituting a scientific revolution in social and political thought. This claim is based on Marx’s discovery of the dynamic substance: value in motion (Capital Vol 2 ), on which the social universe of Capital is founded: a dynamic substance that is unknown and invisible to the methods of bourgeois social science. This claim is grounded in a reappraisal of Marx’s social theory that seeks to recover and develop the revolutionary proposition in Marx’s writing through ‘a critique of value’, recognising the revolutionary principles (communism) and practices (class struggle) out of which a postcapitalist society is already emerging, but is always and everywhere at risk.