In contemporary political philosophy the category of critique has become deeply ambiguous. This article proposes to relaunch the debate about the meaning of “critique” in the work of Marx. I argue that Marx belongs to a tradition of thought whose objective is to highlight simultaneously the nature of the object studied and the categories in which the object is thought . Philosophy is radically critical inasmuch as it assumes no presupposition, either concerning the object or the categories in which the (...) object is to be thought. This might sound like the approach of a contemporary philosopher like Michel Foucault. This is the direction in which this study aims to situate Marx in a tradition of thought starting with Hegel and reaching into our times. (shrink)