Il mondo mistico del “Capitale”. Scienza, critica e rivoluzione in Lucio Colletti

Taking the cue from some of Lucio Colletti’s unpublished letters and writings, this article will focus on Colletti’s work from the 1967-1973 period. Here, Colletti interprets Marx’s theory of value in terms of a «real abstraction» – i.e. in terms of the alienation of individual private labours. By turning this abstraction into an object and by reifying it, capital becomes for Colletti an inherently “upside-down” social reality, whose knowledge can only be acquired through the critique and upturning of its idealism. The originality of Colletti’s Marxism lies in the powerful link it establishes between political economy and critique, between Marxism and the critique of idealism, between science and revolution.