With the collapse of real socialism, Marx's theory became questionable. Between blanket declarations of death and defiant defense, there seemed to be no space for a genuine discussion of Marx's texts and their intellectual contexts. Michael Heinrich's work, which has since become a classic, serves as a counterpoint here. In his investigation, which draws on both "early" and "late" Marx, he relates Marx's critique of political economy to both classical and neoclassical economics, revealing profound ambiguities in the process.