Examining how Marxist theory is missing but necessary, this book traces the theoretical maze in which Marxism currently finds itself, and from which it is trying to exit whilst at the same time remaining epistemologically intact. When stripped of any or all of its core elements – such as class formation/consciousness/struggle, and a socialist transition – it ceases to be what historically Marxists have claimed it is. Consequently, the book constitutes an attempt by Marxist political economy to extricate itself from mistaken attempts to conflate it with the cultural turn, identity politics, bourgeois economics, or varieties of populism and nationalism, together with the danger of not doing so.