What is Marx's contribution to the philosophy of time? Or, to put it another way, what has a temporal reading of Marx's writings to contribute to the understanding of the philosophical aspects of his thought? How, for example, might it reconfigure the relationship between the historical, analytical and political dimensions of his work? These are not merely, or even primarily, historical questions, but constructive and critical issues about the philosophical present: constructive, because with only a couple of notable – and notably partial – exceptions (Antonio Negri and Moishe Postone), the temporalphilosophical side of Marx's thought has yet to be systematically disinterred; critical, because of the light such a construction promises to throw on a range of issues, not least the specific contemporaneity of Marx's thought. This is a propitious time for such an investigation, for a number of reasons.