Abstract: The semiotic criticism of Marxist political economy has gone through a long process of development. Marx himself denoted his understanding and exploration of signs and phenomena in his political economy. Since then, many Marxists built on that and invoked different modern Semiotic methods in delivering their critique on political economy one after another. Some Marxists, as represented by Lefebvre, applied the Saussurean dualist semiotics to their criticism of political economy and, yet, could not avoid the effect from its metaphysical defects. However, Rossi-Landi and other members of the School of Bari reformed the paradigm of Semiotic criticism on the political economy by using the triadic model of semiosis based on the tradition of the Piercean logic as semiotics and highlighted the emphasis that the semiotic criticism of Marxist political economy placed on the extension of meaning, so as to gain more valuable significance of historical materialism.

Key words: Marxism, political economy, Semiotic criticism, paradigm, transformation