Competence is a concept imported into the adult and continuing education arena fromthe psychological terminology of human resource development in work organizations. Ithas been elevated to a societal and political level as part of a new discursive regime.This article points out the significance of the particular circumstances in which thecompetence discourse has emerged, and argues for its critical investigation within aMarxist framework. A new discourse of learning and competence reflects a newmaterial dependency of capital(ism) on the concrete quality of work and workers, requiring a total program of learning for work. This opens a new arena of politicalstruggle over the direction of learning processes and the participation of workers inwork and society. The socio-economic realities and new understanding of theinterrelationship between knowledge, skills, learning and practice central to thecompetence concept, raises a potential issue about the role of work and the livingworker in a capitalist economy. This requires a re-development of the notion ofeconomy based in the value and interest of working people, and enabled by the fulldevelopment of the competences of the workers themselves. A notion of the “politicaleconomy of working people” is proposed as a framework for investigating thepotentials of competence development for enhanced democracy.