Sly society tops revolutionary dynasty (8)
I believe the answer is:
scheming
'sly' is the definition.
(thesaurus)
'society tops revolutionary dynasty' is the wordplay.
'tops' says to take the initial letters.
'revolutionary' becomes 'che' (Che Guevara the Marxist revolutionary).
'dynasty' becomes 'ming' (I've seen this before).
The initial letter of 'society' is 's'.
's'+'che'+'ming'='SCHEMING'
(Other definitions for scheming that I've seen before include "Duplicitous" , "Planning secretly" , "Plotting secretly" , "far from 10 [WIDE EYED]" , "Devious" .)