Includes bibliographical references and index.

Note on the translation -- Abbreviations. Introduction: why unite Marx and Foucault, and how? 1 The Marx/Foucault difference: discipline and governtality : Disciplinary society/class society: surveillance and punishment : Foucault's discovery of a new social order -- Disciplines and class relations -- Analogical table Foucault/Marx. Civil society against class state: the College de France lectures of 1977-79 : Praise versus critique of the political economy? -- The Foucauldian grand narrative and theneoliberal question -- Foucault's grand tableau: civil society and the arts of governing. 2 Property-power and knowledge-power : Foucault explores the "pole" that Marx left in a grey zone : Foucault discerns knowledge-power alongside proprietor-power -- Why Marx's theory is missing a "pole." Foucault, theoretician of the knowledge-power of "competent-elites" : "The history of truth:" the true, the just and the authentic -- The truths of government -- Refounding the Marxian project to admit Foucault. Foucault, historian and critic of "copmetent-elites" : The historical conditions of modern "biopolitics" -- The Foucauldian critique of knowledge-power: a politics. 3 Marxian structuralism and Foucauldian nominalism? : Micro-relations of power and macro-relationships of class : The Foucauldian concept of power and the marxian concept of class -- The micro-macrological articulation of class -- The micro-macrological articulation of the state. Apparatuses of power versus class structures : Foucault: strategies in relation to "apparatuses of power" -- Marx: strategies in relation to "class structures." Shortcomings and relevance of Marx and Foucault : Class, sex, race: a Foucauldian triptych? -- War as an "analyser of society" -- "Structure" or "system?" Foucault, Habermas and others. 4 Marx's "capitalism" and Foucault's "liberalism" : The historical productivity of "capitalism" : The political contradiction of capitalism -- The productive contradictions of capitalism. The history of "liberalism" : "Discipline" as productive of utility-docility -- Liberalism as productive of utility-freedom -- Liberalism as relation beetween governors and the governed -- "Governmentality" as against self-government. Elements of conclusion: a strategy from below : Marx's strategies -- Foucault's strategies -- Provocation and interpellation -- Strategy and hegemony -- The dispersed order of strategy from below -- Beyond class horizons. References -- Index.

With this timely commitment, Jacques Bidet unites the theories of arguably the world's two greatest emancipatory political thinkers. In this far-reaching and decisive text, Bidet examines Marxian and Foucauldian criticisms of capitalist modernity. For Marx, the intersection between capital and the market is crucial, while for Foucault, the organizational aspects of capital are what really matter. According to Marx, the ruling class is identified with property; with Foucault, it is the managers who hold power and knowledge that rule. Bidet identifies these two sides of capitalist modernity as 'market' and 'organization,' showing that each leads to specific forms of social conflict; against exploitation and austerity, over wages and pensions on the one hand, and against forms of 'medical' and work-based discipline, control of bodies and prisons on the other. Bidet's impetus and clarity however serve a greater purpose: uniting two souls of critical social theory, in order to overcome what has become an age-long separation between the 'old left' and the 'new social movements.