What is Foucault's Marx? From class struggle to neoliberal civil war
In the Birth of Biopolitics course, Michel Foucault deals with neoliberalism. For Foucault, neoliberalism is something different, as it is not the society portrayed in Book I of Capital. The present work seeks to problematize and unfold the statement about Marx and Capital. If, says Foucault, neoliberalism is not the society portrayed in Book I of Capital, this statement can be expanded further to ascertain more precisely what Foucault's rejection of Marx is in The Birth of Biopolitics. To address the issue, we seek to understand whether Foucault rejects Marxism, part of it, Book I of Capital or part of it, Marx or just part of his work. At first, going back to the texts of Sayings and writings and to the courses The punitive society and Society Must Be Defended, we assess whether, to some extent, Marx still works for Foucault. The Sayings and writings and the mentioned courses bring some indications about what Foucault thought about Marx. In a second moment, the analysis focuses on Marx's place in the Foucauldian analysis of neoliberalism. In both cases, the guiding thread of the analysis is Foucault's reading of the notion of class struggle coming from Marx and some Marxists. Finally, in terms of the class struggle, we intend to address the neoliberal civil war and think about how the neoliberal subject deals with and lives this war.