While in his late writings Michel Foucault is definitively parting ways with Karl Marx, it seems that one of his core late concepts – neoliberal governmentality – is helpful in adapting Marx’s critique of political economy to conditions of contemporary knowledge-based capitalism. On the other hand, within this horizon, the French thinker’s critique of biopower/biopolitics may be supplemented with some positive solutions, the lack of which is underlined by his commentators such as Nancy Fraser or Charles Taylor. The aim of my paper is to show this mutually beneficial complementarity of Marx’s critical analyses of capitalism and Foucault’s critical inquiry into neoliberalism by introducing a modified labor theory of value. I will start with discussion of Foucault’s concept of ‘neoliberal governmentality’ as an incarnation of biopolitics. After the presentation of the relevant aspects of this concept, I will point to the French thinker’s problematic comprehension of the idea of discourse which underlies it. Next, I will suggest Jürgen Habermas’ idea of communicative rationality as a proper solution to this difficulty and postulate re-reading of Foucault’s concept from the standpoint of critically grasped Habermas’ theory of communicative action. Finally, I will embed the concept of ‘neoliberal governmentality’, transformed through the prism of theory of communicative action, in Marx’s observations of ‘ever-expanding market’ in order to conceptualize an adequate theory of value for today’s knowledge economy. What I mean is a theory of value that will allow to highlight scientifically organized subsumption of all our capabilities under capital in everyday interactions, and point to ways which will allow us to overcome this alienation.
