ABSTRACT
Michel Foucault is renowned for his criticisms of state theory and advocacy of a bottom-up approach to social power as well as for his hostility to orthodox Marxism and communist political practice. Yet there have always been indications in his work that matters are not so simple, especially in his work during the mid-to-late 1970s. Foucault’s work reveals the paradox of an outspoken opposition to official and vulgar Marxist positions and an implicit appropriation and development of insights from Karl Marx himself. May 1968 was a major turning point in this regard, according to Foucault himself, because it signalled a crisis in official Marxism and serious ruptures in a modern capitalist society. Although Foucault often refers to the state, he refused to take its existence for granted and rejected any state theory based on this assumption. Foucault always rejected attempts to develop a general theory and changed direction and argument according to his changing interests and the changing political conjuncture.
