This book advances a counter-intuitive thesis: modern attacks on the global ecological balance are exclusively the result of processes of social domination, whether they are based on class, gender or nation. If this is the case, then it follows that ecological struggle and social struggle are one and the same thing. The approach is inspired by Marx's theory, as revisited through Bourdieu and Foucault, Rawls and Habermas, Ostrom and Wallerstein. Based on a new concept, that of "metastructure" which defines the relationship between the structural and the symbolic, it confronts contemporary debates on class, gender and coloniality, as well as on the state, the nation, and the world-system. Global social-ecological destruction is thus analysed on three registers: that of capital, which produces for profit; that of (supposed) competent authority, which produces to produce; and that of the nation, which produces to conquer. Consumerism follows from productivism, not the other way around. The question of need takes precedence over that of desire. This metastrucural configuration poses the imperative constantly renewed to counter the blind logic of capital with a rational logic of organisation, and, at the same time, to counter the logic of the organisers through a democratic discursive logic. This latter is the recourse of common people. The Global South is on the front line of this struggle; and women’s struggle bears its own decisive ecological impulse.

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'.

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'.