The paper begins with a broad description of Adorno's and Foucault's relations to Marx. Its focus then narrows to describe the relation between the economy and the state in their work, and in particular, whether Adorno adopted Friedrich Pollock's state capitalist thesis which asserts that state power now outflanks the market economy. The next section deals with exchange relations and power relations, and Foucault's discussion of neo-liberalism in The Birth of Biopolitics comes to the fore.

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... questioning Foucault's claim that neo-liberalism effectively abandons exchange , I conclude that, while Adorno may well be right about the primacy of exchange relations, his analysis must be supplemented with an analysis of power because he recognizes that power superseded exchange in Nazi Germany and believes that the West still faces a resurgence of that horror. In fact, it was this very threat that impelled Foucault to devote much of his work to an analysis of power. seem to orient their work around different, and possibly incompatible, poles. Where Adorno focusses on exchange relations and their effects on phenomena as diverse as artworks, the natural sciences, and interpersonal relations, Foucault concentrates on power relations in the state and a variety of institutions (including the family, the school, the hospital, and the factory). In part, these distinct centres of interest reflect different perspectives on the work of Karl Marx. Although Adorno is by no means an orthodox Marxist, he nonetheless remains squarely within a Marxist paradigm even as he attempts to revise and update it. By contrast, Foucault shifts the focus away from traditional Marxist concerns about economic exploitation and class conflict when he examines the subjection of individuals by disciplinary power