It is a fact noted that anti-capitalist criticism has not been able to react effectively to the formidable restructuring process promised by capitalism since the mid-1970s. Discarded fordism and its hierarchical functioning, for the benefit of a novel networked organization that takes advantage of the initiative of labor and the relative autonomy of its work – at the price of sacrificing material and psychological security – criticism must articulate new forms of defense adapted to this new spirit of capitalism.
Based on a thorough analysis of the texts of business management, or management, which have inspired the reorganization of companies and shaped the thinking of the management tables, Eve Chiapello and Luc Boltanski examine the ideological changes that have accompanied the recent transforms of capitalism, the triumph of which has been possible thanks – paradoxically – to the formidable appropriation that makes a "artist criticism" that had not ceased to denounce , since May 1968, the alienation of daily life caused by the alliance of capital with bureaucracy, and to a "social critique" that, unable to map the inflections starring the new modes of exploitation and domination of capitalism, has remained anchored in the old schemes of hierarchical organization of production.
This exceptional book aims to contribute to the resurgence of these two complementary critiques of capitalism, as well as to inspire and enrich the wave of anti-sis struggles and initiatives that today's societies go through.