My guess is that Foucault was pointing out that political-economic ideologies cannot be critiqued other than from a position of opposition to the ideology being criticized.  Marxism is not self-reflexive (just as neoliberalism is not self-reflexive). You cannot necessarily have a Marxist critique of Marxism (nor a neoliberal critique of neoliberalism).  One can only criticize Marxism from epistemological and ontological positions contrary to Marxism (which becomes a polemical and unresolvable exercise).  Liberal rationalities premised upon market equilibrium and social discipline alternatively are necessarily reflexive (they engender practices of perfection, and as such must be critical of imperfections).  Liberal rationalities depend upon scientific techniques and practices (statistics, medicine, social sciences etc.) i.e. - liberalism is an art of government through science.  Combining his later lectures at the College de France (e.g. security, territory, population; BoB), Marxism is not a governmental rationality - it is fundamentally an assemblage of texts.  In my opinion, the same may be said about neoliberalism.  

First of all, thank you very much for your attentive answer. I must confess that I am not entirely sure if I have understood you correctly, because I think that perhaps, when you speak of Marxism as not being self-reflexive, it is not the same sort of self-reflexivity I was considering, bearing in mind Foucault's text.

According to Foucault's reconstruction, Marxism is supposed to lack self-reflexivity in the specific sense of being unable to apply to itself (as an allegedly true discourse) the same sort of "external", socio-historical explanation that it applies to ideological (and therefore false) discourses. I think this is, more or less, the same sort of argument that Max Weber mobilized against Marxism: historical materialism can explain anything but itself. This is, I think, the kind of criticism that would follow from Foucault's tenet that Marxism can explain "ideology" but not "truth", and so it would be Foucault himself who, following Nietzsche, must provide us with an "external [i.e., socio-historical] history of truth". Nevertheless, not only does Marxism offer self-reflexive socio-historical accounts of its own apparition (in Marx himself but particularly in Lukács), but (here comes my doubt) there does not seem to be any major Marxist who associates historical-external explanation with ideology, error, instead of truth. Even Althusser's insistence on the "autonomy of Theory" is not explicitly associated with the idea that "external", socio-historical factors can only account for error or illusion - which is the kind of asymmetry that Foucault accuses "academic Marxism" of. Anyway, I am open to considering your opinions to correct my possible misunderstandings concerning this point.

Thanks again for your contribution. 

Claudio

Dear Claudio,

You might be interested in this article by Stéphane Legrand. I don't think you will necessarily find names that "fit" Foucault's definition, but the author proposes interesting approaches to Foucault's relations to marxism and marxists.

http://www.cairn.info/article.php?ID_ARTICLE=AMX_036_0027

Best regards

Denis