Foucault, biopolitics and the birth of neoliberalism

Abstract

In his governmentality studies in the late 1970s Foucault held a course at the Collège de France on the major forms of neoliberalism, examining the three theoretical schools of German ordoliberalism, the Austrian school characterized by Hayek, and American neoliberalism in the form of the Chicago school. Among Foucault's great insights in his work on governmentality was the critical link he observed in liberalism between the governance of the self and government of the state—understood as the exercise of political sovereignty over a territory and its population. Liberal modes of governing are distinguished by the ways in which they utilize the capacities of free acting subjects and, consequently, modes of government differ according to the value and definition accorded the concept of freedom. This paper first briefly discusses Foucault's approach to governmentality, before detailing and analysing Foucault's account of German ordoliberalism, as a source for the ‘social market economy’, and the EU's ‘social model’.

Keywords:

• Economic freedom
• Foucault
• Governmentality
• Liberalism
• Neoliberalism
• Ordoliberalism

Acknowledgement

An earlier version first appeared in Susanne Weber and Susanne Maurer (Eds), Gouvernementalität und Erziehungswissenschaft (Governmentality and educational science), VS Verlag (Publisher for Social Sciences VS), Wiesbaden, Germany, January 2006.

Notes

1. In his Résumé du cours for 1979 (in Foucault, 2004b, p. 323) Foucault indicates that the method he will adopt is based on Paul Veyne's nominalist history and in this respect he writes: ‘Et reprenant un certain nombre de choix de méthode déjà faits, j'ai essayé d'analyser le <<libéralisme>>, non pas une théorie ni comme une idéologie, encore moins, bein entendu, comme une mannière pour la <<société>> de <<se\ représenter>>; mais comme une pratique, c'est‐à‐dire comme une <<manière de faire>> orientée vers objectifs et se régulant par une réflexion continue. Le libéralisme est à analyser alors comme principe et méthode de rationalisation de l'exercice de gouvernement—rationalisation qui obéit, et c'est là sa spécificité, à la règle interne de l'économie maximale’. Foucault (in 2001) explains in ‘Questions of method’ his emphasis on practice with an accent on ‘eventalization’ and ‘the problem of rationalities’. He refers to, ‘Eventalizing singular ensembles of practices, so as to make them graspable as different regimes of “jurisdiction” and “verification”’ (p. 230) and he ascribes the method to Veyne with the following remark ‘it's a matter of the effect on historical knowledge of a nominalist critique itself arrived at by way of historical analysis’ (2001, p. 238). The concept of practice here is crucial to understanding Foucault. Stern (2000, fn. 33, p. 358) indicates in a footnote a reference to Dreyfus' course at the NEH Summer Institute on Practices on 24 July 1997, under the title ‘Conclusion: how background practices and skills work to ground norms and intelligibility: the ethico–political implications’ and summarizes Dreyfus' account of five ‘theories’ (Wittgenstein and Bourdieu; Hegel and Merleau‐Ponty; Heidegger; Derrida; and Foucault). He summarizes Foucault's notion as follows: ‘Problematization. (Foucault) Practices develop in such a way that contradictory actions are felt to be appropriate. Attempts to fix these problems lead to further resistance. This leads to a hyperactive pessimism: showing the contingency of what appears to be necessary and engaging in resistance to established order’. See also Schatzki et al. (2001).

2. Rousseau's begin his famous 1755 text ‘Discourse on political economy’ with the following remark: ‘The word Economy, or OEconomy, is derived from oikos, a house, and nomos, law, and meant originally only the wise and legitimate government of the house for the common good of the whole family. The meaning of the term was then extended to the government of that great family, the state’. Rousseau, goes on to distinguish between the government of the family and the state, and to deny there is anything in common except the obligations that the head or sovereign owe to their subjects. They are, he argues, based on different rules and ‘the first rule of public economy is that the administration of justice should be conformable to the laws’ and to the general will. For the full text see: www.constitution.org/jjr/polecon.htm.

3. The Foucault archives have been recently relocated from the IMEC (Institut Mémoires de l'Édition Contemporaine) Paris address (9, rue Bleue, F‐75009 Paris) to Abbaye d'Ardenne (14280 Saint Germaine la Blanche‐Herbe), email: [email protected]. ‘Il faut défender la société’, a course Foucault delivered in 1975–1976, was translated by David Macey and published in 2003 by Penguin as Society must be defended (Foucault, 2003). While courses for 1977–1978, 1978–1979, as previously mentioned, and 1981–1982 (‘L'Herméneutique de sujet’) have been recently published (in the Gallimand/Seuill series), courses for the years 1979–1980, 1980–1981, 1982–1983, 1983–1984 are still only available from the IMEC Foucault archive as recorded tapes.

4. The governmentality literature has grown up around the journal Economy and Society, and includes the work of Cruickshank, Hindess, Hunter, Larner, Minson, O'Malley, Owen, and others, as well as those referred to above, most of whom have published in Economy and Society (for aims and scope, and table of contents, see www.tandf.co.uk/journals/titles/03085147.asp).

5. See my essay ‘Why Foucault?’ (Peters, 2004) where I discuss Foucault studies in the English‐speaking world by reference to the work of Marshall, Olssen, Ball, Popkewitz and Brennan, Besley, Baker, Middleton and myself. My work on Foucault's governmentality dates from Peters (1994), with additional work in 1996 (with Marshall), Peters (1996), Peters (1997), and Peters (2001a, b, c). For additional work on Foucault see Peters (2003a, b), Peters (2004), Peters (2005a, b). Educational Philosophy and Theory published a special issue in 2006 entitled ‘The learning society and governmentality’ edited by Masschelein, Bröckling, Simons and Pongratz.

6. As he writes in his Résumé du cours (in Foucault, 2004b, p. 323): ‘Le thème retenu était doc la «biopolitique»: j'entendais par là la manière don't on a essayé, depuis le XVIII siècle, de rationaliser les problèmes posés à la pratique gouvenrement par les phénomènes propres à une ensemble de vivants constitutes en population: santé, hygiene, natalitié, longévité, races…’

7. Foucault investigates the notion of civil society—a twin notion to homo economicus and indissociable elements of the technology of liberal government—by reference to Adam Ferguson (1996), a philosopher of the Scottish Enlightenment, whose An essay on the history of civil society, first published in 1767, as an inquiry into the ‘natural history of man’, seeks to elucidate the general characteristics of human nature (including principles of self‐preservation, union, war, etc), provide a ‘history of rude nations’, policy and arts, and comments on the advancement of civil and commercial arts, as well as ‘the decline of nations’ and ‘corruption and political slavery’.

8. Foucault refers to the work of F. Bilger (1964) La Pensée économique libérale de l'Allemagne contemporaine. For a brief chronological biography of Erhard see www.dhm.de/lemo/html/biografien/ErhardLudwig/.

9. Foucault notes that Eucken knew and met with Husserl and a footnote (fn. 2, p. 125) in the text refers to a paper that discusses the phenomenological roots of German ordoliberalism.

10. Vanberg (2004) argues that the constitutional approach of the ordoliberals distanced itself from laissez‐faire economics and is closely modelled by James Buchanan's constitutional economics. Vanberg also notes differences that occurred in discussions at the Mont Pelerin Society between Eucken and Mises. While Eucken knew Hayek since the early 1920s, Vanberg argues that ordoliberalism was a German invention that was not influenced by Anglo‐Saxon influences or the Austrian school. See also Broyer (1996) and Witt (2002). For the continued relevance of ordoliberalism and the social market model see Joerges and Rödl (2004).