Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at the College de France, 1978-79

Foreword: Francois Ewald and Alessandro Fontana     xiii10 January 1979     1Questions of methodSuppose universals do not existSummary of the previous year's lectures: the limited objective of the government of raison d'Etat (external politics) and unlimited objective of the police state (internal politics)Law as principle of the external limitation of raison d'EtatPerspective of this year's lectures: political economy as principle of the internal limitation of governmental reasonWhat is at stake in this research: the coupling of a set of practices and a regime of truth and the effects of its inscription in realityWhat is liberalism?17 January 1979     27Liberalism and the implementation of a new art of government in the eighteenth centurySpecific features of the liberal art of government (I): (1) The constitution of the market as site of the formation of truth and not just as domain of jurisdictionQuestions of method. The stakes of research undertaken around madness, the penal order, and sexuality: sketch of a history of "regimes of veridiction"The nature of a political critique of knowledge (savoir)(2) The problem of limiting the exercise of power by public authorities. Two types of solution: French juridical radicalism and English utilitarianismThe question of "utility" and limiting the exercise of power by public authoritiesComment on the status of heterogeneity in history: strategic against dialectical logicThe notion of "interest" as operator (operateur) of the new art of government24 January 1979     51Specific features of the liberal art of government (II): (3) The problem of European balance and international relationsEconomic and political calculation in mercantilism. The principle of the freedom of the market according to the physiocrats and Adam Smith: birth of a new European modelAppearance of a governmental rationality extended to a world scale. Examples: the question of maritime law; the projects of perpetual peace in the eighteenth centuryPrinciples of the new liberal art of government: a "governmental naturalism"; the production of freedomThe problem of liberal arbitration. Its instrumentsthe management of dangers and the implementation of mechanisms of securitydisciplinary controls (Bentham's panopticism)interventionist policiesThe management of liberty and its crises31 January 1979     75Phobia of the stateQuestions of method: sense and stakes of the bracketing off of a theory of the state in the analysis of mechanisms of powerNeo-liberal governmental practices: German liberalism from 1948 to 1962; American neo-liberalismGerman neo-liberalism (I)Its political-economic contextThe scientific council brought together by Erhard in 1947. Its program: abolition of price controls and limitation of governmental interventionsThe middle way defined by Erhard in 1948 between anarchy and the "termite state"Its double meaningrespect for economic freedom as condition of the state's political representativitythe institution of economic freedom as basis for the formation of political sovereigntyFundamental characteristic of contemporary German governmentality: economic freedom, the source of juridical legitimacy and political consensusEconomic growth, axis of a new historical consciousness enabling the break with the pastRallying of Christian Democracy and the SPD to liberal politicsThe principles of liberal government and the absence of a socialist governmental rationality7 February 1979     101German neo-liberalism (II)Its problem: how can economic freedom both found and limit the state at the same time?The neo-liberal theorists: W. Eucken, F. Bohm, A. Muller-Armack, F. von HayekMax Weber and the problem of the irrational rationality of capitalism. The answers of the Frankfurt School and the Freiburg SchoolNazism as necessary field of adversity to the definition of the neo-liberal objectiveThe obstacles to liberal policy in Germany since the nineteenth centurythe protectionist economy according to ListBismarck's state socialismthe setting up of a planned economy during the First World WarKeynesian interventionism; (e) the economic policy of National SocialismThe neo-liberal critique of National Socialism on the basis of these different elements of German historyTheoretical consequences: extension of this critique to the New Deal and to the Beveridge plans; interventionism and the growth of the power of the state; massification and uniformization, effects of state controlThe stake of neo-liberalism: its novelty in comparison with classical liberalism. The theory of pure competition14 February 1979     129German neo-liberalism (III)Usefulness of historical analyses for the presentHow is neo-liberalism distinguished from classical liberalism?Its specific stake: how to model the global exercise of political power on the principles of a market economy, and the transformations that derive from thisThe decoupling of the market economy and policies of laissez-faireThe Walter Lippmann colloquium (26 to 30 August 1938)The problem of the style of governmental action. Three examplesthe question of monopoliesthe question of "conformable actions (actions conformes)." The bases of economic policy according to W. Eucken. Regulatory actions and organizing actions (actions ordonnatrices)social policy. The ordoliberal critique of the welfare economySociety as the point of application of governmental interventions. The "policy of society" (Gesellschaftspolitik)First aspect of this policy: the formalization of society on the model of the enterpriseEnterprise society and judicial society; two faces of a single phenomenon21 February 1979     159Second aspect of the "policy of society" according to the neo-liberals: the problem of law in a society regulated according to the model of the competitive market economyReturn to the Walter Lippmann colloquiumReflections based on a text by Louis Rougier(1) The idea of a juridical-economic order. Reciprocity of relations between economic processes and institutional frameworkPolitical stake: the problem of the survival of capitalismTwo complementary problems: the theory of competition and the historical and sociological analysis of capitalism(2) The question of legal interventionismHistorical reminder: the Rule of law (l'Etat de droit) in the eighteenth century, in opposition to despotism and the police state. Re-elaboration of the notion in the nineteenth century: the question of arbitration between citizens and public authorities. The problem of administrative courtsThe neo-liberal project: to introduce the principles of the Rule of law into the economic orderRule of law and planning according to Hayek(3) Growth of judicial demandGeneral conclusion: the specificity of the neo-liberal art of government in Germany. Ordoliberalism faced with the pessimism of Schumpeter7 March 1979     185General remarks: (1) The methodological scope of the analysis of micro-powers. (2) The inflationism of state phobia. Its links with ordoliberalismTwo theses on the totalitarian state and the decline of state governmentality in the twentieth centuryRemarks on the spread of the German model, in France and in the United StatesThe German neo-liberal model and the French project of a "social market economy"The French context of the transition to a neo-liberal economicsFrench social policy: the example of social securityThe separation of the economic and the social according to Giscard d'EstaingThe project of a "negative tax" and its social and political stakes. "Relative" and "absolute" poverty. Abandonment of the policy of full employment14 March 1979     215American neo-liberalism (I). Its contextThe difference between American and European neo-liberalismAmerican neo-liberalism as a global claim, utopian focus, and method of thoughtAspects of this neo-liberalism: (1) The theory of human capital. The two processes that it representsan extension of economic analysis within its own domain: criticism of the classical analysis of labor in terms of the time factoran extension of economic analysis to domains previously considered to be non-economicThe epistemological transformation produced by neo-liberal analysis: from the analysis of economic processes to the analysis of the internal rationality of human behaviorWork as economic conductIts division into capital, abilities, and incomeThe redefinition of homo oeconomicus as entrepreneur of himselfThe notion of "human capital." Its constitutive elementsinnate elements and the question of the improvement of genetic human capitalacquired elements and the problem of the formation of human capital (education, health, etcetera)The interest of these analyses: resumption of the problem of social and economic innovation (Schumpeter). A new conception of the policy of growth21 March 1979     239American neo-liberalism (II)The application of the economic grid to social phenomenaReturn to the ordoliberal problematic: the ambiguities of the Gesellschaftspolitik. The generalization of the "enterprise" form in the social field. Economic policy and Vitalpolitik: a society for the market and against the marketThe unlimited generalization of the economic form of the market in American neo-liberalism: principle of the intelligibility of individual behavior and critical principle of governmental interventionsAspects of American neo-liberalism: (2) Delinquency and penal policyHistorical reminder: the problem of the reform of penal law at the end of the eighteenth century. Economic calculation and principle of legality. The parasitic invasion of the law by the norm in the nineteenth century and the birth of criminal anthropologyThe neo-liberal analysis: (1) the definition of crime; (2) the description of the criminal subject as homo oeconomicus; (3) the status of the penalty as instrument of law "enforcement." The example of the drugs marketConsequences of this analysisanthropological erasure of the criminalputting the disciplinary model out of play28 March 1979     267The model of homo oeconomicusIts generalization to every form of behavior in American neo-liberalismEconomic analysis and behavioral techniquesHomo oeconomicus as the basic element of the new governmental reason appeared in the eighteenth centuryElements for a history of the notion of homo oeconomicus before Walras and ParetoThe subject of interest in English empiricist philosophy (Hume)The heterogeneity of the subject of interest and the legal subject: (1) The irreducible nature of interest in comparison with juridical will. (2) The contrasting logics of the market and the contractSecond innovation with regard to the juridical model: the economic subject's relationship with political power. Condorcet. Adam Smith's "invisible hand": invisibility of the link between the individual's pursuit of profit and the growth of collective wealth. The non-totalizable nature of the economic world. The sovereign's necessary ignorancePolitical economy as critique of governmental reason: rejection of the possibility of an economic sovereign in its two, mercantilist and physiocratic, formsPolitical economy as a science lateral to the art of government4 April 1979     291Elements for a history of the notion of homo oeconomicus (II)Return to the problem of the limitation of sovereign power by economic activityThe emergence of a new field, the correlate of the liberal art of government: civil societyHomo oeconomicus and civil society: inseparable elements of liberal governmental technologyAnalysis of the notion of "civil society": its evolution from Locke to Ferguson. Ferguson's An Essay on the History of Civil Society (1787). The four essential characteristics of civil society according to Ferguson: (1) it is an historical-natural constant; (2) it assures the spontaneous synthesis of individuals. Paradox of the economic bond; (3) it is a permanent matrix of political power; (4) it is the motor of historyAppearance of a new system of political thoughtTheoretical consequencesthe question of the relations between state and society. The German, English, and French problematicsthe regulation of political power: from the wisdom of the prince to the rational calculations of the governedGeneral conclusionCourse Summary     317Course Context     327Index of Names     333Index of Concepts and Notions     339