FOUCAULT Y EL NEOLIBERALISMO.docx

8/11/2019 FOUCAULT Y EL NEOLIBERALISMO.docx

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FOUCAULT Y EL NEOLIBERALISMO

A Standard Fit for Neoliberalism

PETER GIBBON

In this narrative, neoliberalism is differentiated from other forms of government by a rationale of

governing at a distance: that is, by an invocation of indirect administration of the economic and socialsphere via a decentralized network of politically autonomous norm-setting entities.

This has occurred as governmental technologies such as systems of managerial controls on financial andoperational reporting, and methods for auditing their quality, that have been disseminated throughout

society by a combination of compulsion, provision of incentives, and imitation. Governing at a distancein these forms is said to entail governing through standards. In essence, it is a response to perceivedeconomic or, more simply, budgetary problems associated with governing too much or too directly,

particularly in social provision.

However, it is also depicted as entailing wider ideological ambitions to re-center government on a

specific construction of the individualas opposed to the state.This perspective, in which standardization is seen as a technology that reconfigures the organization of

power, has been elaborated in distinction to existing paradigms for understanding the role of standards

and the nature of neoliberalism rule. In contrast with most writers who apply the governmentality

approach, we argue that governing through standards was a political initiative of the period aimedmainly at solving the problem of non-competitive UK industry.

Foucault distinguished between rationalities or programs of government (normative discourses providing

accounts of classes of persons, objects, and behaviors to be governed), and technologies of government

(strategies, techniques, and procedures through which rationalities become operable). Liberalismsdistinctive feature as a governmental rationality is that governing human behavior occurs on behalf ofsociety rather than as simply an expression of sovereign power, and that it balances all substantiveobjectives against the defense of the autonomy of the individual and civil society.

While Foucaults thoughts on liberal rationality were fairly consistent, his account of the history ofliberalism did change during the 1970s. This occurred against the background of an ongoing convictionthat unveiling the history of the effective dispersion of liberal government required a history not so much

of its ideas but rather of the mundane techniques through which these ideas materialized, and thereby

recalibrated the cognitive and material practices of modern Western subjectivity.

We now know from recently published lectures Foucault gave at the Collge de France, Security,

Territory, Population (2007), that by the late 1970s he became aware of a set of technologies distinct from

those of discipline, which he thought even better characterized liberal government: technologies of

security. Unlike discipline, technologies of security govern through rendering intelligible the empirical

regularities of objects, for example by drawing on mathematical-scientific models of reality rather than

legal or pedagogical ones.

What Foucault describes here is a new set of technologies that work through different mechanisms ofnormalization (or standardization) than do disciplinary ones. Disciplinary normalization works

prescriptively to get the objects of government to conform to an optimal model of how things ought tobe (ibid.: 57). By implication, the normal is not the state of current affairs, but rather something

normatively to be obtained. By contrast, the logic of security starts from the normalwhat is physicallygiven here and nowand acts in the interplay of reality with itself in order to bring the mostunfavorable in line with the more favorable

This way of thinking and practicing government, Foucault argued, emerged through a strategic coupling

of the framing of a generalized problem of security (involving, for instance, food scarcity andepidemics), with an increasing recognition of cognitive schemas invented by modern academic disciplines

such as epidemiology, statistics, biology, and political economy. It is this new logic of securityand itsrelation to sovereignty and disciplinethat Foucault sees as critical for the emergence of liberal

government in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and which he was later to term governmentality.Foucaults terminology here can sometimes be confusing. But rather than seeking to distinguish preciselywhether a given governmental technology is primarily one of security, discipline, or sovereignty, we want


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to demonstratetwo other points: First, though Foucaults understanding of liberal technologies wassophisticated and complex, it was incomplete. Second, despite this incompleteness, contemporarystudents of neoliberal governmentality can still employ his approach to studying the history of

technologies as a model. In his first three lectures at the Collge de France, when his main objective was

still to write a history of liberal technologies, he contrasted such history with narrower histories of

techniques, and in the process sketched out a potential research program.

The suggested object of this program of analysis was thus not particular technical devices,3but rather the

dominant strategic function (Foucault 1977: 63), or general economy of power (2007: 11), across amultiplicity of more or less distinct practices, forms of knowledge, institutions, and techniques. When he

used this concept, Foucault was, as indicated, primarily concerned with the nature of technologies of

security that he believed were at the core of modern government, and reconfigured the role of sovereignty

and discipline by indicating the limits of their overall economies of power.A second key feature of the analytic program concerns the methodology Foucault proposes for tracing the

history of technologies: looking at the relationship between given historical problematizations and the

shape they subsequently take. In other words, the emergence and proliferation of technologies are linked

to monumental historical problematics, and for this reason they offer a vantage point for studying socialchange.

Returning to neoliberalism, it may be argued that Foucault and most authors within the governmentality

literature distinguish it from liberal rule in terms of a modification in governmental rationality.

Neoliberalisms normative discourse and the use of new forms of expertise are said to prescribe thereconstruction of the state and the wider socio-political environment in terms of an image of the market.

When Foucault himself turned to contemporary liberal government it was in the context of its intellectual

history and in particular the ambitions of some neoliberal thinkers to radically expand the intellectual

application of economics (2008). In Foucaults account, less change is evident in terms of thegovernmental technologies applied, although some new ones emerge and existing ones become more or

less important.

Foucault may have suggested this interpretation in his rudimentary account of neoliberalism, but it has

been neo-Foucauldians, most notably Rose (1993; 1996; 1999), who have tried to formalize it and spell

out what it has entailed. For Rose (1996: 50; 1999: 137; and see Dean 1999: 240ff.), two elements arecrucial in explaining the rise of neoliberalism in the late 1970s and 1980s.7 First, intellectual criticisms of

the welfare state arose from both ends of the political spectrum, although with different aims andarguments.

These questioned the logic of a state apparatus divided into a series of separate bureaucratic structures

with related expert specialties, each delivering distinct substantive rationalities of rule, largely insulatedfrom external control (1996: 5254). Such an apparatus was said to be inefficient, expensive, andunaccountable

This political criticism became effectively governmental when it was joined with a second element:technologies of marketization (Rose and Miller 1992; Rose 1993; 1996; 1999; Dean 1999; see also Larner

2000: 13).

Not just the economy, but all areas of life were to be reconstituted in market terms. Expertise wasdeployed that facilitated a construction of markets in relation to public services, either throughoutsourcing of management and service tasks formerly performed publicly, or by transforming public

agencies into quasi-commercial entities operating according to principles of financial profitability, price

and quality competitiveness, and accountability.

The technologies of marketization put into play are said to have focused on governing through

standardized performance measures, mobilizing the professional disciplines of auditing, accounting, andquality and risk management as fields of expertise. Their propagators translated these existing disciplines

into new settings and generated standardized forms of calculation and monitoring that evaluated existing

arrangements by invoking comparisons with idealized private firms (Rose 1996: 54; Dean 1999: 267;

Rose, OMalley, and Valverde 2006).8 One goal was to create new structures of competition (markets)between public and private entities, and this was accomplished using standardized measurement and

control systems. The highly mobile technology of auditing, in particular, proved an effective means ofrendering complex locales and contexts manageable and comparable for government at a distance. It did


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so by generating newly responsibilized, calculative and result-oriented subjects and organizations, andby promoting new distantiated relations of control between political centers of decision and the non-politicalprocedures, devices and apparatuses (Rose 1996: 55).Similarly, in identifying the origins of the audit explosion and the rise of new public managementdoctrines and practices, Power (1997) points to the problematization of social welfare systems and the

history of financial auditing.

He argues that the assertion of a need for fiscal restraint, ideological commitment to reduction of stateservice provision, and the success of political discourses on improvement of accountability were allconstitutive drivers of neoliberalism.9 Power also mentions quality as having been a major theme, butdoes not explore its historical constitution in any detail.

Within this literature, Higgins and Tamm Hallstrm (2007) are alone in sketching histories of national

and international standards bodies, and quality management standards. They see quality management

standards (and certification mechanisms) as having emerged at the end of the 1970s. These appear, they

say, through a culturalist amalgamation-cum-transformation of both mainstream managementdiscourses about optimal organizational controls and hard engineering quality control practices linkedto inspection of military hardware using statistical techniques. They depict this as having occurred

initially in response to Japanese inroads into the markets of major western consumer durable industries(ibid.: 694). Later, they say, it responded to a need to achieve arm s-length coordination of international

out-sourcing.

They provide little detail to substantiate these arguments. While these analyses of neoliberal

governmentality impressively combine theoretical sophistication and historical references, they leaveunanswered several questions. The most important concerns the histories of the principal governmental

technologies through which neoliberalism materialized.

Despite Foucaults (2007: 89) injunction that these should form the basis of a research program, this hasbeen done only patchily. Even Powers (1997; 2007) writings on audit and risk management technologiesare mainly surveys of applications rather than histories. This can lead analysts to confuse the

problematizations that technologies were originally designed to address and those (such as welfare

criticism) to which they later became attached (see Rose, OMalley, and Valverde 2006).Even though technologies of standardization and auditing predate the intellectual discourses of welfare

criticism, no one has yet analyzed their constitutionthe contexts from which they emerged, their

subsequent proliferation, and their entanglement with neoliberal political programs. This is not to say thatgoverning through quality standards is the single most important technology of neoliberalism. But itcertainly came to occupy a key role, and it defined the specific ways in which neoliberalism unfolded in

the UK contexta point that becomes clear when one follows the politico-technical origins ofneoliberalism, and not solely its intellectual ones.

A parallel question concerns the relation between the neoliberal rationality of government, as depicted in

the governmentality literature, and neoliberal political programs. In the United Kingdom, at least, besides

remaking the social sector, these programs included freeing capital from political controls in the marketsfor labor and for goods, one example being the abolition of policies on prices and incomes. They also

included reducing public expenditure through channels other than the introduction of markets, such as by

rationalizing public functions or freezing recruitment of public employees. These programs were

complementary and may have had important implications for how marketization itself played out when

it came to the fore. To what extent might they also have shaped the ways in which the technologies thenassociated with marketization traveled and became implemented?

Del neoliberalismo y algunas seas deidentidadPablo Salvat Bologna54

A su vez, la conciencia de la existencia de esta tensin entre proyecto, historia yrealizacin fctica, nos es til para relativizar la pretensin de cientificidad asptica delos enfoques en los dominios de las ciencias sociales. Esto resulta particularmentepertinente si consideramos que la evolucin de la economade disciplina de las

ciencias sociales como economa polticahacia una pretendida ciencia a secas


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(como economa o ingeniera), es uno de los pilares sobre los que el discursoneoliberal intenta obtener su legitimidad prctica56.

Discutir sobre neoliberalismo es casi pretender desgarrar el velo de lo misterioso,

porque en algunos casos, se lo identifica directamente con la economa per se, comoreflejando su naturaleza ms propia. Incluso ms, al hablar de neoliberalismo se correel peligro de caricaturizar, de tratar con entelequias o molinos de viento. Esto recuerda

aquellas discusiones en las ciencias sociales sobre si poda hablarse de capitalismocomo tal, como una suerte de sistema con una racionalidad suigeneris (Marx/Weber),o el hacerlo representaba un subterfugio poltico que no deba cometerse desde elanlisis cientfico de las cosas. Detrs de esta discusin hay una apreciacin sobre lasconexiones entre los modelos y la realidad, o entre conceptualizaciones y vida social(en la sombra, el nominalismo), que muchas veces pasa por evidente 57.

Segn Sader y Gentili, el neoliberalismo (...)fue una creacin terica y polticavehemente contra el Estado intervencionista y de Bienestar. Su texto de origen es

Camino de servidumbre, de F. Hayek, escrito en el ao 1944. Se trata de un ataque

apasionado contra cualquier limitacin de los mecanismos de mercado por parte delEstado, denunciada como una amenaza letal a la libertad, no solamente econmica,sino tambin poltica58. Suma tras de s, junto a la herencia central de un Hayek, losaportes de la Escuela Austriaca (Menger), la inglesa (Marshall), la suiza (Walras) y la

americana (Friedman); y en lo poltico, la escuela del Public Choice (Tullock,Buchanan). Todas ellas, diferencias ms, diferencias menos, instituyen una ciertatradicin metdica en el enfoque de las cuestiones econmicas, sociales y polticasque marcan un perfil:

Esta comunidad intelectual inaugura no slo un punto de vista de poltica y economaen general, sino que tambin, abre paso a cierta tradicin metodolgica en laconsideracin de los fenmenos econmicos.

Algunas de las tendencias destacables de esta forma de ver la realidad son: a)orientacin positivista: slo los aspectos observables/verificables de una teora sonrelevantes; b) relevancia de mtodos cuantitativos (econometra); c) idea instrumentaldel conocimiento: ciencia/tcnica estn para predecir/controlar el porvenir; d)neutralidad en lo valrico: desde la ciencia no hay pronunciamiento sobre valores yfinalidades; e) desconfianza de la democracia poltica60.

En un plano ms prctico/histrico, siguiendo y modificando a J. M. Mardones,podramos decir que el neoliberalismo representa una versin del capitalismo tardo,en la cual el rol central lo juega un modo de producir bienes y servicios basado en laprimaca del mercado y en la libre iniciativa de los actores econmicos, en particular, elempresariado. Una crtica y desregulacin de la presencia del Estado y las relacionessociales; una visin instrumental de la poltica y la democracia61; una visin del hombrey la cultura centrada en una antropologa individualista y pesimista, con un mayor omenor acento en la libertad entendida como libertad negativa.

Democracia, poltica y cultura pasan a verse como subsistemas que es necesarioredisciplinar y mediatizar para su correcta adecuacin a la marcha cuasi-natural del

orden espontneo, esto es, a la lgica evolutiva del mercado o catalaxia.

Un aspecto a resaltar es que el conjunto de sus premisas sobre la marcha de la

economa y la poltica, aparece como una suerte de pensamiento nico en la escenapblica, esto es, sin alternativas, y por tanto, muchas veces se auto presenta como

encarnando el fin dela historia en Occidente y el curso natural de las cosas, al cual,tarde o temprano, toda sociedad tendr que adaptarse. Ciertamente que su posicin


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en la escena pblica como la nica aceptable no ha sido algo gratuito ni casual. A

crear esta suerte de nueva creencia ha contribuido un trabajo de inculcacinsimblica realizado pasiva/activamente por periodistas, mass media, ciudadanos, lospoderes interesados y tambin intelectuales.Se trata, a final de cuentas, de presentar las premisas neoliberales como una suerte

de destino inevitable.

La vertiente neoliberal, a diferencia del nfasis en la construccin social de la libertadque hacen los liberales sociales, representa una interpretacin contempornea de losfenmenos econmicos, polticos y sociales, opuesto a todo ideario racionalista yconstructivista, socializante y que en funcin del rescate del individuo y su libertad, ascomo de la evolucin propia de las instituciones, predica e intenta justificar la menorintervencin posible, la menor regulacin posible en las decisiones de los actores

econmicos, y dejar o dar el mayor espacio a la expresin y evolucin del ordenespontneo, una de cuyas expresiones ms relevantes la constituye la institucinincreada y espontnea llamada mercado o catalaxia (F. Hayek).

La justificacin de esta posicin radica en sostener que la libertad se protege ydesarrolla, da mejor resultado (econmico y poltico), cuando menos intervenida yregulada est desde fuera de ella misma, es decir, desde fuera de la voluntad e intersde cada individuo. As entonces, el neoliberalismo emerge pacientemente como crticaal consenso socialdemcrata de los aos, 60 y 70, que se apoyaba en la conviccin deque el capitalismo del Estado Providencia lograba combinar eficiencia econmica yjusticia social, vindolos como factores que deban y podan articularse conjuntamente.

El individuo es el eje, alfa y omega de la evolucin del orden Espontneo.

El nfasis unilateral que hace del rol del individuo, de sus capacidades e intereses,frente a las posibilidades de cualquier expresin de una voluntad comn deliberada, eslo que permite hablar de una posicin proclive al individualismo.

Lo que tienen que hacer la sociedad y sus instituciones es no coaccionar a losindividuos, dejarlos evolucionar segn sus capacidades, y, en esa lucha porrealizarlas, posibilitar que se destaquen los triunfadores o exitosos (que a su vez,harn de modelos inspiradores para el resto).

Ahora, en este ideario de la libertad, la libertad econmicajugar un rol prioritario, enparticular como libertad de mercado. El mismo Friedman afirmaba que el hombre eslibre siempre que los precios seanlibres y siempre que tenga libertad paracompetir. Lo novedoso en el tratamiento de esta temtica, tanto en el liberalismo yms an en el neoliberalismo, ser la defensa de la auto-regulacin del mercado por

s mismo. Es esa auto-regulacin la que genera, dejndola funcionar, es decir,intervinindola lo menos posible, la anhelada armona social

Es tpico del neoliberalismo decir que las sociedades son lo que son como productoespontneo de un orden. No hay cerebro capaz de penetrar ni producir/reproducir unorden complejo como el que habitamos.

Las formas de sociedad, de sus instituciones, parecieran ser el resultado no deseado

por nadie en particular, sino de la evolucinsocial, va la supervivencia de los msaptos y la interaccin resultante de millares de seres humanos. Ella no es el productode la racionalidad humana, de su voluntad, sino de la codificacin/objetivacin casualdel activismo de la accin y la experiencia. La sociedad occidental ha marchado desde

la horda tribal cerrada hasta la sociedad liberal (siglo XIX), moderna, libre y abierta, enla que no hay ya metas comunes que orienten la accin de cada individuo.


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Los intentos permanentes por intervenir/orientar el devenir evolutivo de ese singular

orden se sostienen en dos mitos recurrentes: el de lajusticia social y el de la creenciaen que es factible mejorar apropsito la sociedad (por lo tanto, es un rechazo delmeliorismo).

3.5. As pues, tanto su comprensin de lo social como de lo institucional se basan en

un individualismo, tanto metdico como normativo.A fin de cuentas, resulta unaespecie de solipsismo que cree factible poner al individuo al origen y al final de lasociedad, como auto creado y auto referido en su desarrollo y posibilidades. Unindividualismo radical, en tanto y cuanto ni siquiera parece admitir la metfora delcontrato/pacto social como ficcin de las sociedades modernas.

El hombre es aqu reducido a preferidor racional (sujeto abstracto); no es ms vistocomo sujeto de necesidades.

El termino neo, aadido al de liberalismo, resulta de hecho equivalente a no-

liberalismo [...]69, en la medida en que se basa y sostiene en un neo-darwinismosocial ajeno a los principales motivos de esa rama de la filosofa poltica moderna.

3.7. La creencia en el mercado puesto como institucin, mecanismo, ordenespontneo clave para la realizacin de la libertad de cada quien y de la totalidad. Elmercado les aparece como el mejor modo de asignar recursos escasos; de distribuir elingreso; de resguardar la libre iniciativa y la competencia mutua entre individuos,empresas, pases.

En el mercado, unos pierden, otros ganan. Como este resultado nadie lo ha querido demanera expresa, nadie entonces es responsable de l.El sistema de mercado libre no es slo un medio para intercambiar productos, sino

tambin el mecanismo destinado a sostener/mantener el conjunto de la sociedad. Enlas sociedades modernas, ni la costumbre ni la autoridad tendran la responsabilidadde solucionar la supervivencia del genero humano, sino la libre actividad de cadaquien en bsqueda de ganancia, conectados por el mercado. El progreso es obra decada uno en un generalizado slvese quien pueda dictado por la competencia de

todos contra todos, en donde, segn Hayek, larapidez total del progreso vendrincrementada por aquellos que semueven ms rpido.

El rol ideolgico en esto est sealado por dos aspectos: 1) por el hecho de olvidar elcarcter utopizante de su propia manera de ver la sociedad y la economa, y postular

que es el resultado de una evidencia emprica; 2), porque realiza una re-elaboracin a

posteriori de los principales acontecimientos polticos, sociales econmicos del sigloXX, y los lee desde su estrecha plantilla de realidades, como corroboraciones de locorrecto de su diagnstico anticipado y, por tanto, de lo inevitable de sus postulados a

futuro. Es lo que intenta pasar como el supuesto finde la historia, o el fin de lasideologas.

En segundo trmino, si miramos hacia el subsistema cultural, podemos anotar que:por una parte, existe la tendencia a negar la especificidad de sus racionalidades enjuego, a favor de una hegemona de su expresin calculista/funcional. No hay espaciopara reafirmar los fueros de una racionalidad que pueda ir ms all de ella, o queincluso pueda cuestionarla e interrogarla. Su visin resulta en una suerte de

antropologa que redefine al sujeto como sujeto abstracto calculador de preferencias y

posibilidades.


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Si es imposible determinar necesidades, slo tengo preferencias; y si solo tengopreferencias, ya no tengo posibilidad de reclamar derechosdebidos acordes a micondicin de humanidad y dignidad, por situaciones que estimo/valoro comoindeseables/intolerables. El humano no es sujeto de derechos, sino de preferencias yde su realizacin, decide la astucia individual y la coordinacin social mercantilespontnea e impersonal

A Genealogy of Homo-Economicus: Neoliberalism and the Production of

Subjectivity Jason Read, The University of Southern Maine

First, ex-amining the way in which neoliberalism can be viewed as a particular production

of subjectivity, as a way in which individuals are constituted as subjects of human

capital.

David HarveysA Brief History of Neoliberalism we find the following statement

Neoliberalism... has pervasive effects on ways ofthought to the point where it hasbecome incorporated into the common-sense way many of us interpret, live in, and

understand the world.1 the actual process by which it became hegemonic, to the point of

becoming common sense, is not examined

pointing out this lacuna since it intersects with a commonly accepted idea about

neoliberalism, that it is as much a transformation in ideology as it is a transforma-tion of

ideology. Neoliberalism, in the texts that have critically confronted it, is gen-erally

understood as not just a new ideology, but a transformation of ideology in terms of its

conditions and effects. In terms of its conditions, it is an ideology that is generated not

from the state, or from a dominant class, but from the quotidian expe-rience of buying and

selling commodities from the market, which is then extended across other social spaces,

the marketplace of ideas, to become an image of society. Secondly, it is an ideology that

refers not only to the political realm, to an ideal of the state, but to the entirety of human

existence. It claims to present not an ideal, but a reality; human nature. As Fredric

Jameson writes, summing up this connection and the challenge it poses: The market is in

human nature is the proposition that can-not be allowed to stand unchallenged; in my

opinion, it is the most crucial terrain of ideological struggle in our time.2

A critical examination of neoliberalism must address this transformation of its discursive

deployment, as a new understanding of human nature and social exis-tence rather than a

political program. Thus it is not enough to contrast neoliberalism as a political program,

analyzing its policies in terms of success or failure. An ex-amination of neoliberalism

entails a reexamination of the fundamental problematic of ideology, the intersection of

power, concepts, modes of existence and subjectivity.

Foucaults lec-tures on neoliberalism do not only extend his own critical project into new

areas, they also serve to demonstrate the importance of grasping the present by

examining the way in which the truth and subjectivity are produced.


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The nexus between the production of a particular conception of human nature, a

particular formation of subjectivity, and a particular political ideology, a particular way of

thinking about politics is at the center of Michel Foucaults research.

work takes up exactly what writers on neoliberalism find to be so vexing: the man-ner in

which neoliberalism is not just a manner of governing states or economies, but is

intimately tied to the government of the individual, to a particular manner of liv-ing.

order to frame Foucaults analysis it is useful to begin with how he sees the dist inction

between liberalism and neoliberalism. For Foucault, this difference has to do with the

different ways in which they each focus on economic activity. Classical liberalism focused

on exchange, on what Adam Smith called mankinds tendency to barter, truck, and

exchange. It naturalized the market as a system with its own ra-tionality, its own interest,

and its own specific efficiency, arguing ultimately for its superior efficiency as a distributor

of goods and services. The market became a space of autonomy that had to be carved outof the state through the unconditional right of private property. What Foucault stresses in

his understanding, is the way in which the market becomes more than just a specific

institution or practice to the point where it has become the basis for a reinterpretation

and thus a critique of state pow-er. Classical liberalism makes exchange the general matrix

of society. It establishes a homology: just as relations in the marketplace can be

understood as an exchange of certain freedoms for a set of rights and liberties.4

Neoliberalism, according to Fou-cault, extends the process of making economic activity a

general matrix of social and political relations, but it takes as its focus not exchange but

competition.

general idea of homo economicus, that is, the way in which they place a particular

anthropology of man as an economic subject at the basis of politics. What changes is the

emphasis from an anthropology of exchange to one of competition. The shift from

exchange to competition has profound effects: while exchange was considered to be

natural, competition is understood by the neo-liberals of the twentieth century to be an

artificial relation that must be protected against the tendency for markets to form

monopolies and interventions by the state. Competition necessitates a constant

intervention on the part of the state, not on the market, but on the conditions of the

market

What is more important for us is the way in which this shift in anthropolo-gy from

homo economicus as an exchanging creature to a competitive creature, or rather as a

creature whose tendency to compete must be fostered, entails a general shift in the way

in which human beings make themselves and are made subjects. First, neoliberalism

entails a massive expansion of the field and scope of economics. Foucault cites Gary

Becker on this point: Economics is the science which studies human behavior as

relationship between ends and scarce means which have alter-nate uses. 7 Everything for

which human beings attempt to realize their ends, from marriage, to crime, to

expenditures on children, can be understood economically according to a particular

calculation of cost for benefit. Secondly, this entails a mas-sive redefinition of labor and


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the worker. The worker has become human capi-tal. Salary or wages become the

revenue that is earned on an initial investment, an investment in ones skills or abilities.

Any activity that increases the capacity to earn income, to achieve satisfaction, even

migration, the crossing of borders from one country to another, is an investment in human

capital. Of course a large portion of human capital, ones body, brains, and genetic

material, not to mention race or class, is simply given and cannot be improved. Foucault

argues that this natural lim-it is something that exists to be overcome through

technologies; from plastic surgery to possible genetic engineering that make it possible to

transform ones initial in-vestment. As Foucault writes summarizing this point of view:

Homo economicus is an entrepreneur, an entrepreneur of himself.

Foucaults object in his analysis is not to bemoan this as a victory for capitalist ideology,

the point at which the ruling ideas have truly become the ideas of the ruling class, so

much so that everyone from a minimum wage employee to a C.E.O. considers themselves

to be entrepreneurs. Nor is his task to critique the fun-damental increase of the scope ofeconomic rationality in neo-liberal economics: the assertion that economics is coextensive

with all of society, all of rationality, and that it is economics all the way down. Rather,

Foucault takes the neo-liberal ideal to be a new regime of truth, and a new way in which

people are made subjects: homo eco-Foucaults object in his analysis is not to bemoan this

as a victory for capitalist ideology, the point at which the ruling ideas have truly become

the ideas of the ruling class, so much so that everyone from a minimum wage employee

to a C.E.O. considers themselves to be entrepreneurs. Nor is his task to critique the fun-

damental increase of the scope of economic rationality in neo-liberal economics: the

assertion that economics is coextensive with all of society, all of rationality, and that it iseconomics all the way down. Rather, Foucault takes the neo-liberal ideal to be a new

regime of truth, and a new way in which people are made subjects: homo eco-nomicus is

fundamentally different subject, structured by different motivations and governed by

different principles, than homo juridicus, or the legal subject of the state. Neoliberalism

constitutes a new mode of governmentality, a manner, or a mentali-ty, in which people

are governed and govern themselves. The operative terms of this governmentality are no

longer rights and laws but interest, investment and competi-tion. Whereas rights exist to

be exchanged, and are some sense constituted through the original exchange of the social

contract, interest is irreducible and inalienable, it cannot be exchanged. The state channels

flows of interest and desire by making de-sirable activities inexpensive and undesirable

activities costly, counting on the fact that subjects calculate their interests. As a form of

governmentality, neoliberalism would seem paradoxically to govern without governing;

that is, in order to function its subjects must have a great deal of freedom to act to

choose between competing strategies.

These freedoms, the freedoms of the market, are not the outside of politics, of go-

vernmentality, as its limit, but rather are an integral element of its strategy. As a mode of

governmentality, neoliberalism operates on interests, desires, and aspira-tions rather than

through rights and obligations; it does not directly mark the body, as sovereign power, oreven curtail actions, as disciplinary power; rather, it acts on the conditions of actions.


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Thus, neoliberal governmentality follows a general trajec-tory of intensification. This

trajectory follows a fundamental paradox; as power be-comes less restrictive, less

corporeal, it also becomes more intense, saturating the field of actions, and possible

actions. 10

As Thomas Lemke ar-gues, neoliberalism is a political project that attempts to create a

social reality that it suggests already exists, stating that competition is the basis of social

relations while fostering those same relations.11 The contemporary trend away from long

term labor contracts, towards temporary and part-time labor, is not only an effective

economic strategy, freeing corporations from contracts and the expensive commitments

of health care and other benefits, it is an effective strategy of subjectification as well. It

encourages workers to see themselves not as workers in a political sense, who have

something to gain through solidarity and collective organization, but as com-panies of

one. They become individuals for whom every action, from taking courses on a new

computer software application to having their teeth whitened, can be considered aninvestment in human capital.

Of course the agreement ends there, because what Marx and neo-liberals find in labor is

fundamentally different: for Marx labor is the sphere of exploitation while for the neo-

liberals, as we have seen, labor is no sooner introduced as a problem than the difference

between labor and capital is effaced through the theory of human capital.14

Neoliberalism scram-bles and exchanges the terms of opposition between worker and

capitalist. To quote Etienne Balibar, The capitalist is defined as worker, as an

entrepreneur; the worker, as the bearer of a capacity, of a human capital.

Of course the agreement ends there, because what Marx and neo-liberals find in labor is

fundamentally different: for Marx labor is the sphere of exploitation while for the neo-

liberals, as we have seen, labor is no sooner introduced as a problem than the difference

between labor and capital is effaced through the theory of human capital.14

Neoliberalism scram-bles and exchanges the terms of opposition between worker and

capitalist. To quote Etienne Balibar, The capitalist is defined as worker, as an

entrepreneur; the worker, as the bearer of a capacity, of a human capital.

Labor is no longer limited to the specific sites of the factory or the workplace, but is any

activity that works to-wards desired ends. The terms labor and human capital

intersect, overcoming in terminology their longstanding opposition; the former becomes

the activity and the latter becomes the effects of the activity, its history. From this

intersection the discourse of the economy becomes an entire way of life, a common sense

in which every action--crime, marriage, higher education and so on--can be charted

according to a calculus of maximum output for minimum expenditure; it can be seen as an

in-vestment. Thus situating Marx and neoliberalism with respect to a similar problem

makes it possible to grasp something of the politics of neoliberalism, which through

Labor is no longer limited to the specific sites of the factory or the workplace, but is anyactivity that works to-wards desired ends. The terms labor and human capital


11/11

intersect, overcoming in terminology their longstanding opposition; the former becomes

the activity and the latter becomes the effects of the activity, its history. From this

intersection the discourse of the economy becomes an entire way of life, a common sense

in which every action--crime, marriage, higher education and so on--can be charted

according to a calculus of maximum output for minimum expenditure; it can be seen as an

in-vestment. Thus situating Marx and neoliberalism with respect to a similar problem

makes it possible to grasp something of the politics of neoliberalism, which through

a generalization of the idea of the entrepreneur, investment and risk beyond the

realm of finance capital to every quotidian relation, effaces the very fact of ex-ploitation.

Neoliberalism can be considered a particular version of capitalism with-out capitalism, a

way of maintaining not only private property but the existing dis-tribution of wealth in

capitalism while simultaneously doing away with the anta-gonism and social insecurity of

capitalism, in this case paradoxically by extending capitalism, at least its symbols, terms,

and logic, to all of society. The opposition be-tween capitalist and worker has been effacednot by a transformation of the mode of production, a new organization of the production

and distribution of wealth, but by the mode of subjection, a new production of subjectivity.

Thus, neoliberalism entails a very specific extension of the economy across all of society; it

is not, as Marx argued, because everything rests on an economic base (at least in the last

instance) that the effects of the economy are extended across of all of society, rather it is

an economic perspective, that of the market, that becomes coextensive with all of society.

As Christian Laval argues, all actions are seen to conform to the fundamental economic

ideas of self-interest, of greatest benefit for least possible cost. It is not the structure of

the economy that is extended across society but the subject of economic thinking, itsimplicit anthropology.16

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