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Part of the book series: Michel Foucault ((MFL))

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Abstract

I WOULD LIKE TO refine a little the theses or hypotheses that I put forward last week with regard to what I think is a new art of government that began to be formulated, reflected upon, and outlined around the middle of the eighteenth century. I think an essential characteristic of this new art of government is the organization of numerous and complex internal mechanisms whose function—and this is what distinguishes them from raison dEtat—is not so much to ensure the growth of the state’s forces, wealth, and strength, to ensure its unlimited growth, as to limit the exercise of government power internally.

Liberalism and the implementation of a new art of government in the eighteenth century. ∼Specifzc 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 jurisdiction. Questions of method. The stakes of research undertaken around madness, the penal order, and sexualily: 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 utilitarianism. The question of “utilityand limiting the exercise of power by public authorities. ∼ Comment on the status of heterogeneity in history: strategic against dialectical logic. The notion ofinterestas operator (operateur) of the new art of government.

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Footnotes

  1. On the relations between Eucken and Husserl, see F. Bilger, ibid., p. 47: “On his arrival in the town, Eucken established a deep friendship with Husserl, spiritually linked to Rudolf Eucken. The two men had frequent contacts, sadly quickly interrupted by the philosopher’s death. In his works Eucken acknowledged the influence of the founder of phenomenology on the formation of his economic method. In particular, he often refers to Husserl’s great book, Die logische Untersuchungen (Halle: S. Niemeyer, 1928); English translation by J.N. Findlay, Logical Investigations (London: Routledge, 2001) 2 volumes), the critical and positive aspect of which he transposes into political economy” For a more precise analysis, see R. Klump, “On the phenomenological roots of German Ordnungstheorie: what Walter Eucken owes to Edmund Husserl” in P. Commun, ed., L’Ordolibéralisme allemand: aux sources de l’économie sociale de marche (University of Cergy-Pontoise, CIRAC/CICC, 2003) pp. 149–162.

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  2. Among whom Hans Grossmann-Doerth and Franz Böhm (on the latter, see below note 11). See F. Bilger, La Pensée économique libérale, pp. 47–48 and 71–74. On Kelsen, see Sécurité, Territoire, Population; Security, Territory, Population, lecture of 25 January 1978, note 1.

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  3. W. Eucken, “Staatliche Strukturwandlungen und die Krisis des Kapitalismus” [Structural modifications of the state and crisis of capitalism], Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv, Jena, vol. 36 (2), 1932, pp. 297–321.

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  4. Wilhelm Lautenbach (1891–1948); see especially his article: “Auswirkungen der unmittel-baren Arbeitsbeschaffung,” Wirtschaft und Statistik, vol. 13, no. 21, 1933, republished in G. Bombach and others, eds., Der Keynesianismus (Berlin: Springer, 1981) pp. 301–308, and his posthumous work, Z.ins, Kredit und Produktion (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr, 1952).

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  5. Hjalmar Greely Horace Schacht (1877–1970), first of all President of the Reichsbank, from November 1923 to March 1930, and then Minister for the Economy from July 1934 to November 1937. He was opposed to Göring and to arms expenditure (see below, note 36), but retained the title of Minister without portfolio until 1943. See J. François-Poncet, La Politique économique de l’Allemagne occidental pp. 21–22.

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  6. Quite the opposite. From the end of 1933 Eucken took part in a seminar organized by the economist Karl Diehl, which brought together opponents of Nazism from various faculties (among whom were the historian Gerhard Ritter and the theologian Clemens Bauer). He was resolutely committed against the policy directed by Heidegger in the administration of the University of Freiburg. He was a co-founder, with several Catholic and Protestant theologians, of the Freiburger Konzil, which was without doubt the only university group of opposition to Nazism after the 1938 pogroms, and during the war he took part in the discussions of the Arbeitsgemeinschaft Volkwirtschaftslehre, organized by Erwin von Beckerath, at the heart of Gruppe IV (responsible for economic questions) of the Akademie für Deutsches Recht founded by the Nazis in 1933–34 with the aim of Germanizing the law. Gruppe IV was created in January 1940. Its organizer, Jens Jessen, who became a fervent opponent of National Socialism, was executed in November 1944 for his participation in the July Plot against Hitler. Gruppe IV itself, which constituted an underground opposition forum, was suppressed in March 1943, but discussions between economists—especially around the transition economy of the post-war period—continued within a private framework of the “Beckerath circle.” Eucken published several articles during this period. See H. Rieter and M. Schmolz, “The ideas of German Ordoliberalism 1938–1945: pointing the way to a new economic order,” The European Journal of the History of Economic Thought, I (1), Autumn 1993, pp. 87–114; R. Klump, “On the phenomenological roots of German Ordnungstheorie” pp. 158–160.

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  7. Foucault confuses here the date of publication of the preface, co-signed by F. Böhm, W. Eucken, and H. Grossmann-Doerth with the title “Our task,” in the first volume of the series Die Ordnung der Wirtschaft directed by these three authors (see the English translation with the title “The Ordo Manifesto of 1936” in A. Peacock and H. Willgerodt, eds., Germany’s Social Market Economy: Origins and evolution [London: Macmillan, 1989] pp. 14–26) and that of the first issue of the journal Ordo in 1948. The latter appeared in the form of an annual volume from 1948 to 1974 (Düsseldorf: Helmut Küpper) and from 1975 (Stuttgart: Gustav Fischer).

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  8. W. Eucken, Die Grundlagen der Nationalökonomie (Jena: G. Fischer, 1940, 2nd ed. 1942); English translation by T.W. Hutchison, The Foundations of Economics: History and theory in the analysis of economic reality (London: William Hodge, 1950).

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  9. Franz Böhm (1895–1977). Legal counselor to the Minister for the Economy from 1925 to 1932. He taught law at the universities of Freiburg and Jena from 1933 to 1938, but had to resign due to his opposition to the anti-Semitic policy After the war he became Minister of Cultural Affairs in Hesse (1945–1946) and then professor of civil law and economics at the University of Frankfurt. He was a member (CDU) of the Bundestag from 1953 to 1965 and from 1948 to 1977 he played an active role in the Scientific Council of the Verwaltung für Wirtschaft des Vereinigten Wirtschaftsgebietes in Frankfurt. In 1965 he became the first German ambassador to Israel. His main works are: Wettbewerb und Monopolkampf(Berlin: C. Heymann, 1933); Die Ordnung der Wirtschaft als geschichtliche Aufgabe und rechtsschöpferische Leistung (Stuttgart-Berlin: Kohlhammer, 1937); Wirtschaftsordnung und Staatsvefassung (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr, 1950). See too his Reden und Schriften (Karlsruhe: C.F. Müller, 1960). With W. Eucken and H. Grossmann-Doerth, he was one of the co-signatories of the 1936 “Ordoliberal manifesto” (see above, note 8).

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  10. Alfred Müller-Armack (1901–1978). Assistant in economics at the University of Cologne from 1926, he obtained a professorial chair at Münster in 1940, and then again at Cologne in 1950. He joined the National Socialist Party in 1933 while condemning its racial doctrine (see his book, Staatsidee und Wirtschaftsordnung im neuen Reich [Berlin: Junker and Dünnhaupt, 1933]), and he then progressively distanced himself from the party in the name of his religious convictions. From 1952 to 1963 he was appointed ministerial director to the Minister for the Economy and Secretary of State for European problems. In this capacity he took part in the drafting of the Rome Treaty. He resigned in 1963 in order to take up posts in the administrative councils of several big enterprises. In addition, he was a member of the Mont Pèlerin group, created in Switzerland in 1947 on the initiative of F. Hayek, with a view to the defense of free enterprise, and other members of which were L. von Mises, W. Röpke, and M. Friedman. See F. Bilger, La Pensée économique libérale, pp. 111–112. His main works (apart from his Genealogie der Wirtschafsstile, see below note 14) are: Wirtschaftslenkung und Marktwirtschaft (Düsseldorf: Verlag Wirtschaft und Finanzen, 1946, 2nd ed. 1948); Diagnose unserer Gegenwart. Z.ur Bestimmung unseres geistesgeschichtlichen Standortes (Gütersloh: Bertelsmann, 1949); Religion und Wirschaft. Geistesgeschichtliche Hintergründe unserer europäischen Lebensform (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1959).

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  11. A. Müller-Armack, Genealogie der Wirtschaftsstile: die geistesgeschichtlichen Ursprünge der Staats-und Wirtschaftsformen bis zum Augang des 18 Jahrhunderts (Stuttgart: Alfred Kohlhammer, 1941, 3rd ed. 1944). The author “tried to show that the economic organization of a time is the economic translation of the dominant ‘Weltanschauung’” and “deduced [from this] the need to construct a post-war economy in line with a new ‘style of life’ that the Germans intended to adopt” (F. Bilger, La Pensée économique libérale, pp. 109–110).

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  12. The concept of “economic style” (Wirtschaftsstil), designating the overall socio-economic form of a society in a given epoch, was forged by A. Spiethoff (“Die allgemeine Volkswirtschaftslehre als geschichtliche Theorie”. Die Wirtschaftsstile, Schmollers Jahrbuch für Gesetzgebung, Verwaltung und Wirtschaft im Deutschen Reich, 56, II, 1932) in order to deepen and clarify the concept of “economic system” (Wirtschaftssystem), introduced by W. Sombart in the 1920s: Die Ordnung des Wirtschaftslebens (Berlin: Julius Springer, 1927); Die drei Nationalökonomien-Gesischte und System der Lehre von der Wirtschaft (Berlin: Duncker and Humblot, 1930). It is therefore in partial continuity with the problematic of the German historical school, while exhibiting a concern for a more rigorous typological analysis. The concept was critically examined by W. Eucken, Die Grundlagen der Nationalökonomie, pp. 71–74; The Foundations of Economics, pp. 90–93. See H. Möller, “Wirtschaftsordnung, Wirtschaftssystem und Wirtschaftsstil: ein Vegleich der Auffassungen von W. Eucken, W. Sombart und A. Spiethoff,” in Schmollers Jahrbuch für Gesetzgebung, Verwaltung und Volkswirtschaft (Berlin: Duncker and Humblot, 64, 1940) pp. 75–98. In his articles from the 1950s and 1960s, Müller-Armack frequently uses the concept of style to define the program of action of the social market economy. See, for example, “Stil und Ordnung der sozialen Marktwirtschaft” (1952) in A. Müller-Armack, Wirtschaftsordnung und Wirtschaftspolitik (Fribourg-en-Brisgau: Rombach, 1966) pp. 231–242. See S. Broyer, “ Ordnungstheorie et ordolibéralisme: les leçons de la tradition” in P. Commun, ed., L’Ordolibéralisme allemand, pp. 90–95.

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  13. Wilhelm Röpke (1899–1966): professor of economics at the University of Marbourg, until his dismissal for political reasons. A convinced follower of neo-marginalism, he was designated to be a member of an official commission to study unemployment in 1930–31. See F. Bilger, La Pensée économique libérale, pp. 93–103; J. François-Poncet, La Politique économique, pp. 56–57.

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  14. Kurt von Schleicher (1882–1934): Minister of the Reichswehr (June 1932), he became Chancellor after the resignation of von Papen (December 1932) but had to give way to Hitler in January 1933. He was assassinated by the Nazis the following year. It seems that Foucault here mixes up Röpke and Rüstow (see below, note 23). It was actually to the latter that Schleicher wanted to give the Ministry of Economic Affairs in January 1933.

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  15. W. Röpke, Ist die deutsche Wirtschaftspolitik richtig? Analyse und Kritik (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1950) (see F. Bilger, La Pensée économique libérale, p. 97); republished in W. Stützel and others, eds., Grundtexte zur sozialen Marktwirtschaft, pp. 49–62 (see above, lecture of 31 January 1979, note 21).

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  16. W. Röpke, Die Gesellschaftskrisis der Gegenwart (Erlanbach-Zurich: E. Rentsch, 1942, 4th ed. 1945); French translation by H. Faesi and Ch. Reichard, La Crise de notre temps (Neuchâtel: Éd. de La Baconnière, 1945, edition with reduced annotations and no index; republished, Paris: “Petite Bibliothèque Payot”, 1962); English translation by Annette and Peter Schiffer Jacobsohn, (Roepke) The Social Crisis of Our Time (London: William Hodge, 1950). The work was banned in Germany shortly after publication (see the Völkische Beobachter of 11 July 1942). The other volumes completing this book are, Civitas Humana: Grundfragen der Gesellschafts- und Wirtschaftsreform (Erlenbach-Zurich: E. Rentsch, 1944); French translation by P. Bastier, Civitas Humana, ou les Questions fondamentales de la Réforme économique et sociale: capitalisme, collectivisme, humanisme économique, État, société, économie (Paris: Librairie de Médicis, 1946); English translation by Cyril Spencer Fox, Civitas Humana. A Humane Order of Society (London: William Hodge, 1948), and Internationale Ordnung (Erlenbach-Zurich: E. Rentsch, 1945); French translation [anon.], La Communauté interna-tionale (Geneva: C. Bourquin, 1947); English translation, International Order and Economic integration (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1959). In 1947 Röpke also published a book on the “German question,” Die deutsche Frage (Erlenbach-Zurich: E. Rentsch); English translation by E.W. Dickes, The German Question (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1946), in which he recommends a constitutional monarchy as a way of re-establishing the Rechtsstaat.

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  17. E. Husserl, Die Krisis der europäischen Wissenschaften und die transzendentale Phänomenologie (W. Biemel: 1954); English translation by D. Carr, The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology (Evanston Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1970). If the definitive version belongs to Husserl’s posthumous works, the first part, which “was the material of two lectures in Vienna and Prague in 1935, ”was published in Belgrade in 1936, in Arthur Liebert’s journal, Philosophia. It is therefore possible that Röpke knew of the text. However he makes no explicit reference to it. His source, or his implicit reference, is religious rather than philosophical. See Civitas Humana, p. xvii: ( ... ) a careful reader of the celebrated but much misunderstood papal Encyclical ‘Quadragesimo Anno’ will find a social and economic philosophy expressed therein “which at heart comes to much the same conclusion [as Die Gesellschaftskrisis der Gegenwart; The Social Crisis of Our Time].” On this encyclical, see above, lecture of 31 January 1979, note 31.

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  18. Alexander Rüstow (1885–1963), son of Prussian general officer. As a radical socialist he belonged to the first generation of the Jugendbewegung. After the First World War he was employed in the Ministry for the economy and in 1924 he became scientific counselor of the Verein deutscher Maschinenbauanstalten (VDMA, The Confederation of German Machine Constructors). His adoption of a position favorable to social liberalism made him the target of Communists and National Socialists. After his exile in 1933, with Röpke’s help, he obtained a post as professor of economic and social history at Istanbul, where he remained until 1947. In 1950 he succeeded Alfred Weber in the chair of economic sociology. His main -works are: Das Versagen des Wirtschaftsliberalismus als religionsgeschichtliches Problem [The failure of economic liberalism, a problem of religious history] (Istanbul, 1945) and his monumental trilogy: Ortsbestimmung der Gegenwart [Determination of the place of the present] (Erlenbach-Zurich: E. Rentsch) volume 1: Ursprung der Herrschaft [The origin of domination], 1950; volume 2: Weg der Freiheit [The road of freedom], 1952; and volume 3: Herrschaft oder Freiheit, 1955, [abridged English translation by Salvator Attanasio, Freedom or Domination: a Historical Critique of Civilisation, ed. A. Dankwart (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980)], see the review by C.J. Friedrich, “The political thought of Neo-liberalism,” The American Political Science Review, 49 (2) June 1955, pp. 514–525.

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  19. Friedrich von Hayek: born in Vienna 8 May 1899; studies law and political sciences at Vienna where he follows F. von. Wieser’s (1851–1926) courses on political economy and takes part in the informal seminars organized in his office by Ludwig von Mises, then a functionary in the Chamber of Commerce. Hayek, who still leans towards the socializing thought of the Fabians, soon adheres to the ultra-liberal theses defended by Mises in his book Socialism (see lecture of 31 January 1979, note 11). Director of the Viennese Institute for economic research (the vice president of which is Mises), he leaves Austria for London in 1931. Appointed professor of social and moral sciences at the University of Chicago in 1952, he returns to Germany in 1962 to finish his career at the University of Freiburg. Apart from the works cited in notes (see above, lecture of 10 January 1979, note 3, and below, this lecture, note 33), Hayek is the author of: Prices and Production (London: George Routledge and Sons, 1931); Individualism and Economic Order (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press— Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1949); The Counter-Revolution of Science: Studies of the abuse of reason (Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press, 1952); Law, Legislation and Liberty, vol. 1: Rules and Order; vol. 2: The Mirage of Social Justice; vol. 3: The Political Order of a Free People (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press—Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1973–1979).

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  20. Proclaimed on 9 November 1918, following the announcement of the abdication of William II, endowed with a constitution in 1919, the Weimar Republic (1919–1933) had to confront considerable economic difficulties due, in particular, to inflation accentuated by the costs of reparations and to the shock of the 1929 crisis that encouraged the development of extremist movements.

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  21. Max Weber (1864–1920). It is not clear that Foucault is referring here to Weber’s great work, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr, 1922; 4th ed. by J. Winckelmann, 1956); partial French translation J. Chavy and E. de Dampierre (Paris: Plon, 1971); English translation by Ephraim Fischoff and others, Economy and Society. An Outline of Interpretive Sociology (Berkeley and London: University of California Press, 1979) or rather to The Protestant Ethic and The Spirit of Capitalism already referred to (see above, lecture of 31 January 1979, note 25).

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  22. On the abundant literature on the relation of Weber to Marx, and the contradictory points of view it contains, see C. Colliot-Thélène, “Max Weber et l’héritage de la conception matérialiste de l’histoire,” in Études wébériennes (Paris: PUF, 2001) pp. 103–132.

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  23. Max Horkheimer (1895–1973), co-founder of the Institut für Sozialforschung (Institute for Social Research), created at Frankfurt in 1923, which he reorganizes from 1931. Dismissed in 1933, he directed the Genevan annex of the Institute and then settled in New York in 1934. He returned to Germany in April 1948.

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  24. Ludwig Joseph (Lujo) Brentano (1844–1931): member of the Young Historical School guided by Gustav von Schmoller (1838–1917). See Joseph A. Schumpeter, History of Economic Analysis, p. 809. F. Bilger, La Pensée économique libérale, pp. 25–26, presents him as “the founder of German liberalism”: “He preached a liberalism that had to distinguish itself from English liberalism by a program that was not only negative, but also positive, particularly in the social domain. The state must therefore intervene, and Brentano was part of the ‘Verein für Sozialpolitik’ founded by the state socialists; he supported the social policy carried out by the Empire, and he approved the formation of workers’ unions that, according to him, enabled equilibrium to be reestablished between forces on the labor market.”

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  25. Friedrich List (1789–1846), Das nationale System der politischen Ökonomie (Stuttgart-Tübingen: Cotta, 1841); French translation by H. Richelot, Système nationale d économie politique (Paris: Capelle, 1857; republished “Tel,” 1998). On List’s role in the genesis of the “protection of infant industries,” see W. Röpke (Roepke), The Social Crisis of our Time, pp. 55–62.

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  26. Deutscher Zollverein: Customs union of the German States carried out in the nineteenth century under Prussian direction. Initiated in 1818, extended in 1854 to almost all of Germany, it made a strong contribution to the transformation of Germany into a major economic power. On this subject see Foucault’s comments in the last pages of the manuscript for the preceding lecture (above p. 95).

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  27. Walther Rathenau (1867–1922): Jewish industrialist who, from 1915, was in charge of the organization of the German war economy. Minister of Foreign Affairs in 1922, he was assassinated by two nationalists of the extreme right. See, W. Röpke, Civitas Humana, p. 79, note 1 to p. 63: “Eternal Saint-Simonism which inherits from its founder the ideas of a planning hungering for power meets us again in the tragic figure of Walter Rathenau, the great German industrialist and engineer, himself a victim of a most tragic period, who, together with other engineer friends invented if not the thing itself at least the phrase ‘Planned Economy’ (Planwirtschaft). He also became what a little later was called a ‘Technocrat.’” See too F. Hayek, The Road to Serfdom (Chicago: University of Chicago Press; London: Routledge, 1944) p. 129, which underlines the influence of his ideas on the economic options of the Nazi regime.

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  28. The four-year plan asserted the absolute priority of rearmament. On the role and organization of the office of the four-year plan directed by Göring, see F. Neuman, Behemoth: The structure and practice of National Socialism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1944) pp. 247–254, with table on p. 253. For a synthesis of the most recent work on this moment of German economic policy, see I. Kershaw, Nazi Dictatorship: Problems and perspectives of interpretation (London and New York: E. Arnold, 1996) pp. 59–61. See also H. James, The German Slump: Politics and economics, 1924–1936 (Oxford: Clarendon Press; New York: Oxford University Press, 1986).

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  29. See F. Hayek, The Road to Serfdom, p. 129: “Through his ”writings he [Rathenau] has probably, more than any other man, determined the economic views of the generation “which grew up in Germany during and immediately after the last war; and some of his closest collaborators were later to form the backbone of the staff of Göring’s Five Year Plan administration.”

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  30. Appointed by Churchill, in 1940, president of an inter-ministerial committee responsible for proposing improvements to the English system of social protection. William Beveridge (1879–1963) published a first report in 1942, Social Insurance and Allied Services (New York: Agathon Press, 1969), in which he recommended a generalized, unified, and centralized system of social protection, as well as the creation of a health service free and accessible to all, and then a second report in 1944, Full Employment in a Free Society (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1944), that broadly helped to popularize Keynesian theses. The first report was never fully translated into French (on the syntheses, commentaries, and analyses published in French in the 1940s, see N. Kerschen, “L’influence du rapport Beveridge sur le plan français de sécurité sociale in 1945,” Revue française de science politique, vol. 45 (4), August 1995, p. 571). See R. Servoise, Le Premier Plan Beveridge, le Second Plan Beveridge (Paris: Domat-Montchrestien, 1946). Foucault refers to the Beveridge plan in various lectures and interviews. See especially, “Crise de la médecine our crise de l’antimédicine?” (1976) Dits et Écrits, 3, pp. 40–42; “Un système fini face à une demande infinie” (1983), Dits et Écrits, 4, p. 373; English translation by Alan Sheridan as “Social Security” in Michel Foucault. Politics, Philosophy, Culture. Interviews and other writings 1977–1984, ed. Lawrence D. Kritzman, translated by Alan Sheridan and others (New York and London: Routledge, 1988) p. 166.

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  31. W. Röpke, “Das Beveridgeplan,” Schweizerische Monatshefte für Politik und Kultur, June-July 1943. This criticism of the Beveridge plan is summarized by Röpke in Civitas Humana, pp. 142–149 (see above, lecture of 7 March 1979, note 5). Referring to Foucault’s comments in this passage, K. Tribe, in his Strategies of Economic Order, German Economic Discourse 1750–1950 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995) p. 240, notes: “There is some artistic licence at work here: for Röpke does not seem to have committed himself in so many words.”

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  32. On the juridical structure of the National Socialist State, Foucault had read, notably, the works of M. Cot, La Conception hitlérienne du droit, doctoral thesis (Toulous: Impr. du Commerce, 1938), and R. Bonnard, Le Droit et l’État dans la doctrine national-socialist (Paris: Librairie Générale de Droit et de Jurisprudence, 1936, 2nd ed. 1939).

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  33. Werner Sombart (1863–1941): with A. Spiethoff and M. Weber, he was one of the main representatives of the last generation of the German historical school. Professor of economics at Berlin from 1917. His first major work, Der moderne Kapitalismus (Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot, 1902) is a continuation of Marx’s theses and wins him a socialist reputation. In 1924 he adheres to the program of the conservative revolution and in 1933 becomes a member of the A.kademie für deutsches Recht. Despite his adherence to the Führer principle, he does not subscribe to the National Socialist racial theories. His last books, including, Deutscher Sozialismus were badly received by the regime.

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  34. Deutscher Sozialismus (Berlin-Charlottenburg: Buchholz und Weisswange, 1934); English translation by K.F. Geiser as, A New Social Philosophy (Princeton and London: Princeton University Press, 1934); French translation by G. Welter as Le Socialisme allemand: une théorie nouvelle de la société (Paris: Payot, 1938), republished with a Preface by A. de Benoist (Paris: Pardès “Révolution conservatrice,” 1990).

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  35. See H. Marcuse, One-dimensional Man: Studies in the ideology of advanced industrial societies (Boston: Beacon Press, 1964).

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  36. W. Sombart, A New Social Philosophy, Part One: “The economic era” ch. 2, “The Reconstruction of Society and the State” and ch. 3, “The Intellectual life” pp. 16–41.

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  37. W. Sombart, Der Moderne Kapitalismus; French translation by S. Jankélévitch as L’Apogée du capitalisme (Paris: Payot, 1932) Part III, ch. 53, and Das Proletariat (Frankfurt am Main: Rütter und Loening, 1906) in which he denounced the solitude and uprooting of workers produced by the “economic era.”

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  38. See G. Debord, La Société du spectacle (Paris: Buchet-Chastel, 1967). The books by Marcuse and Debord to which Foucault alludes here were the two major references of the Situationist critique from the end of the 1960s (see already the final lecture of the previous year’s lectures, Sécurité, Territoire, Population; Security, Territory, Population, lecture of 5 April 1978, p. 338, and note 15).

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  39. See W. Röpke, Civitas Humana: “His success rests on the fact that from ‘scientism’ he drew the final consequences for politics and the life of society and thus inevitably arrived by these means at the only possible destination, namely Collectivism. This represents the scientific elimination of the Human element in political and economic practice. His dubious glory it is that he created the model for a world and social outlook which may be described as eternal Saint-Simonism; that attitude of mind which is the outcome of a mixture of the hubris of the natural scientist and engineer mentality of those who, with the cult of the ‘Colossal’ combine their egotistical urge to assert themselves; those who would construct and organise economics, the State and society according to supposedly scientific laws and blueprints, whilst mentally reserving for themselves the principal porte-feuilles.”

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  40. Claude Henri de Rouvroy, comte de Saint-Simon (1760–1825), French philosopher, economist, and social reformer, who, in Du système industriel (1821) (Paris: Anthropos, 1966), to remedy the crisis opened up by the Revolution, presented a plan of “general overhaul of the social system” (p. 11) replacing the old “feudal and military system” (p. 12) with the “industrial system” founded on the domination of industrialists and scientists and organizing the whole of society in terms of the “industrial aim” (p. 19). See also Catéchisme des industriels (Paris: Impr. de Sétier, 1824–1825) in four volumes, the third volume of “which ”was redrafted by Auguste Comte. After his death, his disciples—Rodrigues, Enfantin, and Bazard—were organized in a Society around the journal Le Producteur. Their movement played an important role in the colonial policy of the July monarchy, the construction of the first railways, and building the Suez canal.

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  41. On the intuition of the essence, or ei’dos, in opposition to empirical intuition, see E. Husserl, Ideas. General Introduction to Pure Phenomenology, translated by W.R. Boyce Gibson (London/New York: George Allen and Unwin/Humanities Press, 1969).

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Michel Senellart François Ewald (General Editor)Alessandro Fontana (General Editor)

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© 2008 Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited

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Senellart, M., Ewald, F., Fontana, A. (2008). 17 January 1979. In: Senellart, M., Ewald, F., Fontana, A. (eds) The Birth of Biopolitics. Michel Foucault. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230594180_2

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