Abstract
TODAY* I WOULD LIKE to start talking to you about what is becoming a pet theme in France: American neo-liberalism.’ Obviously, I will only consider some aspects and those that may have some relevance for the kind of analysis I am suggesting.2
American neo-liberalism (I). Its context. The difference between American and European neo-liberalism. ∼ American neo-liberalism as a global claim, utopianfocus, and method of thought. ∼Aspects of this neo-liberalism: (1) The theory of human capital. The two processes that it represents: (a) an extension of economic analysis within its own domain: criticism of the classical analysis of labor in terms of the timefactor; (b) an extension of economic analysis to domains previously considered to be non-economic. The epistemological transformation produced by neo-liberal analysis:from the analysis of economic processes to the analysis of the internal rationality of human behavior. ∼ Work as economic conduct. ∼Its division into capital, abilities, and income. ∼The redefinitzon of homo aeconomicus as entrepreneur of himselif. ∼ The notion of “human capital.” Its constitutive elements: (a) innate elements and the question of the improvement ofgenetic human capital; (b) acquired elements and the problem of theformation 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 ofgrowth.
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Footnotes
“Méthodologie économique et économie non marchand,” communication to the Congress of French-speaking Economists (Quebec, May 1976), partially reproduced in the Revue d’économie politique, July-August 1977 (see H. Lepage, Demain le capitalisme, p. 224).
See, Moi, Pierre Rivière, ayant égorgé ma mère, ma sœur et mon frère…, presented by Michel Foucault (Paris: Julliard, 1973); English translation by F. Jellinek, I, Pierre Rivière … (New York: Pantheon, 1978, and Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1984).
I. Ehrlich, “The deterrent effect of capital punishment: a question of life and death,” American Economic Review, vol. 65 (3), June 1975, pp. 397–417.
George J. Stigler (1911–1991): professor at the University of Chicago from 1958 to 1981, researcher at the National Bureau of Economic Research from 1941 to 1976, he directed the Journal of Political Economy from 1973 until his death. He won the Nobel Prize for economics in 1982. Foucault refers here to his article “The optimum enforcement of laws,” Journal of Political Economy, vol. 78 (3), May-June 1970, pp. 526–536.
G. Becker, “Crime and punishment: an economic approach,” Journal of Political Economy, vol. 76 (2), March-April 1968, pp. 196–217; reprinted in his The Economic Approach to Human Behavior, pp. 39–85. On these three authors cited by Foucault, see F. Jenny, “La théorie économique du crime: une revue de la littérature” in J.-J. Rosa and F. Aftalion, eds., L’Économique retrouvée, pp. 296–324 (Foucault draws on information provided in this article). See also, since then, G. Radnitsky and P. Bernholz, eds., Economic Imperialism: The Economic Approach applied outside the field of economics (New York: Paragon House, 1987).
Jeremy Bentham (see above, lecture of 10 January 1979, p. 12); see in particular the Traités de législation civile et pénale, ed. E. Dumont (Paris: Boussange, Masson & Besson, 1802) and Théorie des peines et des récompenses, ed. E. Dumont (London: B. Dulau, 1811) 2 volumes. It was these adaptations-translations by Dumont, based on Bentham’s manuscripts, which made the latter’s thought known at the beginning of the nineteenth century. On the genesis of the edition of the Traités de législation civile et pénale based on Bentham’s manuscripts, see E. Halévy, La Formation du radicalisme philosophique ([vol. 1, Paris: F. Alcan, 1901] Paris: PUF, 1995) Appendix 1, pp. 281–285; English translation by Mary Morris, The Growth of Philosophical Radicalism (London: Faber & Faber, 1972), Appendix “Traités de Législation Civile et Pénale,” pp. 515–521. The first English edition of these writings dates, for the first, from 1864 (Theory of Legislation, translation from the French by R. Hildreth, London: Kegan Paul), and for the second, from 1825 (The Rationale of Reward, translation from the French by R. Smith, London: J. & A. Hunt) and 1830 (The Rationale of Punishment, translation from the French by R. Smith, London: R. Heward).
See Patrick Colquhoun, A Treatise on the Police of the Metropolis (London: C. Dilly, 5th ed., 1797).
Foucault is referring here to the theory of speech acts developed in the framework of Wittgenstein’s pragmatic linguistics by J.L. Austin in How To Do Things with Words (London: Oxford University Press, 1962), P.F. Strawson, “Intention and convention in speech-acts” in Logico-Linguistic Papers (London: Methuen, 1971), and J.R. Searle, Speech Acts: An essay in the philosophy of language (London: Cambridge University Press, 1969). The French translation of the latter, Les Actes de langage. Essai de philosophie du langage (Paris: Hermann, 1972) contains an important preface by O. Ducrot, “De Saussure à la philosophie du langage.” These four authors are briefly referred to by Foucault in a round table discussion in Rio de Janeiro in 1973 concerning “the analysis of discourse as strategy” following the lectures “La vérité et les formes juridiques” Dits et Écrits, 2, p. 631. [The discussion is omitted from the English translation of these lectures; G.B.] See also, on the notion of speech acts, LArchéologie du savoir (Paris: Gallimard, 1969) pp. 110–111; English translation by A. Sheridan, The Archeology of Knowledge (London: Tavistock, and New York: Pantheon, 1972) pp. 83–84, and Foucault’s answer to Searle, with whom he was in correspondence some weeks after these lectures: “As to the analysis of speech acts, I am in complete agreement with your remarks. I was wrong in saying that statements were not speech acts, but in doing so I wanted to underline the fact that I see them under a different angle than yours” (letter to Searle of 15 May 1979) quoted by H. Dreyfus and P. Rabinow, Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982) p. 46, note 1.
G.J. Stigler, “The optimum enforcement of laws,” p. 40: “The goal of enforcement, let us assume, is to achieve that degree of compliance with the rule of prescribed (or proscribed) behavior that the society believes it can afford. There is one decisive reason why the society must forego ‘complete’ enforcement of the rule: enforcement is costly.”
B.J. Eatherly, “Drug-law enforcement: should we arrest pushers or users?” Journal of Political Economy, vol. 82 (1), 1974, pp. 210–214; M. Moore, “Policies to achieve discrimination on the effective price of heroin,” American Economic Review, vol. 63 (2), May 1973, pp. 270–278. Foucault relies here on the synthesis of these articles given by F. Jenny, p. 316.
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Senellart, M., Ewald, F., Fontana, A. (2008). 14 March 1979. In: Senellart, M., Ewald, F., Fontana, A. (eds) The Birth of Biopolitics. Michel Foucault. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230594180_9
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