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July 29, 2009
Ali Muhammad Rizvi in Foucault and Capitalist Rationality: A Reconstruction builds on the insights of the governmentality theorists about a liberal mode of governance ( a history of the present) to reconstruct Foucault’s understanding of capitalist rationality. He says that the originality of Foucault’s analysis lies in his realisation that capitalism manages individuals and populations (primarily) through freedom and not (primarily) through repression.
Rizvi says:
It is normally understood that Foucault studies the strategies of the accumulation of men as the function of the problem of governance but what is seldom understood is that Foucault treats the problem of governance not in isolation but in relationship to the problem of the accumulation of capital. The problem is not just the governance but the type of governance that provides the space in which hindrances to capital accumulation are the least while its possibilities are being utilised to the maximum. Thus the problem is not just one of producing docile bodies but one of producing docile bodies which are also useful. The purpose of producing docility is to maximise utility. The type of docility that hampers utility is unacceptable. Therefore the problem of governance in Foucault is the problem of the governance for capital accumulation (and for nothing else).
Rizvi's argument is that there exists a more primordial relationship between the system of the accumulation of men and the system of the accumulation of capital:
It is not the case that there is one system for the production of docility - of governance and there is another system for the production of utility - of capital, which are then correlated and reinforce each other. Prior to this and as the condition of the possibility of this correlation and reinforcement, there exists, so to speak, a primordial order which is at once the way of governance and capital accumulation.... The polity in capitalist order is already a capitalist polity.In a capitalist system both polity and economy are geared towards the singular aim of simultaneously producing utility and docility. The polity and economy are equally productive in a capitalist order.
Both men and wealth need to be bared from accumulating in non-capitalist forms.
He adds:
The apparent paradox of capitalism is that in order to increase the utility and productive capacity of individuals and populations it requires continuous expansion in the ambit of freedom and diversity. But in order to make individuals docile and hence governable, it needs to limit this diversity. It is on the maintenance of this delicate balance between diversity and singularity that the sustenance and continuity of the whole capitalist system rests. Curbing freedom and diversity would decrease utility and productivity and hence slow down the motor of production and innovation on whose ever-increasing speed the legitimacy of the whole system depends. On the other hand expansion in the ambit of freedom and diversity to the extent that it becomes untraceable to a singularity would de-link diversity from capital accumulation. It would become ungovernable (hence creating a crisis of governance) in the sense that it would no longer be a capitalist governance i.e. governance for capital accumulation. (and it alone)
Consequently, the continued existence of capitalism requires the continued expansion of the sphere of freedom and that this expansion is geared towards the single end of capital accumulation. The problem of capitalism is not freedom but the intransigence of freedom, the possibility that freedom may take forms that are not traceable to the singularity of capital accumulation. Thus the problem of capitalism is neither servitude nor freedom per se, the problem of capitalism is the problem of the intransigence of freedom (
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