I have tried to indicate three features: veridiction of the market, limitation by the calculation of governmental utility, and now the position of Europe as a region of unlimited economic development in relation to a world market. This is what I have called liberalism.
Why speak of liberalism, and why speak of a liberal art of government, when it is quite clear that the things I have referred to and the features I have tried to indicate basically point to a much more general phenomenon than the pure and simple economic doctrine, or the pure and simple political doctrine, or the pure and simple economic-political choice of liberalism in the strict sense? If we take things up a bit further back, if we take them up at their origin, you can see that what characterizes this new art of government I have spoken about would be much more a naturalism than liberalism, inasmuch as the freedom that the physiocrats and Adam Smith talk about is much more the spontaneity, the internal and intrinsic mechanics of economic processes than a juridical freedom of the individual recognized as such. Even in Kant, who is much more a jurist than an economist, you have seen that perpetual peace is not guaranteed by law, but by nature. In actual fact, it is something like a governmental naturalism which emerges in the middle of the eighteenth century. And yet I think we can speak of liberalism. I could also tell you—but I will come back to this—that this naturalism, which I think is fundamental or at any rate original in this art of government, appears very clearly in the physiocratic conception of enlightened despotism. I will come back to this at greater length, but, in a few words, what conclusions do the physiocrats draw from their discovery of the existence of spontaneous mechanisms of the economy which must be respected by every government if it does not want to induce effects counter to or even the opposite of its objectives? Is it that people must be given the freedom to act as they wish? Is it that governments must recognize the essential, basic natural rights of individuals? Is it that government must be as little authoritarian as possible? It is none of these things. What the physiocrats deduce from their discovery is that the government must know these mechanisms in their innermost and complex nature. Once it knows these mechanisms, it must, of course, undertake to respect them. But this does not mean that it provide itself with a juridical framework respecting individual freedoms and the basic rights of individuals. It means, simply, that it arm its politics with a precise, continuous, clear and distinct knowledge of what is taking place in society, in the market, and in the economic circuits, so that the limitation of its power is not given by respect for the freedom of individuals, but simply by the evidence of economic analysis which it knows has to be respected. It is limited by evidence, not by the freedom of individuals.
So, what we see appearing in the middle of the eighteenth century really is a naturalism much more than a liberalism. Nevertheless, I think we can employ the word liberalism inasmuch as freedom really is at the heart of this practice or of the problems it confronts. Actually, I think we should be clear that when we speak of liberalism with regard to this new art of government, this does not mean that we are passing from an authoritarian government in the seventeenth century and at the start of the eighteenth century to a government which becomes more tolerant, more lax, and more flexible. I do not want to say that this is not the case, but neither do I want to say that it is. It does not seem to me that a proposition like that has much historical or political meaning. Michel Foucault, 24 January 1979, translated by Graham Burchell, Lecture 3, The Birth of Biopolitics. 61-62
Liberalism's complex relationship to despotism is a major sub-theme of the Birth of Biopolitics, which he introduces (recall) in the first lecture. And not to put too fine point on Foucault's diagnosis: enlightened despotism is a recurring even natural temptation and possibility within liberalism. And according to Foucault this is so in virtue of liberalism's occasional self-identification with or embrace of a particular image of science, of political economy. Foucault calls this the privileging of 'naturalism' over 'freedom' within the tradition.
To Foucault's audience -- aware of the controversies connected to Friedman's Nobel after his visit to Pinochet's Chile -- the connection between enlightened despotism and liberalism need not be emphasized much, although Foucault is not subtle about its French roots. The audience of the third lecture might easily miss that in the quote above Foucault already distinguishes between the physiocrats and Adam Smith on this very issue (note how he first groups them together: "the freedom that the physiocrats and Adam Smith"; he then moves "the physiocratic conception of enlightened despotism.") He makes the contrast more explicit in lecture eleven, 28 march, 1979 (286).
So, we can see that Foucault is diagnosing a dynamic within liberalism, with one pole pulling toward despotism, and the other pole (recall here on Mill, who is battling a trend within utilitarianism itself); here on Buchanan; and Shklar, also here, and here) pulling away from it sometimes focused on rights. That is to say, there is a permanent risk in liberalism's struggle with older forms tyranny (associated with feudalism, the Church, Royal absolutism) and its more recent struggles with new forms of collectivist despotisms, and in its attempt to ameliorate and mitigate mercantile tendencies, that it gives rise to its own form of despotism.
It is important to note that both (a) the connection between what Foucault calls 'naturalism' and despotism as well as (b) the dynamic opposition between two poles of top-down systemic order and a bottom up spontaneity order predate liberalism (in his sense). We find (recall), as Abe Stone first noted to me, (a-b) already articulated in the second part of Descartes' Discourse on Method with Descartes himself expressing a tendency toward despotism. (The connection between naturalism in Foucault's sense and Descartes need not surprise.)
It is easy to discern (recall) that with the cost of computing low, with the wide availability of massive data, and the lure of automatic AI, the despotic tendency has reasserted itself. For, previous limitations on evidence may now seem feeble to the scientist. And, so the promise that "the government must know" society's "mechanisms in their innermost and complex nature" now seems eminently reasonable again.
Let me close with an observation. If one's vantage point is to extend the liberal tradition, yet honor Foucault's warning to us, there are two strategies: one -- and it is the one he emphasizes -- is to strengthen the (undoubtedly fallible, recall Isaiah Berlin) countervailing tendencies away from despotism. (In my blogging I tend to associate this, both the dynamic understanding of liberalism, and the stratetic significance of adopting countervailing tendencies, with Jacob Levy's writings.) Another strategy is to conceptualize scientific evidence in such a way such that the tendency toward despotism is minimized within what Foucault calls naturalism; on may understand Frank Knight's deployment of uncertainty and, more recently, methodological analytical egalitarianism [MAE] (inspired by Levy & Peart) as attempts to develop that insight. Given the magnitude of the challenge, these two strategies must be pursued simultaneously.
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