State Power, the Politics of Debt and Confronting Neoliberal Authoritarianism

Foucault against the Foucauldians? On the problem of the neoliberal state

“…The instrumentalist treatment of neoliberalism as a theory of state is also widespread in non-Foucauldian accounts of both the financial crisis and neoliberalism more broadly, to the extent that Sean Phelan (2018: 546) recently suggested ‘no one would deny the existence of something called the “neoliberal state”‘. Similarly, Jamie Peck (2010: 3) maintained that ‘neoliberalism was always concerned – at its philosophical, political and practical core – with the challenge of first seizing and then retasking the state’ (see also Butler, 2018; Hancock, 2019; Jessen, 2020). These authors are operating within a different epistemological framework to Foucault, so at least in principle there is no inconsistency in conceptualising neoliberalism as a theory of the state.…”

“…In the 2008 edition, Graham Burchell offers the following translation: ‘Neo-liberalism should not therefore be identified with laissez-faire, but rather with permanent vigilance, activity, and intervention’ (Foucault, 2008: 132). This particular quote has appeared extensively in a wide variety of contemporary literature concerned with neoliberalism (see for example Butler, 2018: 317; Laruffa, 2018: 692; Sotirakopoulos, 2018: 202; Dale, 2019: 4; Gamez, 2019: 113) and is usually used to justify that a particular interventionist practice is in fact neoliberal. For example, this quote has been cited by authors suggesting that social investment in the welfare state is a form of neoliberalism (Laruffa, 2018) and that the rapid expansion of the global penal population is an intrinsically neoliberal phenomenon (Butler, 2018).…”

“…This particular quote has appeared extensively in a wide variety of contemporary literature concerned with neoliberalism (see for example Butler, 2018: 317; Laruffa, 2018: 692; Sotirakopoulos, 2018: 202; Dale, 2019: 4; Gamez, 2019: 113) and is usually used to justify that a particular interventionist practice is in fact neoliberal. For example, this quote has been cited by authors suggesting that social investment in the welfare state is a form of neoliberalism (Laruffa, 2018) and that the rapid expansion of the global penal population is an intrinsically neoliberal phenomenon (Butler, 2018). Additionally, Foucault’s apparently interventionist theorisation of neoliberalism is frequently invoked to suggest that the ongoing growth of the state in the 21st century, particularly in the context of the Global Financial Crisis, is in fact an essential feature of neoliberalism (see for instance Peck, 2010: 3–4; Mirowski, 2013; Brown, 2015: 61–2).…”