Foucault here situates emergence of liberalism as a response to Nazism.
Ordolibs address four obstacles to liberal policy: 1) protected
economy, 2) state socialism, 3) economic planning, 4) Keynesian
intervention (107-8). This is the first ordolib coup (110).
Second ordolib coup is showing that Nazism proposes the withering away
of the state but is in fact the state’s expansion of the state (111).
This is, as he presents it, paradoxical. It is interestingly resonant
with the ‘starve the beast’ approach of contemporary (21st c.)
neoliberalism. The ordo coup de force is specifying Nazism as
unlimited state power. The coup was in their showing how the Nazi
discourse claim to wither the state was mere appearance. It was
merely apparent because their claim to organize the economy dictated
that they had to expand the state (112), “a necessary link between
this economic organization and this growth of the state” (113). This
is a standard neoliberal trope linking intervention/planning to
fascism (cf. Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom).
Third ordolib coup is showing that Nazi statism and anti-liberalism
lead to massification despite the Nazi critique of massification
(114). This is a function of the Nazi limiting of the market economy.
The meta-problem for the ordoliberals is the ‘technique of
intervention’ construed as a technology (115).
Shift in neoliberalism from ‘naturalistic’ underpinnings (of 18th c.
and 19th c. liberalism) to ‘formalist’ underpinnings (120ff.). In our
language, this is a shift from Hume to Husserl. Because the market
is not a naturally-occurring process but rather something we have to
create. So the ordoliberals are setting up the formal structure of
competition rather than the nature of free exchange. In
earlier/classical liberalism the market was not a site of jurisdiction
but “something that obeyed and had to be obey ‘natural,’ that is to
say, spontaneous mechanisms” (31).
Some of us questioned Foucault’s description of this shift. If you
look in ordo-liberalism for a justification of the eidetic/formal
structure of market competition, then their claim will be that this
formal structure ‘naturally’ (as if by an invisible hand) leads to
social order and progress. But perhaps Foucault is right, because
perhaps their justification is simply that this formal structure
blocks the way to Nazism, statism, planning, etc.. And Nazism,
according to Foucault, loomed large for the ordo-liberals as a sort of
negative justification.
Foucault discusses Weber as background for both Freiburg ordoliberals
and Frankfurt critical theory (105). From logic of contradiction to
analysis based on “the division between the rational and the
irrational” (105). Earlier Foucault had mentioned Frankfurt School in
similar respects, describing it as “that well-known critique of
European rationality and its excesses… from romanticism to the
Frankfurt School” (35). Foucault contrasts this to his own analysis
in terms of modes of veridiction. The Weberians are different, in
that they work by way of rationality against irrationality. Frankfurt
School wants to show how social rationality better understood can
nullify economic irrationality (is Foucault thinking of Habermas as
the culmination of Frankfurt school?). Freiburg School wants to show
how economic rationality can make it possible to nullify social
irrationality of capitalism. So for the latter, setting up a formal
structure in which agents and firms can rationally pursue economic
self-interest helps block social irrationalities of capitalism
resulting from Nazism, etc.. Again, Nazism is the big problem that
the ordoliberals are looking to do away with. So they end up on
opposite sides. So Foucault’s claim is that despite apparent
antagonism, that they actually share in common Weberian.
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