In this engaging new book, Wendy Brown employs a careful reading and critique of Michel Foucault’s 1978-1979 lecture course The Birth of Biopolitics as a way to think about neoliberal government rationality in advanced democracies today. Her basic claim, as the title indicates, is that neoliberalism increasingly renders democratic political agency impossible. Rather than democratic political agency, individuals are construed (and increasingly construe themselves) simply as economic actors (or as entrepreneurs of themselves as Foucault puts it in The Birth of Biopolitics). The book is divided into two parts, with the first three chapters delineating Brown’s conception of neoliberalism followed by two chapters that engage Foucault’s lecture course at the Collége de France. The second section of the book, consisting of final three chapters of the book, examines the impact of neoliberal rationality upon the institutional structures of politics, the judiciary, and education. The conclusion makes a case for what is lost when practices of democratic subjectivity have little more than formal significance and examines the role that sacrifice plays in neoliberal governmentality.

There has been a spate of recent books on neoliberalism. What distinguishes Brown’s account from books by an author such as Philip Mirowski whose analysis of neoliberalism is, like Brown’s, inspired by Foucault’s account of neoliberalism in The Birth of Biopolitics is that Brown focuses more on neoliberalism as an account of governmentality that affects individual conduct rather than simply a new form of economic rationality. For this reason, her book should be read alongside Dardot and Laval’s The New Way of the World: On Neoliberal Society, which also focuses on the broader social context in which strategies of neoliberal governmentality are deployed, although its authors focus on the European context rather than that of the United States.

Neoliberalism reduces all reasons for individual and collective action strictly to economic terms. Initially it might seem that neoliberalism merely continues and intensifies the various forms of alienation that Marx diagnoses early in his work, for under capitalist regimes value must be calculated solely in economic terms. Agents and objects have a value determined by the market, and anything that smacks of intrinsic value is little more than a sham, a fairytale concocted by religious and political authorities so that everyone can sleep better at night. Brown relates that the idea for this book originated in a course devoted to a comparative reading of Marx and Foucault on economic rationality (page 12). Indeed, she argues The Birth of Biopolitics contains an implicit critique of Marx’s economic thought, specifically the claim found in The Communist Manifesto and elsewhere that capitalism unduly influences politics. Rather, Foucault claims that the principle of ‘frugal government’ determines the exercise of liberal polity. Governments are legitimate only insofar as they accord with this principle while simultaneously deploying new ways of managing individuals (page 58). We are mistaken if we see neoliberalism simply as an intensification of liberalism, for such an identification of the aims of liberalism with those of neoliberalism discounts the specific historical conditions of each movement. The problem for classical liberalism was to establish a space for economic conduct that was free from government control as a way of countering the threat of absolutism. Neoliberalism in Germany contests fascism by rendering economic power as the model for political power, a unified field in which all conduct is conceived in economic terms, thereby short-circuiting the abuses of Nazism. Foucault’s genealogy of liberal governmentality proceeds from Smith and Bentham rather than through the contractarian thought of Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau. Consequently, the various early modern discourses of natural rights are only of marginal importance in Foucault’s account of liberalism.  Brown believes that Foucault is mistaken here, and that his marginalization of rights represents a further marginalization of the political realm in his work. Brown’s criticisms do not align her with the recently well-publicized (well, at least in the small world of Foucault studies) critique by Daniel Zamora that see Foucault as little more than a cheerleader for neoliberalism. Rather, her criticism is that Foucault’s alternative genealogy of liberalism leaves little room for a democratic account of freedom that would contest the economic one. Marx’s account of alienation arguably could have helped her make this case, although Marx is just as dismissive of rights-talk as Foucault often seems to be.

With this critique of Foucault’s neglect of the political genealogy of liberalism in place, Brown proceeds to update Foucault’s analysis. According to Brown, this political genealogy is significant because in the absence of any sort of account of political subjectivity that includes constitutive principles of deliberative rationality and individual rights as the basis for democratic polity, individuals are left without a counterweight to economic accounts of political conduct. Neoliberalism renders individual existence precarious, exposed to economic risk. The promise of security has become minimal if not nonexistent. This can be seen in a wide variety of ways today, from employment insecurity and the simultaneous withering away of the welfare state that was a feature of post-World War Two economic arrangements that ensured economic security at least for the nations comprising the Global North. Indeed, Brown comes close to waxing nostalgic for these mid-twentieth century arrangements that provided the promise of a society with less economic inequality and instability. The world remade according to neoliberal principles looks very different, and the remainder of Undoing the Demos provides a series of case studies illustrating the world that neoliberalism has made.

Consider the case of Iraq: Brown shows how the Coalition Provisional Authority led by Paul Bremer sought to remake Iraq into a neoliberal paradise. While this story has been told before, Brown’s account focuses on neoliberal re-fashioning of Iraqi agriculture that imposed restrictions on the re-use of seeds, similar to the restrictions American farmers are facing (page 143-145). With the aid of the United States government, Monsanto and other agribusiness giants are remaking agriculture around the world. These corporations offered free genetically modified seed to wheat farmers in Iraq, which rendered them dependent upon this genetically-modified seed, which the farmers were forced by law to continue using, thus providing a textbook example of the seamless coordination of state and economic power.

The 2010 Citizens United decision provides another example. Taken in isolation, this decision, which found that corporate election donations fall under the definition of protected speech as articulated in the First Amendment, itself signals a profound transformation of the demos, for it identifies corporate campaign contributions with popular sovereignty. Although the case is often construed narrowly in terms of free speech, Brown situates this case in a broader context of neoliberal legal rationality. In the eyes of the law, campaign contributions from individuals are the same as corporate money. Commonly understood as permitting corporate campaign contributions to count as speech under campaign finance laws, Brown argues that the decision is actually more radical, for it recasts speech itself as a form of economic activity (page 156-161). Brown analyzes three more cases that, along with Citizens United, demonstrate the economization of the demos. The 2011 decision in AT&T Mobility LLC v. Concepcion forced individual consumers to enter into individual arbitration rather than bringing class-action lawsuits. “Class-action suits have long been crucial instruments of worker and consumer resistance to discriminatory, deceptive, or fraudulent corporate behavior, from overpaying and overcharging to polluting or violating safety laws” (page 152). An effective legal tool enabling citizens to contest economic power has been neutralized as a result. In June 2011, the Wisconsin Supreme Court effectively limited the collective bargaining-power of public unions, and, finally, in the same month, the Supreme Court decided against the claimants in a class-action suit against Wal-Mart stores brought by more than 1.5 million women alleging pay discrimination at stores across the nation. These courses together demonstrate that “an important remaking of the demos is taking place” (page 153). Brown concludes the fifth chapter on law and legal reason with the claim that “rendering government regulation or limits as the enemy of free markets everywhere, the court blends flows of capital and speech into a single stream, sharing characteristics and rights against a common enemy: the state” (page 173).

The final chapter examines the transformations wrought by neoliberalism within education. Students are now conceived of as human capital whose education ought to secure, insofar as this is possible, a precarious role as an economic subject within the global economy. In other words, students see education as an investment that should net them a decent job upon graduation, provided that they are smart consumers of education who major in a field that is in demand. This means avoiding humanities and social science fields that are perceived as detrimental to this pursuit. This reverses a postwar trend that saw a broad-based education as the key to entry in the middle class (page 180). After all, what’s the point of educating engaged citizens who will engage in the public sphere if the public sphere itself is but a dim memory? This leads colleges and universities to emphasize career preparation over any other ideals that once motivated them. Education is an expensive investment, and students are consumers who expect a good return on their investment (page 192). This neoliberal conception of education’s role in society fundamentally transforms education at the expense of a traditional liberal arts education. Brown argues, following philosophers such as Martha Nussbaum, that this loss is detrimental to democracy. At the same time, without a thriving democratic polity (i.e. without the demos), the traditional justification of a liberal arts education disappears.

The book does not conclude with nostalgic paeans in praise of lost democracy. Instead, the epilogue accomplishes two things: first, it provides a realistic appraisal of what democracy was and might have been and, second, an account of the changed nature of sacrifice under neoliberal governance. Democracy is simply rule by the people, and we should avoid the temptation of idealizing this: democratic decisions have often proven foolish. Nevertheless, democracy remains the best hope for a critical, participatory form of government that can secure the public good. The economization of politics forecloses on this possibility. Yet, neoliberalism continues to demand individual sacrifice, though no longer for the common good. Rather than sacrificing for the common good in the face of external threat during times of war (for example), individuals are required to sacrifice themselves for the sake of “internal elements.” “Thus, for example, rage appropriately directed at investment banks is redirected into a call for shared sacrifice undertaken by their victims” (page 217). The beneficiaries of this sacrifice is, of course, the very investment bankers who caused the 2008 economic crash in the first place and one can see similar demands for sacrifice in Greece today. The key difference between liberal and neoliberal forms of sacrifice is that now individuals are asked to sacrifice their jobs and overall well-being for the sake of the economic “health” of the economy. Indeed, rather than sacrificing an individual for the health of society; under neoliberal governmentality sacrifice is demanded of all for the economic health of society—an abstraction that masks the true beneficiaries of this sacrificial act. Previously, individuals had been asked to sacrifice for the common good and overall-all social wellbeing. Brown draws a further distinction between religious notions of sacrifice on one hand and the democratic and neoliberal secular notions of sacrifice sketched above, and briefly suggests how sacrifice functions in neoliberal societies. Unfortunately, Brown does not have the space to devote to the fascinating biopolitical dimensions of this theme of sacrifice, but one hopes that she returns to it in the future.

Given this bleak picture, what is to be done? Brown avoids comforting platitudes here as well, candidly admitting that there are not any good options. The despair on the Left is real, but collective movements such as Occupy Wall Street may provide some glimmer of hope. This raises one of the glaring omissions in this otherwise excellent book: Although Brown briefly discusses gender in the context of neoliberal subjectivity, she does not have anything to say about the issues of racism and neoliberalism in this book. Perhaps the public outcry and the collective response to the senseless killing of young black men such as Michael Brown in Ferguson and Freddie Gray in Baltimore can inspire more collective action in the face of neoliberal governance. Given the almost daily revelations of police misconduct perpetrated predominantly on black bodies, it seems that the racial dimension of neoliberal sacrifice has become one of the primary sites for contesting the neoliberal governmentality in recent months. Indeed, it increasingly appears as if neoliberalism demands that young black men sacrifice themselves for the overall health and security of society, despite its purported color-blindness. Movements such as Black Lives Matter are casting a spotlight on the troubling and widespread issues related to race and law enforcement. Policies that institutionalized bias in law enforcement were once hailed as crime-reduction measures are increasingly questioned and one now sees a growing public outcry against specific issues such as mass incarceration and profiling that are the product of these policies. There are signs that this may lead to real changes. One can only hope. 

References

Dardot P and Laval C (2013) The New Way of the World: On Neoliberal Society. Trans. Gregory Elliott. London: Verso.

Foucault F (2008) The Birth of Biopolitics. Lectures at the Collége de France 1978-1979. Snellart M (ed), Burchell G (trans)Graham Burchell. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Marx K (1848) The Communist Manifesto.

Mirowski M (2013) Never Let a Serious Crisis Go To Waste: How Neoliberalism Survived the Financial Meltdown. London: Verso.