Capitalist state power and Christian pastoral techniques

(this incorporates and earlier post which I have deleted)

Capitalist “state power”, Foucault writes, “is both an individualising and a totalsing form of power. Never, I think, in the history of human societies-even in the old Chinese society – has there been such a tricky combination in the same political structure of individualising techniques, and of totalisation procedures" (Micheal Foucault (1983) “The Subject and Power” as afterwards to Michel Foucault : Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics p. 213. Nothing escapes the capitalist state (This is the ambition of this state, its nature.).

This power of the capitalist state is based on the emergence of a new type of power: bio power and disciplinary power. A new type of state has emerged in the west because the “western state has integrated in a new political shape, an old power technique which originated in Christian institutions. We can call this power technique the pastoral power" (ibid.). Bio and disciplinary power is a modern reinterpretation of Christian pastoral power (ibid. p. 214). This reinterpretation has been made possible due to ‘profound transformation’ in the basic mode of power. Power does not any longer work primarily as negativity, as a deduction. It takes the form of positivity: “ ‘Deduction’ has tended to be no longer the major form of power but merely one element among others, working to incite, reinforce, control, monitor, optimise, and organise the forces under it: a power bent on generating forces, making them grow, and ordering them, rather than dedicated to impeding them, making them submit, or destroying them” (The History of Sexuality : An Introduction p. 136).

This new power is salvation oriented but its conception of salvation is the inversion of the original Christian conceptions. In capitalism the state no longer aims at “leading people to their salvation in the next world, but rather ensuring it in this world”. Welfarism takes the form of this worldly salvation and “the word salvation takes on different meanings: health, well being (that is, sufficient wealth, standard of living), security, protection against accident” (ibid. p. 215). By incorporating Christian pastoral techniques, while transforming their character and incorporating them into its mechanisms, the modern capitalist state stretches its reach to the soul and body of individuals on the one hand and to the social body at large on the other hand.

Through distinguishing bio from disciplinary power Foucault tries to bring forth the different aspects of this ‘secularised’ version of pastoral power.

By ‘bio-power’ Foucault wanted to emphasis the form of power which does not only cater for the needs of the individuals but also looks after ‘population’ as a whole. On the other hand ‘discipline’ is what is concerned with individual in his specificity and concreteness. But these two forms of power should not be construed as antithetical in nature, they are the ‘two poles’ of the same phenomenon (ibid. p. 139). What links these two forms of power (apart from that they both are life administering powers), is the phenomenon of body. While the ‘bio power’ is ‘focused’ on the species body’ the disciplines are ‘centered on body as machine’ (ibid.).
‘Bio power’ is concerned with the ‘human species’, “the body imbued with the mechanics of life and serving as the basis of the biological processes: propagation, births and mortality, the level of health, life expectancy and longevity, with all the conditions that can cause these to vary” (ibid.) The purpose of this was ‘the regulation of the population” (ibid.). For the first time in the human history 'specie' and ‘population’ as a whole became the object of government: "(F)or the first time in history, scientific categories – specie, population, and others – rather then juridical ones become the object of political attention in a consistent and sustained fashion” (Michel Foucault : Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics p. 134).

‘Disciplines’ on the other hand are concerned with body “as a machine: its disciplining, the optimisation of its capabilities, the extortion of its forces, the parallel increase of its usefulness and its docility, its integration into systems of efficient and economic controls . . . ." ((Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison p. 139). Exercise of ‘disciplinary’ power over the body gave rise to the reality of the modern ‘soul’ (ibid. p. 29).

The emergent ‘soul’ acted as an instrument through which 'discipline' becomes ‘self-discipline’. Thus the surplus power used in the earlier phases of capitalism is justified on the ground that in the long run it reduces the need of the ‘surplus’ exercise of power. This corresponds to what some commentators have read as a transition from early capitalism’s disciplinary society to present day control society.

Combination of these four aspects (i.e. power over species and population, body and soul) gave formidable power to the capitalist state over the individual and society that is unprecedented in history. It permeates through and through the whole arena of life, its only limit is death. Appearently there is no escape from it within life (Perhaps it would seem that in today's world only those escape the tyranny of capital who are ready to sacrifice life.). As Foucault puts it:

"For the first time in history . . . biological existence was reflected in political existence; the fact of living was no longer an inaccessible substrate that only emerged from time to time, amid the randomness of death and its fatality; part of it passed into knowledge’s field of control and power’s sphere of intervention. Power would no longer be dealing simply with legal subjects over whom the ultimate dominion was death, but with living beings, and the mastery it would be able to exercise over them would have to be applied at the level of life itself; it was the taking charge of life, more than the threat of death, that gave power its access even to the body. ((The History of Sexuality : An Introduction pp. 142-143).).