Neo-liberalism replaces the peasant manpower reserve with an assisted liminal population.

Evidence

This is a completely different system from that through which eighteenth and nineteenth. century capitalism was fOrD;1ed and developed, when it had t0 7deal w1-th a peasant population which was a possible constant reservoir of manpower. When the economy functions as it does now, when the peasant population can no longer ensure that kind of endless fund of manpower, this fund has to be formed in a completely different way. This other way is the assisted population, which is actually assisted in a very liberal and much less bureaucratic and disciplinary way than itis by a system focused on full employment which employs mechanisms like those ofsocial security. D1timately, it is up to pe9ple to workiftheywantornot work if they don’t. Above all there is thepossibilityofnot forcing them to work if there is no interest in doing so. They are merely guaranteed the possibility of minimal existence at a given level, and in this way the neo-liberal policy can be got to work. — Michel Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics, 1084

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Abandoning full employment creates an assisted liminal population as manpower reserve. — Michel Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at…, 1083

Broader Connections

• Abandoning full employment creates an assisted liminal population as manpower reserve. #expands (0.85) — Michel Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics, 1083