Neoliberalism generalizes the enterprise form across the entire social body

Evidence

What does this involve? Well, when we look a bitmoredosely, we may of course hear it as a kind of more or less Rousseauesque return to nature, something that Riistow called, moreover, with a very ambiguous word, a “V.italpolitik,” a politics of life. But what is this Vitalpolitik that Riistow talks about, and of which this is an expression? Actually, as you can see, it is not a matter of constructing a social fabric in which the individual would be in direct contact with nature, but of constructing a social fabric in which precisely the basic units would have the form of the ente1:pris~,forwhat is private property if-not an enterprise? What is a house if not an enterprise? What is the management of these small neighborhood communities [ … *] ifnot other forms of enterprise? In other words, what is involved is the generalization of forms of “enterprise” by· diffusing and multiplying them as· much as possible, enter~ prises which must not be focused on the form of big national or international enterprises or the type ofbig enterprises of a state. I think this multiplication of the “enterprise” form within the social body is what is at stake in neo-liberal policy. It is a matter of making the market, competition, and so the enterprise, into what could be called the formative power of society. — Michel Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics, 823

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines ‘Vitalpolitik’ by negating its Rousseauesque reading and fixing its actual content: society reorganized so every basic unit takes the enterprise form.
• DEEPTHINKING: The core thesis of the whole lecture series — the enterprise as the formative power of society — stated in one dense passage; this is the load-bearing concept everything else builds on.
• ADDENDUM: The enterprise-form as social infrastructure resonates with the essay on trees as worldbuilding: both treat a structuring form propagated through a whole society, though with opposite normative valences.
• XREF: connects to: Social media self-presentation is a technology of self-governance under neoliberal capitalism.; Neoliberalism extends market logic to regulate all human behavior. — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update: Celebrity, Publicity,…, 32; Neoliberal restructuring converts collective public goods into individualized risk management — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 266 (+14 more)

Broader Connections

• Neoliberalism generalizes the economic form across the entire social field, unlike classical liberalism. #corroborates (0.98) — Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos, 105
• Neo-liberalism collapses labor into capital and frames the individual as an enterprise #corroborates (0.95) — Michel Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics, 1218
• Neoliberalism is a governing rationality that frames all life in market terms #expands (0.92) — Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos, 357
• Neoliberalism’s ultimate ideal self is the autonomous self-made individual #expands (0.85) — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 430