The sovereign deals with a nature, or rather with the perpetual conjunction, the perpetual intrication of a geographical, climatic, and physical milieu with the human species insofar as it has a body and a soul, a physical and a moral existence; and the sovereign will be someone who will have to exercise power at that point of connection where nature, in the sense of physical elements, interferes with nature in the sense of the nature of the human species, at that point of articulation where the milieu becomes the determining factor of nature. This is where the sovereign will have to intervene, and if he wants to change the human species, Moheau says, it will be by acting on the milieu. I think we have here one of the axes, one of the fundamental elements in this deployment of mechanisms of security, that is to say, not yet the appearance of a notion of milieu, but the appearance of a project, a political technique that will be addressed to the milieu.
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The population can only be the basis of the state’s wealth and power in this way on condition, of course, that it is framed by a regulatory apparatus (appareil) that prevents emigration, calls for immigrants, and promotes the birth rate, a regulatory apparatus that also defines useful and exportable products, fixes the objects to be produced, the means of their production, as well as wages, and which prevents idleness and vagrancy. In short, it requires an apparatus that will ensure that the population, which is seen as the source and the root, as it were, of the state’s power and wealth, will work properly, in the right place, and on the right objects. In other words, mercantilism was concerned with the population as a productive force, in the strict sense of the term, and I do not think it is in the eighteenth century, after the mercantilists, nor, obviously, in the nineteenth century, that the population is seen as essentially and fundamentally a productive force. It was the mercantilists, or the cameralists, who basically saw the population in this way, on condition, of course, that it is effectively trained, divided up, distributed, and fixed by disciplinary mechanisms. The population as the source of wealth, as a productive force, and disciplinary supervision are all of a piece within the thought, project, and political practice of the mercantilists.
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102
We could also say that the naturalness of the population appears in a second way in the fact that this population is of course made up of individuals who are quite different from each other and whose behavior, within a certain limit at least, cannot be accurately predicted. Nevertheless, according to the first theorists of population in the eighteenth century, there is at least one invariant that means that the population taken as a whole has one and only one mainspring of action. This is desire. Desire is an old notion that first appeared and was employed in spiritual direction (to which, possibly, we may be able to return),* and it makes its second appearance within techniques of power and government. Every individual acts out of desire. One can do nothing against desire. As Quesnay says: You cannot stop people from living where they think they will profit most and where they desire to live, because they desire that profit. Do not try to change them; things will not change.† However – and it is here that this naturalness of desire thus marks the population and becomes accessible to governmental technique – for reasons to which we will have to come back and which are one of the important theoretical elements of the whole system, this desire is such that, if one gives it free play, and on condition that it is given free play, all things considered, within a certain limit and thanks to a number of relationships and connections, it will produce the general interest of the population. Desire is the pursuit of the individual’s interest. In his desire the individual may well be deceived regarding his personal interest, but there is something that does not deceive, which is that the spontaneous, or at any rate both spontaneous and regulated play of desire will in fact allow the production of an interest, of something favorable for the population. The production of the collective interest through the play of desire is what distinguishes both the naturalness of population and the possible artificiality of the means one adopts to manage it. This is important because you can see that with this idea of a management of populations on the basis of the naturalness of their desire, and of the spontaneous production of the collective interest by desire, we have something that is completely the opposite of the old ethical-juridical conception of government and the exercise of sovereignty. For what was the sovereign for the jurists, for medieval jurists but also for the theorists of natural law, for Hobbes as well as for Rousseau?
The sovereign is the person who can say no to any individual’s desire, the problem being how to legitimize this “no” opposed to individuals’ desire and found it on the will of these same individuals. Now through the economic-political thought of the physiocrats we see a completely different idea taking shape, which is that the problem of those who govern must absolutely not be how they can say no, up to what point they can say no, and with what legitimacy they can say no. The problem is how they can say yes; it is how to say yes to this desire.
...
104
There is not nature and then, above nature and against it, the sovereign and the relationship of obedience that is owed to him. We have a population whose nature is such that the sovereign must deploy reflected procedures of government within this nature, with the help of it, and with regard to it. In other words, with the population we have something completely different from a collection of subjects of right differentiated by their status, localization, goods, responsibilities, and offices: [We have]** a set of elements that, on one side, are immersed within the general regime of living beings and that, on another side, offer a surface on which authoritarian, but reflected and calculated transformations can get a hold.
...
The population can only be the basis of the state’s wealth and power in this way on condition, of course, that it is framed by a regulatory apparatus (appareil) that prevents emigration, calls for immigrants, and promotes the birth rate, a regulatory apparatus that also defines useful and exportable products, fixes the objects to be produced, the means of their production, as well as wages, and which prevents idleness and vagrancy. In short, it requires an apparatus that will ensure that the population, which is seen as the source and the root, as it were, of the state’s power and wealth, will work properly, in the right place, and on the right objects. In other words, mercantilism was concerned with the population as a productive force, in the strict sense of the term, and I do not think it is in the eighteenth century, after the mercantilists, nor, obviously, in the nineteenth century, that the population is seen as essentially and fundamentally a productive force. It was the mercantilists, or the cameralists, who basically saw the population in this way, on condition, of course, that it is effectively trained, divided up, distributed, and fixed by disciplinary mechanisms. The population as the source of wealth, as a productive force, and disciplinary supervision are all of a piece within the thought, project, and political practice of the mercantilists.
...
102
We could also say that the naturalness of the population appears in a second way in the fact that this population is of course made up of individuals who are quite different from each other and whose behavior, within a certain limit at least, cannot be accurately predicted. Nevertheless, according to the first theorists of population in the eighteenth century, there is at least one invariant that means that the population taken as a whole has one and only one mainspring of action. This is desire. Desire is an old notion that first appeared and was employed in spiritual direction (to which, possibly, we may be able to return),* and it makes its second appearance within techniques of power and government. Every individual acts out of desire. One can do nothing against desire. As Quesnay says: You cannot stop people from living where they think they will profit most and where they desire to live, because they desire that profit. Do not try to change them; things will not change.† However – and it is here that this naturalness of desire thus marks the population and becomes accessible to governmental technique – for reasons to which we will have to come back and which are one of the important theoretical elements of the whole system, this desire is such that, if one gives it free play, and on condition that it is given free play, all things considered, within a certain limit and thanks to a number of relationships and connections, it will produce the general interest of the population. Desire is the pursuit of the individual’s interest. In his desire the individual may well be deceived regarding his personal interest, but there is something that does not deceive, which is that the spontaneous, or at any rate both spontaneous and regulated play of desire will in fact allow the production of an interest, of something favorable for the population. The production of the collective interest through the play of desire is what distinguishes both the naturalness of population and the possible artificiality of the means one adopts to manage it. This is important because you can see that with this idea of a management of populations on the basis of the naturalness of their desire, and of the spontaneous production of the collective interest by desire, we have something that is completely the opposite of the old ethical-juridical conception of government and the exercise of sovereignty. For what was the sovereign for the jurists, for medieval jurists but also for the theorists of natural law, for Hobbes as well as for Rousseau?
The sovereign is the person who can say no to any individual’s desire, the problem being how to legitimize this “no” opposed to individuals’ desire and found it on the will of these same individuals. Now through the economic-political thought of the physiocrats we see a completely different idea taking shape, which is that the problem of those who govern must absolutely not be how they can say no, up to what point they can say no, and with what legitimacy they can say no. The problem is how they can say yes; it is how to say yes to this desire.
...
104
There is not nature and then, above nature and against it, the sovereign and the relationship of obedience that is owed to him. We have a population whose nature is such that the sovereign must deploy reflected procedures of government within this nature, with the help of it, and with regard to it. In other words, with the population we have something completely different from a collection of subjects of right differentiated by their status, localization, goods, responsibilities, and offices: [We have]** a set of elements that, on one side, are immersed within the general regime of living beings and that, on another side, offer a surface on which authoritarian, but reflected and calculated transformations can get a hold.
- Michel Foucault. Security, Territory, Population
