While Foucault was, I think, correct in leaving out finance capital at the level of practice, I believe it was an error in terms of discourse. To use the figure of the entrepreneur in a highly technological and developed age is not to evoke the figure, to put it in the most general and simplistic terms, of someone who goes to a factory and checks in on their investment from time to time. The entrepreneur, before even the notion of finance capital comes into view for us, is someone already deeply divorced from the production process and our general way of thinking about it. To introduce the pervasive, however misapprehended, understanding of finance capital that is common today is to say simply that the entrepreneur of himself, on the neo-liberal account, is someone who imagines that they make their human capital work for them. What I mean by this is that once people begin to think that investment is a process whereby money is grown by virtue of its participation in the market, subjects will understand themselves, by way of the neo-liberal concept of human capital, quite differently. Yes, homo-œconomicus will be an entrepreneur of himself but in neo-liberal society this will have developed, at least supplementarily, by way of the discourse around finance capital. The individual always having something to sell is not a very new thought considering the extent to which Marx explained that a worker was a commodity owner selling their labor-power for a wage; a wage they could increase by selling to a different capitalist. To differentiate the extent to which this is a new type of entrepreneurship of the self, beyond acknowledging the extent to which human capital plays a role, is to acknowledge the change in the way one seeks to profit...
... middle of paper ...
...in the neo-liberal era, one can not think of the entrepreneur without thinking of what our “top” entrepreneurs do, which is, like the preceding era engage as investors in investing. But investing at this level today is subsumed under the activities not of industrial ownership but of finance capital. In a certain way, to turn everyone into an entrepreneur is to place subjects in a massive hierarchy of better or worse participants in the “topsy-turvy” world of finance capital. For neo-liberals, individuals use their human capital to invest in whatever opportunities may come along, hoping to scale the ladder and achieve the success that the best entrepreneurs have. To understand this type of entrepreneurial figure requires Foucault's discussion to adopt a critical-historical-discursive category of finance capital.
Works Cited
Michel Foucault, The Birth of Bio-Politics
The captain of industries were businessmen who also benefitted society through their accumulation of wealth, using methods such as increased productivity, the expansion of markets, offering up new jobs to the working class, and other acts of generosity. All of the notable industrialists dubbed “robber barons” were also named “captain of industries” as well. Therefore, there have been many debates as to whether the term “robber barons” really did justice to the industrialists, when taking into account of their effects on America’s economy, and not just the negative aspects. While the robber barons did harm specific groups of people in order to meet their selfish goals, as well as execute ruthless tactics to surpass their competitors, they have also created an economic boom in which they created larger manufacturing companies, created many employment opportunities for the working class. Even though robber barons went to extreme measures and harmed others in their pursuit of wealth, they have also, and built a stable and prosperous
According to Folsom, political entrepreneurs fit the classic robber barons mold (1). Meaning that the way
The time of the Industrial Revolution allowed little room for smaller companies to make a name because the big businesses had monopolies over certain areas of industry. Therefore, for a person to make a name for himself, he had to do so with ambition, money, reputation, and inner strength. By reason of an owner not possessing these qualities, then by the rigors of business owning he would be mentally crushed by the amount of work that falls upon the owner's shoulders. In addition, even though labor came cheaply to t...
Derek Aldcroft` s article, `The Entrepreneur and the British economy, 1870-1914 published in 1964 spearheaded the broad indictment of the British entrepreneur...(2).......
The author expresses his grievances towards industrialized businesses during the Gilded Age and supports the American farmer. Therefore, the author references the “fakers” as fraud politicians who did not support the beliefs of the Populist Party. He then characterizes the “makers” as the independent business owners and farmers because they made lives for themselves without a strong dependency on these “dictatorship-like” businesses. The author primarily focuses on voicing his reproach for the “takers” of the Gilded Age, or the monopolistic business owners such as Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller. He negates these industrialists suppressing individualism while showing little regard for the well being of lower class Americans. In other words, the author believes that Carnegie and Rockefeller’s monopolistic industries offered an unspoken ultimatum for Americans: either submit to our control or we will c...
When the topic of American economics arises, the infamous Robber Barons of the 19th Century often springs to mind. They are often glorified as "Captains of Industry" for their money making strategies and enterprising methods. Those who hold this view probably do not know the evils of the laissez-faire capitalism in which the Robber Barons believed and participated. They wanted an unrestricted system of economics so that they could amass as much money as they could to out do each other and control the power in society. They were not as glorious and generous as some people make them out to have been.
Accurately established by many historians, the capitalists who shaped post-Civil War industrial America were regarded as corrupt “robber barons”. In a society in which there was a severe imbalance in the dynamics of the economy, these selfish individuals viewed this as an opportunity to advance in their financial status. Thus, they acquired fortunes for themselves while purposely overseeing the struggles of the people around them. Presented in Document A, “as liveried carriage appear; so do barefooted children”, proved to be a true description of life during the 19th century. In hopes of rebuilding America, the capitalists’ hunger for wealth only widened the gap between the rich and poor.
Successful capitalists of the late 1800s were referred to as “robber barons” because of the common belief that they were responsible for the farmers’ grievances (doc. D). The weapon of these “robber barons” was the trusts created to gear economical power and dom...
Carnegie’s essay contains explanations of three common methods by which wealth is distributed and his own opinions on the effects of each. After reading the entire essay, readers can see his overall appeals to logos; having wealth does not make anyone rich, but using that wealth for the greater good does. He does not force his opinions onto the reader, but is effectively convincing of why his beliefs make sense. Andrew Carnegie’s simple explanations intertwined with small, but powerful appeals to ethos and pathos become incorporated into his overall appeal to logos in his definition of what it means for one to truly be rich.
You’re sitting alone in the café drinking your coffee and reading the newspaper. You see out of the corner of your eye a little girl sitting with her mom at the table nearby. You keep glancing over and you notice the little girl is staring you down. No matter what you do she continues to watch your every move. You wonder how long she has been sitting there and why she is gazing at you. You are being watched just like the people Michel Foucault describes, people who are simply being under constant surveillance. Foucault's work, "Panopticism," features a central control tower from which all inhabitants are watched while in their surrounding glass-walled cells. The Panopticon creates an atmosphere in which the inhabitants never know whether or not they are being watched forcing them to assume that they are at all times. With this mindset, "the exercise of power may be supervised by society as a whole" (Foucault). In other words, the people control their actions and take care of themselves appropriately just on the fact that they think they are being watched. "In appearance, [panopticism] is merely the solution of a technical problem; but, through it, a whole type of society emerges" (Foucault). The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton portrays a society that functions much like the Panopticon. Newland Archer and his fellow New Yorkers are part of a very close knit group of people. Everyone knows what everyone else's business and the gossip that surrounds them, which makes privacy a foreign concept. The only way to be accepted is to know the right people, have the right connections and, of course, have money. Once a part of the group, everyone must follow a set of unwritten rules. The society forces everyone to act a certain way, and ev...
Michel Foucault his full name was Paul-Michel Foucault, was born October 15, 1926, Poitiers France—died June 25, 1984, Paris. He the grandson of a physician.You could say that he was born into a solidly bourgeois family, Also his father was a doctor so you can see that being intelligent runs in the family, his mother was just any ordinary housewife Foucault’s mother, Anne, was likewise the daughter of a surgeon, and had longed to follow a medical career, but her wish had to wait until Foucault’s younger brother as such a career was not available for women at the time. It is surely no coincidence then that much of Foucault’s work would revolve around the critical interrogation of medical discourses .Foucault was schooled in Poitiers during the years of German occupation Foucault excelled at philosophy and, having from a young age declared his intention to pursue an academic career, persisted in defying his father, who wanted the young Paul-Michel to follow his forebears into the medical profession. The conflict with his father may have been a factor in Foucault’s dropping the ‘Paul’ from his name. The relationship between father and son remained cool through to the latter’s death in 1959, though Foucault remained close to his mother.
Foucault describes this power as a branch of technology. In “The Entire History of You” the technology is eerily close to where we are now. In fact, a recordable contact lens in being developed as we speak. Facebook has recently created a new feature in which you can go live, this means you can record, upload and receive comments, likes, or dislikes all in real time. You can then go back and re-watch your live broadcast as much as you’d like. This feature shows you at exactly what moment people reacted to your video. The grain in Black Mirror resembles a mixture of the recordable contact lens and Facebook’s new live feature. The difference lies in the fact that the grain does not require any sort of external technology. Many characters are
The wealth that was accumulated through this lifestyle was reinvested into the work process in order to create more wealth. This continual reinvestment of wealth provided the necessary capital and conditions that allowed for the development of modern capitalism. Weber starts out his essay with a few questions that he proposes to try and answer. He notes that European business leaders are overwhelmingly Protestant instead of Catholic. He also notices that the most developed areas of Europe in his time were those that had embraced Protestantism (Weber, 4).
What is solitary Confinement? Solitary Confinement is the practice of isolating people in closed cells for 22-24 hours a day, virtually free of human contact, for periods of time ranging from days to decades. Solitary confinement results primarily from an individual’s behavior while incarcerated, not from their sentence. Although you are isolated and free of human contact Solitary Confinement can promote and worsen mental health issues. When being locked up in a cell for 23 hours everyday you do not get the exercise and activity that regular prisoners will get. Many of the prisoners subjected to isolation have serious mental illness and the conditions of solitary confinement can exacerbate their symptoms or provoke recurrence. Therefore Solitary
Introduction to this work was written as, discontent with existing Marxist analysis of monopoly capitalism .