Biopolitics: An Advanced Introduction

8. Vital Politics and Bioeconomy

105 8 Vital Politics and Bioeconomy From Menschenökonomie to Human Capital The concept of vital politics, which Nikolas Rose employs in his discussion of the molecularization and informatization of life, was already in use much earlier in a completely different context. The term played a prominent role in the work of Wilhelm Röpke and Alexander Rüstow, two significant representatives of postwar German liberalism and architects of the social market economy (soziale Marktwirtschaft ). In the 1950s and ’60s, they used the term “vital politics” to refer to a new form of the political that was grounded in anthropological needs and that has an ethical orientation. The negative point of reference here is a mass society that erodes social integration and cohesion. “Massification” (Vermassung) is the antonym of vital politics , representing the “worst social malady of our time” (Rüstow 1957, 215). Whereas massification emerged from the dissolution of original social bonds and forms of life, vital politics aims to promote and reactivate them. Contrary to social policy, which focuses on material interests, vital politics takes into account “all factors upon which happiness , well-being, and satisfaction in reality depend” (Rüstow 1955, 70). The ordoliberal1 concept of vital politics was the result of a double-pronged approach. According to Rüstow, both the market economies of the West and the socialist states of the East were on the wrong track. Both social systems were in the grip of centralization and were dominated by material concerns. Rüstow wished to reactivate a “natural” principle of politics which, in his view, had 106 Vital Politics and Bioeconomy progressively declined since the 19th century. He argued that normative guidelines of political action must consider how policies “affect well-being and the self-esteem of individuals” (1957, 235). Politics should resonate with human nature, instead of alienating itself from it. The yardstick by which this politics is measured is natural and inborn human needs, an orientation which discloses the anthropological foundations of vital politics (ibid., 236). Politics must adapt to the “essence of the human” (ibid., 235), which indicates the primacy of politics over the realm of the economic . According to Rüstow, vital politics is founded on the basic difference between the “good life” and material affluence; it understands the economic system as an integral part of a higher order that defines and limits the scope of economic activity. Vital politics enlists mechanisms of economic coordination and regulation to “serve life,” so that economic measures represent a means to an end rather than an end in itself. In Rüstow’s view, vital politics is by no means limited solely to a state’s activity but is rather “politics in the widest possible sense. . . . [I]t encompasses all social measures and experimental arrangements ” (ibid., 235). It reactivates moral values and cultural traditions, while focusing on spiritual solidarity and relationships developed over time. The goal of this policy is to insert an “ever more dense net and weave of living ties [lebendiger Bindungen] into the entire social realm” (ibid., 238). This is a task involving both innovation and integration and takes into account all social elements and strata, while at the same time recognizing their self-organizational capacities. In this respect, vital politics follows the principle of subsidiarity, because when it comes to social problems the first concern is whether they can be solved by autonomous life forms, that is, whether solutions to a given problem can be found within the sphere of family, neighborhood , and the like, before the state is asked for help (ibid., 232). Rüstow contends that a successful policy depends on families acting as “basic cells of the social body” and remaining healthy, on “corporate Vital Politics and Bioeconomy 107 solidarity” in the workplace, and on the legislative and executive branches of government working for the “integration of the people’s body [Volkskörper]” entrusted to it (ibid., 237). Vital politics fulfills two important functions in ordoliberal thinking . First, it serves as a critical principle against which political activity can be measured and which relates the economy back to a comprehensive order that is external to it and ethically grounded. Second, the vital-political dimension of the social market economy asserts its superiority over the “inhumane conditions” existing in the Soviet Union, where fundamental human needs were ignored (ibid, 238). Whereas for the ordoliberals vital politics points to the conflictual relationship between economic principles and...