July 12, 2022
Security, Territory, Population
P. 196:
"My second remark is that these revolts of conduct have their specificity, what I would like to show you is that they are distinct from political revolts against power exercised by a form of sovereignty, and they are also distinct [from economic revolts against power] inasmuch as it maintains or guarantees exploitation. They are distinct in their form and in their objective. There are revolts of conduct. After all, the greatest revolts of conduct the Christian West has known was that of Luther, and we know that at the outset it was neither economic nor political, notwithstanding the connections that were immediately established with economic and political problems. But the specificity of these struggles, of these resistances of conduct, does not mean that they remained separate or isolated from each other, with their own partners, forms, dramaturgy and distinct aim. In actual fact they are always, or almost always, linked to other conflicts and problems. Throughout the Middle Ages resistances of conduct are linked to struggles between the bourgeosie and feudalism, in the Flemish towns, for example, or in Lyon at the time of the Waldensians. They are also linked to the uncoupling of the urban and rural economies that is particularly noticeable from the twelfth century. There are the Hussites and Calixtines on the one hand, and the Taborites on the other. You also find revolts, or resistances of conduct linked to the completely different but crucial problem of the status of women. These revolts of conduct are often linked up with the problem of women and their status in society, in civil society or in religious society."
P. 233
"The second analogy, the second continuity, is with nature itself. There is nothing in the world, Saint Thomas says, or at any rate no living animal, whose body would not be exposed to loss, separation and decomposition, if there were not some vital, guiding force within it holding together this different elements of which living bodies are composed and ordering them in terms of the common good. If there were not a living force, the stomach would go its way and the legs another, etcetera. The same applies to a kingdom. Each individual in a kingdom would strive for their won good and this neglect the common good. Therefore there must be something in the kingdom that corresponds to the vital, guiding force in the organism, and this is the king, who turns each individuals tendency back from his own good towards the common good. "As in any multitude," says Saint Thomas,, "a direction is necessary that is responsible for regulating and governing." This is the second analogy the analogy of the king with an organism's vital force.
P. 267
"So, Bacon writes an essay entitled "Of Seditions and Troubles." In this essay he gives a complete description, a quite remarkable analysis - I was going to say, a physics - of sedition and the reactions to be taken against it, and of government of the people. First, sedition should not be seen as extraordinary so much as an entirely normal, natural phenomenon, immanent as it were to the res publica, of the republic. Seditions, he says, are like tempests, they arise precisely when they are least expected, in the greatest calm, in periods of stability or equinox. In moments of equality and calm, something may very well be brewing, or rather, being born, or swelling like a tempest,. The sea secretly swells, he says, and it is precisely this way of signaling, this semiotics of revolt that must be worked out.
P. 325
"Finally the last object of police is circulation, the circulation of goods, of the products of men's activity. This circulation should be understood first of all in the sense of the material instruments with which it must be provided. Thus police will be concerned with the condition and development of roads, and with the navigability of rivers and canals, etcetera. In his Trait de droit public, Donat devotes a chapter [to this question] which is called "Of Police," the full title being: "of police for the use of seas, rivers, bridges, roads, public squares, major routes and other public places. So the space of circulation is a privileged object for police. But by "circulation" we should understand not only this material network that allows the circulation of goods and possibly of men, but also the circulation itself, what is to say, the set of regulations, constraints, and limits, or the facilities and encouragement that will allow the circulation of men and things in the kingdom and possibly beyond its borders. From this stem those typical policy regulations, some of which seek to suppress vagrancy, others to facilitate the circulation of goods in this or that direction, [and] others that want to prevent qualified workers from leaving their place of work, or especially the kingdom. After health and the objects of bare necessity after the population itself, this whole field of circulation will become the object of police.
P. 343
"You recall that the second thesis was this: what will happen if the grain is well paid, that is to say, if one lets the price of grain rise as much as it wants, so to speak, as much as possible, according to supply and demand, according to its scarcity and consumer's desire? Well, the price of grain will not continue to rise indefinitely but will settle neither too high nor too low, it will settle simply at a level that is the just level. This is the thesis of the just price."
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