The Monetization of Society and Changes in Forms of Power

Foucault and Deleuze’s Theory of Power from the Perspective of Simmel’s The Philosophy of Money

Abstract

This paper discusses changes in forms of power as observed by Michel Foucault and Gilles Deleuze from the perspective of Georg Simmel’s Philosophie des Geldes（The Philosophy of Money）. In contrast to Foucault’s theory of power as social control through “disciplinaires,” which he espoused in Les formes élémentaires de la vie religieuse, Deleuze stated in Pourparlers, 1972-1990 that power as social control applied only until the early 20^th century, after which its prevalence declined. At that time, Deleuze asserted that money accounted for the difference between“ disciplinaires” and “contrôle”; however, he did not explain this in detail.

Simmel assumed that individuals become freer because their personalities are decomposed into elements that are utilized in productive activities and into other elements that are not ; hence, only certain personality elements are involved in productive activities. However, this paper argues that the decomposition of the personality due to money has caused a shift to a control society that utilizes individual elements rather than freeing whole individuals.

This paper posits that the above phenomenon is related to Shoshana Zuboff’s “surveillance capitalism,” which is a system in which people’s personality elements are converted into information and exploited by a consortium of corporations that pursue profits by manipulating consumption behavior. It will be shown that today’s “Contrôle,” social system, in terms of the informatization of money and the “Contrôle,”of the subjective desires of differentiated individuals in consumption, which Simmel did not envision, the personal freedom that Simmel believed was brought about by money, is increasingly being control （“Contrôle”） through information systems.