Individual Biopolitics and Biopolitics of the State

Abstract

If we reject the idea of chronological suc-
cession of liberal democracy and totalitarian systems
and acclaim the genealogical perspective instead, we
will notice another structural division or rift. Here it is
not at stake the vertical di_erentiation between totali-
tarianism and liberal democracy but the horizontal one:
democracy and communism (as a radicalisation of
egalitarianism) vs. biopolitics (consisting of two anti-
thetical, but complementary forms: Nazism and liber-
alism, state and individual biopolitics). In Nazism
human being is its own body, for liberalism (from Locke
ahead), human owns his/her body, so is able to use it,
change it and even sell it. In this light Nazism in its
basic categories reverses the liberal perspective and grant
the possession of the body to the state instead of indi-
vidual, not leaving behind the very conditions of bio-
political thinking.
I argue, that biopolitical character of liberalism dif-
ferentiates it from democracy and communism mostly.
Essay attempts to analyse above mentioned opposition
in vertical, as well as horizontal dimension, in order to
have a more in-depth insight in the roots of totalitarian
systems and to put under scrutiny the liberal sources
of contemporary biopolitical regimes.