The sovereign’s control of taxes and debt replace the police state?
Rosembuj 23 [Tulio Rosembuj currently worked at the Department of Public Economy, Political Economy and Spanish Economy, University of Barcelona. Now he is retired.He is Invited Professor at the Luiss UNiversity Rome, and teach s European Tax Law.Tulio does research in Public Law. Their current project is 'taxation and artificial intelligence'. Tulio Rosembuj, 3-15-2023, “Agamben, Taxation and Sovereignity.” https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4432527]
Fraenkel corrects Foucault. The sovereign police state does not disappear or dissolve before the liberal State of political economy. On the contrary, its monopoly over physical violence, taxes, and public debt, allows it to take a step back, preserving its prerogatives in the face of governmentality crises that endanger the State of the economy. The State of measures is the equivalent of the State of police, and the normative State is the Rule of Law of the economy. One responds to the permanent coup - the state of exception - and the other to the protection of the economic power of the market and its agents.
The State of norms and measures are complementary constructions combining their respective competencies, an interdependent whole that does not admit precise analysis. The presumption of competence of the Rule of Law yields to the competence of the State of measures. No matter is left out except the market, the company, property, contracts, and taxes. Conversely, the normative State does not enter into the arbitrariness, abuse, judicial, administrative, or political excesses of the State of measures.
The Rule of Law protects the private property of the means of production and the personal property of individuals, civil relations between companies, and legal relations of an economic-administrative nature between the State and the market.