Covid proves the rubric of biopower is inconsistent at best

During the Covid-19 pandemic, the distance between capital and the state blows wide open. In order to respond to the crisis, states around the world resort to measures that stop the flow of capital and restrict the functioning of capitalist society. The state’s attempt to ensure the survival of its citizens – to “let live,” in the words of Foucault – take on a clearly anticapitalist hue. Biopower, if that is what we must call it, reveals itself as an opponent of unbridled capitalism rather than as capitalism’s handmaiden. States make emergency payments to all citizens, freeze evictions, expand free medical care, offer state-funded child care, and close businesses. These are not actions that benefit capital.

At this point, the power of the state and the interests of capital come into opposition. The theorists of biopower have no way to account for this division, which is why Agamben’s response to the pandemic is so woeful. Unable to recognize the potential radicality of the split between state power and the forces of capital, Agamben lumps both together under the rubric of biopower and launches a series of diatribes against its expansion during the Covid-19 pandemic. When he does discuss the difference, he laments capitalism’s capitulation to the state and its regime of biopower. These diatribes show the failure of the theory of biopower to think through the politics of capitalist society in crisis. But more than this, Agamben’s reactions to the pandemic highlight fundamental missteps that have always been present but never fully apparent. The pandemic reveals that the theory of biopower is not a theory of emancipation after all but rather a theory that supports the workings of capital.