The problematic of the economy is by no means the logical completion of the great problematic of sovereignty through which eighteenth century juridical-political thought stroveto show how, by starting from individual subjects of natural right, one could arrive at the constitution of a political unity defined by the existence ofan individual or collective sovereign who is the holder of Part of the totality of these individual rights and at the same time the principle of their limitation. The economic problematic, the problematic of economic interest, is governed by a completely different configuration, by a completely different logic, type of reasoning, and rationality. In fact, from the eighteenth century the political-juridical world and the economic world appear as heterogeneous and incompatible worlds. The idea of an economic-juridical science is strictly impossible and what is more it has never in fact been constituted.

Michel Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics, loc. 1454