Although Foucault himself does not explore the point, this is a knife cut across the body of liberal democracy, where the enshrinement of equality in the rule and application of law is the promise of the social contract. Competition as the central principle of market rationality also means political subjects lose guarantees of protection by the liberal state. Competition yields winners and losers; capital succeeds by destroying or cannibalizing other capitals. Hence, when market competition becomes generalized as a social and political principle, some will triumph and some will die … as a matter of social and political principle.

Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos, loc. 115