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.Thus, men and women marry ifthey believe this decision to be beneficial, and they file for divorceif this action promises an increase in well-being.Even the desire tohave children follows an economic calculus.Children are seen ei-ther as a source of psychic pleasure or as future labor that will oneday bring in money.Whether it is the desire for children, education,career, or marriage, the claims of this theoretical perspective knowno natural limits and extend across the totality of human behavior.The economic approach (Becker 1976) conceives of all people asautonomous managers of themselves, who make investment deci-sions relevant to themselves only and who aim for the production of Vital Politics and Bioeconomy 111surplus value.The flipside of this is that they are also responsible fortheir own failure in the face of social competition, which provides aninteresting contrast to the ideas presented by Goldscheid and othersin the early 20th century.In the program of the Menschenökonomie, the state sovereign func-tioned as an idealized global capitalist who strove to accumulateorganic surplus value.As Ulrich Bröckling notes, in the years afterWorld War I the state also decided what life was deemed not worthyof living and could therefore legitimately be killed (2003, 20 21).With human capital theory, which emerged after World War II, ev-ery individual becomes not only a capitalist but also the sovereignof him- or herself.With every action, he or she maximizes his or herindividual advantage, but he or she also to use Foucault s formula-tion exerts power in order to make life or let die. Following theeconomic approach, diseases and (premature) death could be inter-preted as the result of (wrong) investment decisions: most (if notall!) deaths are to some extent suicides in the sense that they couldhave been postponed if more resources had been invested in pro-longing life (Becker 1976, 10; emphasis in original).BiocapitalWhereas the concept of Menschenökonomie and human capital theoryview human existence from a perspective of economic rationality, inrecent times a range of political initiatives have postulated that theboundaries and the substance of the economic have to be redefined.The economy, according to this ambitious projection, will soontransform itself into a bioeconomy. 3 In 2006, the Organization forEconomic Cooperation and Development (OECD) published TheBioeconomy to 2030: Designing a Policy Agenda. Bioeconomy is de-fined in this programmatic text as a society s sum total of economicoperations which use the potential value of biological products andprocesses in order to create new growth and prosperity for citizensand nations (OECD 2006, 3). 112 Vital Politics and BioeconomyAt approximately the same time as the OECD document ap-peared, the European Commission adopted a plan with a similargoal.The Commission stressed the potential of a knowledge-basedbioeconomy (KBBE) that would both strengthen European com-petitiveness in international markets and help to protect the environ-ment.The European Commissioner for Science and Research, JanezPoto%0Å„nik, described the project as follows: As citizens of planetEarth it is not surprising that we both turn to Mother Earth to lifeitself to help our economies to develop in a way which should notjust enhance our quality of life, but also maintain it for future genera-tions (European Commission 2005, 2).Both the European Commission s and the OECD s programs aremeant to promote new products and services derived from bioscien-tific innovations.Central to this vision, therefore, is the creation andregulation of markets rather than a fundamental realignment of theeconomy, which is implied in the term bioeconomy. This enlargedmeaning of the word appears in scientific works, which in contrast tothe political programs observe a decisive and structural transforma-tion of economic relations.In Tissue Economies: Blood, Organs, and Cell Lines in Late Capital-ism (2006), a book by the medical anthropologist Catherine Waldbyand the literary scholar Robert Mitchell, terms such as biovalue or tissue economies do not refer to a political economy of capitalistaccumulation.These are situated instead in a symbolic economy ofgift exchange.On the one hand, blood and other bodily substancesare commonly understood as gifts that are unselfishly donated tohelp a needy third party.On the other hand, however, biomaterialsare increasingly viewed as commodities that can be sold and tradedfor profit
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