"Liberal" thinkers

[KXX4493553 at aol.com]

When we are talking about (neo)liberalism today, we must also see their 
forerunners in the 18th and 19th century. One of them was J. Bentham, the 
inventor of the "panopticon", a prison system in which all prisoners are 
visible all the time. The full title of the book in which he suggested his 
"new" system of "supervising" was:
J. Bentham, Panopticon; or, the Inspection House; containing the Idea of of 
new Principle of Construction applicable to any sort of Establishment, in 
which Persons of any Description are to be kept under Inspection; and in 
particular to Penitentiary-Houses, Prisons, Houses of Industry, Work-Houses, 
Poor-Houses, Manufacturies, Mad Houses, Lazarettos, Hospitals, and Schools; 
with a Plan of Management adaptet to the principle: in  a Series of Lettres, 
written in the year 1787, from Crecheff in White Russia, to a friend in 
England. By Jeremy Bentham, Dublin, printed: London, reprinted 1791. 
More about it in: Michel Foucault: Surveiller et punir. La nuissance de la 
prison, Editions Gallimard 1975, German edition: Überwachen und Strafen. Die 
Geburt des Gefängnisses, Frankfurt 1976, Suhrkamp, p. 256 ff.

To speak about totalitarism is useless without regarding the forerunners, and 
they were called "liberal" in their era...

Kurt-Werner Pörtner