Foucault finds power in discourse and social relations, but neglects to discuss the reasons why power exists in a given situation. The errors in Foucault’s ideas about penal reform reflect a larger problem with his idea of power. Foucault asserts that disciplinary power extends throughout all society, but does not give a reason for it to exist outside of the prison. Although upper-class influence offers a plausible explanation for penal reform, it fails to justify disciplinary power in its other forms. Instead, he forces their efforts into a larger discourse, dominated by the bourgeoisie. Without providing substantial evidence to support his claims, Foucault dismisses the idea that the reformers might have changed punishment by appealing to human sympathy. By using bourgeois influence to explain penal reform, Foucault ignores other social trends and insufficiently explains power outside of the prison. Later, the upper class created the concept of delinquency to supervise and normalize the poor (Discipline 277). They removed public execution and torture, symbols of the inefficacy of the sovereign, and targeted the criminal’s soul.

According to Foucault, an eighteenth century shift from an illegality of rights to an illegality of property prompted the bourgeoisie to protect their goods by making the penal system more efficient.

Yet, Foucault commits the same error when he derives the origin of disciplinary power from bourgeois domination in Discipline and Punish. Foucault calls this kind of social theory too easy and faults it for yielding results that are both true and false simultaneously.

He derides academics that use bourgeois domination to explain a diverse range of social trends, including the exclusion of madness and the repression of infantile sexuality. In “Two Lectures,” Michel Foucault criticizes historical materialism for inadequately explaining social phenomena.

Foucault punishment