Comparing Foucault's 'Discipline And Punish'

In Michel Foucault's Discipline and Punish, Foucault analyzes the concept of discipline and describes it as a concept in which people become “docile bodies” (Foucault 135), which an entity of power can subject to it’s will in order to create the most productive and least political dissonant person possible. The theory that the change in governmental punitive systems from more violent forms of punishment to more jail-based forms occurred in order to create “disciplined” people, rather than because, as some would think, to create a more humane form of punishment that wasn’t a public “atrocity” (55), is one of the crux’s of Foucault's book’s argument and makes Foucault’s argument more about changes in punitive measures reflecting changes in power
This concept of sovereign molding and control is clearly outlines when Foucault says, “Discipline increases the forces of the body (in economic terms of utility) and diminishes these same forces (in political terms of obedience)”. (138) Hence the purpose of structured “discipline” is two fold: firstly, molded citizens are more productive and able to support a system controlled by a powerful entity, and are less likely to rise up against those who have power over them, whatever that entity may
It is easy to interpret that the development from a torture based punitive system to a jail based punitive system was a change based upon humanism. However, even though “The Enlightenment was soon to condemn public torture as an ‘atrocity’”. (55) One can see through the the implications of Foucault's discipline that humanism what not the main driving force behind punitive change which is shown by the following: First, early on in the book, Foucault continually refers to a “sovereign” power which commits punitive measures upon its citizens as it sees fit. This “sovereign” power, in terms of torture and execution, can easily be interpreted to be kings, governments, etc. However, as the book delves into the concept of discipline, it becomes clear that disciplinary power doesn’t only apply to sovereign governments and kings. But, rather, that disciplinary power can be used by a myriad of systems, whether that system be private schooling, the government, or, perhaps most importantly, capitalists, which becomes clear when analyzing Foucault's first level of disciplinary organization: distribution. Capitalists could hire factory foremen who could, “By walking up and down the central aisle of the workshop... carry out a supervision that was both