Any attempt to solve for poverty or climate change is futile under capitalism.
Transit is not a means of increasing low-income accessibility to push people out of poverty, but merely
a means of maximizing profit for the ruling class.
Kipfer 12, Stefan, “Ecosocialism and the fight for free public transit,” Climate and Capitalism,
https://climateandcapitalism.com/2012/12/04/ecosocialism-and-the-fight-for-free-public-transit/. [Stefan Kipfer teaches at the Faculty of
Environmental Studies, York University.] //YS
Starting points Transportation is never just about transportation. Historically,
transportation has always been much more
than a technology of moving goods and people from point A to point B. In the modern world, it has
been central in the development of imperial capitalism and the transformation of social relations. The
sail ships of the 17th and 18th century, the steamships of the 19th century and the cargo planes and container ships in the late 20th century
were essential means of ‘shrinking the globe’ to minimize the circulation time of capital while entrenching a deeply unequal and racialized
international division of labour. The slave ships, the railways and the car represented key points of experimenting with new labour processes and
Today, production and circulation are
based on existing transportation technologies that are intensified and selectively globalized. Auto-centred
energy sources while providing the strategic sectors in the first three industrial revolutions.
transportation has been transformed into “hyperautomobility” (Martin) in the global North while taking off in select parts of the global South.
As the case of computerized container shipping indicates, transportation technologies have also been integrated with electronic means of
communication. Mass transportation has also been central to the process through which the world has become urbanized over the last two
centuries. It has helped build networks between cities and hinterlands while shaping spatial relations in metropolitan areas. In the 19th century,
the rise of the modern metropolis was unthinkable without the global network of steam ships and railways that sustained the transfer of surplus
under imperialism. Equally important was mass transportation (streetcars and suburban trains, then subways). Mass transit made it possible for
social relations to be stretched between work and residence, facilitating (not causing) the segregation of social groups along lines of race and
class, and sustaining the sexual division of labour. In the 20th century, car transportation allowed planners to treat cities as machines of
consumption, production and circulation to sustain post-war capitalism. It laid the foundation for the suburbanization of urban life in
Euro-America while building the basis for urban sprawl, which we now recognize as a crucial element of global climate injustice – the imperial
aspect of planetary ecological degradation. Restructuring transportation is thus never just a matter of adjusting the technologies of
transportation. Up to a point, this is now widely acknowledged by most progressive urban planners and politicians. Advocates of “smart
growth,” “new urbanism,” “new regionalism” or “transit-centred development,” many of whom sit on city councils, populate planning offices or
write on urban affairs in cities like Toronto, recognize that to promote more effective and ecologically sustainable forms of transportation
requires linking public transit to a form of city building that promotes higher population densities and a greater ‘mix’ of urban activities (jobs,
apartments, public spaces). But mass transportation is intimately tied not only to the physical form of cities, towns and suburbs. [Mass
transportation] is profoundly shaped by the deeper social structures of imperial capitalism. Making transit
free and transforming it in the process is impossible without transforming the social relations amongst
humans and with nature that are embedded in transportation as we know it.
An investment in high speed rail perpetuates and worsens the state of capitalism as
FARMER, STEPHANIE, and SEAN NOONAN 2014. “The Contradictions of Capital and Mass Transit: Chicago, USA.” Science & Society,
vol. 78, no. 1, 2014, pp. 61–87. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/24583607. //AX
Transportation infrastructure plays a vital role in capitalism. Transportation
infrastructure facilitates the flow of capital
through its circuit, [and] can operate as a site for accumulation, and reduces the cost of living for laborers. Investment
in transportation is one means to achieve the annihilation of space through time (Harvey, 1999, 406). The turnover time of capital
can be reduced by accelerating the pace of movement of commodities across space via long-term,
fixed investments in the build environment such as harbors, railways, highways, and airports. Mass transit
systems contribute to the compression of the turnover time of capital insofar as buses and trains draw
passengers away from other transit modes used to move commodities across the urban space. This
reduction in traffic congestion allows for the faster movement of commodities across the urban
transportation network. Furthermore, as capital over-accumulates in the primary circuit of valorizing
production some capitalists seek out other channels of profit-making, such as the built environment.
Bus and rail systems come to act as a secondary circuit of (fixed) capital and a key element of the consumption fund (Harvey, 1989). Once in
place, differential access to transportation infrastructure provides the conditions for capturing differential rents as firms located in greater
propinquity to transit hubs are often able to capture a larger share of the market for their goods or services (Logan and Molotch, 1987).
Simply increasing the amount of public transit under our same economic system does not benefit the
working class as
Kipfer 12, Stefan, “Ecosocialism and the fight for free public transit,” Climate and Capitalism,
https://climateandcapitalism.com/2012/12/04/ecosocialism-and-the-fight-for-free-public-transit/. [Stefan Kipfer teaches at the Faculty of
Environmental Studies, York University.] //YS
In our age of privatization, it is easy to forget that public transit was built on the
ruins of private transportation networks. Between the late 19th and the middle of the 20th century, it
became clear that “the market” was incapable of organizing effective forms of mass transportation. As
a result, transportation was organized publicly: private rail, subway and trolley lines were taken over and transformed into
How ‘public’ is public transit?
transit agencies and railway corporations. Labour and popular movements often played an important role in this process, as was the case in
Toronto where the labour council began advocating for a municipal streetcar system decades before the TTC was created in 1921. However, in
the capitalist world, this sectoral socialization of transportation did not lead to a wider
decommodification of land and labour. Public transit did not always serve primarily public purposes. Public transit was an
important part in the construction of the ‘red’ [in this case, Social Democratic] cities of the inter- and postwar period – Vienna, Frankfurt, Zurich,
Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Stockholm – where public land ownership, public services and social housing were pillars of early modernist planning.
these efforts did not of course challenge private property per se and the
world of exploitation in the workplace. Indeed, in capitalist contexts, public transportation has
typically represented a collective infrastructure to sustain expanded and primary accumulation. Most
In contrast to the early Soviet experiments,
egregiously in the colonies – and white settler colonies like Canada – public transit companies and railway corporations helped dispossess
indigenous peoples, plunder ‘resources,’ further real-estate speculation and promote boosterist urban development. One reason for the
eventual creation of the TTC (in 1921) was that private streetcar companies were unwilling to expand their routes sufficiently to support private
real estate development. Since the middle of 20th century, public transit in the advanced capitalist world was increasingly relegated to
secondary status. Despite big comparative differences between, say, New York City and Houston, or Naples and Vienna, nowhere did public
transportation manage to stem the tide of mass ‘automobilization’ and cargo trucking from the 1920s (in the U.S.) to the 1960s (Western
Europe). Indeed, it was not uncommon for Socialist and Communist parties to support car-led development as a ‘working-class proposition.’
Since the oil crisis of the 1970s, only some resurgent transit initiatives were designed to counter automobility. Long-range suburban commuter
transit, which is typically supported by business-centred growth coalitions, often facilitate automobilized sprawl. Similarly, the European case
shows that high-speed train systems (now typically semi-privatized initiatives) can come at the expense of the density of inter-regional rail
transportation. Demanding free transit can represent a refreshing argument against the reprivatization of transit – and the profoundly unfree
character of our car- and road-dominated society. But given that various forms of public transit have functioned in less-than-public and
progressive ways, arguing for free transit today is also insufficient. Free transit advocates are thus forced to think not only about how to pay for
existing transportation routes but also about what kind of transportation system we want. While public transit is always preferable to privatized
transportation (car-led or otherwise), only some forms of public transit are amenable to red-green – socialist, sustainable, internationalist –
ways of reorganizing urban life and the social order.
High speed rail would open the door for the unprecedented rapid circulation of capital, furthering the
world toward its inevitable demise. Capitalism is fatally unsustainable and its impact is two-fold.
First is exacerbating inequality. In past attempts for reform, such as the New Deal, we found that
infrastructure and inequality worsened over time. Fraser 12 writes that
Capitalism cannibalizes infrastructure –state-funded rail falls apart while inequality worsens – turns
case.
Fraser 12 [Fraser, Steve (2012). More than Greed. Dissent, 59(1), 101–104. doi:10.1353/dss.2012.0011 //AX
Capitalism cannibalizes infrastructure –state-funded rail falls apart while inequality
worsens – turns case.
Fraser 12 [Fraser, Steve (2012). More than Greed. Dissent, 59(1), 101–104. doi:10.1353/dss.2012.0011 //AX
Madrick’s aversion to thinking of the crisis as systemic and to a related faith in the Democratic Party as the repository of the
New Deal version of
capitalism, a version many progressives would like to restore. But the New Deal not only civilized a broken-down economic
system, it also sought successfully to extend the reach of the capitalist marketplace and credit
networks not abolish them. It created the political and institutional foundations of mass consumption
capitalism. Those foundations eventually crumbled as domestic opportunities for profitable enough
capital accumulation grew scarce, a process that in turn exerted a relentless downward pressure on labor
costs and the social wage. That is to say, in an increasingly fierce struggle to compete with lower cost
foreign producers, American business began to undermine the foundations of “effective demand”
among ordinary working people that had kept the system upright for so long. It set in motion a
perverse dynamic of disaccumulation or what might be called the auto-cannibalism of an economy
eating itself alive. The most developed economy in the world began a process of underdevelopment.
Its infrastructure—road, bridges, tunnels, railroads, waterworks, dams, airports, electrical grids— were
allowed to decay. The industrial core of the economy was hollowed out by precisely those “financial engineers” Madrick writes about. Deindustrialization
signaled that the old system had broken down. This became a long, secular crisis. Gradually and then at an accelerated rate, it elicited one overriding response;
namely, to leverage everything in sight. Everything
in this case included capital assets that produced debt-based asset
bubbles in stocks or housing or other securities and commodities that provided a kind of “privatized
Keynesian” stimulus package for elite financial institutions. Meanwhile, below, a working population
found itself drowning in a sea of usurious credit.
Second is extinction
Capitalism is a root cause of climate change
Sun 21, Fanchao. “Global Social Challenges | Is the Fundamental Cause of Climate Change Capitalist Economic Growth? - Global Social
Challenges.” the University of Manchester WordPress Websites & Blogs, 5 May 2021,
https://sites.manchester.ac.uk/global-social-challenges/2021/05/05/is-the-fundamental-cause-of-climate-change-capitalist-economic-growth/.
Accessed 27 July 2022.
First of all, what changes has capitalism brought to us? Marx and Engels (1824) claimed that the material wealth created by capitalism in the 100
years after its emergence exceeded the sum of all previous times. This is enough to show that the rise of capitalism caused the explosive growth
of productivity, whether in industry or agriculture, more new technology and human resources input, and participation in social production and
activities. At the same time, according to the theory of the treadmill of production, Gould, Pellow, and Schnaiberg (2003) argued that The
relationship between production and ecosystem is direct. From the exploitation of resources, the establishment of factories, or the application
of chemistry in industry and agriculture, the human society and the ecosystem interact during the production activities. With the establishment
of the capitalistic system, the growth of population and productivity is inevitable. Therefore, Just like the greenhouse effect, human production,
transportation, and social activities will bring more greenhouse gas emissions, such as carbon dioxide and methane. In the natural cycle, climate
in the
centuries since the advent of capitalism, massive anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases have
directly exacerbated and accelerated climate change, further contributing to the melting of the
Antarctic ice sheet and the frequent occurrence of extreme weather events. Most of the time we think of the
change is a very long process, and human beings are also flourishing in the relatively stable ecological environment of 12000 years. But
earth as a whole, but it’s made up of a lot of complex systems that interact with each other, and one of those variables, like temperature, if it
exceeds a certain level, the stability of the whole system will be disrupted.
Krosofsky 21, Andrew. “Will Global Warming Cause Extinction? Here's What Scientists Say.” Green Matters, 11 March 2021,
https://www.greenmatters.com/p/will-global-warming-cause-extinction. Accessed 27 July 2022.
Eventually, yes. Global warming will invariably result in the mass extinction of millions of different species, humankind included. In fact, the
Center for Biological Diversity says that global
warming is currently the greatest threat to life on this planet. Global
warming causes a number of detrimental effects on the environment that many species won’t be able to handle long-term. Extreme weather
patterns are shifting climates across the globe, eliminating habitats and altering the landscape. As a result, food and fresh water sources are
being drastically reduced. Then, of course, there are the rising global temperatures themselves, which many species are physically unable to
contend with. Formerly frozen arctic and antarctic regions are melting, increasing sea levels and temperatures. Eventually, these effects will
create a perfect storm of extinction conditions. re
The alternative is the resistance of capitalism in the debate space. Stoddart 07 writes to the
importance of ideology in keeping the masses complicit.
Stoddart 07, Mark C. J. “Ideology, Hegemony, Discourse: A Critical Review of Theories of Knowledge and Power.” Social Thought & Research,
vol. 28, 2007, pp. 191–225. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/23252126. Accessed 28 Jul. 2022. // YS
The notion of ideology, as it informed critical social theory throughout the twentieth century, emerged in the work of Karl Marx (1977; also see
Marx and Engels 1989). Here, ideology refers to the ways in which society as a whole adopts the ideas and interests of the dominant economic
class. Marx’s model of ideology rests upon a historical-materialist perspective, which asserts that material reality is the foundation of social
consciousness. Material reality sets boundaries on the ideas that may emerge as important, or even acceptable, in a given social setting.
However, it
is through the dominant ideologies of capitalism that the working classes take for granted
their exploitation within economic structures of inequality. For Marx, the most important aspects of material reality
centre on human productive labor. The appropriation of resources from the natural world for the production of goods is the foundation of social
life. Within a capitalist mode of production, the most important social relations are those between members of the working class as they engage
in productive labor, as well as the relations between the working class and the capitalist class, which owns the means of production (such as
factories and machines). Through their owner-ship of the means of production, the capitalist class gains the power to appropriate the labor of
the working classes, who lack access to the means to produce the necessities of survival — including food, clothing, shelter — for themselves.
Ideology enters Marx’s theoretical framework to explain how the subordinate classes take exploitative
relations of production for granted, as something solid and unchangeable. One way in which this is
accomplished is the way in which objects with use value become commodities characterized by their
exchange value. Objects produced through human labor have value insofar as they fulfill a particular
function. The use value of wood may be realized if I build a house; the use value of an apple is realized when I eat it. By contrast,
exchange value refers to the social labor that is required to produce the same objects for a capitalist
economy. The move from use value towards a system of exchange value removes from visibility the
role of human labor in producing value. Commodity “fetishism” refers to the way in which the objects produced by human labor
are divorced from that productive labor and are relocated in the economy of exchange value within a capitalist mode of production (Marx
1977:165). This
process is ideological in the sense that it obscures the central importance of labor to
social life. It transforms the material product of human labor into a “social hieroglyphic” which is undecipherable to capital’s subordinate
classes (p. 167). Through this process, elite social groups naturalize capitalist relations of production. Workers come to view the
capitalist mode of production as the only viable option, where they must sell their labor power to the capitalist class in
order to obtain commodities. Ideology, then, functions to secure the participation of subordinate classes in exploitative relations of production.
For Marx, the equation of labor power with money, or wages, is another way in which ruling groups secure the consent of the working classes
for their own exploitation. Workers exchange their labor power for wages, which they use to purchase the commodi- ties that they produce, but
which the capitalist class owns and sells. This transmutation of labor into wages creates a false reality for workers
Discourse acts as a form of resistance. Stoddart speaks to the work of Foucault who asserts that
Stoddart 07, Mark C. J. “Ideology, Hegemony, Discourse: A Critical Review of Theories of Knowledge and Power.” Social Thought &
Research, vol. 28, 2007, pp. 191–225. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/23252126. Accessed 28 Jul. 2022. // YS
For Foucault, the
production and circulation of discourses are simultaneously mechanisms of social power.
Corollary to this, he asserts that those who wish to exercise social power must use discourse in order to do so.
The regulation of discourse deals with who is allowed to speak on a given topic, as well as which forms of knowledge are subjugated in the
production of truth. As Foucault (2003) notes, “The delicate mechanisms of power cannot function unless knowledge, or rather knowledge
apparatuses, are formed, organized, and put into circulation, and those apparatuses are not ideological trimmings or edifices” (pp. 33-34).
Similarly, we should be attentive to the silences that lie outside the boundaries of acceptable debate, for they are also part of the networks of
power-knowledge that make up the discursive economy. Finally, if
discourses are sites for the exercise of social power,
then the production of discourse may also constrain and challenge the exercise of power. Emphasizing the
inherent capacity for resistance within power relations, Foucault writes, “The power relation- ship and freedom’s refusal to submit cannot
therefore be separated. . . . At the very heart of the power relationship, and constantly provoking it, are the recalcitrance of the will and the
intransigence of freedom” (Foucault 2000[1994]a: 342). Therefore, networks of power/knowledge are also sites of resistance, where all of the
part- ners within a power relationship produce and contest the truth.
The role of the ballot is to endorse the best method of resisting capitalism.
McLaren and Farahmandpur 01 [McLaren, P.; Farahmandpur, R. (2001). Teaching Against Globalization and the New
Imperialism: Toward a Revolutionary Pedagogy. Journal of Teacher Education, 52(2), 136–150. doi:10.1177/0022487101052002005 // AX
This requires that students are able to see themselves in relation to their role as workers and to be provided with an opportunity to develop
class consciousness. This does not mean that class consciousness excludes other aspects of identity. As Reed (2000) points out, The claim that
being a worker is not the most crucial identity for members of marginalized groups is debatable. To say the least. But even if that claim were
true, what it means simply is that people see themselves in many ways simultaneously. We all have our own sets of experiences fashioned by
our social position, our family upbringing, our local political culture, and our voluntary associations. Each of these goes into the mix, modifying,
cross-cutting, even at times overriding identities based on race or ethnicity, gender, or sexual orientation. . . . The fact of the existence of a
capitalist economic order doesn’t automatically tell us how people interpret their positions within it. Class consciousness, no less than other
identities, is contingent, the product of political debate and struggle. (p. 137) It is imperative in our view that the struggles of teachers in
schools are linked to the struggles of other workers. A revolutionary workingclass pedagogy of labor stresses that the empowerment of
workers (i.e., teachers, postal workers, factory workers) can be successfully achieved through organizing labor unions that committed to
anticapitalist struggle and a proletarian praxis. Yet, we
must also emphasize that the political and economic
empowerment of workers will depend on their active e participation and self-education. Here we oppose the tradition of
“workerism” that is often anti-intellectual and looks on theory with suspicion and often contempt. Instead, we applaud the recent struggles of intellectuals such as
Pierre Bourdieu of France to coordinate the efforts of numerous European social movements through his organization, Raisons d’Agir. The ability of teachers and
prospective teachers to interpret contemporary social relations of production as a set of interconnected social and material practices helps them
to understand that success in a capitalist society is not the result of individual capacities but rather is constrained and enabled by asymmetrical
relations of power linked to race, class, gender, and sexual economies of privilege. We believe that workers committed to social justice have the
opportunity to become liberatory intellectuals (what Antonio Gramsci, 1971, referred to as “organic” intellectuals) who possess the capacity to make
meaningful choices and decisions in their lives (McLaren, Fischman, Serra, & Antelo, 1998). Thus, teachers who are central to the process of raising
our task as
organic and committed intellectuals is to create the conditions for the development of a revolutionary
consciousness among the working class in general and teachers and students in particular. In developing a
students’ political consciousness must themselves become theoreticians of their own teaching practices. Accordingly,
framework for forging solidarity and collective action among workers and students, we find the three conditions that Weinbaum (1998) proposes to be particularly
instructive. First,
the central role of critical educators must be directed at facilitating dialogues among workers
and students concerning everyday labor practices at the workplace and teaching practices within schools. Second, teachers
and workers must be presented with opportunities for transforming those relationships that link their individual interests and issues at the
local and community level to broader social and economic relations at a global level. And finally, Weinbaum stresses the active political role
that critical educators in labor unions and schools must play both in their communities and in progressive organizations. We believe that a
revolutionary workingclass pedagogy that aims at consciousnessraising, political activism, and social empowerment can be a critical tool for
self-determination and also for transforming existing social conditions. Yet, we feel it is necessary to stress that working-class pedagogy can be
effective only to the degree that marginalized social groups are able to organize into oppositional social and political movements against global
capitalism and remain committed to a metanarrative of social justice both inside and outside the classroom. This stipulates that a stress on
difference not undercut the possibility of political solidarity. As Reed (2000) notes, Insofar as identity politics insists on recognizing difference as
the central truth of political life, it undercuts establishing a broad base as a goal of organizing. Its reflex is to define ever more distinct voices and
to approach collective action from an attitude more like suspicion than solidarity. (p. xxii)
Do so by voting neg.
McLaren 4, “Class Dismissed? Historical materialism and the politics of ‘difference’,” Educational Philosophy and Theory Vol. 36, Issue 2,
p. 183-199
For well over two decades we have witnessed the jubilant liberal and conservative pronouncements of the demise of socialism. Concomitantly,
history's presumed failure to defang existing capitalist relations has been read by many self-identified
‘radicals’ as an advertisement for capitalism's inevitability. As a result, the chorus refrain ‘There Is No
Alternative’, sung by liberals and conservatives, has been buttressed by the symphony of post-Marxist
voices recommending that we give socialism a decent burial and move on. Within this context, to speak of
the promise of Marx and socialism may appear anachronistic, even naïve, especially since the post-al
intellectual vanguard has presumably demonstrated the folly of doing so. Yet we stubbornly believe that the chants of
T.I.N.A. must be combated for they offer as a fait accompli, something which progressive Leftists should refuse to
accept—namely the triumph of capitalism and its political bedfellow neo-liberalism, which have worked
together to naturalize suffering, undermine collective struggle, and obliterate hope. We concur with Amin
(1998), who claims that such chants must be defied and revealed as absurd and criminal, and who puts the challenge we face in no uncertain
terms: humanity
may let itself be led by capitalism's logic to a fate of collective suicide or it may pave the
way for an alternative humanist project of global socialism. The grosteque conditions that inspired Marx
to pen his original critique of capitalism are present and flourishing. The inequalities of wealth and the
gross imbalances of power that exist today are leading to abuses that exceed those encountered in
Marx's day (Greider, 1998, p. 39). Global capitalism has paved the way for the obscene concentration of wealth
in fewer and fewer hands and created a world increasingly divided between those who enjoy opulent
affluence and those who languish in dehumanizing conditions and economic misery. In every corner of the
globe, we are witnessing social disintegration as revealed by a rise in abject poverty and inequality. At the current historical
juncture, the combined assets of the 225 richest people is roughly equal to the annual income of the
poorest 47 percent of the world's population, while the combined assets of the three richest people
exceed the combined GDP of the 48 poorest nations (CCPA, 2002, p. 3). Approximately 2.8 billion people—almost half of the
world's population—struggle in desperation to live on less than two dollars a day (McQuaig, 2001, p. 27). As many as 250 million children are
wage slaves and there are over a billion workers who are either un- or under-employed. These are the concrete realities of our time—realities
that require a vigorous class analysis, an unrelenting critique of capitalism and an oppositional politics capable of confronting what Ahmad
(1998, p. 2) refers to as ‘capitalist universality.’ They
are realities that require something more than that which is
offered by the prophets of ‘difference’ and post-Marxists who would have us relegate socialism to the
scrapheap of history and mummify Marxism along with Lenin's corpse. Never before has a Marxian
analysis of capitalism and class rule been so desperately needed. That is not to say that everything Marx said or
anticipated has come true, for that is clearly not the case. Many critiques of Marx focus on his strategy for moving toward socialism, and with
ample justification; nonetheless Marx did provide us with fundamental insights into class society that have held true to this day. Marx's
enduring relevance lies in his indictment of capitalism which continues to wreak havoc in the lives of
most. While capitalism's cheerleaders have attempted to hide its sordid underbelly, Marx's description of
capitalism as the sorcerer's dark power is even more apt in light of contemporary historical and
economic conditions. Rather than jettisoning Marx, decentering the role of capitalism, and discrediting class analysis, radical
educators must continue to engage Marx's oeuvre and extrapolate from it that which is useful
pedagogically, theoretically, and, most importantly, politically in light of the challenges that confront us.
The urgency which animates Amin's call for a collective socialist vision necessitates, as we have argued, moving beyond the particularism and
liberal pluralism that informs the ‘politics of difference.’ It also requires
challenging the questionable assumptions that
have come to constitute the core of contemporary ‘radical’ theory, pedagogy and politics. In terms of
effecting change, what is needed is a cogent understanding of the systemic nature of exploitation and
oppression based on the precepts of a radical political economy approach (outlined above) and one that
incorporates Marx's notion of ‘unity in difference’ in which people share widely common material interests. Such an understanding extends far
beyond the realm of theory, for the manner in which we choose to interpret and explore the social world, the concepts and frameworks we use
to express our sociopolitical understandings, are more than just abstract categories. They imply intentions, organizational practices, and political
agendas. Identifying
class analysis as the basis for our understandings and class struggle as the basis for
political transformation implies something quite different than constructing a sense of political agency
around issues of race, ethnicity, gender, etc. Contrary to ‘Shakespeare's assertion that a rose by any other name would smell as
sweet,’ it should be clear that this is not the case in political matters. Rather, in politics ‘the essence of the flower lies in the
name by which it is called’ (Bannerji, 2000, p. 41). The task for progressives today is to seize the moment and
plant the seeds for a political agenda that is grounded in historical possibilities and informed by a vision
committed to overcoming exploitative conditions. These seeds, we would argue, must be derived from
the tree of radical political economy. For the vast majority of people today—people of all ‘racial
classifications or identities, all genders and sexual orientations’—the common frame of reference arcing
across ‘difference’, the ‘concerns and aspirations that are most widely shared are those that are rooted in
the common experience of everyday life shaped and constrained by political economy’ (Reed, 2000, p. xxvii).
While post-Marxist advocates of the politics of ‘difference’ suggest that such a stance is outdated, we would argue that the categories
which they have employed to analyze ‘the social’ are now losing their usefulness, particularly in light of
actual contemporary ‘social movements.’ All over the globe, there are large anti-capitalist movements
afoot. In February 2002, chants of ‘Another World Is Possible’ became the theme of protests in Porto Allegre. It seems that those people
struggling in the streets haven’t read about T.I.N.A., the end of grand narratives of emancipation, or the decentering of capitalism. It seems
as though the struggle for basic survival and some semblance of human dignity in the mean streets of
the dystopian metropoles doesn’t permit much time or opportunity to read the heady proclamations
emanating from seminar rooms. As E. P. Thompson (1978, p. 11) once remarked, sometimes ‘experience walks in without
knocking at the door, and announces deaths, crises of subsistence, trench warfare, unemployment,
inflation, genocide.’ This, of course, does not mean that socialism will inevitably come about, yet a sense of
its nascent promise animates current social movements. Indeed, noted historian Howard Zinn (2000, p. 20) recently
pointed out that after years of single-issue organizing (i.e. the politics of difference), the WTO and other anti-corporate
capitalist protests signaled a turning point in the ‘history of movements of recent decades,’ for it was the
issue of ‘class’ that more than anything ‘bound everyone together.’ History, to paraphrase Thompson (1978, p. 25)
doesn’t seem to be following Theory's script. Our vision is informed by Marx's historical materialism and his
revolutionary socialist humanism, which must not be conflated with liberal humanism. For left politics
and pedagogy, a socialist humanist vision remains crucial, whose fundamental features include the
creative potential of people to challenge collectively the circumstances that they inherit. This variant of
humanism seeks to give expression to the pain, sorrow and degradation of the oppressed, those who
labor under the ominous and ghastly cloak of ‘globalized’ capital. It calls for the transformation of those
conditions that have prevented the bulk of humankind from fulfilling its potential. It vests its hope for
change in the development of critical consciousness and social agents who make history, although not
always in conditions of their choosing. The political goal of socialist humanism is, however, ‘not a resting
in difference’ but rather ‘the emancipation of difference at the level of human mutuality and reciprocity.’
This would be a step forward for the ‘discovery or creation of our real differences which can only in the end be explored in reciprocal ways’
(Eagleton, 1996, p. 120). Above all else, the
enduring relevance of a radical socialist pedagogy and politics is the
centrality it accords to the interrogation of capitalism. We can no longer afford to remain indifferent to
the horror and savagery committed by capitalist's barbaric machinations. We need to recognize that
capitalist democracy is unrescuably contradictory in its own self-constitution. Capitalism and democracy cannot be
translated into one another without profound efforts at manufacturing empty idealism. Committed Leftists must unrelentingly
cultivate a democratic socialist vision that refuses to forget the ‘wretched of the earth,’ the children of
the damned and the victims of the culture of silence—a task which requires more than abstruse
convolutions and striking ironic poses in the agnostic arena of signifying practices. Leftists must illuminate the
little shops of horror that lurk beneath ‘globalization’s’ shiny façade; they must challenge the true ‘evils’ that are manifest in the tentacles of
global capitalism's reach. And, more than this, Leftists
must search for the cracks in the edifice of globalized
capitalism and shine light on those fissures that give birth to alternatives. Socialism today, undoubtedly, runs against
the grain of received wisdom, but its vision of a vastly improved and freer arrangement of social relations beckons on the horizon. Its unwritten
text is nascent in the present even as it exists among the fragments of history and the shards of distant memories. Its
potential remains
untapped and its promise needs to be redeemed.
The role of the ballot is to endorse the side which best dismantles capitalism.
-
Debate promotes education and discourse which is essential in resisting capitalism. The ballot in
and of itself acts as a form of offense.
General notes:
- Exchange and use values:
https://cla.purdue.edu/academic/english/theory/marxism/terms/usevalue.html