CAP K
RTW is a “capitalist assault”, destroys labor, part of scheme to protect capitalism
Da Cruz, Joshua. 2021 The Right to Toil: Labors Fight against Right to Work Laws the Right to Toil: Labors
Fight against Right to Work Laws Recommended Citation Recommended Citation. 2021,
scholarworks.gsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1138&context=history_theses, 10.57709/24074839.
Accessed 23 Jan. 2023.
Although seemingly in support of union activity, this statement contradicts Governor Talmadge’s actions
in March when he signed the RTW laws.53 One is left to interpret his words through the lens of a more
Right-leaning pro-capitalist viewpoint. Through this interpretation, the “cooperation of labor” that
Governor Talmadge favored was less cooperation and more coercion. Talmadge wanted these new labor
laws enacted so that instead of management meeting laborers’ demands under threat of a strike, the
workers would have less power during collective bargaining. The public would not get an official
reasoning for Talmadge passing the Georgia RTW laws as he never commented during the signingof
these impactful bills.54
…
While Reynolds was not the far left, anti-American Marxist that Westbrook Pegler or Ralph McGill would
like their readers to believe, he was still standing in the way of the business conservatives’ plan to rip up
the New Deal in favor of a more pro-business model. 74 This is the crux of the capitalist assault on the
labor movement. If there is a roadblock preventing businesses from enriching themselves, management
were willing to throw money at that problem until it went away. One way to do that was to encourage
Congress to pass a new law to protect businesses from those problems. Kim Phillips-Fein, in her book
Invisible Hands: The Businessmen͛ s Crusade Against the New Deal ;2009), highlights this happening over
and over again in the 1950s when businesses began funding think tanks to publish studies or promote
arguments ranging from advocating for the destruction of the welfare state to the creation of unionbusting consultants.75 The unions were just another problem which business owners threw money at to
eliminate. The creation of RTW laws and the subsequent Taft-Hartley Act in 1947 was a prime example
of business leaders using their influence to smooth over opposition to the maximization of profits for
management
…
While the CIO had begun fighting against the proposed Taft-Hartley Act and local RTW laws, the AFL was
preparing a legal offensive in early March 1947. George Googe, the Southern Director of the
Organization of the AFL, stated that his organization would seek to respond immediately to the Georgia
RTW laws as soon as the General Assembly finished its deliberations.93 While the AFL mulled over its
next strategic move, pro-labor groups across the South believed that the RTW laws passed in various
states fell into a grand, national scheme to influence lawmakers to pass the Taft-Hartley Act.94 Procapitalist organizations, such as the Mont Pelerin Society and the National Association of Manufacturers,
ran their own campaigns to combat the “radical labor organizations” and to protect capitalism. 95 In
doing so, they effectively created a synthetic grassroots movement to prop up the Taft-Hartley Act at
the national level.
…
RTW makes unions extinct and ineffective, uproots democracy
Fowler, Patrick J. 2018 “Opinion: “Right to Work” Only Works for the Rich.” Tallahassee Democrat,
Tallahassee Democrat, 6 Apr. 2018, www.tallahassee.com/story/opinion/2018/04/06/opinion-rightwork-only-works-rich/492442002/. Accessed 16 Feb. 2023.
In his column, Bob McClure did not just tout the false merits of "right to work" laws. He said the
conditions provide a rationale for labor unions no longer existing.
Is that so? Why do workers join together to address compensation, working conditions and the politics
that support the rights of owners and executives over those of workers?
Workers are people who depend on payment for their labor power. The payment comes from the
owners of the land and buildings, who have access to credit necessary to carry out a business enterprise.
The owners promise to pay. Workers promise to go by the rules set by management.
There is no freedom of speech, assembly or redress of grievances in this set of promises. It is not a
contract between equals. Capitalism centralizes money and power at the top. In order to affect that in
any way, workers must join together.
McClure said even though they are no longer needed, unions cling to their desire to remain relevant.
There is certainly reason to question the union hierarchy, but it is not, as he would have it, because the
people who support the James Madison Institute have become altruistic or the government is doing a
good job seeing U.S. workers are protected and secure.
In the past 60 years since the passage of the Taft/Hartley Act, limiting the actions allowed to unions and
giving federal sanction to state "right to work" laws, unionization has been crushed as an effective tool.
Neo-liberals have succeeded in promoting individualism and competition over cooperation and the
common good. The effect has been disastrous for the trust and social solidarity needed for democracy
to operate.
Both political parties participated and there was no longer an effective force to point out the damage
being done. U.S. unions had lost their influence.
Businesses have cut back on benefits and stopped providing pensions. They send jobs overseas and
automate more. The "newly created" jobs to replace those lost have not come with the same
compensation.
U.S. business invented and exported the "gig economy." It became obvious with the birth of Uber. This
business model, as do others today, destroys secure jobs and replaces them with positions that have
no rights, no benefits and no real government regulation. It is a scheme that shows the capitalist
dream of sucking all the gains to the top.
Unions are key to deconstructing capitalism – the world is ready
Eidlin, Barry. 2020“Why Unions Are Good — but Not Good Enough.”
Jacobin.com, 2020,
jacobin.com/2020/01/marxism-trade-unions-socialism-revolutionary-organizing.
Accessed 24 Jan. 2023.
…
Many unions
have adapted to this conservative, managerial role. Others have played
key roles in challenging capital’s power. Some have even played insurgent roles at one
moment and managerial roles at others. When unions have organized workplace
insurgencies, this has sometimes translated into political pressure that expanded
democracy and led to large-scale
policy reforms. In the few revolutionary historical moments that we can identify,
worker organization, whether called unions or something else, has been essential.
…
What gives these Unions and the strikes arising from them their
real importance is this, that they are the first attempt of the workers to
abolish competition. They im- ply the recognition of the fact that the
supremacy of the bourgeoisie is based wholly upon the competition of the
workers among themselves; i.e., upon their want of cohesion. And precisely
because the Unions direct themselves against the vital nerve of the present social order,
however one-sidedly, in however narrow a way,
are they so dangerous to this social
order.
Marx and Engels understood that unions are essential to
working-class formation because, under capitalism, the system of “free labor,” where individual
workers sell their labor power to an employer for a wage, fragments relations between workers
and makes them
compete with each other. As
described in the Communist Manifesto, the bourgeoisie “has left no other nexus
between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous ‘cash payment,’”
leaving workers “exposed to all the vicissitudes of competition, to all the
fluctuations of the market.”
…
While workers organized based on other collective identities, such
as race, ethnicity, or religion, only unions could unite them as workers against the source of
their exploitation — the bourgeoisie. Unions serve “as organized agencies for superseding the
very system of
wage labor and capital rule.
…
Third, there are signs that the working class is stirring
once again. Just in 2018, the wave of teachers’ strikes across conservative US “red states”
garnered international headlines. Meanwhile, strikes by tens of
thousands of German
public sector workers crippled
cities and airports, while
French workers and students sought to rekindle the convergence des luttes of
May 1968. And in the United Kingdom, unconventional groups of workers including
IT specialists, university lecturers, and nonunion Ryan Air workers all walked out. Preliminary
analyses suggest that these events are part of a broader uptick in labor
protest since 2011. While
traditional unions have been involved in these strikes, what distinguishes the
recent wave is its organic, bottom-up character. It remains to be seen how
unions adapt to the emerging movements as they seek to reassert workers’ power
against capital and the state.
Capitalism is unsustainable and locks in planetary extinction.
Foster '19 [John Bellamy; 2/1/19; Professor of Sociology at the University of Oregon, PhD in Political
Science from York University, President and Board Member of the Monthly Review; "Capitalism Has
Failed—What?" https://monthlyreview.org/2019/02/01/capitalism-has-failed-what-next/]
The Anthropocene epoch, first ushered in by the Great Acceleration of the world economy immediately after the Second World War,
has generated enormous rifts in planetary boundaries, extending from climate change to ocean
acidification, to the sixth extinction, to disruption of the global nitrogen and phosphorus cycles, to the
loss of freshwater, to the disappearance of forests, to widespread toxic-chemical and radioactive
pollution.36 It is now estimated that 60 percent of the world’s wildlife vertebrate population (including mammals, reptiles,
amphibians, birds, and fish) have been wiped out since 1970, while the worldwide abundance of invertebrates has declined by 45
percent in recent decades.37 What climatologist James Hansen calls the “species exterminations” resulting from
accelerating climate change and rapidly shifting climate zones are only compounding this general process of
biodiversity loss. Biologists expect that half of all species will be facing extinction by the end of the century.38
If present climate-change trends continue, the “global carbon budget” associated with a 2°C increase in average
global temperature will be broken in sixteen years (while a 1.5°C increase in global average temperature—
staying beneath which is the key to long-term stabilization of the climate—will be reached in a decade). Earth
System scientists warn that the world is now perilously close to a Hothouse Earth, in which catastrophic
climate change will be locked in and irreversible.39 The ecological, social, and economic costs to
humanity of continuing to increase carbon emissions by 2.0 percent a year as in recent decades (rising in 2018 by 2.7 percent—3.4 percent
in the United States), and failing to meet the minimal 3.0 percent annual reductions in emissions currently needed to avoid a
catastrophic destabilization of the earth’s energy balance, are simply incalculable.40
Nevertheless, major energy
corporations continue to lie about climate change, promoting and bankrolling
climate denialism—while admitting the truth in their internal documents. These corporations are
working to accelerate the extraction and production of fossil fuels, including the dirtiest, most greenhouse gasgenerating varieties, reaping enormous profits in the process. The melting of the Arctic ice from global warming is seen
by capital as a new El Dorado, opening up massive additional oil and gas reserves to be exploited without regard to
the consequences for the earth’s climate. In response to scientific reports on climate change, Exxon Mobil declared that it
intends to extract and sell all of the fossil-fuel reserves at its disposal.41 Energy corporations continue to intervene in
climate negotiations to ensure that any agreements to limit carbon emissions are defanged. Capitalist
countries across the board are putting the accumulation of wealth for a few above combatting climate
destabilization, threatening the very future of humanity.
Capitalism is best understood as a competitive class-based mode of production and exchange geared to
the accumulation of capital through the exploitation of workers’ labor power and the private
appropriation of surplus value (value generated beyond the costs of the workers’ own reproduction). The mode of
economic accounting intrinsic to capitalism designates as a value-generating good or service anything
that passes through the market and therefore produces income. It follows that the greater part of the
social and environmental costs of production outside the market are excluded in this form of valuation
and are treated as mere negative “externalities,” unrelated to the capitalist economy itself—whether in terms
of the shortening and degradation of human life or the destruction of the natural environment. As environmental economist K. William Kapp
stated, “capitalism must be regarded as an economy of unpaid costs.”42
We have now reached a point in the twenty-first century in which the externalities of this irrational system,
such as the costs of war, the depletion of natural resources, the waste of human lives, and the
disruption of the planetary environment, now far exceed any future economic benefits that capitalism
offers to society as a whole. The accumulation of capital and the amassing of wealth are increasingly
occurring at the expense of an irrevocable rift in the social and environmental conditions governing
human life on earth.43
Capitalism leads to War
Chossudovsky on a synopsis of his new book. (Professor of Economics at the University of Ottawa), 11
(Michel, author of The Globalization of Poverty and The New World Order (2003), America's "War on Terrorism"
(2005) and Towards a World War III Scenario: The Dangers of Nuclear War (2011); "Towards a World War III
Scenario: The Dangers of Nuclear War." 06/30/11.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=25185.)
The US has embarked on a military adventure, “a long war”, which threatens the future
of humanity. The first two chapters of this E-book focus on the "Cult of Death and Destruction"
underlying this global military agenda.
US-NATO weapons of mass destruction are portrayed
as instruments of peace. Mini-nukes are said to be "harmless to the surrounding civilian population".
Pre-emptive nuclear war is portrayed as a "humanitarian undertaking". Nuclear war has become a
multibillion dollar undertaking, which fills the pockets of US defense contractors. What
is at stake is the outright "privatization of nuclear war". US nuclear doctrine is intimately related
to "America's War on Terrorism" and the alleged threat of Al Qaeda, which in a bitter irony is considered
as an upcoming nuclear power. Under
the Obama administration, Islamic terrorists are said to
be preparing to attack US cities. Proliferation is tacitly equated with “nuclear terrorism”.
Obama's nuclear doctrine puts particular emphasis on “nuclear terrorism” and on the alleged plans by Al
Qaeda to develop and use nuclear weapons. Chapter III focusses on America's Holy Crusade and the Battle
for Oil. The “Global War on Terrorism” requires going after the terrorists, using advanced weapons
systems. US foreign policy upholds a pre-emptive religious-like crusade against evil, which serves to
obscure the real objectives of military action. In the inner consciousness of Americans, the attacks of
September 11, 2001 justify acts of war and conquest against evil-doers. The Global War on Terrorism is
presented as a “clash of civilizations”, a
war between competing values and religions, when in
reality it is an outright war of conquest, guided by strategic and economic objectives. The
lies behind 9/11 are known and documented. The American people’s acceptance of this crusade
against evil is not based on any rational understanding or analysis of the facts. "The
American inquisition" purports to extend Washington’s sphere of influence. Military
intervention is justified as part of an international campaign against “Islamic terrorists”. Its ultimate
intention, which is never mentioned in press reports, is territorial conquest and control
over strategic resources. Ironically, under the Global War on Terrorism, these plans of conquest are
instrumented by covertly supporting Islamic paramilitary armies, which are then used to destabilize noncompliant governments and impose Western standards of "governance" and "democracy". World War III
Scenario The contours of a World War III scenario are discussed in Chapter IV. The Pentagon’s global
military design is one of world conquest. The military deployment of US-NATO forces is occurring in
Militarization at the global level is instrumented
through the US military's Unified Command structure: the entire planet is divided up into
geographic Combatant Commands under the control of the Pentagon. According to (former)
several regions of the World simultaneously.
NATO Commander General Wesley Clark, the Pentagon’s military road-map consists of a sequence of war
theaters: “[The] five-year campaign plan [includes]... a total of seven countries, beginning with Iraq, then
Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Iran, Somalia and Sudan.” Chapter V focusses on war preparations pertaining to
Iran, including the launching of a pre-emptive nuclear attack on the Islamic Republic. While Iran remains
on the Pentagon's drawing board, a fundamental shift in the sequencing of military operations has occurred.
The US-NATO-Israel alliance realizes that Iran has significant capabilities to respond and retaliate. With
the onset of the US-NATO led war in North Africa, Washington and its allies have chosen to wage war on
countries with lesser military capabilities. This factor in itself has been crucial in the decision by the US
and its allies to put "the Iran operation" on hold, while launching a "humanitarian war" on Libya. How to
Reverse the Tide of War Chapter VI focusses on antiwar actions directed against this diabolical military
agenda. Central to an understanding of war, is the media campaign which grants it legitimacy in the eyes
of public opinion. A good versus evil dichotomy prevails. The perpetrators of war are presented as the
victims. Public opinion is misled: “We must fight against evil in all its forms as a means to preserving the
Western way of life.”
Breaking the "big lie" which upholds war as a humanitarian
undertaking, means breaking a criminal project of global destruction, in which the quest for
profit is the overriding force. This profit-driven military agenda destroys human values and
transforms people into unconscious zombies. The holding of mass demonstrations and antiwar protests is
not enough. What is required is the development of a broad and well organized grassroots antiwar network,
across the land, nationally and internationally, which challenges the structures of power and authority.
People must mobilize not only against the military agenda, the authority of the state and
its officials must also be challenged. This war can be prevented if people forcefully confront their
governments, pressure their elected representatives, organize at the local level in towns, villages and
municipalities, spread the word, inform their fellow citizens as to the implications of a nuclear war, initiate
debate and discussion within the armed forces. The object of this E-Book is to forcefully reverse the tide
of war, challenge the war criminals in high office and the powerful corporate lobby groups which support
them. Break the American Inquisition. Undermine the US-NATO-Israel military crusade. Close down
the weapons factories and the military bases. Members of the armed forces should disobey orders and
refuse to participate in a criminal war. Bring home the troops.
The alternative is to reject RTW and capitalism in favor of commitment to organizing
anti-capitalist international revolution.
Tavan '21 [Luca; 3/7/21; writer for Red Flag; "Worldwide revolution is possible and necessary,"
https://redflag.org.au/article/worldwide-revolution-possible-and-necessary/]
From the moment Marx
and Engels urged workers of the world to unite at the climax of the Communist
Manifesto, the goal of international revolution has been at the core of Marxist politics.
International revolution isn’t just a romantic dream, but an urgent necessity. It’s the only means by
which capitalism can be permanently uprooted and replaced with socialism. This is because capitalism,
unlike previous class societies, is a globally integrated system. “For the first time in history”, wrote British Marxist Colin
Barker of this phenomenon, “capitalism has created a genuinely world society, where all our lives are entwined together in a common history
and a common fate”.
Capitalism has linked every nation in a global chain of production. Take your mobile phone for example. It was likely
assembled in China, using computer chips manufactured in Taiwan, powered by coal exported from Australia and produced with minerals
mined in the Democratic Republic of Congo according to specifications developed in Europe or the United States. No
single country
produces all the things necessary to satisfy its population’s needs, unlike the various forms of society
that came before capitalism, which were mostly self-sufficient and organised around small local economies.
Capitalism was established as a world system through immense robbery and violence—from the
international slave trade, which fuelled the Industrial Revolution, to the murderous colonisation of what is now Australia.
That same violence is today used by states to defend their imperialist interests, and discipline any
movements that get in their way. Movements that aspire to national independence or that back left-wing reformist governments have
been demolished with the aid of the great capitalist powers countless times in the past century, from the overthrow of the Allende government
in Chile in 1973 to the 2019 Bolivian coup.
Revolutionary movements that attempt to overturn the entire capitalist system face a much more severe response. This was confirmed by the
defeat of the Russian Revolution. In 1917 workers, radicalised by years of war and economic crisis, overthrew the tsarist regime and eventually
took power into their own hands. In response, the capitalist powers of the world united to crush the workers’ state, in alliance with
reactionaries who wanted to restore the tsarist regime. Unless
revolutions can spread internationally and challenge the
imperialist powers that have an interest in destroying them, they will be crushed.
A heroic effort by Russian workers and peasants fought off 16 foreign invading armies, but at a great cost. The working class was decimated, the
factories were depopulated, and the radical working-class democracy that had been built withered. The isolation
and poverty
imposed on Russia made building socialism an impossibility, and a new Stalinist regime emerged that
reversed most of the gains of the revolution.
Because Russian revolutionary socialists who pinned their hopes on spreading revolution across the globe were ultimately
defeated, their example is used by defenders of capitalism as a cautionary tale today: that a worldwide
revolution against the system is an impossible dream.
But capitalism’s global nature means that revolts tend to spread across national borders. Workers
today share increasingly similar experiences: conditions of work, forms of consumption, lifestyles and
political cultures. And the global integration of production serves to transmit struggle from one country
to another. In 1974, for instance, resistance to the brutal military dictatorship in Chile spread to East Kilbride,
Scotland, of all places. Workers at the Rolls Royce factory there learned that the engines they were repairing were being used by the
Chilean air force to drop bombs on workers resisting the coup. They downed tools and refused to work on the engines, keeping them out of the
hands of the military junta for four years.
While nationalism still has a powerful hold on the consciousness of many, it’s increasingly clear that the real line
of polarisation across the globe is between the minority ruling class and the majority working class.
And when revolts break out in one part of the world, people can identify with the causes and
motivations of their struggles, and draw comparisons with their own situation. “Languages remain different,”
observed UK Marxist Chris Harman in 1992, “but what they say is increasingly the same”. Harman’s words ring true in every wave
of political radicalisation.
1968 is remembered as a year of global revolt, when millions of workers, students and oppressed
people drew inspiration from each other’s movements. Activists in the US were radicalised by the heroic
resistance of the Vietnamese people to American imperialism. Irish civil rights activists emulated the militant
politics of the Black Panthers. When students and workers united to launch a massive general strike in
France in May, it taught student radicals in Australia that they needed to link up with the power of the organised
working class in order to win.
The movements of 1968 united people across superficially very different societies. For decades, Cold War
common sense had dictated that the greatest divide on the planet was between Western liberal capitalism and Stalinist “Communism”. But in
1968, both sides of the iron curtain exploded in revolt. The triggers for the struggles may have been
different, but they were all responses to similar issues: inequality, exploitation and war, imposed by
monstrous bureaucratic states.
In 2011, a poor Tunisian street vendor set himself alight to protest against police harassment. Within days, his act
had inspired anti-government protests across the country. Within weeks, the protests escalated into a
regional revolt that challenged regimes across the Arab world. One small act tapped into resentment
against inequality, unemployment and state violence that engulfed an entire region. The radical wave
spread even further: at a massive demonstration against an anti-union bill in the US city of Madison, Wisconsin,
a man held up a poster with a picture of Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak beside Republican Governor Scott Walker. The caption read: “One
dictator down. One to go”. The
Arab revolutions went on to inspire the Occupy movement, which spread to
more than 80 countries.
Today, more than ever, insurgent social movements and working-class uprisings are spurring action in
other parts of the world—from Hong Kong to Chile, from Lebanon to France. One placard at a memorial for protesters murdered while
resisting the military coup in Myanmar took up Marx’s incitement: “Workers of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but your chains”.
While the Russian Revolution is cynically held up by capitalist ideologists as the ultimate argument against
international revolution, it actually proves the opposite. It shows that the goal is not only necessary, but also
that it’s possible. The news of workers seizing power in Russia, overthrowing their capitalist government and
declaring their withdrawal from WWI, created shock waves across the planet. Workers in Germany rose in
revolt a year later, ending the war for good and building soviets, a form of radical working-class democracy inspired by the Russian
example. This was followed by uprisings in France, Italy and Hungary.
The revolutionary wave spread further. A classified British government report from 1919 noted a “very
widespread feeling among workers that thrones have become anachronisms, and that the Soviet may
be the best form of Government for a democracy”.
The rising tide of radicalism had an impact in Australia too. Meatworkers in the Queensland city of Townsville donned red jumpers, stormed the
local police station to free jailed unionists, and placed the city under workers’ control. The editor of the conservative Townsville Daily Bulletin
lamented: “Townsville for the last year or so has been developing Bolshevism ... the mob management of affairs in this city, differs very little,
from the Petrograd and Moscow brand”.
The Russian Bolsheviks, the revolutionary working-class party that led the revolution to victory in 1917, didn’t just passively
wait for revolutions elsewhere. They actively organised to spread the revolt. In 1919, they established the
Communist International, an organisation for debate, discussion and coordination between different
revolutionary workers’ parties. Revolutionaries in Russia, Italy, France, Germany, the US, Australia and elsewhere attempted to
clarify and develop a strategy for overthrowing capitalism everywhere. In none of these countries was there a party like
the Bolsheviks, steeled in years of organising working-class struggle to overthrow the state, and capable of leading a revolution. But for a
number of years, workers came close to overthrowing capitalism in several countries.
In periods of stability, when social conservatism dominates, international revolution can seem like a
pipe dream. Defenders of the status quo actively work to reinforce this illusion. But history proves that
the crises that the system generates are international, and that they will inevitably provoke
international resistance.
Capitalism is a global system. It requires a global movement to tear it up, root and branch. But it also makes
global revolution more possible, and more likely. The most important thing that socialists can do, whether you live
in Hong Kong or France, Myanmar or Australia, is to get stuck into organising for it today.
Refusal creates fissures in capitalism, multiplies into revolution
Holloway 5 [John Holloway, Writer of famous anti-capitalist text Change the World Without Taking
Power, Ph.D. in Political Science at the University of Edinburgh, teacher at the Institute for Humanities
and Social Sciences at the Autonomous University of Puebla, 2005, "Can we change the world without
taking power?" ZCommunications, Accessed online at http://www.zcommunications.org/can-wechange-the-world-without-taking-power-by-john-holloway, Accessed on 8/24/11]
I don’t know the answer. Perhaps we can change the world without taking power. Perhaps we
cannot. The starting point—for all of us, I think—is uncertainty, not knowing, a common search for a
way forward. Because it becomes more and more clear that capitalism is a catastrophe for humanity. A
radical change in the organisation of society, that is, revolution, is more urgent than ever. And this
revolution can only be world revolution if it is to be effective. But it is unlikely that world revolution can
be achieved in one single blow. This means that the only way in which we can conceive of revolution is
as interstitial revolution, as a revolution that takes place in the interstices of capitalism, a revolution that
occupies spaces in the world while capitalism still exists. The question is how we conceive of these
interstices, whether we think of them as states or in other ways. In thinking about this, we have to start
from where we are, from the many rebellions and insubordinations that have brought us to Porto
Alegre. The world is full of such rebellions, of people saying NO to capitalism: NO, we shall not live our
lives according to the dictates of capitalism, we shall do what we consider necessary or desirable and
not what capital tells us to do. Sometimes we just see capitalism as an all-encompassing system of
domination and forget that such rebellions exist everywhere. At times they are so small that even those
involved do not perceive them as refusals, but often they are collective projects searching for an
alternative way forward and sometimes they are as big as the Lacandon Jungle or the Argentinazo of
three years ago or the revolt in Bolivia just over a year ago. All of these insubordinations are
characterised by a drive towards self-determination, an impulse that says, ‘No, you will not tell us
what to do, we shall decide for ourselves what we must do.’ These refusals can be seen as fissures,
as cracks in the system of capitalist domination. Capitalism is not (in the first place) an economic
system, but a system of command. Capitalists, through money, command us, telling us what to do. To
refuse to obey is to break the command of capital. The question for us, then, is how do we multiply and
expand these refusals, these cracks in the texture of domination? There are two ways of thinking about
this. The first says that these movements, these many insubordinations, lack maturity and effectiveness
unless they are focused, unless they are channelled towards a goal. For them to be effective, they must
be channelled towards the conquest of state power either through elections or through the
overthrowing of the existing state and the establishment of a new, revolutionary state. The
organisational form for channelling all these insubordinations towards that aim is the party. The
question of taking state power is not so much a question of future intentions as of present organisation.
How should we organise ourselves in the present? Should we join a party, an organisational form that
focuses our discontent on the winning of state power? Or should we organise in some other way? The
second way of thinking about the expansion and multiplication of insubordinations is to say, No, they
should not be all harnessed together in the form of a party, they should flourish freely, go whatever way
the struggle takes them. This does not mean that there should be no coordination, but it should be a
much looser coordination. Above all, the principal point of reference is not the state but the society that
we want to create. The principal argument against the first conception is that it leads us in the wrong
direction. The state is not a thing, it is not a neutral object: it is a form of social relations, a form of
organisation, a way of doing things which has been developed over several centuries for the purpose of
maintaining or developing the rule of capital. If we focus our struggles on the state, or if we take the
state as our principal point of reference, we have to understand that the state pulls us in a certain
direction. Above all, it seeks to impose upon us a separation of our struggles from society, to convert
our struggle into a struggle on behalf of, in the name of. It separates leaders from the masses, the
representatives from the represented; it draws us into a different way of talking, a different way of
thinking. It pulls us into a process of reconciliation with reality, and that reality is the reality of
capitalism, a form of social organisation that is based on exploitation and injustice, on killing and
destruction. It also draws us into a spatial definition of how we do things, a spatial definition which
makes a clear distinction between the state's territory and the world outside, and a clear distinction
between citizens and foreigners. It draws us into a spatial definition of struggle that has no hope of
matching the global movement of capital. There is one key concept in the history of the state-centred
left, and that concept is betrayal. Time and time again the leaders have betrayed the movement, and
not necessarily because they are bad people, but just because the state as a form of organisation
separates the leaders from the movement and draws them into a process of reconciliation with capital.
Betrayal is already given in the state as an organisational form. Can we resist this? Yes, of course we
can, and it is something that happens all the time. We can refuse to let the state identify leaders or
permanent representatives of the movement, we can refuse to let delegates negotiate in secret with the
representatives of the state. But this means understanding that our forms of organisation are very
different from those of the state, that there is no symmetry between them. The state is an organisation
on behalf of, what we want is the organisation of self-determination, a form of organisation that allows
us to articulate what we want, what we decide, what we consider necessary or desirable. What we
want, in other words, is a form of organisation that does not have the state as its principal point of
reference. The argument against taking the state as the principal point of reference is clear, but what of
the other concept? The state-oriented argument can be seen as a pivoted conception of the
development of struggle. Struggle is conceived as having a central pivsot, the taking of state power. First
we concentrate all our efforts on winning the state, we organise for that, then, once we have achieved
that, we can think of other forms of organisation, we can think of revolutionising society. First we move
in one direction, in order to be able to move in another: the problem is that the dynamic acquired
during the first phase is difficult or impossible to dismantle in the second phase. The other concept
focuses directly on the sort of society we want to create, without passing through the state. There is no
pivot: organisation is directly prefigurative, directly linked to the social relations we want to create.
Where the first concept sees the radical transformation of society as taking place after the seizure of
power, the second insists that it must begin now. Revolution not when the time is right but revolution
here and now.
The role of the ballot is to support the greatest anti-capitalist alternative
Lebowitz 5 — Michael A. Lebowitz, Emeritus Professor of Economics at Simon Fraser University
(Canada), 2005 (“The Knowledge of a Better World,” Monthly Review: An Independent Socialist
Magazine, Volume 57, Issue 3, July-August, Available Online to Subscribing Institutions via Academic
Search Elite, p. 67)
The most immediate obstacle, though, is the belief in TINA, i.e., that there is no alternative. Without the
vision of a better world, every crisis of capitalism (such as the one upon us) can bring in the end only a
painful restructuring—with the pain felt by those already exploited and excluded. The concept of an
alternative, of a society based upon solidarity, is an essential weapon in defense of humanity. We need
to recognize the possibility of a world in which the products of the social brain and the social hand are
common property and the basis for our self-development—the possibility in Marx's words of "a society
of free individuality, based on the universal development of individuals and on their subordination of
their communal, social productivity as their social wealth" (Grundrisse [Penguin, 1973], 158). For this
reason, the battle of ideas is essential.
2nd off - theory
They must respond to all our arguments in the next speech, 1st constructive, or concede it - 2
warrants
Predictability - if they don’t respond in 2nd constructive, they can dump on new DAs and and we
will be unable to know what they are going to go for.
Time skew - not responding till 2nd rebuttal means we can’t frontline till summary. This gives
them a 4 to 3 structural advantage. That time skew cannot be rectified. They can avoid a position
of advocacy until second rebuttal
Strat skew - they can wait to see what links we extend in 1st rebuttal and then selectively choose
what to answer. They can also wait until 2nd rebuttal to dump straight turns in rebuttal.
Clash - waiting until a second rebuttal to engage with our arguments undermines the value
gained from contesting these ideas. It minimizes the debate round to heavy collapses to conceded
arguments in the back half
Voters
Education - its the only thing we take from debate and the only reason schools fund teams
Fairness - judges are asked to judge to best debaters, that’s impossible when the round is skewed