***Neg Neoliberalism K***
1NCs
1NC- Neoliberalism K
The intersection between economic engagement and neoliberalism is the root cause
of the current economic crisis—it ushers in an unsustainable model of debt-driven
growth.
Palley, PhD in economics from Yale, 10 (Thomas, MA in IR from Yale, and a BA from Oxford, “AMERICA’S EXHAUSTED PARADIGM: MACROECONOMIC CAUSES
OF THE FINANCIAL CRISIS AND GREAT RECESSION”, New School Economic Review, Volume 4(1), 2010: 15-43, ZBurdette)
This paper traces the roots of the current financial crisis to a faulty U.S. macroeconomic paradigm. One
flaw in this paradigm was the neoliberal growth model adopted after 1980 that relied on debt and asset
price inflation to drive demand in place of wage growth. A second flaw was the model of U.S.
engagement with the global economy that created a triple economic hemorrhage of spending on
imports, manufacturing job losses, and off-shoring of investment. Financial deregulation and financial
excess are important parts of the story, but they are not the ultimate cause of the crisis. These
developments contributed significantly to the housing bubble but they were a necessary part of the
neoliberal model, their function being to fuel demand growth by making ever larger amounts of credit
easily available. As the neoliberal model slowly cannibalized itself by undermining income distribution
and accumulating debt, the economy needed larger speculative bubbles to grow. The flawed model of
global engagement accelerated the cannibalization process , thereby creating need for a huge bubble
that only housing could provide. However, when that bubble burst it pulled down the entire economy because of the bubble’s massive dependence on debt. The old
postWorld War II growth model based on rising middle-class incomes has been dismantled, while the new neoliberal growth model has imploded. The United States needs a
new economic paradigm and a new growth model, but as yet this challenge has received little attention from
policymakers or economists.
Neoliberal engagement of Latin America results in inequality, political oppression, and
military intervention—moral obligation to put those sacrificed by Western growth at
the center of decision making.
Makwana 6 (Rajesh, STWR, 23rd November 06, http://www.stwr.org/globalization/neoliberalism-and-economic-globalization.html, ZBurdette)
Neoliberalism and Economic Globalization
The goal of neoliberal economic globalization is the removal of all barriers to commerce, and the
privatization of all available resources and services. In this scenario, public life will be at the mercy of
market forces, as the extracted profits benefit the few, writes Rajesh Makwana.
The thrust of international policy behind the phenomenon of economic globalization is neoliberal in
nature. Being hugely profitable to corporations and the wealthy elite, neoliberal polices are propagated through the IMF, World Bank and WTO. Neoliberalism favours
the free-market as the most efficient method of global resource allocation. Consequently it favours large-scale, corporate
commerce and the privatization of resources.
neoliberalism. Its ideologies have been rejected by influential countries in
Latin America and its moral basis is now widely questioned. Recent protests against the WTO, IMF and World Bank were essentially protests
There has been much international attention recently on
against the neoliberal policies that these organizations implement, particularly in low-income countries.
The neoliberal experiment has failed to combat extreme poverty , has exacerbated global inequality ,
and is hampering international aid and development efforts. This article presents an overview of neoliberalism and its effect on low income
countries.
Introduction
After the Second World War, corporate enterprises helped to create a wealthy class in society which enjoyed excessive political influence on their government in the US and Europe.
Neoliberalism surfaced as a reaction by these wealthy elites to counteract post-war policies that favoured the working class and strengthened the welfare state.
Neoliberal policies advocate market forces and commercial activity as the most efficient methods for producing and supplying goods
and services. At the same time they shun the role of the state and discourage government intervention into
economic, financial and even social affairs. The process of economic globalization is driven by this ideology;
removing borders and barriers between nations so that market forces can drive the global economy. The
policies were readily taken up by governments and still continue to pervade classical economic thought, allowing corporations and affluent countries to secure their financial advantage within
the world economy.
The policies were most ardently enforced in the US and Europe in the1980s during the Regan–Thatcher–
Kohl era. These leaders believed that expanding the free-market and private ownership would create greater economic efficiency and social well-being. The resulting deregulation,
privatization and the removal of border restrictions provided fertile ground for corporate activity, and over the next 25 years corporations grew rapidly in size and influence. Corporations are
now the most productive economic units in the world, more so than most countries. With their huge financial, economic and political leverage, they continue to further their neoliberal
objectives.
There is a consensus between the financial elite, neoclassical economists and the political classes in
most countries that neoliberal policies will create global prosperity. So entrenched is their position that
this view determines the policies of the international agencies (IMF, World Bank and WTO), and through
them dictates the functioning of the global economy. Despite reservations from within many UN agencies, neoliberal policies are accepted by most
development agencies as the most likely means of reducing poverty and inequality in the poorest regions.
There is a huge discrepancy between the measurable result of economic globalization and its proposed
benefits. Neoliberal policies have unarguably generated massive wealth for some people, but most
crucially, they have been unable to benefit those living in extreme poverty who are most in need of financial
aid. Excluding China, annual economic growth in developing countries between 1960 and 1980 was 3.2%.
This dropped drastically between 1980 and 2000 to a mere 0.7 %. This second period is when
neoliberalism was most prevalent in global economic policy. (Interestingly, China was not following the
neoliberal model during these periods, and its economic growth per capita grew to over 8% between
1980 and 2000.)
Neoliberalism has also been unable to address growing levels of global inequality. Over the last 25 years,
the income inequalities have increased dramatically, both within and between countries. Between 1980 and 1998,
the income of richest 10% as share of poorest 10% became 19% more unequal; and the income of richest 1% as share of poorest 1% became 77% more unequal (again, not including China).
The shortcomings of neoliberal policy are also apparent in the well documented economic disasters
suffered by countries in Latin America and South Asia in the 1990s. These countries were left with no choice but to
follow the neoliberal model of privatization and deregulation, due to their financial problems and pressure from the IMF. Countries
such as Venezuela, Cuba, Argentina and Bolivia have since rejected foreign corporate control and the
advice of the IMF and World Bank. Instead they have favoured a redistribution of wealth, the renationalization of industry and have prioritized the provision of healthcare and education. They are also
sharing resources such as oil and medical expertise throughout the region and with other countries
around the world.
The dramatic economic and social improvement seen in these countries has not stopped them from
being demonized by the US. Cuba is a well known example of this propaganda. Deemed to be a danger
to ‘freedom and the American way of life’, Cuba has been subject to intense US political, economic and
military pressure in order to tow the neoliberal line. Washington and the mainstream media in the US
have recently embarked on a similar propaganda exercise aimed at Venezuela’s president Chavez. This
over-reaction by Washington to ‘economic nationalism’ is consistent with their foreign policy objectives
which have not changed significantly for the past 150 years. Securing resources and economic
dominance has been and continues to be the USA’s main economic objective.
According to Maria Páez Victor:
Since 1846 the United States has carried out no fewer than 50 military invasions and destabilizing
operations involving 12 different Latin American countries. Yet, none of these countries has ever had the
capacity to threaten US security in any significant way. The US intervened because of perceived
“
threats to its economic control and expansion. For this reason it has also supported some of the
region’s most vicious dictators such as Batista, Somoza, Trujillo, and Pinochet.”
As a result of corporate and US influence, the key international bodies that developing countries are forced to turn to for assistance, such as the World Bank and IMF, are major exponents of
the neoliberal agenda. The WTO openly asserts its intention to improve global business opportunities; the IMF is heavily influenced by the Wall Street and private financiers, and the World
Bank ensures corporations benefit from development project contracts. They all gain considerably from the neo-liberal model.
So influential are corporations at this time that many of the worst violators of human rights have even entered a Global Compact with the United Nations, the world’s foremost humanitarian
body. Due to this international convergence of economic ideology, it is no coincidence that the assumptions that are key to increasing corporate welfare and growth are the same assumptions
that form the thrust of mainstream global economic policy.
there are huge differences between the neoliberal dogma that the US and EU dictate to the world
and the policies that they themselves adopt. Whilst fiercely advocating the removal of barriers to trade,
investment and employment, The US economy remains one of the most protected in the world. Industrialized
However,
nations only reached their state of economic development by fiercely protecting their industries from foreign markets and investment. For economic growth to benefit developing countries,
the international community must be allowed to nurture their infant industries. Instead economically dominant countries are ‘kicking away the ladder’ to achieving development by imposing
an ideology that suits their own economic needs.
The US and EU also provide huge subsidies to many sectors of industry. These devastate small industries in developing countries, particularly farmers who cannot compete with the price of
Despite their neoliberal rhetoric, most ‘capitalist’ countries have increased their
levels of state intervention over the past 25 years, and the size of their government has increased. The
requirement is to ‘do as I say, not as I do’.
Given the tiny proportion of individuals that benefit from neoliberal policies, the chasm between what
subsidized goods in international markets.
is good for the economy and what serves the public good is growing fast . Decisions to follow these policies are out of the
hands of the public, and the national sovereignty of many developing countries continues to be violated, preventing them from prioritizing urgent national needs.
Below we examine the false assumptions of neoliberal policies and their effect on the global economy.
Economic Growth
Economic growth, as measured in GDP, is the yardstick of economic globalization which is fiercely pursued by multinationals and countries alike. It is the commercial activity of the tiny portion
of multinational corporations that drives economic growth in industrialized nations. Two hundred corporations account for a third of global economic growth. Corporate trade currently
accounts for over 50% of global economic growth and as much as 75% of GDP in the EU. The proportion of trade to GDP continues to grow, highlighting the belief that economic growth is the
only way to prosper a country and reduce poverty.
Corporations have to go to extraordinary lengths in order to
reflect endless growth in their accounting books. As a result, finite resources are wasted and the
environment is dangerously neglected. The equivalent of two football fields of natural forest is cleared
each second by profit hungry corporations.
Economic growth is also used by the World Bank and government economists to measure progress in developing countries. But, whilst economic growth clearly does
have benefits, the evidence strongly suggests that these benefits do not trickle down to the 986 million
people living in extreme poverty, representing 18 percent of the world population (World Bank, 2007). Nor has
economic growth addressed inequality and income distribution. In addition, accurate assessments of both poverty levels and the overall
Logically, however, a model for continual financial growth is unsustainable.
benefits of economic growth have proved impossible due to the inadequacy of the statistical measures employed.
this
very model is also the cause of the growing inequalities seen across the globe. The privatization of resources and
profits by the few at the expense of the many, and the inability of the poorest people to afford market
prices, are both likely causes.
The mandate for economic growth is the perfect platform for corporations which, as a result, have grown rapidly in their economic activity, profitability and political influence. Yet
Free Trade
Free trade is the foremost demand of neoliberal globalization. In its current form, it simply translates as
greater access to emerging markets for corporations and their host nations. These demands are contrary
to the original assumptions of free trade as affluent countries adopt and maintain protectionist
measures. Protectionism allows a nation to strengthen its industries by levying taxes and quotas on imports, thus increasing their own industrial capacity, output and revenue.
Subsidies in the US and EU allow corporations to keep their prices low, effectively pushing smaller producers in developing countries out of the market and impeding development.
With this self interest driving globalization, economically powerful nations have created a global trading regime with which they can determine the terms of trade.
The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) between the US, Canada, and Mexico is an example
of free-market fundamentalism that gives corporations legal rights at the expense of national
sovereignty. Since its implementation it has caused job loss, undermined labour rights, privatized
essential services, increased inequality and caused environmental destruction.
In Europe only 5% of EU citizens work in agriculture, generating just 1.6% of EU GDP compared to more than 50% of citizens in developing countries. However, the European Common
Agricultural Policy (CAP) provides subsidies to EU farmers to the tune of £30 billion, 80% of which goes to only 20% of farmers to guarantee their viability, however inefficient this may be.
The General Agreement on Trade and Services (GATS) was agreed at the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 1994. Its aim is to remove any restrictions and internal government regulations
that are considered to be "barriers to trade". The agreement effectively abolishes a government’s sovereign right to regulate subsidies and provide essential national services on behalf of its
citizens. The Trade Related agreement on International Property Rights (TRIPS) forces developing countries to extend property rights to seeds and plant varieties. Control over these resources
and services are instead granted to corporate interests through the GATS and TRIPS framework.
These examples represent modern free trade which is clearly biased in its approach. It fosters corporate
globalization at the expense of local economies, the environment, democracy and human rights. The
primary beneficiaries of international trade are large, multinational corporations who fiercely lobby at
all levels of national and global governance to further the free trade agenda.
Liberalization
The World Bank, IMF and WTO have been the main portals for implementing the neoliberal agenda on a global scale. Unlike the United Nations, these institutions are over-funded,
continuously lobbied by corporations, and are politically and financially dominated by Washington, Wall Street, corporations and their agencies. As a result, the key governance structures of
the global economy have been primed to serve the interests of this group, and market liberalization has been another of their key policies.
According to neoliberal ideology, in order for international trade to be ‘free’ all markets should be open to competition, and market forces should determine economic relationships. But the
The playing field is not even; all developing
countries are at a great financial and economic disadvantage and simply cannot compete.
Liberalization, through Structural Adjustment Programs, forces poorer countries to open their markets to foreign products
which largely destroys local industries. It creates dependency upon commodities which have artificially
low prices as they are heavily subsidized by economically dominant nations. Financial liberalization removes barriers to currency speculation from abroad. The resulting
rapid inflow and outflow of currencies is often responsible for acute financial and economic crisis in
many developing countries. At the same time, foreign speculators and large financial firms make huge
gains. Market liberalization poses a clear economic risk; hence the EU and US heavily protect their own markets.
A liberalized global market provides corporations with new resources to capitalize and new markets to
exploit. Neoliberal dominance over global governance structures has enforced access to these markets. Under WTO agreements, a sovereign country cannot interfere with a
overall result of a completely open and free market is of course market dominance by corporate heavy-weights.
corporation’s intentions to trade even if their operations go against domestic environmental and employment guidelines. Those governments that do stand up for their sovereign rights are
frequently sued by corporations for loss of profit, and even loss of potential profit. Without this pressure they would have been able to stimulate domestic industry and self sufficiency, thereby
reducing poverty. They would then be in a better position to compete in international markets.
Reject the aff as a means to create space for alternatives to neoliberal engagement.
Munck, professor of Globalization and Social Exclusion, 3 (Ronaldo, Department of Sociology, Social Policy & Social Work Studies and
Globalisation and Social Exclusion Unit, University of Liverpool, “Neoliberalism, necessitarianism and alternatives in Latin America: there is no alternative (TINA)?”, Third World Quarterly, Vol
24, No 3, pp 495–511, 2003, http://www-e.unimagdeburg.de/evans/Journal%20Library/Trade%20and%20Countries/Neoliberalism,%20necessitarianism%20and%20alternatives%20in%20Latin%20America.pdf, ZBurdette)
Taking as its point of departure the position that there are or must be alternatives to neoliberalism ,
this article explores the issue in relation to some examples from Latin America. The 2001–02 virtual
collapse of the economy of Argentina and the recent victory of Workers Party candidate, Lula, in Brazil
highlight, in very different ways, the need for a viable alternative democratic economic strategy for Latin
America . Many progressive analysts seem to be paralysed by a false ‘necessitarianism’ which grants more coherence and solidity
to the neoliberal project than it merits. Argentina puts paid to that illusion. Will the exciting experience of Porto Alegre’s
‘participatory budget’ in Brazil now be scaled up to the national level or does ‘globalisation’ block this option? Do the old questions of imperialism and
dependency now come to the fore again after being left dormant under the spell of globalisation? We
may not have all the answers yet but Latin America is back in the foreground of thinking and practice around
alternative economic theories.
There is no alternative (TINA) was an oft-repeated expression of Margaret Thatcher’s, used to dismiss any
plausible alternatives to her brand of hard-nosed neoliberalism. One imagines that her friend General Pinochet, with whom she shared
tea during his enforced stay in London, would agree with her. What is more surprising is the influence the TINA philosophy has had on social science analysis of neoliberalism in Latin America
What I propose is a radically anti-necessitarian approach to neoliberalism, inspired by the work of Roberto
Mangabeira Unger. Things are not always how they are because they have to be so. There is life beyond neoliberalism. There are alternatives
taking shape all the time at all levels of society in Latin America. The so-called Washington Consensus is
no longer so consensual even in Washington and there is growing recognition that globalisation requires
global governance. We therefore need to return to the rise of neoliberalism and globalisation in a
nonnecessitarian spirit and examine the whole horizon of possibilities that is now opening up in Latin America
as elsewhere. If the virtual collapse of Argentina in 2001–02 shows that ‘actually existing’ neoliberalism simply
does not work even on its own terms , the exciting but also challenging prospects now opening up in Brazil under Lula underline the urgency of developing a
since Pinochet.
credible and viable alternative to its policies.
2NC Blocks
2NC—Framework
The most productive method for decision making is to step back and examine flawed
macro-economic policies before taking specific actions.
Palley, PhD in economics from Yale, 10 (Thomas, MA in IR from Yale, and a BA from Oxford, “AMERICA’S EXHAUSTED PARADIGM: MACROECONOMIC CAUSES
OF THE FINANCIAL CRISIS AND GREAT RECESSION”, New School Economic Review, Volume 4(1), 2010: 15-43, ZBurdette)
The macroeconomic forces unleashed by these twin factors have accumulated gradually and made for an increasingly fragile and unstable macroeconomic environment. The brewing instability
over the past two decades has been visible in successive asset bubbles, rising indebtedness, rising trade deficits, and business cycles marked by initial weakness (so-called jobless recovery)
followed by febrile booms. However,
investors, policymakers, and economists chose to ignore these danger signs,
resolutely refusing to examine the flawed macroeconomic arrangements that have led to the cliff’s
edge. It is time to take a step back and look at how we got ourselves in this precarious position. Then
perhaps we can figure out where to go next.
II. THE FLAWED U.S. GROWTH MODEL
Economic crises should be understood as a combination of proximate and ultimate factors. The proximate factors represent the triggering events, while the ultimate factors represent the deep
causes. The meltdown of the subprime mortgage market in August 2007 triggered the current crisis, which was amplified by policy failures such as the decision to allow the collapse of Lehman
That macroeconomic environment
has been a long time in the making and can be traced back to the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980 and the
formal inauguration of the era of neoliberal economics.
Brothers. However, a crisis of the magnitude now being experienced requires a facilitating macroeconomic environment.
Must examine the frame of economic rationality before constructed harms—failure
creates a masking effect
Munck, professor of Globalization and Social Exclusion, 3 (Ronaldo, Department of Sociology, Social Policy & Social Work Studies and
Globalisation and Social Exclusion Unit, University of Liverpool, “Neoliberalism, necessitarianism and alternatives in Latin America: there is no alternative (TINA)?”, Third World Quarterly, Vol
24, No 3, pp 495–511, 2003, http://www-e.unimagdeburg.de/evans/Journal%20Library/Trade%20and%20Countries/Neoliberalism,%20necessitarianism%20and%20alternatives%20in%20Latin%20America.pdf, ZBurdette)
Polanyi thus speaks to the current debates on how to ensure social regulation over economic internationalisation of capital at the heart of the
global governance problematic. This is, of course, doubly relevant in areas of the globe such as Latin America, which are almost totally
dependent on the fortunes of the global system. Polanyi's ideas are also, of course, directly relevant to the critique of neoliberalism. First,
'there was nothing natural about laissez faire; free markets could never have come into being merely by allowing things to take their course'
(Polanyi, 1957: 139). Then, as today in the era of neoliberalism, the
road to the free market was cleared by massive state
intervention at all levels. Second, Polanyi points to a feature of classical laissez faire which only becomes reality in the era of
globalisation, namely that 'Nothing less than a self-regulating market on a world scale could ensure the functioning of this stupendous
mechanism' (Polanyi, 1957: 138). The third fact, is that this perfect dream (or nightmare) cannot happen because societies and people
At the level of the nation-states of Latin America these global dynamics may
seem remote but their effects are nonetheless real. In the post-neoliberal era the question of the state
has again come to the fore. The interventionist state of the desarollista era may have been superseded by the 'competition state' but
there is no sign of the market regulating itself. As Lechner puts it, 'the state and the market follow different
rationalities, therefore there is no sign that one can substitute for the other' (Lechner, 1999: 23). For Lechner,
with the demise of the desarollista state and the failure of neoliberalism to kill off the state, the task is now its
democratic reconstruction. Indeed, re-imagining what citizenship might mean in the era of postmodernism and globalisation is not an
easy task but it is clearly necessary. To seek the harmonisation of economic growth with political democracy and
social equity may seem an 'old' issue but it is also the key issue of the day in contemporary Latin
America.
inevitably seek to protect them- selves.
2NC—Framework—AT: Policy Relevance
Individual action is essential—the current system is unsustainable.
Ackerman 13 (John, a professor at the Institute of Legal Research of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) and vice president of the International Association of
Administrative Law, got his under-grad from Swarthmore just like Meyer Archibald Thalheimer, also Meghana, “The Mexico Bubble: Is President Enrique Peña Nieto about to fall to Earth?”,
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/05/01/the_mexico_bubble_enrique_pena_nieto, ZBurdette)
independent citizen action has the potential to transform the system before the entire edifice
comes crumbling down in a widespread and dangerous political crisis. If Obama, and the citizens of the
United States he represents, dare to look beyond Peña Nieto and into the eyes of their Mexican neighbors,
colleagues, and family members, they will inevitably find a source of enormous hope for the future.
Fortunately,
2NC—AT: Perm Do Both
Neoliberal ideology is mutually exclusive with any alternative
Wise, Ph.D. in social sciences, 10—*Raul Delgado Wise, doctorate in social sciences from the University of Pennsylvania **Humberto Marquez Covarrubias, PhD in
Development Studies from the Autonomous University of Zacatecas ***Rubén Puentes, Executive Director of Development Studies at the Autonomous University of Zacatecas (October 2010,
“Reframing the debate on migration, development and human rights: fundamental elements,” http://rimd.reduaz.mx/documentos_miembros/ReframingtheDebate.pdf, RBatra)
The official discourse of neoliberal globalization rests on the ideology of the free market, the end of history,
representative democracy and, more recently, the war on terrorism. In practice, however, it promotes the interests of
large corporations and a single, exclusive mode of thought, nullifying all alternatives.
While the prevalent discourse exalts the notion of citizenship and citizen rights and opportunities in a democracy with an open economy and full political participation, the latter is constrained
fundamental human rights are systematically
undermined and subverted by the doctrine of national security and the demands of a market economy
at the service of multinational corporate interests, which turns the vast majority of the population into
cheap means of production and objects of consumption. In addition, the so-called welfare state has been dismantled under the sway of
to a limited electoral offer and often curtailed by an exclusionary political system. At the same time,
mercantilism, and the satisfaction of most basic needs is conditioned by the market, where communal goods and public services are offered as new spaces for privatization. Labor flexibility,
sustained by a massive workforce surplus and the systematic deprivation of labor rights, becomes a mechanism through which to increase business competitiveness and extraordinary profits.
this, in turn, seriously undermines the social, economic, political and environmental fabric, leading to
considerable damage. The advancement of structural reform in peripheral countries has led to increasing social debt, a fact that remains unacknowledged by governments
All of
and the entrenched powers.
2NC—A2: No Link
AT: Plan Not Coercive
Even if the plan is not coercive in the abstract, the political process of engagement is
warped by neoliberalism.
Barahona 6 (Diana, Note: no date given, 2006 was last citation, State of Nature, “The Move towards
Independence in Latin America”, http://www.stateofnature.org/?p=5371, ZBurdette)
European colonialism was replaced in the 20th century by U.S. neocolonialism, a system which enabled
U.S. corporations to transfer Latin America’s wealth to the United States without ruling them directly. Propped up
by the U.S., local elites replaced colonial viceroys and ran each country for their own profit on the condition that they
subjected their economies to the will of transnational corporations. The rulers allowed these companies to extract raw
materials and monopolize infrastructure, vital industries, land and banks while they kept labor
oppressed. On the other end of the production process, Latin American markets were kept open to foreign companies’ goods. This
neocolonial system was backed up by military force, as 33-year Marine veteran Maj. Gen. Smedley Butler
famously stated in the 1930s:
“I served in all commissioned ranks from Second Lieutenant to Major-General. And during that period, I spent most of my
time being a high class muscle-man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers. In short, I was a
racketeer, a gangster for capitalism…
“I
helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba
helped in the raping of half a dozen Central
American republics for the benefits of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long. I helped purify Nicaragua for
a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I
the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar
interests in 1916.” [1]
The history of U.S. support for rightist forces and dictatorships in Latin America is long. The CIA
overthrew Guatemalan President Jacobo Arbenz in 1954 at the request of United Fruit Company.
Alfredo Stroessner served as dictator of Paraguay from 1954 to 1989 with the blessing of the U.S.
Washington backed coups in the Dominican Republic in 1962, Brazil and Bolivia in 1964, and Argentina
in 1966. The 1970s saw long term military regimes being installed in Latin America: in 1973 the
Anaconda and Kennecott copper companies and International Telephone and Telegraph requested that
President Nixon overthrow Chilean President Salvador Allende, and ruthless dictatorships were likewise
installed in Uruguay in 1973 and Argentina in 1976.
In the 1970s U.S. banks had an excess of oil money, and a strategy was devised to recycle these petrodollars and plunder Latin America at the
same time. The new racketeers didn’t wear a Marine uniform and arrive in a gunboat, but wore a suit and tie and arrived at the airport with
briefcases containing an offer which was impossible to refuse. The
National Security Agency sent “economic hit men” to
pressure countries to accept loans from the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank for large infrastructure
projects built by U.S. contractors. The exaggerated rate of growth projected by the EHM always failed to materialize
because the ulterior goal was not development, but to saddle a country with an unpayable debt. [2]
Former EHM John Perkins, to whom we owe this information, says that when economists like him failed to convince
presidents to go along with the racket, the “jackals” – the CIA – moved in to remove them. In 1981 two
presidents were assassinated in quick succession by bombs placed on their aircrafts: Ecuadorian President Jaime Roldós and
Panamanian President Omar Torrijos. Perkins places responsibility for the killings with the Reagan administration, allegedly because the leaders
angered the principals of corporations tied to the U.S. government. [3]
Over the past 20 years Latin
America has grown poorer than ever due to neoliberal economics, devised by U.S.
objectives of the neoliberal model are the same old colonial goals – to increase
foreign ownership of countries’ infrastructure, industries and resources and force open their markets.
economists in the 1980s. The
AT: Critique Is Overly Totalizing
AT: K is overly totalizing
Munck, professor of Globalization and Social Exclusion, 3 (Ronaldo, Department of Sociology, Social Policy & Social Work Studies and
Globalisation and Social Exclusion Unit, University of Liverpool, “Neoliberalism, necessitarianism and alternatives in Latin America: there is no alternative (TINA)?”, Third World Quarterly, Vol
24, No 3, pp 495–511, 2003, http://www-e.unimagdeburg.de/evans/Journal%20Library/Trade%20and%20Countries/Neoliberalism,%20necessitarianism%20and%20alternatives%20in%20Latin%20America.pdf, ZBurdette)
Critics of the status quo often tend to over-homogenise that which they criticise. So, for example, the
'varieties of capitalism' school (eg Coates, 2000) is a useful corrective to any analysis which rests on an
assumption that capitalism is capitalism is capitalism. In our case it would be useful to delve into the
growing literature that suggests there might be a 'high road' as well as a 'low road' to what we call
globalisation. Korzeniewicz and Smith advance the proposition that 'embryonic and fragmentary efforts
are already underway in Latin America that make it possible to visualise a "high road" to economic
growth, hemispheric integration and globalisation' (Korzeniewicz & Smith, 2000: 29). The fundamentalist tenets of the Washington Consensus are now being openly questioned in the corridors of
economic and political power. The problem of inequality is not swept aside quite so hastily, the state is
no longer summarily dismissed and the market is not adored quite so uncritically. For the progressive
critics to continue to focus on the 'low road', as though Pinochet still ruled OK, would be a mistake, if
this analysis is correct.
Certainly, both the 'high road' and the 'low road' are heading in the direction of globalisation but this
does not mean that there is no difference between them. Pinochet is not the same as Chile's
democratically elected President Lagos and free market fundamentalism is not the same as 'growth with
equity', as promoted by the Chilean neo-structuralists (see Sunkel, 1993) long before it was taken up by
the World Bank and others. To a certain degree these Latin American debates are part of the broader
international debates on the 'Third Way'. Of course, we could simply declare 'against' the Third Way, like
Alex Callinicos (2001), or for that matter 'against' globalisation, but it may be more useful to engage with
what these movements and ideologies have to say and their possible effects. Basic consensus around
the efficiency of market mechanisms should not mask the considerable debate around the 'appropriate
mix of state and market regulation' (Korzeniewicz & Smith, 2000: 21) for example. Nor can we ignore the
growing chorus of powerful and influential figures within international capitalism who warn of the
effects social and political unrest could have on the new democracies. Of course, by the late 1990s all
was not well in the house of globalisation, as various East Asian economies, including the once revered
(or demonised) Japanese model began to appear distinctly unhealthy. In Latin America Mexico, which
took on the favoured 'Eastern' mantle after that region faded has since begun to look rather fragile in
terms of globalisation star turn (see Hart-Lansberg, 2002).
AT: Market Self Regulates / Invisible Hand
AT: Invisible hand of the market
Munck, professor of Globalization and Social Exclusion, 3 (Ronaldo, Department of Sociology, Social Policy & Social Work Studies and
Globalisation and Social Exclusion Unit, University of Liverpool, “Neoliberalism, necessitarianism and alternatives in Latin America: there is no alternative (TINA)?”, Third World Quarterly, Vol
24, No 3, pp 495–511, 2003, http://www-e.unimagdeburg.de/evans/Journal%20Library/Trade%20and%20Countries/Neoliberalism,%20necessitarianism%20and%20alternatives%20in%20Latin%20America.pdf, ZBurdette)
The anti-necessitarian line of thought could also be usefully pursued by (re)considering the contribution
made by Karl Polanyi towards the end of World War II to our understanding of the first 'great
transformation' carried out by the Industrial Revolution (Polanyi, 1957). Today, as we witness the
'Globalisation Revolution' carrying out a second 'great transformation', based on the principles of
neoliberalism we could do worse than explore the contradictions of the first liberalism. In Polanyi's view:
'Regulation and markets, in effect, grew up together. The self-regulating market was unknown, indeed
the emergence of the idea of self-regulation was a complete reversal of the trend of development'
(Polanyi, 1957: 68). In other words, neither in the 19th or the twenty-first century can the notion of a
self-regulating market be considered as somehow 'natural'. Indeed, according to Polanyi's famous
'double movement': 'while on the one hand markets spread all over the face of the globe...on the other
hand a network of measures and policies was integrated into powerful institutions designed to check
the action of the market relative to labor, land and money' (Polanyi, 1957: 76). Societal reaction to
protect itself from the unfettered effects of the free market detected by Polanyi is, in effect, the form
that counter-hegemony move- ments take on the international scale.
This may help us understand why today the World Bank pursues globalisation vigorously but also, at the
same time, proclaims that 'institutions matter'. In language that George Soros, financial speculator
turned caring sociologist, would understand well (Soros, 2000), Polanyi argued that, while the first wave
of globalisation 'gave an unparalleled momentum to the mechanism of markets, a deep-seated
movement sprang into being to resist the pernicious effects of a market-controlled economy' (Polanyi,
1957: 76). What it means essentially is that society must perforce protect itself against the destructive
effects of an unregulated market economy, a tendency even more valid for the era of neo- liberalism
than it was for the era of liberalism. The notion of a self-regulating market on a world-scale, as
conceived by the early gurus of neoliberal globalisa- tion, is simply inconceivable and unachievable . It
is thus necessary to examine 'actually existing' neoliberalism and not its textbook formulations.
Likewise, we need to understand the long journey this capitalist ideology has taken from its Pinochetista
to its 'Blairista' days. It is only in the dark that all cats look black.
AT: Markets Natural / Inevitable
Absolute free markets are not natural—state intervention at every level society is the
only way to foster pure laissez faire conditions.
Munck, professor of Globalization and Social Exclusion, 3 (Ronaldo, Department of Sociology, Social Policy & Social Work Studies and
Globalisation and Social Exclusion Unit, University of Liverpool, “Neoliberalism, necessitarianism and alternatives in Latin America: there is no alternative (TINA)?”, Third World Quarterly, Vol
24, No 3, pp 495–511, 2003, http://www-e.unimagdeburg.de/evans/Journal%20Library/Trade%20and%20Countries/Neoliberalism,%20necessitarianism%20and%20alternatives%20in%20Latin%20America.pdf, ZBurdette)
Polanyi thus speaks to the current debates on how to ensure social regulation over economic
internationalisation of capital at the heart of the global governance problematic. This is, of course,
doubly relevant in areas of the globe such as Latin America, which are almost totally dependent on the
fortunes of the global system. Polanyi's ideas are also, of course, directly relevant to the critique of
neoliberalism. First, 'there was nothing natural about laissez faire; free markets could never have come
into being merely by allowing things to take their course' (Polanyi, 1957: 139). Then, as today in the era
of neoliberalism, the road to the free market was cleared by massive state intervention at all levels.
Second, Polanyi points to a feature of classical laissez faire which only becomes reality in the era of
globalisation, namely that 'Nothing less than a self-regulating market on a world scale could ensure the
functioning of this stupendous mechanism' (Polanyi, 1957: 138). The third fact, is that this perfect dream
(or nightmare) cannot happen because societies and people inevitably seek to protect them- selves.
Impacts
2NC—Extinction
Neoliberalism is a genocidal impulse that leads to extinction
Santos, sociology prof, 3 (Boaventura de Sousa, Professor of Sociology at the School of Economics, University of Coimbra (Portugal) and Distinguished Scholar at the
University of Wisconsin-Madison Law School. "Collective Suicide?" March 28, 2003 online http://www.ces.fe.uc.pt/opiniao/bss/072en.php)
the West has repeatedly been under the illusion that it should try to save
humanity by destroying part of it. This is a salvific and sacrificial destruction, committed in the name of the need to radically
materialize all the possibilities opened up by a given social and political reality over which it is supposed to have total power. This is how it was in colonialism,
with the genocide of indigenous peoples, and the African slaves. This is how it was in the
period of imperialist struggles, which caused millions of deaths in two world wars and many
other colonial wars. This is how it was in Stalinism, with the Gulag and in Nazism, with the
holocaust. And now today, this is how it is in neoliberalism, with the collective sacrifice of the
periphery and even the semiperiphery of the world system. With the war against Iraq , it is fitting to
ask whether what is in progress is a new genocidal and sacrificial illusion, and what its scope might be. It is above all appropriate to ask if the new
illusion will not herald the radicalization and the ultimate perversion of the western illusion:
destroying all of humanity in the illusion of saving it. Sacrificial genocide arises from a totalitarian illusion that is
According to Franz Hinkelammert,
manifested in the belief that there are no alternatives to the present-day reality and that the problems and difficulties confronting it arise from
failing to take its logic of development to its ultimate consequences. If there is unemployment, hunger and death in the Third World, this is not
the result of market failures; instead, it is the outcome of the market laws not having been fully applied. If there is terrorism, this is not due to
the violence of the conditions that generate it; it is due, rather, to the fact that total violence has not been employed to physically eradicate all
terrorists and potential terrorists. This political logic is based on the supposition of total power and knowledge, and on the radical rejection of
alternatives; it is ultra-conservative in that it aims to infinitely reproduce the status quo. Inherent to it is the notion of the end of history. During
the
last hundred years, the West has experienced three versions of this logic , and, therefore, seen three versions of the
end of history: Stalinism, with its logic of insuperable efficiency of the plan; Nazism, with its logic of racial superiority; and neoliberalism, with its logic of
insuperable efficiency of the market. The first two periods involved the destruction of democracy. The last one trivializes democracy, disarming it in the face of social actors sufficiently
powerful to be able to privatize the State and international institutions in their favour. I have described this situation as a combination of political democracy and social fascism. One current
manifestation of this combination resides in the fact that intensely strong public opinion, worldwide, against the war is found to he incapable of halting the war machine set in motion by
At all these moments, a death drive, a catastrophic heroism, predominates,
the idea of a looming collective suicide, only preventable by the massive destruction of the
other. Paradoxically, the broader the definition of the other and the efficacy of its
destruction, the more likely collective suicide becomes. In its sacrificial genocide version, neoliberalism is a mixture of market
supposedly democratic rulers.
radicalization, neoconservatism and Christian fundamentalism. Its death drive takes a number
of forms, from the idea of "discardable populations", referring to
citizens of the Third World not capable of being exploited as workers and consumers, to the concept of "collateral damage", to refer to the
deaths, as a result of war, of thousands of innocent civilians. The last, catastrophic heroism, is quite clear on two facts: according to reliable calculations by the NonGovernmental Organization MEDACT, in London, between 48 and 260 thousand civilians will die during the war and in the three months after (this is without there being civil war or a nuclear
attack); the war will cost 100 billion dollars, enough to pay the health costs of the world's poorest countries for four years. Is it possible to fight this death drive? We must bear in mind that,
historically, sacrificial destruction has always been linked to the economic pillage of natural resources and the labor force, to the imperial design of radically changing the terms of economic,
It is as though
hegemonic powers, both when they are on the rise and when they are in decline, repeatedly go through
times of primitive accumulation, legitimizing the most shameful violence in the name of futures where,
by definition, there is no room for what must be destroyed. In today's version, the period of primitive
accumulation consists of combining neoliberal economic globalization with the globalization of war. The
machine of democracy and liberty turns into a machine of horror and destruction.
social, political and cultural exchanges in the face of falling efficiency rates postulated by the maximalist logic of the totalitarian illusion in operation.
Neoliberalism makes extinction inevitable—we control terminal impact uniqueness.
Korten, Ph.D., 2 – et al – David C. Korten, Nicanor Perlas, and Vandana Shiva, December 2002, BA in psychology from Stanford University, MBA and Ph.D. degrees from the
Stanford Business School, former Associate Professor of the Harvard University Graduate School of Business, activists. “GLOBAL CIVIL SOCIETY: THE PATH
AHEAD,” http://davidkorten.org/CivilSocietyPathAhead
liberation movements freed the world from the institutions of conventional colonialism. The world
The celebration proved to be premature. The
forces of empire soon re-emerged under the mantle of development and a promise to banish poverty from
the face of the earth. Development, however, turned out to be largely a program to facilitate a new cycle of
expropriation by the strong of the resources of the weak and led to the emergence of global financial markets
and corporations as the de fact governing institutions of the planet. Development continued a pattern of much longer duration by which
At the end of World War II, a series of national
celebrated the end of empire and the rise of a new era of democracy, peace, prosperity, and community.
the institutions of empire transfer to themselves, and thus to elite control, ever more of the planet’s common heritage wealth that people and communities have nurtured, shared, and
protected for millennia — including the lands, water, seeds, and biodiversity essential to life and well-being. The pattern has been continuously repeated. First, the state exercises its power of
eminent domain to claim control of common heritage resources, such as forests and communal lands, in the name of development and a larger public interest. Then the state privatizes the
assets in the name of economic efficiency. Once privatized, life-essential resources originally accessible to all as a gift of creation are commodified and monopolized by private corporations
that forever after demand private tribute or rent at a price of their choosing. Empire’s current agenda also calls for eliminating social safety nets while privatizing, commodifying and
monopolizing essential public services, such as education, health care, water, and sanitation — thus depriving those who lack the ability to pay of the most fundamental of all human rights —
the right to live. The human consequences of the transfer are masked by misdirecting attention to indicators of economic growth — a proxy for growth in the power of the institutions of
Insisting that economic growth
increases the wealth of all and is a fitting proxy for human benefit, the forces of empire create an
illusion of progress that hides a reality of decline in the economic security and well-being of the persons
and households that bear the costs. For example, grain giants like Cargill lobby governments to create globally
competitive economic regimes that sacrifice small farmers and food security. The structural adjustment programs of the
World Bank and IMF and trade rules of the WTO force the removal of barriers to the entry of subsidized food
imports from abroad that undermine small farmers and ultimately drive them out of business and off
their land. The lands are then acquired by corporate interest to produce food for export to markets in
wealthier countries. This earns foreign exchange to pay for food imports and repay foreign loans — in the process generating handsome profits for international grain traders
money — as the measures of human progress to the neglect of more valid indicators of the well-being of people and nature.
and bankers, while those without money go hungry. A regime of household, community, and national food security is replaced with a global regime of food security for the rich and food
To mask the reality, the forces of empire point to a growth in food exports as proof of
the increasing health of the agricultural sector and evidence of a domestic food surplus — even in the
face of widespread malnutrition and starvation. The legitimacy of badly flawed development projects rests on their claim to create
abundance. More often they create scarcity by exploiting natural resources faster than nature can renew them and
diverting what remains away from those who have less than they need to those who often have far
more than they need. This creates a scarcity of land, water, forest, marine and other essential resources that condemns the excluded to a struggle for survival and fuels
growing social conflict. Surrounded by violence and mindful of the incessant competition for power, even the rich feel an increasing sense of threat. The overall dynamic
turns the corporate global economy into a global suicide economy that is destroying the foundations of
its own existence and threatening the survival of the human species. The “terminator seed” — genetically engineered to eliminate
its natural ability to reproduce itself — is a metaphor for the pathological economic system that created it. The 2002 UN World Summit on Sustainable
Development in Johannesburg, South Africa demonstrated all too clearly empire’s callous disregard for the plight of
the poor and the environment. Johannesburg was supposed to have been the third in a series of Earth
Summits focused on addressing the needs of life. The forces of empire were concerned that the meeting
might lead to new environmental standards and regulations that could impose costs and restrictions detrimental to corporate power and
profits. So with the strong backing of the U.S. government, they highjacked the conference and replaced the human and
environmental agenda crafted 10 years earlier in Rio de Janeiro with the corporate agenda of the WTO. First they resurrected the fabrication
that environmental protection is anti-poor and substituted poverty for the environment as the priority concern of the conference. They then, in denial of the evidence, brought
forward the standard neoliberal fiction that economic growth is a path to prosperity for all and that
deregulation, free trade, and privatization are the keys to growth. They did not achieve all their aims in Johannesburg, but they dealt a
insecurity for everyone else.
serious blow to the hope that the conference might advance the cause of people and nature.
2NC—Disposability
Neoliberalism causes widespread suffering and makes life disposable – ensures extinction
Giroux 8 [Henry, PROF. OF CULTURAL STUDIES AND COMMUNICATION AT MCMASTER UNIVERSITY, “Beyond the biopolitics of disposability: rethinking neoliberalism in the New Gilded
Age” Social Identities, September, 2008, CMR]
invoking hope must be connected to a version of biopolitics in which life meaningful, purposeful and
dignified life, not simply bare life is both affirmed and made central to the challenge of addressing the problem of
disposability as global in its roots and transformation. This suggests a political pedagogy in which injustices on a local level are
linked to broader global forces, and a notion of public responsibility in which matters of human waste and
disposability are ‘condemned not because a law is broken, but because people have been hurt’ (Simon, 2005, p. 117). In a marketdriven society in which disposability is now central to modes of regulation, growth, and power, the price that is being paid in
human costs is so high as to potentially spell the eventual destruction of the planet itself. At the same time, the
return of Gilded Age excess with its biopolitics of wealth, greed, and gross inequality reveals its link to a historical past in which the rich squander valuable
resources and remove themselves from the violence, loss, pain and death visited daily on billions of people on the
Needless to say,
planet. The return of the Gilded Age must be viewed not as historical reinvention, but as a referent for critique and collective struggles for democracy. Just as suffering can no longer be treated
as either routine or commonsensical, the New Gilded Age and its institutional formations, values, corruptions, and greed must be rewritten in the discourse of moral outrage, economic justice,
Against the apocalyptic ‘dream-worlds’ of neoliberalism, educators and others need to find new
ways to rebuild those deserted public spheres from the schools to the media to cyberspace where it becomes possible to produce the conditions in which
and organized resistance.
individual empowerment is connected not only to the acquisition of knowledge and skills, but also to social power (Bauman, 2005, p. 124). In an age marked by outsourcing, uncertainty,
deregulation, privatization, and downsizing, hope is in short supply because many people have little sense of a different future, or of what it means to seek justice collectively rather than
individually, relying on their own meagre resources to combat problems that far exceed individual solutions. As shared fears, insecurities, and uncertainties replace shared responsibilities,
those who bear the effects of negative globalization and neoliberalism increasingly retreat into the narrowly
circumscribed worlds of either consumerism or the daily routines of struggling to survive. Ignorance, indifference, and
apathy provide the conditions for political inaction and the atrophy of democratic politics.
2NC—AT: Poverty Declining
Global inequality is at its highest level in history
Krishna, pol sci prof, 9—Professor of Political Science at U Hawaii, Ph.D. in political science (Sankaran, © 2009, Globalization & Postcolonialism: Hegemony and Resistance in
the Twenty-first Century, RBatra)
p. 8-9
3 billion people, subsists on less than two dollars a day, while the world’s three richest individuals’
assets exceed that of the total GDP of the 48 poorest countries of the world. In 1997 the combined income of the richest 20 percent of the
world’s population, concentrated in the first world, was seventy-four times as much as that of the poorest 20 percent
As much as half of the world’s population,
who live mostly in the third world.2 The differences between the first and third worlds in life expectancy, literacy, per capita income, energy consumption, infant mortality rates, daily caloric
intake, access to health care, and other indicators reveal the polarized world we live in today. As noted above, within the West there are areas of striking poverty and insecurity, and in the rest
of the world there exist areas marked by affluence and prosperity—but
this global picture of a widening inequality between first and
third worlds is accurate.3
At an everyday level the different life prospects between first and third worlds is indicated by the large numbers of people in the latter desirous of emigrating—legally or illegally—to the
former, and the marked absence of a movement of people in the opposite direction, except for tourism. The media are full of stories about the desperate efforts of would-be migrants from
the third world to gain entry into the first world, be it in ramshackle boats over dangerous seas, on foot across deserts and past trigger-happy border security patrols, in container trucks, or as
stowaways on international airlines. A common sight in many leading third-world cities is that of serpentine queues of men and women outside Western embassies and consulates, armed with
certificates and papers, seeking work- or education-related visas for entry into the first world.
this polarization of the world into relatively concentrated areas of affluence and
larger swathes of poverty is a relatively new phenomenon. It is, at best, about four or five centuries old, perhaps even less—the blink of an
eyelid in comparison to the length of time that human civilizations have existed. Historical data, travelogues, memoirs of merchants,
pilgrims, explorers, and other evidence show that different parts of the world were not so unequal until
around 1500 A.D., and the distribution of affluence and poverty was nowhere near as polarized as it is today.
There is fairly substantial agreement that
According to one source, while the average per capita income of someone in Europe was about three times that of someone in the third world in 1500, that ratio had increased to five to one
by 1850, to ten to one by 1960, and to fourteen to one by 1970.4
2NC—AT: Growth Turn
Even if the plan is proximately beneficial for growth, neoliberal engagement is the
only scenario that can facilitate a collapse.
Palley, PhD in economics from Yale, 10 (Thomas, MA in IR from Yale, and a BA from Oxford, “AMERICA’S EXHAUSTED PARADIGM: MACROECONOMIC CAUSES
OF THE FINANCIAL CRISIS AND GREAT RECESSION”, New School Economic Review, Volume 4(1), 2010: 15-43, ZBurdette)
Economic crises should be understood as a combination of proximate and ultimate factors. The
proximate factors represent the triggering events, while the ultimate factors represent the deep causes.
The meltdown of the subprime mortgage market in August 2007 triggered the current crisis, which was amplified by policy failures such as the decision to allow the collapse of Lehman
a crisis of the magnitude now being experienced requires a facilitating macroeconomic
environment. That macroeconomic environment has been a long time in the making and can be traced
back to the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980 and the formal inauguration of the era of neoliberal economics.
Brothers. However,
2NC—AT: Cap Good
Cap = extinction
Simonovic 7 (Ljubodrag Simonovic, Ph.D., Philosophy; M.A., Law; author of seven books, 2007, A New World is Possible, “Basis of contemporary critical theory of capitalism.”)
The final stage of a mortal combat between mankind and capitalism is in progress. A specificity of capitalism is that,
in contrast to "classical" barbarism (which is of destructive, murderous and plundering nature), it annihilates life by creating a "new world" – a "technical
civilization" and an adequate, dehumanized and denaturalized man. Capitalism has eradicated man from his (natural) environment and has cut off the roots through which he had drawn lifecreating force. Cities are "gardens" of capitalism where degenerated creatures "grow". Dog excrement, gasoline and sewerage stench, glaring advertisements and police car rotating lights that
By destroying the natural environment capitalism creates increasingly
extreme climatic conditions in which man is struggling harder and harder to survive – and creates artificial
living conditions accessible solely to the richest layer of population, which cause definitive
degeneration of man as a natural being. "Humanization of life" is being limited to creation of micro-climatic conditions, of special capitalistic
howl through the night - this is the environment of the "free world" man.
incubators - completely commercialized artificial living conditions to which degenerated people are appropriate. The most dramatic truth is: capitalism can survive the death of man as a
For capitalism a "traditional man" is merely a temporary means of its own reproduction.
"Consumer-man" represents a transitional phase in the capitalism-caused process of mutation of man towards the "highest"
form of capitalistic man: a robot-man. "Terminators" and other robotized freaks which are products of the Hollywood entertainment industry which creates a
"vision of the future" degenerated in a capitalist manner, incarnate creative powers, alienated from man, which become vehicles for destruction of man and life. A new "super
race" of robotized humanoids is being created, which should clash with "traditional mankind", meaning with people capable of loving, thinking, daydreaming,
fighting for freedom and survival - and impose their rule over the Earth. Instead of the new world, the "new man" is being created - who has been reduced to a level
human and biological being.
of humanity which cannot jeopardize the ruling order. Science and technique have become the basic lever of capital for the destruction of the world and the creation of "technical civilization".
It is not only about destruction achieved by the use of technical means. It is about technicization of social institutions, of interpersonal relations, of the human body. Increasing
transformation of nature into a surrogate of "nature", increasing dehumanization of the society and increasing denaturalization of man are direct
consequences of capital's effort, within an increasingly merciless global economic war, to achieve complete
commercialization of both natural and the social environment. The optimism of the Enlightenment could hardly be unreservedly supported
nowadays, the notion of Marx that man imposes on himself only such tasks as he can solve, particularly the optimism based on the myth of the "omnipotence" of science and technique. The
race for profits has already caused irreparable and still unpredictable damage to both man and his environment. By the creation of "consumer society", which means through the transition of
capitalism into a phase of pure destruction,
such a qualitative rise in destruction of nature and mankind has been performed
that life on the planet is literally facing a "countdown ". Instead of the "withering away" (Engels) of institutions of the
capitalist society, the withering away of life is taking place.
Capitalism is the root cause of every impact – it makes genocide and nuclear war
inevitable
IP 2K – Internationalist Perspective #36 “Capitalism and Genocide” 2000 http://www.geocities.com/wageslavex/capandgen.html
Mass death, and genocide, the deliberate and systematic extermination of whole groups of human beings, have
become an integral part of the social landscape of capitalism in its phase of decadence. Auschwitz, Kolyma, and Hiroshima are not
merely the names of discrete sites where human beings have been subjected to forms of industrialized mass death, but synecdoches for the death-world that is
a component of the capitalist mode of production in this epoch. In that sense, I want to argue that the Holocaust, for example, was not a
Jewish catastrophe, nor an atavistic reversion to the barbarism of a past epoch, but rather an event produced by the unfolding of the logic of capitalism itself. Moreover,
Auschwitz, Kolyma, and Hiroshima are not "past", but rather futural events, objective-real possibilities on the Front of history, to use
concepts first articulated by the Marxist philosopher Ernst Bloch. The ethnic cleansing which has been unleashed in Bosnia and Kosovo,
the genocide of the Tutsis in Rwanda, the mass death to which Chechnya has been subjected, the prospect
for a nuclear war on the Indian sub-continent, are so many examples of the future which awaits the
human species as the capitalist mode of production enters a new millenium. Indeed, it is just such a death-world that constitutes
the meaning of one pole of the historic alternative which Rosa Luxemburg first posed in the midst of the slaughter inflicted on masses of conscripts during World War I: socialism
or barbarism!
2NC—AT: Globalization Good
AT: Globalization impact turn
Munck, professor of Globalization and Social Exclusion, 3 (Ronaldo, Department of Sociology, Social Policy & Social Work Studies and
Globalisation and Social Exclusion Unit, University of Liverpool, “Neoliberalism, necessitarianism and alternatives in Latin America: there is no alternative (TINA)?”, Third World Quarterly, Vol
24, No 3, pp 495–511, 2003, http://www-e.unimagdeburg.de/evans/Journal%20Library/Trade%20and%20Countries/Neoliberalism,%20necessitarianism%20and%20alternatives%20in%20Latin%20America.pdf, ZBurdette)
Critics of the status quo often tend to over-homogenise that which they criticise. So, for example, the
'varieties of capitalism' school (eg Coates, 2000) is a useful corrective to any analysis which rests on an
assumption that capitalism is capitalism is capitalism. In our case it would be useful to delve into the
growing literature that suggests there might be a 'high road' as well as a 'low road' to what we call
globalisation. Korzeniewicz and Smith advance the proposition that 'embryonic and fragmentary efforts
are already underway in Latin America that make it possible to visualise a "high road" to economic
growth, hemispheric integration and globalisation' (Korzeniewicz & Smith, 2000: 29). The fundamentalist tenets of the Washington Consensus are now being openly questioned in the corridors of
economic and political power. The problem of inequality is not swept aside quite so hastily, the state is
no longer summarily dismissed and the market is not adored quite so uncritically. For the progressive
critics to continue to focus on the 'low road', as though Pinochet still ruled OK, would be a mistake, if
this analysis is correct.
Certainly, both the 'high road' and the 'low road' are heading in the direction of globalisation but this
does not mean that there is no difference between them. Pinochet is not the same as Chile's
democratically elected President Lagos and free market fundamentalism is not the same as 'growth with
equity', as promoted by the Chilean neo-structuralists (see Sunkel, 1993) long before it was taken up by
the World Bank and others. To a certain degree these Latin American debates are part of the broader
international debates on the 'Third Way'. Of course, we could simply declare 'against' the Third Way, like
Alex Callinicos (2001), or for that matter 'against' globalisation, but it may be more useful to engage with
what these movements and ideologies have to say and their possible effects. Basic consensus around
the efficiency of market mechanisms should not mask the considerable debate around the 'appropriate
mix of state and market regulation' (Korzeniewicz & Smith, 2000: 21) for example. Nor can we ignore the
growing chorus of powerful and influential figures within international capitalism who warn of the
effects social and political unrest could have on the new democracies. Of course, by the late 1990s all
was not well in the house of globalisation, as various East Asian economies, including the once revered
(or demonised) Japanese model began to appear distinctly unhealthy. In Latin America Mexico, which
took on the favoured 'Eastern' mantle after that region faded has since begun to look rather fragile in
terms of globalisation star turn (see Hart-Lansberg, 2002).
2NC—AT: Empiricism
Empiricism flows negative—neoliberalism is an unsustainable model for growth.
Palley, PhD in economics from Yale, 10 (Thomas, MA in IR from Yale, and a BA from Oxford, “AMERICA’S EXHAUSTED PARADIGM: MACROECONOMIC CAUSES
OF THE FINANCIAL CRISIS AND GREAT RECESSION”, New School Economic Review, Volume 4(1), 2010: 15-43, ZBurdette)
a. The Post-1980 Neoliberal Growth Model
The impact of the neoliberal economic growth model is apparent in the changed character of the U.S. business cycle (Palley, 2005).
Before 1980, economic policy was designed to achieve full employment, and the economy was characterized by a system in which
wages grew with productivity. This configuration created a virtuous circle of growth. Rising wages meant robust
aggregate demand, which contributed to full employment. Full employment in turn provided an
incentive to invest, which raised productivity, thereby supporting higher wages.
After 1980, with the advent of the new growth model, the commitment to full employment was abandoned as inflationary, with the result that the link between productivity growth and wages
In place of wage growth as the engine of demand growth, the new model substituted borrowing
and asset price inflation. Adherents of the neoliberal orthodoxy made controlling inflation their primary
policy concern, and set about attacking unions, the minimum wage, and other worker protections. Meanwhile, globalization brought increased foreign competition from lowerwas severed.
wage economies and the prospect of off-shoring of employment.
The new neoliberal model was built on financial booms and cheap imports. Financial booms provide consumers and firms with
collateral to support debt-financed spending. Borrowing is also sustained by financial innovation and deregulation that ensures a flow of new financial products, allowing increased leverage
Meanwhile, cheap imports ameliorate the impact of wage stagnation,
thereby maintaining political support for the model. Additionally, rising wealth and income inequality
makes high-end consumption a larger and more important component of economic activity, leading to the
and widening the range of assets that can be collateralized.
development of what Ajay Kapur, a former global strategist for Citigroup, termed a “plutonomy.”
These features have been visible in every U.S. business cycle since 1980, and the business cycles under presidents Reagan, Bush père, Clinton,
and Bush fils have robust commonalities that reveal their shared economic paradigm. Those features include asset price inflation (equities and housing);
widening income inequality; detachment of worker wages from productivity growth; rising household
and corporate leverage ratios measured respectively as debt/income and debt/equity ratios; a strong
dollar; trade deficits; disinflation or low inflation; and manufacturing job loss.
The changes brought about by the post-1980 economic paradigm are especially evident in manufacturing employment (see tables 1 and 2). Before
1980, manufacturing employment rose in expansions and fell in recessions, and each expansion tended
to push manufacturing employment above its previous peak.2 After 1980, the pattern changes abruptly. In
the first two business cycles (between July 1980 and July 1990) manufacturing employment rises in the expansions but does not recover its previous peak. In the two
most recent business cycles (between March 1991 and December 2007), manufacturing employment not only fails to recover its previous peak but actually falls over the entirety of the
expansions.
The great myth about manufacturing, which has been hard to puncture, is that the observed pattern of decline is a
natural and benevolent outcome of manufacturing’s relatively higher rate of productivity growth. The confusion stems from the fact that higher productivity growth does mean
manufacturing’s employment share tends to decline naturally. However, a smooth long run declining employment share brought about by investment and innovation that creates a more
efficient manufacturing sector is a fundamentally different proposition from decline caused by adoption of a policy paradigm that dismantles the manufacturing sector by encouraging off-
The reality is the break in the historical pattern of manufacturing employment
growth shown in Tables 1 and 2 reflects a changed policy paradigm that first undermined manufacturing and
eventually undermined the entire economy. This changed policy paradigm is perhaps most clearly illustrated by the change in policy attitudes toward the
shoring and undermining competitiveness.3
trade deficit.
Alternative
2NC—AT: Alt Fails
It’s try or die for the alt—individual resistance is crucial.
Makwana 6 (Rajesh, STWR, 23rd November 06, http://www.stwr.org/globalization/neoliberalism-and-economic-globalization.html, ZBurdette)
Conclusion
Neoliberal ideology embodies an outdated, selfish model of economy. It has been formulated by the old
imperial powers and adopted by economically dominant nations. Given the state of the global trade and finance structures, wealthy
countries can maintain their economic advantage by pressurizing developing countries to adopt neo-liberal policies – even though they themselves do not. Understandably, many
commentators have described this process as economic colonialism.
The ultimate goal of neoliberal economic globalization is the removal of all barriers to commerce, and the privatization of all available resources and services. In this scenario, public life will be
at the mercy of volatile market forces, and the extracted profits will benefit the few.
The major failures of these policies are now common knowledge. Many countries, particularly in Latin
America, are now openly defying the foreign corporate rule that was forced upon them by the international financial
institutions. In these countries, economic ideologies based on competition and self interest are gradually being replaced by policies based on cooperation and the sharing of resources.
Changing well-established political and economic structures is a difficult challenge, but pressure for
justice is bubbling upward from the public. Change is crucial if the global public is to manage the
essentials for life and ensure that all people have access to them as their human right.
2NC—AT: Neolib Inev
Neoliberalism is not inevitable—discursive challenges are key.
Munck, professor of Globalization and Social Exclusion, 3 (Ronaldo, Department of Sociology, Social Policy & Social Work Studies and
Globalisation and Social Exclusion Unit, University of Liverpool, “Neoliberalism, necessitarianism and alternatives in Latin America: there is no alternative (TINA)?”, Third World Quarterly, Vol
24, No 3, pp 495–511, 2003, http://www-e.unimagdeburg.de/evans/Journal%20Library/Trade%20and%20Countries/Neoliberalism,%20necessitarianism%20and%20alternatives%20in%20Latin%20America.pdf, ZBurdette)
For Alain Touraine, 'France is the birthplace of the obsessional idea that we are in thrall to the famous pense'e unique, to which both right and
left have apparently rallied (Touraine, 2001: 1). This paradigm has tended to disable social and political organisation for transformation by
preaching the all-knowing and omnipotent mechanisms of the free market. For the neoliberal
advocates of la pensee unique,
market forces should be allowed free rein in society and economic globalisation should be encouraged
to spread this process across the world. The left, for its part, has on the whole tended to see a certain degree of
inevitability in the way in which economic Pinochetismo, Thatcherism and Reaganism devel- oped in the 1980s, as though they were
somehow inscribed in history. It is as if neoliberalism and globalisation have dissolved our capacity for social
mobilisa- tion and political transformation. Thus neoliberalism became a very limited horizon of possibilities in the 1980s in
most parts of the globe, not least in Latin America. The 'Chicago Boys' in Chile and Martinez de Hoz in Argentina pioneered this 'one right way'
philosophy on the back of a merciless repression of social activism and of oppression of the whole of society.
The story of the rise and triumph of neoliberal ideas in Latin America is fairly well known (see Brieger, 2001; Smith et al, 1994). The military
dictatorships in Chile after 1973 and in Argentina after 1976 launched the turn towards neo- liberalism for largely 'internal' reasons, namely the
need to defeat a real or perceived popular insurgency. Then, at various points in the mid-1980s, this turn was further facilitated by an 'external'
factor, namely the international shift towards the free market under the guise of 'globalisation'. The latter served somehow to
'naturalise' neoliberalism, making it seem inevitable , part of the 'onward march of history' as it were and, by the
1990s, it was unchallenged by any other overall alternative world-view such as national development, let
alone socialism. What Pinochet revealed, in his brutality, was the totally contradictory nature of the so-called 'neoliberal paradox'. As
Norbert Lechner puts it, 'a successful economic liberalism presupposes an active intervention by the state to carry out such reforms' (Lechner,
1999: 22). Much later, in the post 1997 era of Tony Blair's New Labour, this paradox was not so apparent. Nevertheless this was probably so as
to be able to globalise neoliberalism better, not less, much as prison was a more effective tool of repression than the scaffold, as Foucault
(1977) has argued. By this stage 'globalisation'
had itself been so naturalised anyway that it could be called on as an
'objective' and inevitable limit on what nation-states could achieve or not in terms of economic policy.
Of course, neoliberalism did not spring fully formed from the heads of the Chicago Boys , as seems to be implicit
in some of the more conspiratorial or necessitarian and practically timeless or ahistorical views of their rise to prominence (see Centeno & Silva,
1998). A complex political and discursive process led to that conjuncture and much transformation has also occurred in the years since then of
course. The internal-external dialectic of neoliberalism's implementation is by no means clear and varies from country to country. Nor should
we ignore more specific contexts, such as the need to find a coherent policy response to the Latin American debt crisis in the 1980s. The
perceived, and to a large extent real, failure of the previous inward-orientated model, also played a key, but variable, role in facilitating the
emergence of the 'new economic model' (see Bulmer-Thomas, 1996). Another critical factor was the transition towards democracy in the
second half of the 1980s and its consolidation in the 1990s. There was a quite successful ideological operation at play that linked the neoliberal
economic policies then spreading across the continent with the needs of democratic governance. Since then the notion of economic 'reform'
has become synonymous with 'opening up' the market and driving back the state, rather than with income redistribution or agrarian reform as
in the 1960s and 1970s. This is, then, a complex story and not one reducible to the 'triumph' of neoliberal ideas as portrayed in much of the
critical as well as triumphalist literature.
An economistic reading of the neoliberal story necessarily focuses on the technical aspects such as the problems with protectionism, the causes
of inflation and the best way to achieve full employment. A traditional history of ideas approach would, on the other hand, simply miss the plot
by ignoring the political aspects of all these issues. Yet we
should not ignore the critical importance of the discursive
terrain on which neoliberalism achieved undisputed hegemony in the 1980s. Whatever controversies continued
to rage in the margins of that terrain, there was a remarkable consensus achieved. As Biersteker concludes in his account of
the neoliberal story: 'the terms of discourse reflect a significantly changed acceptance of market mechanisms and a shift in public-private
relations in the direction of greater support for (and increased reliance on) the private sector' (Biersteker, 1995: 178). The 'magic of the market'
would sweep away all the obstacles to economic growth. For
a whole period this belief was simply not questioned, it
was taken for granted and it was seen somehow as natural. There was, indeed, no alternative. Or so it
seemed to many commentators.
Against necessitarianism
As Karl Polanyi put it, writing about the first wave of economic liberalism in the 19th century, 'there was
nothing natural about laissez faire; free markets could never have come into being merely by
allowing things to take their course ... laissez faire was enforced by the state' (Polanyi, 1957: 139).
Much the same could be said about the neoliberalism of the 1970s and 1980s, whatever its
propagandists may have said. It is ironic, I think, that neoliberalism and global- isation have as many of
their true believers on the left of the political spectrum as on the right. Whether it was Pinochet's
economic model or the globalisation revolution, the left tended to over-homogenise, over-simplify and
over-determine these processes. For Touraine, globalisation has been popularised by the left, precisely
'to justify the preservation of the traditional forms of the administered economy on the grounds that it
is impossible to create new forms of social controls on the economy' (Touraine, 2001: 17). The way out
of neoliberalism is now being desperately sought in most countries but we can be sure that it does not
lie in a return to the past.
There is much in Roberto Mangabeira Unger's wide-ranging political philosophy that could help us to
develop a more nuanced perspective on economic liberalism than the rather 'necessitarian' approach
which I believe prevails. Against what he calls the 'mythical history' of democracy, for example, Unger
asks us to recognise how many of the economic and political institutional arrangements of democracy
are accidental or at least socially constructed. Against the 'deep-structure' theorists who find hidden
causes for all political phenomena, he shows the limitations of a 'structure fetishism' which denies that
we can change our formative contexts. Against all kinds of necessitarian assump- tions lying behind
much social and political analysis (especially that influenced by traditional forms of Marxism) Unger aims
'to break loose from a style of social understanding that allows us to explain ourselves and our societies
only to the extent we imagine ourselves helpless puppets of the social worlds we build and inhabit or of
the lawlike forces that have supposedly brought these worlds into being' (Unger, 1997: 7). But history
can be surprising and social (re)invention can occur even in the most unlikely of circumstances.
2NC—AT: Vague Alt / Fails In Practice
Munck, professor of Globalization and Social Exclusion, 3 (Ronaldo, Department of Sociology, Social Policy & Social Work Studies and
Globalisation and Social Exclusion Unit, University of Liverpool, “Neoliberalism, necessitarianism and alternatives in Latin America: there is no alternative (TINA)?”, Third World Quarterly, Vol
24, No 3, pp 495–511, 2003, http://www-e.unimagdeburg.de/evans/Journal%20Library/Trade%20and%20Countries/Neoliberalism,%20necessitarianism%20and%20alternatives%20in%20Latin%20America.pdf, ZBurdette)
If Argentina shows the downside of neoliberal globalisation at its starkest, we need to consider whether
in neighbouring Brazil a more hopeful scenario is not now opening up with the historic victory of the
Workers's Party candidate Luis Inacio 'Lula' de Silva in the 2002 presidential elections. In a bold political
statement calling for an alternative to neoliberalism, Ciro Gomes and Roberto Unger declared in the mid
1990s that 'Todo o Brasil reclama a falta de proposta e de alternativa' (the whole of Brazil is complaining
about the lack of proposals or alternatives) (Gomes & Unger, 1996: 17). But they admitted that, while
the people want and need opposition, they have no faith in the opposition that exists. This is, as we shall
argue, probably the main issue facing those seeking to articulate a progressive alternative to
neoliberalism. Even as advocates and beneficiaries of this perspective/ideology/discourse begin to
perceive the seams in this once seamless garment, the people still have confidence in it ('better the devil
we know', etc). In this sense, politics is back in command and the ideologues of economic supremacy no
longer hold sway over the discursive terrain. The main issues, in terms of the enduring popular
credibility of the neoliberal economic project, are the heartfelt need for macroeconomic stability and
the spectre of hyperinflation which caused so much devastation in the past.
Unger recognises clearly that what he calls the 'operative version' (my 'really existing') of neoliberalism
enjoys a 'unity' that 'is social and political rather than narrowly economic and technical' (Unger, 1998:
58). However, this unity is seen as a negative consensus around disabling the state and disempowering
govern- ment. Thus an alternative project to the dominant one of real neoliberalism would need to build
a broad political alliance as well as to offer economic policies better able to carry out the productive
revolution that the region needs. Raising the level of public and private savings is essential for Unger
but, equally, so is the development of institutional arrangements which can channel this into productive
investment, not into the global financial casino. To break with the dualism created or exacerbated by
globalisation-between those integrated into the circuits of the 'new' capitalism and those who are not-is
an economic issue but also, of course, a task of massive social, political and cultural dimensions. The
imagination of an alternative may be possible then, but what about its practical implementation?
Towards the end of 1997 an influential group of centre-left politicians and intellectuals (led by Unger
and Mexico's soon to be elevated to Foreign Minister, Jorge Castanieda) issued the Consenso de Buenos
Aires (CBA, 1997) intended as a full-frontal attack on the Washington Consensus. Monetary stability is
therein recognised as a sine qua non ('bandera indeclinable'-unfurlable banner) and globalisation is
basically taken for granted. From the Economic Commission for Latin America (ECLA) structuralist
tradition are derived the need for endogenous growth and the truism that growth and welfare are not a
zero-sum equation. Much emphasis is placed on the institutional arrangements necessary to achieve
social regulation of the market, but then the IDB was also saying at the time that 'Institutions matter', as
we saw above. In summary the CBA could be considered a realist social democratic alternative seeking
to confront the social exclusionary processes inherent in neoliberal globalisation. It would seem that a
reformist alternative to the status quo is possible; whether it is a revolutionary reform in Unger's terms,
promoting further transformation, has yet to be seen.
In the cities of Brazil controlled by the Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT- Worker's Party) we have seen the
germs of a progressive alternative to neo- liberalism. The experience of Porto Alegre's 'participative
budget' experiment since l998 has attracted international attention, being dubbed 'an experience of
direct democracy without parallel in the world' (Cassen, 1998: 3). In its rigour and breadth this is no
cosmetic exercise in 'municipal socialism' and the nearly three-and-a-half million citizens of the urban
district of Porto Alegre have come to appreciate its value. There is active popular engagement with
budget priorities from education to transport, health to crime, which then feeds in transparently to the
actual budget implemented each year. How this experiment in direct democracy meshes (or not) with
representative democracy is an open theoretical and practical issue (see Baierle, 2002, for a sceptical
view). With a participation rate of 60% the participative budget has certainly engaged the population
and it has also, through its transparent mechanisms, proven a strong antidote to the corruption that
once permeated local government. At the local level the example of Porto Alegre shows there is a
possible alternative to laissez faire economics.
However, many are now asking how the Workers' Party can possibly govern Brazil in the era of
neoliberal globalisation and retain any radical principles at the same time. Will Lula not just say the
same as Tony Blair did when he assumed office, namely that his 'hands are tied' by globalisation and
that the need to maintain Brazil's 'competitiveness' on the world market must take precedence over any
social reforms that might be desirable but not practicable? Certainly, the negative example of Argentina
loomed large during the electoral campaign with the anti-Lula forces saying that if he was elected, the
same would happen in Brazil. Now many on the left are asking whether the Workers' Party will 'live up
to its name' and deliver radical policies. From both sides we see misconceptions of what is necessary
and possible for a socially progressive political economy in Brazil. The left's critique of Cardoso's
government (see for example Rocha, 2002) had already set the tone with unrealistic expectations being
placed on progressive presidents. The fact is that Lula must govern having gained 91 (up from 58 in
1998) out of 513 deputies in the National Congress and 10 out of the 54 seats at stake in the Federal
Senate. So, from the start the PT is not a hegemonic governing force. The case of Argentina shows the
danger of national disintegration as the provinces of that country engage in a 'beggar thy neighbour'
strategy in the midst of economic collapse. Brazil will probably display the dangers associated with
inflated popular expectations of what can be achieved in terms of socioeconomic reform. As it happens
the Workers Party has put forward a rational and progressive economic strategy and I believe this is not
only to 'retain investors' confidence' or to 'placate Washington' (although these considerations may not
be irrelevant, see Burgos, 2002). The Workers Party government plan recognises that the first challenge
is to develop a 'less vulnerable economy' and to regain strong growth rates. It argues for the need to
'create a climate of stability' and to maintain control over inflation. Its first axis of development is the
social and the second is 'strengthening the national economy'. Thus poverty eradication, dealing with
unemployment and redressing the severe socioeconomic inequalities are placed first. Yet this is only
seen as possible with a long-term strategic plan, and state planning is certainly given a key role, one that
it never entirely lost in Brazil anyway. Urban regeneration and infrastructure development are seen as
key in this regard. But, in explicit contrast to 1950s and 1960s developmentalism (desenvolvimentismo)
this national development model is set in the context of improving national 'competi- tiveness' (Pr,
Programa de Governo, 2002). Of course there will be many changes to this bold manifesto, and no
doubt backtracking, but this seems very much like a 'high road' type strategy and consonant with the
Chilean neo- structuralists' call for 'growth with equity' (see Sunkel, 1995). In the Argentinian context
Lula's declared intention to prioritise the Mercosur is also highly significant and by no means a minor
regionalist gesture.
2NC—AT: Grass Roots Fail
No link—social resistance is important, but the alt is not a utopian
Munck, professor of Globalization and Social Exclusion, 3 (Ronaldo, Department of Sociology, Social Policy & Social Work Studies and
Globalisation and Social Exclusion Unit, University of Liverpool, “Neoliberalism, necessitarianism and alternatives in Latin America: there is no alternative (TINA)?”, Third World Quarterly, Vol
24, No 3, pp 495–511, 2003, http://www-e.unimagdeburg.de/evans/Journal%20Library/Trade%20and%20Countries/Neoliberalism,%20necessitarianism%20and%20alternatives%20in%20Latin%20America.pdf, ZBurdette)
A progressive alternative to real neoliberalism might be developed by critical intellectuals, and
articulated by leftist political parties but, arguably, without a mobilised civil society all this will not come
to fruition. A cowed, disorientated and demobilised civil society will be a poor vehicle for progressive
transforma- tion of any kind. This is not a simplistic, utopian, or even ultimately a manipula- tive
argument for a politics 'from below' to counter the dominant politics 'from above'. It is just that, if we
look at Chile, Brazil, Central America, we see that where and when civil society has become activated,
progressive or democratic alternatives are more likely to prosper. The World Bank certainly understands
fully the importance of civil society in achieving social support for neoliberal globalisation and giving it a
social 'face'. Certainly for a progressive alternative it will be necessary to recover alternatives from the
anti-authoritarian democratic socialist traditions to counter the current infatuation with building 'social
capital', a discursive terrain firmly dominated by the new global technocracy.
2NC—UQ—Neolib Decreasing Now
Latin America is moving away from neoliberal structures of governance.
Cahill 9 (Damien, lecturer in political economy at the University of Sydney, Australia, “The End of Neoliberalism?”, http://www.zcommunications.org/the-end-of-neoliberalism-bydamien-cahill, ZBurdette)
This is not to suggest that a retreat from neoliberalism is impossible. The example of the Chavez
government in Venezuela demonstrates that neoliberalism can be dismantled, but that it takes more than deteriorating
economic conditions for this to occur.
In Venezuela and other Latin American countries, neoliberalism has been wound
back as a result of a political mobilization by the working and peasant classes of society. Because the forces and
structures supportive of neoliberalism remain strong globally, it is likely that a popular political mobilization would also be necessary in other countries to wind back neoliberalism, even given
Neoliberalism is not inevitable, but a new politics is required to
impose democratic and socially protective alternatives upon both capital and the state.
the current financial crisis and the obvious failures of the neoliberal model.
2NC—UQ—No Washington Consensus
Latin America has broken out of the Washington Consensus policies.
Munck, professor of Globalization and Social Exclusion, 3 (Ronaldo, Department of Sociology, Social Policy & Social Work Studies and
Globalisation and Social Exclusion Unit, University of Liverpool, “Neoliberalism, necessitarianism and alternatives in Latin America: there is no alternative (TINA)?”, Third World Quarterly, Vol
24, No 3, pp 495–511, 2003, http://www-e.unimagdeburg.de/evans/Journal%20Library/Trade%20and%20Countries/Neoliberalism,%20necessitarianism%20and%20alternatives%20in%20Latin%20America.pdf, ZBurdette)
Within the broader globalisation debates (which have largely subsumed those around economic
liberalism) there has also been a decisive shift 'beyond' the Washington Consensus, even in the
mainstream. Thus James Wolfenson, the President of the World Bank, declared in 1998 that 'if we do
not have greater equity and social justice, there will be no political stability and without political stability
no amount of money put together in financial packages will give us financial stability' (cited in Higgott,
2000: 131). The talk now is not about how the market can manage itself but of how 'governance' needs
to be improved. The post-Washington Consensus has responded to the backlash created by the financial
collapses in Latin America, Russia and East Asia in the latter part of the 1990s. The spectre of a global
meltdown following the events of 11 September 2001 put further pressure on the agents of economic
internationalisation to attend to the needs of global governance if their profitability is to be sustainable.
As Higgott (2000) puts it, we need only ponder the shift from the buzzwords of deregulation,
liberalisation and privatisation to those of civil society, social capital and transparency to realise that
something is afoot in the corridors of power.
Mexico Modules
1NC—Nieto Agenda Version
US investment in Mexico is critical to sustain Nieto’s neoliberal agenda—that
sacrifices the wellbeing of the majority of the population.
Imison 12 (Imison, a freelance journalist based in Mexico City who has written for a variety of publications, “What Now for the Mexican Left?,” Published by Counterpunch in July
2012, http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/07/03/what-now-for-the-mexican-left/, ZBurdette)
So the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which governed Mexico as a de facto dictatorship for 71
years, wins back power south of the border after a twelve-year absence. The Mexican business elite win.
Foreign investment giants win. NAFTA wins. Washington, for its myriad interests in the country,
wins. The Mexican population – or 99% of it – loses. As much of Latin America swings to the Left and
looks for alternatives to the neoliberal model, Mexico (“so close to the United States, so far from
God”) will surely be the last “domino” to fall.
The country’s Federal Electoral Institute (IFE) promised a “quick count” – based on a sample of 7,500 polling stations – to be released at 11:15pm Sunday. No sooner had IFE president
Leonardo Valdes Zurita announced a seven-point lead by the PRI’s Enrique Peña Nieto with 38% of the vote in his favor than President Felipe Calderon appeared on national TV to congratulate
the president-elect. Calderon, who faced accusations of fraud after his own election in 2006, insisted that “Today, Mexico voted like a free country.”
As of Monday evening, preliminary results from 98% of stations show Peña Nieto leading leftist candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO) of the Progressive Movement coalition by a
6.5% margin. This is nowhere near as close as the 0.56% margin by which AMLO lost to Calderon in 2006. Tellingly, AMLO has not claimed victory as he did that July, simply saying he would
wait until all votes were counted before accepting the result.
The rush to recognize Peña Nieto’s victory by both the PRI and incumbent PAN was surely an attempt to dampen the likelihood of protest by AMLO’s supporters and groups such as the
The so-called “Mexican Spring” looks set to turn into a long,
heady summer.
So who really won the Mexican election? Notoriously crooked former president Carlos Salinas de
Gortari, who will act as the power behind the throne of Peña Nieto, deserves a nod. These next six years will look a lot like the
student-led #YoSoy132 movement in the coming days. Good luck with that.
Salinas and Ernesto Zedillo administrations of the 1990s with a scoop of the militarization of the Calderon era for good measure.
The world’s oil giants win. Peña Nieto will back the privatization of Petroleos Mexicanos (PEMEX).
Mexico’s oil industry, which accounts for some 40% of the federal budget, has been in state hands since 1938. The privatization of PEMEX has always been a sensitive issue
owing to Mexican nationalism, but Peña – like Calderon before him – will fight on behalf of the world’s super-majors against the
public interest.
US defense contractors reaping the blood money of Mexico’s “Drug War” also win. AMLO had vowed to halt the flow of
gringo “security aid” that sent the Calderon administration on a killing spree. Peña Nieto has said he will continue “the struggle” against a drug-trafficking mafia that is nevertheless knee-deep
in the country’s politics. We already know he will hire former Colombian National Police commander General Oscar Naranjo as chief security adviser; an extremely sketchy figure known for
both his narco links and long working relationship with Washington.
Ignore the hype that this is some kind of
return to the dark days of authoritarianism for Mexico. The dark days never actually went away.
If this is starting to sound a lot like the Felipe Calderon administration of the last six years, that’s because it will be.
“The Most Transparent Election in History”
Was it a clean victory by the PRI? Despite IFE’s claim that this would be “the most transparent election in Mexican history”, a recent poll by Latinobarometro indicated that around 71% of
Mexicans were anticipating some kind of fraud. There’s a possibility that Peña Nieto – pushed down voters’ throats relentlessly for the best part of two years – would have won anyway given
his enormous media exposure, but there is no guarantee.
the PRI employed its age-old tactics of vote-buying and coercion
We know for certain that
; the same ones it used to maintain power for
seven decades. “Gift boxes” containing essential food items and two-hundred peso bills ready for distribution were photographed by journalists around the country. Pledges were made to
replace rooftops and pave roads in impoverished communities – cement sales skyrocket every six years – if residents gave up their vote for Peña Nieto.
Link—Labor Reform
Nieto’s labor reforms would eviscerate social justice in Mexico.
La Botz 12 (Dan, American labor union activist, New Politics, “Mexico: The PRI is Back, the Left In Disarray”, September 16, 2012, http://newpol.org/content/mexico-pri-back-leftdisarray, ZBurdette)
The victory of Enrique Peña Nieto, a man notorious for his repression of a poor people’s movement in the town
of Atenco when he was governor of the State of Mexico and known as the public face of the country’s most
notoriously corrupt party, represents a defeat not only for the left, but for democracy, decency and
social justice in Mexico. But it does not represent a return to the one-party state of the past. Too much has changed in the last several decades to make possible the
recreation of the powerful state party of the past. The end of the national economic model, the greater involvement of Mexico in manufacturing for the U.S. and world economy, the sell-off of
state industries, the weakening of the industrial unions, the decline in the size of the peasantry, the increase in urbanization, the role of the modern media, and the growth in the power of the
rival parties that have actually held power at the national or state level have all undermined the bases of the old political machine.
The PRI, no longer so much a nationalist state party as a purely capitalist party, will push a conservative,
pro-business agenda—coinciding in large measure with that of the PAN—calling for the privatization of energy, labor law “reform,” and regressive tax policies. The first
item on the agenda is labor law reform which Calderón has now placed on fast track. The proposed
reforms would render it virtually impossible to organize genuine unions, make it even more difficult
than it already is to strike, and allow employers to subcontract and to hire temporary and part-time
workers, practices now prohibited.
Link—War on Drugs
The War on the Drugs is a war against social equality
Grupo Espartaquista 12 (Grupo Espartaquista de México—a communist worker’s organization in Mexico, 2012, “Mexico: PRI Back at Helm of Capitalist State,” Translated
from Spanish, International Communist League, September, Available Online at http://www.icl-fi.org/english/wv/1012/mexico.html, ZBurdette)
This situation allows even the corrupt and repressive PRI to pose as a lesser evil, even though Peña Nieto
has promised nothing but further austerity, disguised by vague declarations, and more privatizations—
notably of [state oil company] PEMEX, about which he has not been vague at all. We say: Down with the privatization of
PEMEX and the rest of the energy sector! Down with the draconian labor “reform”!
Additionally, there is widespread loathing for the increasing brutality of the state and criminal gangs carried
out under Calderón’s “war on drugs,” which has left over 60,000 dead in the last few years. This “war” has nothing
to do with protecting the population but rather with regimenting it, particularly the working class.
The “war on drugs” has also served a purpose in allowing U.S. imperialism to tighten its control over its
“backyard.” By 2010, military aid to Mexico had increased seven-fold through the Merida Plan. For the U.S., the “war on drugs” in Mexico serves the same purpose as the “war on
terror” elsewhere: the presence of U.S. military and police personnel in Mexico is increasing, while drone flights are now common. Now there’s even talk about an independent U.S. plan—in
the style of bin Laden’s execution in 2011—to come into Mexico and hunt down famous drug lord “Chapo” Guzmán.
Nieto has promised a “strategy” change that in reality means business as usual for the
Mexican masses: increasing police forces and strengthening intelligence services, particularly in
coordination with the U.S. and Central American countries. This has not been enough, however, to convince his
untrusting imperialist masters that he will continue the “war on drugs.” James Sensenbrenner, director of the House Subcommittee
In the same sense, Peña
on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security, complains that during the 71 years of PRI rule, the party “minimized violence by turning a blind eye to the cartels.” On the other hand, the fear
caused by the increase in “narco-violence” has stirred some nostalgia for the order of the olden days. Some graffiti mentioned in Proceso magazine, clearly referring to this desperate situation,
evocatively read: “Out with the incompetent ones, bring back the corrupt.”
It is the duty of the workers movement as a whole to oppose the “war on drugs,” whose only purpose is
to strengthen the repressive powers of the capitalist state. We say: Down with “war on drugs” militarization! FBI,
DEA and all U.S. military and police agencies out of Mexico! We call for the decriminalization of drugs, which, by eliminating the superprofits derived from
the illegal and underground nature of the drug trade, would reduce crime and its related social pathologies. We also oppose measures by the bourgeois state to restrict or prevent the
population from carrying firearms. Gun control laws limit the rights of the population and guarantee that the state and criminals maintain a monopoly of weapons.
Link—PEMEX
Nieto wants to privatize PEMEX—that inflicts needless suffering on the Mexican
working class
Azul 12 (Rafael Azul, “Peña Nieto moves toward privatization of Mexican oil,” Published by the World Socialist Web Site on 18 December 2012,
http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2012/12/18/mexi-d18.html, ZBurdette)
No sooner had Enrique Peña Nieto, the candidate of the PRI (Institutional Revolutionary Party), won the presidential election in July, he began
to implement a conservative, pro-business agenda, first with his support for labor reform legislation and
second by laying out an energy policy. The lynchpin of that energy policy is the privatization of Pemex.
In a visit to Brazil in September, Peña Nieto indicated that he favored the so-called Petrobras model. Petrobras is the Brazilian national oil company.
Starting in 1997, Petrobras was transformed from a fully national oil company, to an investor-owned company in which the state owns 60 percent of the shares.
Nieto declared that the Petrobras “model inspires what
we want to do in Mexico.” The Mexican president attributes Petrobras’ supposed efficiency to the entry
of private capital. Turning to Pemex, he said that an influx of private capital would leverage investments and job growth in Mexico.
A few weeks later in Germany, Peña Nieto again announced his intention to present before the legislature an energy reform
law, declaring that his models for Pemex were Petrobras and the Colombian Ecopetrol. “To cling to old resistances is to
At a press conference following a meeting with Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, Peña
postpone benefits for Mexicans,” declared the newly elected president.
As with Pemex, Petrobras was subjected to a campaign to discredit it in the eyes of the public. As with Pemex it was starved of necessary funds to modernize.
The Brazilian company’s privatization resulted in the loss of some 30,000 jobs. The world market sets
domestic oil and fuel prices, while the profits of private investors are taxed at a relatively low rate, by
international standards.
The reference to Ecopetrol is even more ominous. The privatization of that company in 2003 was
accompanied by savage attacks, kidnappings and murders of oil workers by right-wing paramilitary
death squads. According to conservative estimates, some 200 workers have been killed at the hands of
death squads since 2003. At least 400 others have been expelled, with their families, from their homes
and towns. In May 2004, the Colombian government of former president Alvaro Uribe responded to a strike by 3,800 oil
workers protesting savage repression in the oil center of Barrancabermeja by militarizing the region, terrorizing thousands of workers
and their families and expelling militants from the oil fields and refineries.
The main beneficiaries from Ecopetrol’s privatization have been Chevron Texaco (US), BP-Amoco (UK),
and Schlumberger (Austria).
The privatization of Pemex will inevitably spark strong opposition in Mexico, and President Peña Nieto is no
stranger to repression. Mexican students and youth who protested his inauguration in Mexico City and Guadalajara on December 1 experienced this first hand;
protesters were singled out, dragged and beaten.
As a governor of the state of Mexico he ordered the 2006 attack on the community of San Salvador Atenco, which
resulted in two deaths, 100 wounded and sexual assault against two women, followed by draconian prison sentences against
leaders of the community. During his campaign, organized PRI goons attacked protesting youth at campaign events. Pemex es de los mexicanos, the slogan that Pemex belongs to all Mexicans,
while never fully a reality, continues to be a source of nationalist pride for Mexicans. It is the one state-owned company that was not privatized in the 1980s.
Since then, a backdoor form of privatization has proceeded in stages through outsourcing. According to Petroleum Industry Classified Workers Union ( Unión de Trabajadores de Confianza )
spokesperson Alfredo Hernandez Peñalosa, Pemex now contracts out over 60 percent of well drilling, maintenance and repair to privately owned foreign companies. Subcontracting accounts
for 70 percent of the monies that Pemex budgets for such purposes.
This policy has displaced thousands of skilled and technical workers. Those who do find work end up as low wage contract workers with little or no job security. In tandem with this
outsourcing, Pemex has also dismantled much of its petrochemical infrastructure. The closure of a petrochemical plant in Camargo, Chihuahua State, will soon result in the destruction of 5000
jobs.
The company was born in the oil industry nationalization of 1938, a response by the bourgeois nationalist government of President Lazaro Cardenas to the massive labor rebellion in the Shell
and Standard Oil facilities. The strikes and occupations over wages and the length of the working day lasted seven months.
Pemex’s original mission was that of insuring domestic oil needs and promoting national (i.e., bourgeois) interests.
Currently, Pemex is the largest Mexican company, public or private. It generated over $124 billion in revenues last year from crude oil and refined products. High revenues do not translate into
profits; it lost about $9 billion in the second quarter of 2012.
It has now become an oil monopoly tied to the global energy market and committed, in the name of efficiency, to the profit interests of its bond holders—finance capital, the privately owned
banks and financial institutions that own its debt—and private contractors. Pemex is also closely allied to Repsol, the Spanish oil company, with whom earlier this year it announced a 10-year
partnership that includes ownership by the Mexican firm of Repsol shares.
Private sector economists blame Pemex’s low profitability on shady contracts with suppliers of oil drilling and other equipment, on payoffs to the oil workers union to suppress worker
over one third of the federal government’s income
discontent, on a fall in the value of Repsol stock, and on excessive government taxes—
comes from company revenues.
Peña Nieto and the Mexican ruling class promote the notion that Pemex’s difficulties are the results of the intrinsic inefficiency of being a state-owned corporation and to the high wages,
benefits and pensions that the company gives its workers. All this will be solved, they insist, by the injection of private capital.
Parallel to the process of privatization is the gradual elimination of fuel subsidies for domestic consumers, who will soon be forced to buy fuel at the world market price.
The incorporation of Pemex into a publicly traded company is a way of handing it over to private
companies; it is immaterial that the government plans to own a large chunk of its shares, or even a
majority.
In anticipation of the changes, both Exxon Mobil and BP have established closer ties with Pemex.
A recent article in the Financial Times quotes Exxon Mobile CEO Rex Tillerson, who said in June that this oil giant was carrying out joint studies with the Mexican firm “so we can get to know
each other.” But he added: “It’s going to be a long process … And if the next step provides an avenue for Exxon Mobil to participate, we will.”
BP has offered to share with Pemex the oil capping technology that it derived from its experience in the Gulf of Mexico, at “no cost” to the Mexicans, as a way of creating a working
relationship with Pemex.
Link—Nieto’s Agenda
Nieto’s agenda will collapse now, benefitting citizens in both the US and Mexico—the
plan reverses that progress and locks in corrupt policymaking.
Ackerman 13 (John, a professor at the Institute of Legal Research of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) and vice president of the International Association of
Administrative Law, got his under-grad from Swarthmore just like Meyer Archibald Thalheimer, also Meghana, “The Mexico Bubble: Is President Enrique Peña Nieto about to fall to Earth?”,
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/05/01/the_mexico_bubble_enrique_pena_nieto, ZBurdette)
Nieto's honeymoon has not lasted long. Extremely controversial reforms such as a new role for
foreign oil companies in the energy sector and an increase in the value-added tax, which the president had promised to implement at the beginning of his administration,
look less feasible than ever. Washington's hope that Mexico could serve as an anti-Bolivarian
"stabilizing" force in the region may also have to wait for another day.
But this is good news for the Main Streets of North America. Washington's geopolitics and Peña Nieto's
proposed energy and tax reforms were never designed in the best interest of the common man and
woman anyway. Instead of increasing its highly regressive value-added tax, Mexico, one of the most unequal countries in the world with a Gini coefficient of 5.1, should consider
Peña
implementing capital gains and wealth taxes. Instead of handing over its oil reserves to abusive and environmentally dangerous international oil corporations, Mexico may well be able to
manage better on its own by increasing the investment, transparency and technology of its homegrown company, PEMEX. Instead of helping the United States dominate Latin America, Mexico
could do a great service to peace and stability in the region by defending a healthy multilateralism.
Nieto's weakness creates an opportunity for organized civil-society groups to start rebuilding
the broken link between politics and society which is the underlying cause of Mexico's contemporary
problems. Mexico is not a "failed state" that needs to be buffered through increased militarization or by recentralizing power in the executive branch, as Peña Nieto and some scholars
In general, Peña
seem to think. To the contrary, the central problem is not a lack of state power but the consistent abuse of the government's significant authority by politicians of all colors and stripes to favor
friends and punish rivals.
independent citizen action has the potential to transform the system before the entire edifice
comes crumbling down in a widespread and dangerous political crisis. If Obama, and the citizens of the
United States he represents, dare to look beyond Peña Nieto and into the eyes of their Mexican neighbors,
colleagues, and family members, they will inevitably find a source of enormous hope for the future.
Fortunately,
2NC—AT: Mexico Improving Now
Their evidence is all hype—Mexico is plagued by corruption and murder.
Ackerman 13 (John, a professor at the Institute of Legal Research of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) and vice president of the International Association of
Administrative Law, got his under-grad from Swarthmore just like Meyer Archibald Thalheimer, also Meghana, “The Mexico Bubble: Is President Enrique Peña Nieto about to fall to Earth?”,
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/05/01/the_mexico_bubble_enrique_pena_nieto, ZBurdette)
When U.S. President Barack Obama travels to Mexico this Thursday for his first summit with new President Enrique Peña Nieto, he's
going to hear a lot about the country's uptick in international portfolio investment, its recent discovery of vast new
petroleum reserves, and its new political grand bargain, called the "Pact for Mexico," in which the leaders of the three largest political parties have gone behind closed doors to hammer out
deals on tax, education, energy, banking and telecom reform, among other areas.
But instead of giving priority to the interests of Wall Street and of Mexico's discredited political class,
Obama should turn his gaze to Main Street and listen to the voices of the Mexican people on both sides
of the Rio Grande. Otherwise, he risks committing the United States to a highly risky political game run by Latin American cronies that could soon end in disaster, with an
impact that could be felt across North America.
According to the hype, Peña Nieto has already transformed the political landscape in Mexico after only four
months in office. Time magazine has named him one of its "100 Most Influential People in the World," claiming that he "combines Reagan's charisma with Obama's intellect and
Clinton's political skills." The Financial Times raves that with the death of Venezuela's Hugo Chávez, Peña Nieto may now take up the torch of Latin American leadership and revive the
"Washington Consensus" that predominated in the region during the 1980s and called for drastic restrictions in social spending and the implementation of "trickle-down" neoliberal economic
policies. The Washington Post editorial board suggests that "Washington should be cheering Mexico's gridlock busting -- and taking it as an example." Meanwhile, Thomas Friedman, of the
New York Times, has called Mexico the "Comeback Kid" and Shannon O´Neill argues in Foreign Affairs that Mexico has now "made it."
Such exaggerations have no basis in reality. Even after months of an expensive, high-profile media blitz,
Peña Nieto has begun his administration with the lowest public approval rating of any Mexican president
over the last two decades. Only 50 percent of Mexicans approve of his presidency today, much less than the 70 percent who supported the first non-PRI president,
Vicente Fox, at the beginning of his term, according to Reforma newspaper. Peña Nieto's approval rating is even lower than that for presidents Ernesto Zedillo and Felipe Calderón at the
disastrous crisis-ridden beginnings of their terms, according to the same source.
A recent poll also shows increased public skepticism in Peña Nieto's, "Pact for Mexico," Today, only 21
percent of the population believes that this pact will benefit them while 31 percent are convinced that it
will harm them. This same independent poll reveals that the majority of the population perceives the
agreement to be in the interests principally of the political parties and big business. Only 35 percent think that the country
as a whole will benefit.
Nieto only received 38.2 percent of the vote
It is important to remember that Peña
in the 2012 presidential elections and that the voting base of his party
(Party of the Institutional Revolution-PRI) is principally located in the poorest, least educated, and most isolated rural sectors of the population. All of the most "modern" and "middle class"
sectors of the population voted overwhelmingly against bringing the PRI and its pretty-boy candidate back to power, according to independent exit polls and demographic surveys. For
instance, the only time Peña Nieto dared to hold a campaign event with college students during last year's presidential race, he was aggressively run off the campus amid shouts that he was an
"assassin" and a "thief."
Peña Nieto's strategy has been to compensate for this weakness in public support by co-opting the old political opposition and turning his back on his critics in society. But this approach has
recently come up against a brick wall.
For instance, in their haste to demonstrate quick legislative results, the politicians forgot to consult with civil society before pushing through a controversial education reform at lightning speed
last December. As a result, today thousands of teachers are on strike throughout Mexico's poorest southern states of Chiapas, Oaxaca, Guerrero, and Michoacán in protest against a reform
which they correctly claim threatens to drastically reduce job security, introduce excessive standardized testing, entrench inequality between schools in wealthy and poor areas, and privatize
public education. In the state of Guerrero, local citizen militias, parents, and youth groups have even joined with the teachers in a broad-based coalition against Peña Nieto's broader neoliberal
economic agenda.
Indeed, the Pact for Mexico itself may soon entirely break apart. A new scandal involving the use of Peña Nieto's federal social programs to purchase votes has led the two leading opposition
parties, PAN from the right and PRD from the left, to threaten abandoning the pact altogether unless the president takes action against his own top officials. This will be an important test of
political will for Peña Nieto to see whether he is able to prioritize accountability over political expediency.
Nieto has continued with the time-old tradition of using the justice system as an arm of
political control. He has jailed a significant political adversary, Elba Esther Gordillo, a leader of the teacher´s
union well known for her corrupt and illegal practices. But he has simultaneously freed Jesús Angeles, an
army general who had links to Peña Nieto´s presidential campaign but was jailed on corruption charges by
Meanwhile, Peña
Calderón shortly before the 2012 elections.
Meanwhile, violence continues to wreak havoc over large swathes of the country. Organized crimerelated executions continue at the startling pace of more than 1,000 a month since Peña Nieto took office
on Dec. 1. While some border cities like Ciudad Juárez and Tijuana have shown improvement, other coastal cities such as Acapulco and Veracruz are much worse off than they were in the past.
And
even in places where the homicide rate has gone down, there is widespread suspicion that this is due
more to deals being cut with the drug cartels than to actually defeating them, as reflected in the most recent report of the
International Crisis Group and reports in the international press.
Nieto talks about changing the approach to the "drug war" by focusing on reducing crime and
improving social programs instead of on drug interdiction, but in fact his strategy has been more of the
same. The president has not taken any steps to withdraw the more than 40,000 military troops that
today patrol Mexico's streets, putting human rights at grave risk, nor has he taken any concrete
measures to clean up endemic corruption in law enforcement. Instead, he has conducted a minor bureaucratic shake-up by eliminating the
Peña
Fox-era federal public security agency and next plans to create a new national police out of military personal, paradoxically just as Fox himself did 10 years ago. Peña Nieto has also suggested
that the media no longer pay so much attention to violent crime, as if turning the other way could somehow make the problem miraculously disappear.
The press, meanwhile, has come under heavy attack under the new administration. Three of Mexico's leading female
investigative journalists, Lydia Cacho, Anabel Hernández, and Ana Lilia Pérez, whose principal work has been to expose government complicity with organized crime, have had to leave the
country in recent months due to threats and judicial pressure on their work. One of the most important international NGOs that defends press freedoms, London-based Article 19, recently
received a letter with credible death threats under the door of its office in Mexico City. Meanwhile, the dominant television and radio monopolies continue to allow very little space for
genuinely plural debate on public affairs and rarely criticize the president's policies.
In the economic realm, we need to look beyond the short-term increase in international portfolio
investment. According to Mexico's Central Bank, international capital flows have skyrocketed in recent
months. This is due to a combination of both low interest rates in more developed economies and the international media hype around Peña Nieto's presidency. Japanese investment
has played a particularly important role. But the recent political difficulties reveal important underlying problems with the top-down development model being pursued by Mexico's new
president.
If Peña Nieto
responds to today's political difficulties with more police repression, as he did on his inauguration day,
instead of by changing course and opening himself up to a genuine dialogue with civil society, the economy could easily come tumbling down like a
house of cards.
There is also growing concern about underlying fundamentals. For instance, past-due consumer debts are now at their highest level since the 2008-2009 economic crisis.
Venezuela Modules
1NC Oil
US economic pressure on oil causes Venezuela to move back towards neoliberal
policies.
Socialism Today 99 (Issue 41, September 1999, “Venezuela: Neo-liberalism defied”, http://www.socialismtoday.org/41/venezuela41.html, ZBurdette)
Oil generates 70% of Venezuela's export revenue. It is the world's third biggest oil exporter and now the
largest supplier to the USA. Chávez has announced plans to revive Cuban oil refineries to process the
petroleum as part of a scheme to set aside 25% of the country's bank loans to pay for agricultural
projects.
These steps are beginning to worry US imperialism and the elite who rule Venezuela. The radical
populist measures that Chávez has begun to adopt reflect a new wave of radicalism towards the left that
is beginning to take place in Latin America. It is possible that Chávez will go even further and may even nationalise sectors of the economy. These
developments are a precursor of the upheavals that will develop in the rest of the continent in the next few years.
Under pressure from imperialism, Chávez may retreat to more acceptable policies for capitalism,
although this is not certain given the depth of the crisis that is gripping Venezuela and spreading
throughout Latin America. The pressure from the workers and peasants may drive such populist regimes as Chávez to strike more blows against capitalism than they
intended. However, it will need the establishment of a workers' and peasants' government, along with a democratic socialist plan of production that breaks with capitalism, to end the poverty
and misery of the Venezuelan masses. That could lead to a voluntary socialist federation of Latin America. Only then will the threat of retaliation from capitalism and imperialism be removed.
2NC—UQ—Neolib Low Now
Venezuela is placing social justice at the center of its policymaking now.
Mills 13 (Frederick, Senior Research Fellow at the Council on Hemispheric Affairs, “Commentary: Venezuelan elections: Rehabilitated neoliberalism versus 21st century socialism”,
March, http://www.caribbeannewsnow.com/topstory-Commentary%3A-Venezuelan-elections%3A-Rehabilitated-neoliberalism-versus-21st-century-socialism-15187.html, ZBurdette)
In those Latin American countries that have decided to abandon neoliberalism in pursuit of social
justice, there has been a change in the parameters of political debate in presidential electoral politics. Right wing electoral campaigns
can no longer count on the effectiveness of hysterical anti-communism nor on singing the virtues of the free market to inspire the confidence of the independent voter. Even the old reliable
appeal to democracy and freedom rings hollow without the now obligatory mention of social rights as part of any winning electoral strategy.
it is simply no longer possible to garb oligarchic interests in the raiment of
democracy. The concept of “democracy” has taken firm root in the social and economic spheres, where it has become a vehicle for emancipation. While there is a
broad spectrum of left and center left regimes that have emerged in Latin America over the past two
decades, the intensity of the struggle for social justice is nowhere more pronounced than in Venezuela.
Despite such born again liberalism on the right,
AT: Aff Helps Venezuelans
The critique controls the root cause—the reason they need help is because
neoliberalism has wrecked their lives.
Socialism Today 99 (Issue 41, September 1999, “Venezuela: Neo-liberalism defied”, http://www.socialismtoday.org/41/venezuela41.html, ZBurdette)
CHÁVEZ, a former paratrooper who led a failed military coup in 1992 against a corrupt pro-market government, was swept to power in presidential elections in
His victory, on a radical populist and nationalist programme, signified a major swing to the left by workers and peasants in Venezuela
and mass opposition to the continuation of neo-liberal policies of privatisation.
Chávez claimed that he had, 'won a revolution without a shot being fired'. Referring to the effects of the
neo-liberal policies which have left 80% of Venezuelans living in poverty, he declared, 'Venezuela is wounded
at its heart. It is as if I inherited a time bomb ticking away'.
HUGO
December 1998.
AT: Capitalism Good
No link—challenges to neoliberalism aren’t intrinsically tied to tearing down
capitalism, just the worst manifestations of it.
Socialism Today 99 (Issue 41, September 1999, “Venezuela: Neo-liberalism defied”, http://www.socialismtoday.org/41/venezuela41.html, ZBurdette)
CHÁVEZ, a former paratrooper who led a failed military coup in 1992 against a corrupt pro-market government, was swept to power in presidential elections in
December 1998. His victory, on a radical populist and nationalist programme, signified a major swing to the left by workers and peasants in Venezuela
and mass opposition to the continuation of neo-liberal policies of privatisation.
Chávez claimed that he had, 'won a revolution without a shot being fired'. Referring to the effects of the
neo-liberal policies which have left 80% of Venezuelans living in poverty, he declared, 'Venezuela is wounded
at its heart. It is as if I inherited a time bomb ticking away'.
HUGO
Following his election he promised that, 'instead of a military parade with tanks there will be a parade of soldiers carrying agricultural instruments heading for the fields'. Fifty thousand
soldiers have been put onto the streets to direct road building, house and school construction programmes. A special brigade of soldiers and professionals has also been established to help
develop the health service and improve agricultural production. New taxes on the rich have been announced along with a drive to imprison all tax evaders - a measure mainly aimed at tax
avoidance by the rich elite. In a challenge to the corrupt legal system Chávez is also proposing the election of all judges by popular vote.
As a reaction to the heightened exploitation of Latin America by the major imperialist powers which has taken place during the 1990s, Chávez has begun to look for a 'Latin American
alternative' and has posed the question of developing a Latin American market and economy. Venezuela, he has suggested, would supply the oil needs of countries such as Brazil and
Argentina. Chávez is donning the mantle of the 19th century liberator of Latin America, Simon Bolívar, who struggled for Latin American unification against the imperialist conquistadores.
These radical populist measures have received massive support from the population. In polls, Chávez receives 75% approval. Even more significant was the stunning victory of his party,
Patriotic Pole (PP), in July's elections to the newly-convened Constituent Assembly. PP took 91% of the seats. Neither of the traditional parties which have ruled Venezuela for the last 40 years
won a single seat.
This victory and the enthusiasm it has generated seems to be pushing the government in an even more radical direction. In his first speech to the Assembly, Chávez lambasted neo-liberalism as
a 'dogma of individualism that has led the world to fight like savages against each other'. As a rallying call he promised, 'Venezuela is rising out of its ashes'. This was followed by the removal of
Bolívar's sword from the national vault, to be paraded through the streets of the capital, Caracas. The sword was taken from its scabbard and brandished in front of thousands of cheering
people.
The radical measures proposed do not constitute a programme to overthrow capitalism. But they do
represent a significant radicalisation of Venezuelan society that has even affected sections of the radical
petty bourgeoisie who are sickened by the poverty and corruption of capitalism and who are looking for
something different. Reflecting this mood Chávez has called for a 'new economic model' that will end
'inequality and social injustice'.
Cuba
1NC Embargo
Lifting the embargo would force liberalization upon Cuba, destroy its domestic
industries, and integrate it into the global neoliberal order.
Gonzalez, law prof, 3 (Carmen, Assistant Professor, Seattle University School of Law, Tulane Environmental Law Journal, Vol. 16, p. 685, 2003, “Seasons of Resistance:
Sustainable Agriculture and Food Security in Cuba”, http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=987944, ZBurdette)
the greatest challenge to the agricultural development strategy adopted by the Cuban
government in the aftermath of the Special Period is likely to be external—the renewal of trade relations with the United States. From
Notwithstanding these problems,
the colonial era through the beginning of the Special Period, economic development in Cuba has been constrained by Cuba’s relationship with a series of primary trading partners. Cuba’s
export-oriented sugar monoculture and its reliance on imports to satisfy domestic food needs was imposed by the Spanish colonizers, reinforced by the United States, and maintained during
It was not until the collapse of the socialist trading bloc and the strengthening of the U.S.
embargo that Cuba was able to embark upon a radically different development path.
Cuba was able to transform its agricultural development model as a consequence of the political and
economic autonomy occasioned by its relative economic isolation, including its exclusion from major international financial and trade
institutions.411 Paradoxically, while the U.S. embargo subjected Cuba to immense economic hardship, it also
gave the Cuban government free rein to adopt agricultural policies that ran counter to the prevailing
neoliberal model and that protected Cuban farmers against ruinous competition from highly subsidized
agricultural producers in the United States and the European Union.412 Due to U.S. pressure, Cuba was excluded from regional and international financial institutions,
the Soviet era.410
including the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the Inter-American Development Bank.413 Cuba also failed to reach full membership in any regional trade association and was
However, as U.S. agribusiness clamors to ease trade
restrictions with Cuba, the lifting of the embargo and the end of Cuba’s economic isolation may only be
a matter of time.415
barred from the negotiations for the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA).414
It is unclear how the Cuban government will respond to the immense political and economic pressure from the United States to enter into bilateral or multilateral trade agreements that would
If Cuba accedes to the dictates of agricultural trade
liberalization, it appears likely that Cuba’s gains in agricultural diversification and food self-sufficiency
will be undercut by cheap, subsidized food imports from the United States and other industrialized
countries.417 Furthermore, Cuba’s experiment with organic and semi-organic agriculture may be jeopardized if the Cuban government is either unwilling or unable to restrict the sale
curtail Cubansovereignty and erode protection for Cuban agriculture.416
of agrochemicals to Cuban farmers—as the Cuban government failed to restrict U.S. rice imports in the first half of the twentieth century.418
Cuba is once again at a crossroads—as it was in 1963, when the government abandoned economic diversification, renewed its emphasis on sugar production, and replaced its trade
dependence on the United States with trade dependence on the socialist bloc. In the end, the future of Cuban agriculture will likely turn on a combination of external factors (such as world
market prices for Cuban exports and Cuba’s future economic integration with the United States) and internal factors (such as the level of grassroots and governmental support for the
alternative development model developed during the Special Period). While this Article has examined the major pieces of legislation that transformed agricultural production in Cuba, and the
government’s implementation of these laws, it is important to remember that these reforms had their genesis in the economic crisis of the early 1990s and in the creative legal, and extra-legal,
survival strategies developed by ordinary Cubans.419 The distribution of land to thousands of small producers and the promotion of urban agriculture were in response to the self-help
measures undertaken by Cuban citizens during the Special Period. As the economic crisis intensified, Cuban citizens spontaneously seized and cultivated parcels of land in state farms, along the
highways, and in vacant lots, and started growing food in patios, balconies, front yards, and community gardens. Similarly, the opening of the agricultural markets was in direct response to the
booming black market and its deleterious effect on the state’s food distribution system. Finally, it was the small private farmer, the neglected stepchild of the Revolution, who kept alive the
traditional agroecological techniques that formed the basis of Cuba’s experiment with organic agriculture. The survival of Cuba’s alternative agricultural model will therefore depend, at least in
part, on whether this model is viewed by Cuban citizens and by the Cuban leadership as a necessary adaptation to severe economic crisis or as a path-breaking achievement worthy of pride
and emulation.
The history of Cuban agriculture has been one of resistance and accommodation to larger economic and political forces that shaped the destiny of the island nation. Likewise, the
The lifting of the
U.S. economic embargo and the subjection of Cuba to the full force of economic globalization will
present an enormous challenge to the retention of an agricultural development model borne of crisis
and isolation. Whether Cuba will be able to resist the re-imposition of a capital-intensive, exportoriented, import-reliant agricultural model will depend on the ability of the Cuban leadership to
appreciate the benefits of sustainable agriculture and to protect Cuba’s alternative agricultural model in
the face of overwhelming political and economic pressure from the United States and from the global trading
system.
transformation of Cuban agriculture has occurred through resistance and accommodation by Cuban workers and farmers to the hardships of the Special Period.
2NC Embargo
Economic isolationism is at the crux of Cuban resistance to neoliberalism.
Fernandez, professor of social sciences, 5 (Raul, University of California—Irvine, “Cuba in the Age of Neoliberalism”,
http://www.ncsu.edu/acontracorriente/fall_05/Fernandez.pdf, ZBurdette)
State Resistance to Globalization in Cuba is a concise and readable study of the evolution of the Cuban economy in the years following the disintegration of the Soviet bloc and the
Cuban leadership has been able to
successfully resist the pressures of neo-liberal globalization and maintain the island's economic
independence. At the same time Carmona Báez identifiesthe manner in which the global economy shaped the policies and structures put in place by Cuban authorities in the last
disappearance of Cuba's dependence on the economies of Eastern Europe. The author explains the ways in which the
decade and a half. The book contains a wealth of empirical data and observations.
***AFF Neoliberalism K***
2AC—Sustainable / Inevitable
Neoliberalism is inevitable and sustainable
Peck 2—Canada Research Chair in Urban & Regional Political Economy and Professor of Geography, University of British Columbia. Former Honourary Professorial Fellow, School of
Environment and Development, University of Manchester. PhD in Geography. AND—Adam Tickell—Professor of Geography, University of Bristol. PhD (Jamie, Neoliberalizing space, Antipode
34 (3): 380-404, AMiles)
it would be tempting to conclude with a Ideological reading of neoliberalism, as if it were somehow locked on a
course of increasing vulnerability to crisis. Yet this would be both politically complacent and theoretically
erroneous. One of the most striking features of the recent history of neoliberalism is its quite remarkable transformative
capacity. To a greater extent than many would have predicted, including ourselves, neoliberalism has
demonstrated an ability to absorb or displace crisis tendencies, to ride—and capitalize upon—the very economic cycles
and localized policy failures that it was complicit in creating, and to erode the foundations upon which generalized or extralocal
resistance might be constructed. The transformative potential—and consequent political durability—of neoliberalism has been
repeatedly underestimated , and reports of its death correspondingly exaggerated . Although antiglobalization protests have
clearly disrupted the functioning of "business as usual" for some sections of the neoliberal elite, the underlying power structures of neoliberalism remain substantially
intact. What remains to be seen is how far these acts of resistance, asymmetrical though the power relations clearly are, serve to expose the true character of neoliberalism as a political
In many respects,
project. In its own explicit politicization, then, the resistance movement may have the capacity to hold a mirror to the process of (ostensibly apolitical) neoliberalization, revealing its real
character, scope, and consequences.
Crises represent neoliberalism’s ability to adapt – not instability
Springer 9 – Prof @ University of Otago (2009, Simon Springer, Prof @ University of Otago, “Postneoliberalism? Or What Geography Still Ought To Be,” ngoetz)
moments of crisis do not prefigure an impending collapse of the
neoliberal project. Instead, crises actually represent a continuation that offers a window on the character of
neoliberalism as an adaptive regime of socioeconomic governance (Peck, Theodore, and Brenner forthcoming). So to the question ‘does
Given the relationship between neoliberalism and crises,
this crisis signal the end of neoliberalism?’, David Harvey (2009: np) appropriately responds by suggesting,
“it depends what you mean by neo-liberalism. My interpretation is that it’s a class project, masked by a lot of neo-liberal rhetoric about individual freedom, liberty, personal responsibility,
the restoration and consolidation of class power, and that neo-liberal project has been
fairly successful”.
The corporate bailouts thus are not necessarily reflective of a terminal moment for neoliberalism, but instead
represent a continuation of the class project, reconfigured under a modus operendi that explicitly returns its accumulative practices to the basis of
privatization and the free market. These were means, however, towards
taxation.
2AC—AT: Vague Alt
Reformism and specific alternatives are key—can’t just jump scales all at once.
Munck, professor of Globalization and Social Exclusion, 3 (Ronaldo, Department of Sociology, Social Policy & Social Work Studies and
Globalisation and Social Exclusion Unit, University of Liverpool, “Neoliberalism, necessitarianism and alternatives in Latin America: there is no alternative (TINA)?”, Third World Quarterly, Vol
24, No 3, pp 495–511, 2003, http://www-e.unimagdeburg.de/evans/Journal%20Library/Trade%20and%20Countries/Neoliberalism,%20necessitarianism%20and%20alternatives%20in%20Latin%20America.pdf, ZBurdette)
Current rather abstract academic debates on the 'politics of scale' (see Massey, 1992; Amin, 2002) could be
usefully taken into the strategic and political arena to better conceptualise the parameters of the Lula
government. It
is probably not possible simply to 'jump scales' and follow a type of Porto Alegre
participative budget policy writ large on the national scene. However, what is happening up and down Brazil in cities and
in rural locations, in health policy and workplaces, will undoubtedly affect the national prospects for transformation. What Argentina
shows as counter-factual is how fragile the left's grip on power can be and how easily it can slip into
political oblivion when it fails to govern, as happened to the FREPASO coalition in Argentina in 2000-01.
The issue of govern- ability is thus crucial to Lula as it is generally in the era of globalisation and is not one that can
be sacrificed to facile 'critiques' of reformism.
What Argentina also highlights for Lula is the continued importance of the
'national question' and its forceful re-emergence under neoliberalism. As Jonathan Steele commented during the elections, the hostility and
hysteria of the international capital markets in relation to Lula 'highlighted the crisis of sovereignty that lies at the heart of globalisation'
(Steele, 2002). Brazil as a territorial state cannot be allowed to collapse as Argentina has, either through the forces of the right opposed to Lula
or by imperial design, seeking to teach the periphery lessons, as was done with Allende's Chile some 30 years ago. The importance of
developments in Brazil is not lost on the rest of Latin America and in Argentina their outcome may be a matter of survival.
Lack of a concrete advocacy destroys the alt’s potential
McClean 1 SOCIETY FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF AMERICAN PHILOSOPHY – GRADUATE AND PHILOSOPHER – NYU [DAVID E., “THE CULTURAL LEFT AND THE LIMITS OF SOCIAL HOPE”,
http://www.american-philosophy.org/archives/2001%20Conference/Discussion%20papers/david_mcclean.htm]
Leftist American culture critics might put their considerable talents to better use if they bury some of
their cynicism about America's social and political prospects and help forge public and political
possibilities in a spirit of determination to, indeed, achieve our country - the country of Jefferson and King; the country of John Dewey and Malcom X;
the country of Franklin Roosevelt and Bayard Rustin, and of the later George Wallace and the later Barry Goldwater. To invoke the words of King, and with reference to the
American
the time is always ripe to seize the opportunity to help create the "beloved community," one woven with
the thread of agape into a conceptually single yet diverse tapestry that shoots for nothing less than a true intra-American cosmopolitan ethos, one wherein both same sex unions and
society,
faith-based initiatives will be able to be part of the same social reality, one wherein business interests and the university are not seen as belonging to two separate galaxies but as part of the
philosophers would do well to create from within ourselves and from within
our ranks a new kind of public intellectual who has both a hungry theoretical mind and who is yet capable of
seeing the need to move past high theory to other important questions that are less bedazzling and
"interesting" but more important to the prospect of our flourishing - questions such as "How is it possible to develop a citizenry that
cherishes a certain hexis , one which prizes the character of the Samaritan on the road to Jericho almost more than any other?" or "How can we square the political dogma that
same answer to the threat of social and ethical nihilism. We who fancy ourselves
undergirds the fantasy of a missile defense system with the need to treat America as but one member in a community of nations under a "law of peoples?"
The new public philosopher might seek to understand labor law and military and trade theory and doctrine as much as theories of surplus value; the logic of international markets and trade
This means
going down deep into the guts of our quotidian social institutions, into the grimy pragmatic details
where intellectuals are loathe to dwell but where the officers and bureaucrats of those institutions take
difficult and often unpleasant, imperfect decisions that affect other peoples' lives, and it means making
agreements as much as critiques of commodification, and the politics of complexity as much as the politics of power (all of which can still be done from our arm chairs.)
honest attempts to truly understand how those institutions actually function in the actual world
before howling for their overthrow commences. This might help keep us from being slapped down in
debates by true policy pros who actually know what they are talking about but who lack awareness of
the dogmatic assumptions from which they proceed, and who have not yet found a good reason to
listen to jargon-riddled lectures from philosophers and culture critics with their snobish disrespect for the so-called "managerial
class."
2AC—AT: Specific Alt
Specific alternative collapses their movement—divergent interest groups.
Cerny 5 – Prof of Global Political Economy (2005, Susanne Soederberg, Professor in International Development Studies @ Queen's University, Georg Menz, Ph.D. in Political Science
from the University of Pittsburgh, BA in International Relations, and Philip G. Cerny, Prof of Global Political Economy, pg 28, CH1: “ Different Roads to Globalization: Neoliberalism, the
Competition State, and Politics in a More Open World,” Internalizing Globalization: The Rise of Neoliberalism and the Decline of National Varieties of Capitalism, PALGRAVE MACMILLAN:
Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire, ngoetz)
critics of neoliberal globalization have been increasingly moving towards
presenting proposals and projects for forms of globalization more responsive to social needs and values –
But rather than just opposing globalization,
what we earlier tentatively called ‘social neoliberalism’ – as put forward at a now regular annual gathering of the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil, explicitly designed as a counterevent to the long-standing gathering of corporate executives, politicians and representatives of international institutions, or World Economic Forum, held annually in Davos, Switzerland. New
transnational advocacy groups have emerged, some rooted in particular issue areas, some in developing
broad public policy proposals. But a pressing problem for the anti- or alter-globalization movement has
been the formulation of concrete alternatives to the neoliberal globalization process they criticize (Starr,
2000). The movement’s success is based on a relatively modest core catalogue of demands, primarily revolving around a small tax on international currency transactions, the so-called ‘Tobin
to demand a more comprehensive and/or radical array of reform measures could conceivably
undermine a fundamentally divergent and colorful coalition.
tax’;
2AC—Impact Turn—Trade Good
First, Neoliberalism Sustains Free Trade and the WTO
Gerogia, president of the Transnational Institute, 99 (Susan; March 24-26; “A Short History Of Neo-Liberalism: Twenty Years Of Elite Economics
And Emerging Opportunities For Structural Change,” pg online @ http://www.globalexchange.org/campaigns/econ101/neoliberalism.html; RR)
, the IMF has been strengthened enormously. Thanks to the debt crisis and the mechanism of
conditionality, it has moved from balance of payments support to being quasi-universal dictator of so-called "sound" economic policies, meaning of
course neo-liberal ones. The World Trade Organisation was finally put in place in January 1995 after long and laborious negotiations, often rammed
through parliaments which had little idea what they were ratifying. Thankfully, the most recent effort to make binding and universal neoliberal rules, the Multilateral Agreement on Investment, has failed, at least temporarily. It would have given all
rights to corporations, all obligations to governments and no rights at all to citizens.
Over the past twenty years
Free trade promotes peace and decreases the likelihood of war—empirically proven
Griswold 98 (Daniel, Associated Director of the Center for Trade Policy Studies at the CATO Institute, “Peace on Earth, Free Trade for Men,” 31 Dec, http://www.cato.org/dailys/1231-98.html)
Free trade also encourages people and nations to live in peace
with one another. Free trade raises the cost of war by making nations more economically
interdependent. Free trade makes it more profitable for people of one nation to produce goods and
services for people of another nation than to conquer them. By promoting communication across
borders, trade increases understanding and reduces suspicion toward people in other countries.
Advocates of free trade have long argued that its benefits are not merely economic.
International trade creates a network of human contacts. Phone calls, emails, faxes and face-to-face meetings are an integral part of commercial relations between people of different nations.
This human interaction encourages tolerance and respect between people of different cultures (if not toward protectionist politicians).
Ancient writers, expounding what we now call the Universal Economy Doctrine, understood the link between trade and international harmony. The fourth-century writer Libanius declared in
his Orations (III), "God did not bestow all products upon all parts of the earth, but distributed His gifts over different regions, to the end that men might cultivate a social relationship because
one would have need of the help of another. And so He called commerce into being, that all men might be able to have common enjoyment of the fruits of the earth, no matter where
produced."
Open trade makes war a less appealing option for governments by raising its costs. To a nation
committed to free trade, war not only means the destruction of life and property. It is also terrible for
business, disrupting international commerce and inflicting even greater hardship on the mass of citizens.
When the door to trade is open, a nation's citizens can gain access to goods and resources outside their
borders by offering in exchange what they themselves can produce relatively well. When the door is
closed, the only way to gain access is through military conquest. As the 19th century Frenchman Frederic Bastiat said, "When goods cannot
cross borders, armies will."
The century of relative world peace from 1815 to 1914 was marked by a
dramatic expansion of international trade, investment and human migration, illuminated by the example of Great Britain. In
contrast, the rise of protectionism and the downward spiral of global trade in the 1930s aggravated the
underlying hostilities that propelled Germany and Japan to make war on their neighbors.
In the more than half a century since the end of World War II, no wars have been fought between two nations that
were outwardly oriented in their trade policies. In every one of the two dozen or so wars between nations fought since 1945, at least one side was
History demonstrates the peaceful influence of trade.
dominated by a nation or nations that did not pursue a policy of free trade.
2AC—Impact Turn—Capitalism Good
Neoliberalism is key to maintain the free market, the value of an individual, and free
trade
Olssen 5 -- Professor of Political Theory and Education (May 2005, Mark Olssen, Professor of Political Theory and Education, PhD Political Studies, and Michael A. Peters, Ph.D.
Philosophy of Education, M.A., Philosophy, Professor Educational Policy Studies, Adjunct Professor School of Foriegn Studies, Journal of Education Policy, Vol. 20, No. 3, pp. 313–345,
“Neoliberalism, higher education and the knowledge economy: from the free market to knowledge capitalism,” ebscohost, ngoetz)
neoliberalism has introduced a new mode of
governmentality
Within higher education
regulation or form of
. In order to understand this it
is necessary to understand that the welfare liberal mode it replaced maintained fundamentally different premises at the level of political and economic theory, as well as at the level of
The central defining characteristic of this new brand of neoliberalism can be understood at one level as a revival of many
include:
1. The self-interested individual: a view of individuals as economically self-interested subjects. In this perspective
philosophical assumption.
of the central tenets of classical liberalism, particularly classical economic liberalism. The central presuppositions shared
the individual was represented as a rational optimizer and the best judge of his/her own interests and needs.
Free market economics: the best way to allocate resources and opportunities is through the market. The
2.
market is both a more efficient mechanism and a morally superior mechanism.
A commitment to laissez-faire: because the free market is a self-regulating order it regulates itself
better than the government or any other outside force. In this, neoliberals show a distinct distrust of
governmental power and seek to limit state power within a negative conception, limiting its role to the
protection of individual rights.
4. A commitment to free trade: involving the abolition of tariffs or subsidies , or any form of state-imposed protection or support,
3.
as well as the maintenance of floating exchange rates and ‘open’ economies.
Capitalism and Globalization are good—it’s responsible for most of the good in the
world. The root cause of structural violence is a lack of free markets. Areas that have
started to develop must transition to the next level of capitalism or they will be locked
in misery for a very long time – key to the environment and freedom
Goklany 7 (Indur, scholar who has 25 years of experience working and writing on global and national environmental issues. He has published several peer-reviewed papers and book
chapters on an array of issues Author of The Improving State of the World: Why We're Living Longer, Healthier, More Comfortable Lives on a Cleaner Planet, Mar. 23,
http://www.reason.com/news/show/119252.html, twm)
globalization foes are united in their fear that greater population and consumption of energy, materials, and chemicals
accompanying economic growth, technological change and free trade—the mainstays of globalization—degrade human and environmental wellbeing. Indeed, the 20th century saw the United States’ population multiply by four, income by seven, carbon dioxide emissions by nine, use of materials by 27, and use of chemicals by
more than 100. Yet life expectancy increased from 47 years to 77 years. Onset of major disease such as cancer, heart, and respiratory disease has been
postponed between eight and eleven years in the past century. Heart disease and cancer rates have been in rapid
decline over the last two decades, and total cancer deaths have actually declined the last two years, despite increases in
population. Among the very young, infant mortality has declined from 100 deaths per 1,000 births in 1913 to just seven
per 1,000 today. These improvements haven’t been restricted to the United States. It’s a global phenomenon. Worldwide, life expectancy has more
than doubled, from 31 years in 1900 to 67 years today. India’s and China’s infant mortalities exceeded 190 per 1,000 births in the early 1950s; today they are 62 and 26,
respectively. In the developing world, the proportion of the population suffering from chronic hunger declined from 37 percent to 17 percent between
1970 and 2001 despite a 83 percent increase in population. Globally average annual incomes in real dollars have tripled since 1950.
Consequently, the proportion of the planet's developing-world population living in absolute poverty has halved since 1981, from 40 percent to 20 percent. Child labor
in low income countries declined from 30 percent to 18 percent between 1960 and 2003. Equally important, the world is more
literate and better educated than ever. People are freer politically, economically, and socially to pursue their
well-being as they see fit. More people choose their own rulers, and have freedom of expression. They are more likely to
live under rule of law, and less likely to be arbitrarily deprived of life, limb, and property. Social and professional mobility have also never
Environmentalists and
been greater. It’s easier than ever for people across the world to transcend the bonds of caste, place, gender, and other accidents of birth. People today work fewer hours and have more
early stages of development can
indeed cause some environmental deterioration as societies pursue first-order problems affecting human well-being. These include hunger, malnutrition,
illiteracy, and lack of education, basic public health services, safe water, sanitation, mobility, and ready sources of energy. Because greater wealth alleviates these
problems while providing basic creature comforts, individuals and societies initially focus on economic
development, often neglecting other aspects of environmental quality. In time, however, they recognize that
environmental deterioration reduces their quality of life. Accordingly, they put more of their recently acquired wealth and human
capital into developing and implementing cleaner technologies. This brings about an environmental transition via
the twin forces of economic development and technological progress, which begin to provide solutions to
environmental problems instead of creating those problems. All of which is why we today find that the richest countries are also the
cleanest. And while many developing countries have yet to get past the “green ceiling,” they are nevertheless ahead of where today’s
developed countries used to be when they were equally wealthy. The point of transition from "industrial period" to "environmental conscious" continues to fall. For example, the US
introduced unleaded gasoline only after its GDP per capita exceeded $16,000. India and China did the
same before they reached $3,000 per capita. This progress is a testament to the power of globalization and the
transfer of ideas and knowledge (that lead is harmful, for example). It's also testament to the importance of trade in transferring technology from developed
to developing countries—in this case, the technology needed to remove lead from gasoline. This hints at the answer to the question of why some parts of the world have
money and better health to enjoy their leisure time than their ancestors. Man’s environmental record is more complex. The
been left behind while the rest of the world has thrived. Why have improvements in well-being stalled in areas such as Sub-Saharan Africa and the Arab world? The proximate cause of
improvements in well-being is a “cycle of progress” composed of the mutually reinforcing forces of economic development and technological progress. But that cycle itself is propelled by a
web of essential institutions, particularly property rights, free markets, and rule of law. Other important institutions would include science- and technology-based problem-solving founded on
skepticism and experimentation; receptiveness to new technologies and ideas; and freer trade in goods, services—most importantly in knowledge and ideas. In short, free and open societies
prosper. Isolation, intolerance, and hostility to the free exchange of knowledge, technology, people, and goods breed stagnation or regression. Despite all of this progress and good news, then,
there is still much unfinished business. Millions of people die from hunger, malnutrition, and preventable disease such as malaria, tuberculosis, and diarrhea. Over a billion people still live in
Barriers to globalization,
economic development, and technological change—such as the use of DDT to eradicate malaria, genetic engineering, and biotechnology—are a
big source of the problem. Moreover, the global population will grow 50 percent to 100 percent this century, and per capita consumption of energy and materials will
absolute poverty, defined as less than a dollar per day. A third of the world’s eligible population is still not enrolled in secondary school.
likely increase with wealth. Merely preserving the status quo is not enough. We need to protect the important sustaining institutions responsible for all of this progress in the developed world,
and we need to foster and nurture them in countries that are still developing. Man’s remarkable progress over the last 100 years is unprecedented in human history. It’s also one of the more
Ensuring that our incredible progress continues will require not only recognizing and
appreciating the progress itself, but also recognizing and preserving the important ideas and
institutions that caused it, and ensuring that they endure.
neglected big-picture stories.
2AC—Impact Turn—Poverty
Capitalism solves global poverty
Perry 9 professor of economics and finance @ Univ of Michigan, M.A. and Ph.D @ George Mason University, MBA in finance from Curtis L. Carlson School of Management at the
University of Minnesota, 11-18-2009 (Mark, “World Poverty Rate Plummets”, http://blog.american.com/?p=7291, RBatra) note – NBER = national bureau of economic research
Hassett
In Kevin
’s National Review article “The Poor Need Capitalism,” he
Income,” and writes:
points to a new NBER study, “Parametric Estimations of the World Distribution of
The chart [below] draws on a landmark new study by economists Maxim Pinkovskiy and Xavier Sala-i-Martin. The authors set out to study
changes in the world distribution of income by gathering data from many different countries. As a byproduct of their work, they are able to count the number of individuals who live on $1 per
day or less, a key measure of poverty.
the number of people living in poverty so defined has plummeted, from 967,574,000 in 1970 to
64 percent. Whence the reduction? The biggest factor is the emergence of middle classes in
previously poverty stricken China and India. And the spread of capitalism to other countries has similarly
been followed by prosperity. The trend is even more impressive if one considers that the world population skyrocketed over that time, increasing by 3 billion.
If the trend continues for just 40 more years, poverty will have been essentially eradicated from the globe. And capitalism
will have done it. There are those who have argued that the current financial crisis has served as proof that capitalism is a failed ideology. The work of Pinkovskiy and Sala-iAccording to their calculations,
350,436,000 in 2006, a decrease of a whopping
Martin suggests that there are about a billion people whose lives prove otherwise.
The NBER paper also finds that the world poverty rate fell by 80 percent, from 26.8 percent in 1970 to only 5.4 percent in 2006 based on the $1 per day poverty measure (see chart below).
The study also estimates poverty rates separately for five geographical regions (see chart below), with some pretty amazing results for East Asia (China, Taiwan, and S. Korea), which in 1960
had the highest regional poverty rate in the world by far, at 58.8 percent, compared to 39.9 percent for Africa, 11.6 percent for Latin America, 8.4 percent for MENA (Middle East and North
Africa), and 20.1 percent for South Asia. In the 36-year period between 1970 and 2006, the poverty rate in East Asia fell to only 1.7 percent, which is now below all of the other regions: Africa
The 80 percent decrease in the world
poverty rate between 1970 and 2006 has to be the greatest reduction in world poverty in such a short time
span ever in history, and the 97 percent reduction in the poverty rate of East Asia (from 58.8 percent to 1.7 percent) has to be the
most significant improvement in a regional standard of living in history over such a short period. Thanks to
Hassett for pointing out that capitalism is alive and well, and is spreading around the world helping to eliminate poverty.
(31.8 percent), Latin America (3.1 percent), MENA (5.2 percent), and South Asia (2.6 percent). poverty3Bottom Line:
Globalization is key—it benefits the rich, but it benefits the poor even more.
Meredith 7
(Robyn and Suzanne Hoppough, April 16; “Why Globalization is good”; http://www.forbes.com/free_forbes/2007/0416/064.html; RR)
globalization is good--and not just for the
rich, but especially for the poor. The booming economies of India and China--the Elephant and the Dragon--have lifted
Cut to 2007, and the numbers are in: The protesters and do-gooders are just plain wrong. It turns out
200 million people out of abject poverty in the 1990s as globalization took off, the International Monetary Fund says. Tens of
millions more have catapulted themselves far ahead into the middle class. It's remarkable what a few container ships can do to make
poor people better off. Certainly more than $2 trillion of foreign aid, which is roughly the amount (with an inflation adjustment) that the U.S. and Europe have poured into
Africa and Asia over the past half-century.
2AC—No Impact—UQ
We control uniqueness—violence is declining
Pinker 7 (Steven, Johnstone Family Professor in the Department of Psychology – Harvard University, “A History of Violence”, Edge: The Third Culture, 3-28,
http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/pinker07/pinker07_index.html, CAT)
In sixteenth-century Paris, a popular form of entertainment was cat-burning, in which a cat was hoisted in a sling on a stage and slowly lowered into a fire. According to historian Norman
Davies, "[T]he spectators, including kings and queens, shrieked with laughter as the animals, howling with pain, were singed, roasted, and finally carbonized." Today, such sadism would be
Violence has
been in decline over long stretches of history, and today we are probably living in the most peaceful moment
of our species' time on earth. In the decade of Darfur and Iraq, and shortly after the century of Stalin, Hitler, and Mao, the claim that violence has been diminishing
may seem somewhere between hallucinatory and obscene. Yet recent studies that seek to quantify the historical ebb and flow of violence point to exactly that
conclusion. Some of the evidence has been under our nose all along. Conventional history has long shown that, in many ways, we have
been getting kinder and gentler. Cruelty as entertainment, human sacrifice to indulge superstition, slavery as a labor-saving
device, conquest as the mission statement of government, genocide as a means of acquiring real estate, torture and
mutilation as routine punishment, the death penalty for misdemeanors and differences of opinion, assassination as the
mechanism of political succession, rape as the spoils of war, pogroms as outlets for frustration, homicide
as the major form of conflict resolution—all were unexceptionable features of life for most of human history. But,
today, they are rare to nonexistent in the West, far less common elsewhere than they used to be, concealed when they do occur, and widely
condemned when they are brought to light. At one time, these facts were widely appreciated. They were the source of notions like progress, civilization, and man's rise from savagery
unthinkable in most of the world. This change in sensibilities is just one example of perhaps the most important and most underappreciated trend in the human saga:
and barbarism. Recently, however, those ideas have come to sound corny, even dangerous. They seem to demonize people in other times and places, license colonial conquest and other
foreign adventures, and conceal the crimes of our own societies. The doctrine of the noble savage—the idea that humans are peaceable by nature and corrupted by modern institutions—pops
up frequently in the writing of public intellectuals like José Ortega y Gasset ("War is not an instinct but an invention"), Stephen Jay Gould ("Homo sapiens is not an evil or destructive species"),
social scientists have started to count bodies in
different historical periods, they have discovered that the romantic theory gets it backward: Far from causing us to become
more violent, something in modernity and its cultural institutions has made us nobler. To be sure, any attempt to document changes in
and Ashley Montagu ("Biological studies lend support to the ethic of universal brotherhood"). But, now that
violence must be soaked in uncertainty. In much of the world, the distant past was a tree falling in the forest with no one to hear it, and, even for events in the historical record, statistics are
spotty until recent periods. Long-term trends can be discerned only by smoothing out zigzags and spikes of horrific bloodletting. And the choice to focus on relative rather than absolute
numbers brings up the moral imponderable of whether it is worse for 50 percent of a population of 100 to be killed or 1 percent in a population of one billion. Yet, despite these caveats, a
decline of violence is a fractal phenomenon, visible at the scale of millennia, centuries, decades, and years. It applies over
it appears to be a worldwide
trend, though not a homogeneous one. The leading edge has been in Western societies, especially England and Holland, and there seems to have
picture is taking shape. The
several orders of magnitude of violence, from genocide to war to rioting to homicide to the treatment of children and animals. And
been a tipping point at the onset of the Age of Reason in the early seventeenth century. At the widest-angle view, one can see a whopping difference across the millennia that separate us from
our pre-state ancestors. Contra leftist anthropologists who celebrate the noble savage, quantitative body-counts—such as the proportion of prehistoric skeletons with axemarks and
pre-state societies were far
more violent than our own. It is true that raids and battles killed a tiny percentage of the numbers that die in modern warfare. But, in tribal violence, the clashes are
more frequent, the percentage of men in the population who fight is greater, and the rates of death per battle are higher. According to anthropologists like Lawrence
Keeley, Stephen LeBlanc, Phillip Walker, and Bruce Knauft, these factors combine to yield population-wide rates of death in tribal
warfare that dwarf those of modern times. If the wars of the twentieth century had killed the same proportion of the population that die in the wars of a
embedded arrowheads or the proportion of men in a contemporary foraging tribe who die at the hands of other men—suggest that
typical tribal society, there would have been two billion deaths, not 100 million. Political correctness from the other end of the ideological spectrum has also distorted many people's
conception of violence in early civilizations—namely, those featured in the Bible. This supposed source of moral values contains many celebrations of genocide, in which the Hebrews, egged
The Bible also prescribes death by stoning as the penalty for a long list of nonviolent infractions, including
idolatry, blasphemy, homosexuality, adultery, disrespecting one's parents, and picking up sticks on the Sabbath. The Hebrews, of course, were no more murderous than other tribes; one
also finds frequent boasts of torture and genocide in the early histories of the Hindus, Christians, Muslims,
and Chinese. At the century scale, it is hard to find quantitative studies of deaths in warfare spanning medieval and modern times. Several historians have suggested that there has
on by God, slaughter every last resident of an invaded city.
been an increase in the number of recorded wars across the centuries to the present, but, as political scientist James Payne has noted, this may show only that "the Associated Press is a more
Social histories of the West provide evidence
of numerous barbaric practices that became obsolete in the last five centuries, such as slavery,
amputation, blinding, branding, flaying, disembowelment, burning at the stake, breaking on the wheel,
comprehensive source of information about battles around the world than were sixteenth-century monks."
and so on. Meanwhile, for another kind of violence—homicide—the data are abundant and striking. The criminologist Manuel Eisner has assembled hundreds of homicide estimates from
murder rates declined steeply—for
example, from 24 homicides per 100,000 Englishmen in the fourteenth century to 0.6 per 100,000 by the
early 1960s. On the scale of decades, comprehensive data again paint a shockingly happy picture: Global violence has fallen steadily since the middle of the twentieth century.
According to the Human Security Brief 2006, the number of battle deaths in interstate wars has declined from more than
Western European localities that kept records at some point between 1200 and the mid-1990s. In every country he analyzed,
65,000 per year in the 1950s to less than 2,000 per year in this decade. In Western Europe and the Americas, the second half of the century saw a steep decline in
the number of wars, military coups, and deadly ethnic riots. Zooming in by a further power of ten exposes yet another reduction. After the cold war, every part of
the world saw a steep drop-off in state-based conflicts, and those that do occur are more likely to end in negotiated settlements rather than
being fought to the bitter end. Meanwhile, according to political scientist Barbara Harff, between 1989 and 2005 the number of campaigns of mass killing of
civilians decreased by 90 percent.
2AC—No Impact—AT: Morality
Neoliberalism leads to a moral structure – personal responsibility and the market
Evans 5 – Prof of public policy (2005, Mark Evans, Professor of Public Policy, Head of the Department of Politics and Provost of Halifax College at the University of York, pg 77, CH4:
“Neoliberalism and Policy Transfer in the British Competition State: the Case of Welfare Reform,” Internalizing Globalization: The Rise of Neoliberalism and the Decline of National Varieties of
Capitalism, PALGRAVE MACMILLAN: Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire, ngoetz)
State actors and institutions promote new forms of complex globalization in the attempt to adapt state
action to cope more effectively with what they see and portray as global ‘realities’. Hence they seek to make the domestic
economy more competitive while accepting the loss of key traditional social and economic state functions, which were central to the development of the IWS. However, in
attempting to meet the challenges of globalization, domestic political and bureaucratic actors
increasingly transform the domestic political system into a terrain of conflict underpinned with profound
policy debates around alternative responses to globalization (e.g. in Britain the issue of the single European currency). Out of this
process of domestic rearticulation, a particular range of policy options comes to represent a restructured, loosely
knit consensus: first on the right (many of whose ‘neoliberal’ members have always believed deeply in the disarming of the economic state) and then on the left, as traditional
alternatives are incrementally eroded. This increasingly familiar consensus involves both an extensive process of deregulation,
liberalization, and flexibilization not only of public policy but of the state apparatus itself and a
refocusing of the state on supporting, maintaining and even promoting transnational and international
market processes and governance structures at home. The latter manifests itself in a moral emphasis on
personal responsibility, an economic and political acceptance of the correctness of market outcomes, and,
paradoxically, an increase in pro-market regulation and intervention (Cerny, 1990; Vogel, 1996). Thus t he rationale for state intervention is aimed not
only at sustaining the domestic economy but also at promoting its further integration into an
increasingly open global economy in the acceptance that the imperatives of international competitiveness and consumer choice have a higher ideological status
than issues of domestic social solidarity.
2AC—No Impact—AT: War
Economic competition isn’t the root cause of war
MacKenzie 3—prof of economics at Coast Guard Academy. Former prof of economics at Kean. BA in Economics and Management Science at Kean. MA in Economics from U
Connecticut. PhD in economics from George mason (DW, “Does Capitalism Require War?,” 7 April 2003, http://mises.org/story/1201, AMiles)
proponents appeal so often to historical examples. They often claim that history shows
how capitalism is imperialistic and warlike or at least benefits from war. Capitalism supposedly needs a boost from some war spending from time to time, and history
shows this. Robert Higgs demonstrated that the wartime prosperity during the Second World War was illusory[i]. This should come
to no surprise to those who lived through the deprivations of wartime rationing. We do not need wars for prosperity, but does capitalism breed war and imperialism anyway? History is
rife with examples of imperialism. The Romans, Alexander, and many others of the ancient world waged imperialistic wars. The Incan Empire and the empire of Ancient China
stand as examples of the universal character of imperialism. Who could possibly claim that imperialism grew out of the prosperity of
these ancient civilizations? Imperialism precedes modern industrial capitalism by many centuries. Uneven
wealth distribution or underconsumption under capitalism obviously did not cause these instances of imperialism. Of course, this fact
Perhaps the oddest aspect of these various, but similar, claims is that their
does not prove that modern capitalism lacks its own imperialistic tendencies. The notion that income gets underspent or maldistributed lies at the heart of most claims that capitalism either
needs or produces imperialistic wars. As J.B. Say argued, supply creates its own demand through payments to factors of production. Demand Side economists Hobson and Keynes argued that
there would be too little consumption and too little investment for continuous full employment. We save too much to have peace and prosperity. The difficulty we face is not in oversaving, but
in underestimating the workings of markets and the desires of consumers. Doomsayers have been downplaying consumer demand for ages. As demand side economist J.K. Galbraith claimed,
we live in an affluent society, where most private demands have been met. Of course, Hobson made the same claim much earlier. Earlier and stranger still, mercantilists claimed that 'wasteful
acts' such as tea drinking, gathering at alehouses, taking snuff, and the wearing of ribbons were unnecessary luxuries that detracted from productive endeavors. The prognostications of
esteemed opponents of capitalism have consistently failed to predict consumer demand. Today, consumers consume at levels that few long ago could have imagined possible. There is no
reason to doubt that consumers will continue to press for ever higher levels of consumption. Though it is only a movie, Brewster's Millions illustrates how creative people can be at spending
money. People who do actually inherit, win, or earn large sums of money have little trouble spending it. Indeed, wealthy individuals usually have more trouble holding on to their fortunes than
in finding ways to spend them. We are never going to run out of ways to spend money. Many of the complaints about capitalism center on how people save too much. One should remember
that there really is no such thing as saving. Consumers defer consumption to the future only. As economist Eugen Böhm-Bawerk demonstrated, people save according to time preference.
Savings diverts resources into capital formation. This increases future production. Interest enhanced savings then can purchase these goods as some consumers cease to defer their
consumption. Keynes' claim that animal spirits drive investment has no rational basis. Consumer preferences are the basis for investment. Investors forecast future consumer demand. Interest
rates convey knowledge of these demands. The intertemporal coordination of production through capital markets and interest rates is not a simple matter. But Keynes' marginal propensities
to save and Hobson's concentration of wealth arguments fail to account for the real determinants of production through time. Say's Law of Markets holds precisely because people always
want a better life for themselves and those close to them. Falling interest rates deter saving and increase investment. Rising interest rates induce saving and deter investment. This simple logic
of supply and demand derives from a quite basic notion of self interest. Keynes denied that the world worked this way. Instead, he claimed that bond holders hoard money outside of the
banking system, investment periodically collapses from 'the dark forces of time and uncertainty, and consumers save income in a mechanical fashion according to marginal propensities to
save. None of these propositions hold up to scrutiny, either deductive or empirical. Speculators do not hoard cash outside of banks. To do this means a loss of interest on assets. People do
move assets from one part of the financial system to another. This does not cause deficient aggregate demand. Most money exists in the banking system, and is always available for lending. In
fact, the advent of e-banking makes such a practice even less sensible. Why hoard cash when you can move money around with your computer? It is common knowledge that people save for
homes, education, and other expensive items, not because they have some innate urge to squirrel some portion of their income away. This renders half of the market for credit rational.
Investors do in fact calculate rates of return on investment. This is not a simple matter. Investment entails some speculation. Long term investment projects entail some uncertainty, but
investors who want to actually reap profits will estimate the returns on investment using the best available data. Keynes feared that the dark forces of time and uncertainty could scare
investors. This possibility, he thought, called for government intervention. However, government intervention (especially warfare) generally serves to increase uncertainty. Private markets
have enough uncertainties without throwing politics into the fray. The vagaries of political intervention serve only to darken an already uncertain future. Capital markets are best left to
capitalists. Nor is capital not extracted surplus value. It comes not from exploitation. It is simply a matter of people valuing their future wellbeing. Capitalists will hire workers up to the point
where the discounted marginal product of their labor equals the wage rate. To do otherwise would mean a loss of potential profit. Since workers earn the marginal product of labor and capital
derives from deferred consumption, Marxist arguments about reserve armies of the unemployed and surplus extraction fail. It is quite odd to worry about capitalists oversaving when many
complain about how the savings rate in the U.S. is too low. Why does the U.S., as the world's 'greatest capitalist/imperialist power', attract so much foreign investment? Many Americans worry
about America's international accounts. Fears about foreigners buying up America are unfounded, but not because this does not happen. America does have a relatively low national savings
rate. It does attract much foreign investment, precisely because it has relatively secure property rights. Indeed, much of the third world suffers from too little investment. The claims of
Marxists, and Hobson, directly contradict the historical record. Sound theory tells us that it should. The Marxist claim that capitalists must find investments overseas fails miserably. Larry
Kudlow has put his own spin on the false connection between capitalism and war. We need the War as shock therapy to get the economy on its feet. Kudlow also endorses massive airline
subsidies as a means of restoring economic prosperity. Kudlow and Krugman both endorse the alleged destructive creation of warfare and terrorism. Kudlow has rechristened the Broken
Window fallacy the Broken Window principle. Kudlow claims that may lose money and wealth in one way, but we gain it back many time over when the rebuilding is done. Kudlow and
Krugman have quite an affinity for deficits. Krugman sees debt as a sponge to absorb excess saving. Kudlow see debt as a short term nuisance that we can dispel by maximizing growth. One
would think that such famous economists would realize that competition does work to achieve the goal of optimum growth based on time preference, but this is not the case. While these
economists have expressed their belief in writing, they could do more. If the destruction of assets leads to increased prosperity, then they should teach this principle by example. Kudlow and
Krugman could, for instance, help build the economy by demolishing their own private homes. This would have the immediate effect of stimulating demand for demolition experts, and the
longer term affect of stimulating the demand for construction workers. They can create additional wealth by financing the reconstruction of their homes through debt. By borrowing funds,
they draw idle resources into use and stimulate financial activity. Of course, they would both initially lose wealth in one way. But if their thinking is sound, they will gain it back many times over
as they rebuild. The truth is that their beliefs are fallacious. Bastiat demonstrated the absurdity of destructive creation in his original explanation of the opportunity costs from repairing broken
windows. Kudlow is quite clear about his intentions. He wants to grow the economy to finance the war. As Kudlow told some students, "The trick here is to grow the economy and let the
economic growth raise the revenue for the war effort"[ii]. Kudlow also praises the Reagan Administration for growing the economy to fund national defense. Here Kudlow's attempts to give
economic advice cease completely. His argument here is not that capitalism needs a shot in the arm. It is that resources should be redirected towards ends that he sees fit. Kudlow is a war
hawk who, obviously, cannot fund this or any war personally. He instead favors using the state to tax others to fund what he wants, but cannot afford. He seems to think that his values matter
more than any other's. Why should anyone else agree with this? Kudlow tarnishes the image of laissez faire economics by parading his faulty reasoning and his claims that his wants should
reign supreme as a pro-market stance. Unfortunately, it is sometimes necessary to defend capitalism from alleged advocates of liberty, who employ false dogmas in pursuit of their own
Capitalism neither requires nor promotes imperialist expansion. Capitalism did not create
imperialism or warfare. Warlike societies predate societies with secure private property. The idea that inequity or underspending give rise to militarism lacks any rational basis.
Imperialistic tendencies exist due to ethnic and nationalistic bigotries, and the want for power. Prosperity depends
upon our ability to prevent destructive acts. The dogma of destructive creation fails as a silver lining to the cloud of warfare. Destructive acts entail real
militaristic desires.
costs that diminish available opportunities. The idea that we need to find work for idle hands in capitalism at best leads to a kind of Sisyphus economy where unproductive industries garner
subsidies from productive people. At worst, it serves as a supporting argument for war. The more recent versions of the false charges against capitalism do nothing to invalidate two simple
Capitalism generates prosperity by creating new products. War inflicts poverty by destroying existing wealth. There is no sound reason to think
facts.
otherwise.
2AC—No Impact—AT: Root Cause of War
No root cause of war—solving the proximate cause is best
Sagan 2k (Scott D. Sagan – Department of Political Science, Stanford University – ACCIDENTAL WAR IN THEORY AND PRACTICE – 2000 – available via:
www.sscnet.ucla.edu/polisci/faculty/trachtenberg/cv/sagan.doc, ZBurdette)
it is essential, in my view, to avoid the common "fallacy of overdetermination." Looking
, it is always tempting to underestimate the importance of the immediate causes of a
war and argue that the likelihood of conflict was so high that the war would have broken out sooner or later even without
the specific incident that set it off. If taken too far, however, this tendency eliminates the role of contingency in history
and diminishes our ability to perceive the alternative pathways that were present to historical actors. The point is perhaps best made
through a counterfactual about the Cold War. During the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, a bizarre false warning incident in the U.S. radar
systems facing Cuba led officers at the North American Air Defense Command to believe that the U.S. was under attack and that a nuclear weapon
was about to go off in Florida. Now imagine the counterfactual event that this false warning was
reported and believed by U.S. leaders and resulted in a U.S. nuclear "retaliation" against the Russians. How would future
historians have seen the causes of World War III? One can easily imagine arguments stressing that the
war between the U.S. and the USSR was inevitable. War was overdetermined: given the deep political
hostility of the two superpowers, the conflicting ideology, the escalating arms race, nuclear war would have occurred
eventually. If not during that specific crisis over Cuba, then over the next one in Berlin, or the Middle
East, or Korea. From that perspective, focusing on this particular accidental event as a cause of war
would be seen as misleading. Yet, we all now know, of course that a nuclear war was neither inevitable nor
overdetermined during the Cold War.
To make reasonable judgements in such matters
backwards at historical events