Capitalism Kritik TSDC 2014
1NC Shell
A. Link - Oceanic development has lead to ecological degradation, a product of
global capitalism, and aff plans to solve will only exacerbate the impacts.
Clark and Clausen ’08 [Brett Clark teaches sociology at North Carolina State University in Raleigh. Rebecca Clausen
teaches sociology at Fort Lewis College in Durango, Colorado. “The Oceanic Crisis: Capitalism and the Degradation of Marine
Ecosystem.” The Monthly Review. 2008, Volume 60, Issue 03 (July-August). Date Accessed: June 27, 14. O’B]
The world is at a crossroads in regard to the ecological crisis. Ecological
degradation under global capitalism extends
to the entire biosphere. Oceans that were teeming with abundance are being decimated by
the continual intrusion of exploitive economic operations. At the same time that scientists are documenting the
complexity and interdependency of marine species, we are witnessing an oceanic crisis as natural conditions, ecological
processes, and nutrient cycles are being undermined through overfishing and transformed due to global warming. ¶ The expansion of the
accumulation system, along with technological advances in fishing, has intensified the exploitation of the world
ocean; facilitated the enormous capture of fishes (both target and bycatch); extended the spatial reach of fishing operations; broadened the
species deemed valuable on the market; and disrupted metabolic and reproductive processes of the ocean.
The quick-fix solution of aquaculture enhances capital’s control over production without resolving
ecological contradictions.
B. Impact - Capitalism is the root of ocean destruction – the world can no longer
support human development and the deadly trio assures probability of
extinction if nothing is done.
Butler ’13 [Simon Butler, Frequent contributor to Climate & Capitalism, and co-author of Too Many People? Population,
Immigration, and the Environmental Crisis. Climate & Capitalism. October 14, 2013. “Oceans on the brink of ecological collapse.”
(http://climateandcapitalism.com/2013/10/14/oceans-brink-ecological-collapse/) Date Accessed: July 1, 14. O’B]
Earth’s climate
is warming faster than at any point in the past 65 million years and that human activity is the
cause. It was disappointing, though not surprising, that news reports dried up after only a few days.¶ But another major scientific study, released a week later and including
In late September, many mainstream media outlets gave substantial coverage to the UN’s new report on the climate change crisis, which said the
even graver warnings of a global environmental catastrophe, was mostly ignored altogether. The marine scientists that released the State of the Ocean 2013 report on October 3
We are entering an unknown territory of
marine ecosystem change, and exposing organisms to intolerable evolutionary pressure. The next mass extinction event
may have already begun. Developed, industrialised human society is living above the carrying
capacity of the Earth, and the implications for the ocean, and thus for all humans, are huge.Ӧ
gave the starkest of possible warnings about the impact of carbon pollution on the oceans:¶ “
Report co-author, Professor Alex Rogers of SomervilleCollege, Oxford, said on October 3:¶ “The health of the ocean is spiralling downwards far more rapidly than we had
thought. We are seeing greater change, happening faster, and the effects are more imminent than previously anticipated. The situation should be of the gravest concern to
everyone will be affected by changes in the ability of the ocean to support life on
Earth.”¶ The ocean is by far the Earth’s largest carbon sink and has absorbed most of the excess
carbon pollution put into the atmosphere from burning fossil fuels. The State of the Ocean 2013 report warned that
this is making decisive changes to the ocean itself, causing a “deadly trio of impacts” – acidification, ocean warming
and deoxygenation (a fall in ocean oxygen levels).¶ The report said:¶ “Most, if not all, of the Earth’s five past mass
extinction events have involved at least one of these three main symptoms of global carbon perturbations [or disruptions], all
of which are present in the ocean today.”¶ Fossil records indicate five mass extinction events have taken place in the Earth’s history. The
everyone since
biggest of these – the end Permian mass extinction – wiped out as much as 95% of marine life about 250 million years ago. Another, far better known mass extinction event
wiped out the dinosaurs about 66 million years ago and is thought to have been caused by a huge meteor strike.¶ A further big species extinction took place 55 million years
ago. Known as the Paleocene/Eocene thermal maximum (PETM), it was a period of rapid global warming associated with a huge release of greenhouse gases. “Today’s rate of
Ocean acidification is a sign
that the increase in CO2 is surpassing the ocean’s capacity to absorb it. The more acid the
ocean becomes, the bigger threat it poses to marine life – especially sea creatures that form their skeletons or shells from
carbon release,” said the State of the Ocean 2013, “is at least 10 times faster than that which preceded the [PETM].”[1]¶
calcium carbonate such as crustaceans, molluscs, corals and plankton.¶ The report predicts “extremely serious consequences for ocean life” if the release of CO2 does not fall,
including “the extinction of some species and decline in biodiversity overall.”¶ Acidification is taking place fastest at higher latitudes, but overall the report says
“
geological records indicate that the current acidification is unparalleled in at least the last 300
million years”.¶ Ocean warming is the second element in the deadly trio. Average ocean temperatures have risen by 0.6°C in the past 100 years. As the
ocean gets warmer still, it will help trigger critical climate tipping points that will warm the entire planet
even faster, hurtling it far beyond the climate in which today’s life has evolved. Ocean warming will accelerate the death
spiral of polar sea ice and risks the “increased venting of the greenhouse gas methane from the Arctic seabed”, the report says.¶ Ongoing ocean warming will
also wreak havoc on marine life. The report projects the “loss of 60% of present biodiversity of exploited marine life and invertebrates, including numerous local extinctions.”
Each decade, fish are expected to migrate between 30 kilometres to 130 kilometres towards the poles, and live 3.5 metres deeper underwater, leading to a 40% fall in fish catch
these changes will have massive economic and food security
consequences, not least for the fishing industry and those who depend on it.Ӧ The combined effects of acidification and
ocean warming will also seal the fate of the world’s coral reefs, leading to their “terminal and
rapid decline” by 2050. Australia’s Great Barrier Reef and Caribbean Sea reefs will likely “shift from coral domination to algal domination.” The report says
potential in tropical regions.¶ The report says: “All
the global target to limit the average temperature rise to 2°C, which was adopted at the Copenhagen UN climate conference in 2009, “is not sufficient for coral reefs to survive.
Lower targets should be urgently pursued.Ӧ Deoxygenation Рthe third component of the deadly trio Рis related to ocean warming and to high levels of nutrient run-off into the
ocean from sewerage and agriculture. The report says overall ocean oxygen levels, which have declined consistently for the past five decades, could fall by 1% to 7% by 2100.
But this figure does not indicate the big rise in the number of low oxygen “dead zones,” which has doubled every decade since the 1960s.¶ Whereas acidification most impacts
the combined impact of this
deadly trio will “have cascading consequences for marine biology, including altered food webs dynamics and the
expansion of pathogens [causing disease].” It also warns that it adds to other big problems affecting the ocean, such as chemical pollution and overfishing
(up to 70% of the world’s fish stock is overfished).¶ “We may already have entered into an extinction period and not yet realised it. What is certain is that
the current carbon perturbations will have huge implications for humans, and may well be the
most important challenge faced since the hominids evolved. The urgent need to reduce the pressure of all ocean stressors,
upon smaller marine life, deoxygenation hits larger animals, such as Marlin and Tuna, hardest.¶ The report cautions that
especially CO2 emissions, is well signposted.”
And, Capitalism creates a “metabolic rift” between nature and humankind –
ocean development and exploration will lead to resource scarcity and
eventually the end of life.
Bachtell ’11 [John Bachtell, writer for Political Affairs Magazine. “Three Irresolvable Crises of Capitalism.” Political Affairs
Magazine, August 9, 2011. (http://www.politicalaffairs.net/three-irresolvable-crises-of-capitalism/) Date Accessed: July 1, 14. O’B]
Historically, capitalism came on the scene as the most environmentally destructive economic system. The
process of capital
accumulation gouged the Earth, deforested continents, spoiled the oceans, over fished them,
polluted rivers and waterways, fouled the air and exhausted the soil.¶ As environmental problems arose
and resources became scarcer, the solutions necessitated by expanding production meant
ever greater environmental destruction.¶ Today’s mountain top removal, fracking and degradation resulting from
the extraction of oil from the Canadian tar sands are some of the most vivid examples.¶ Today, the ecological crisis is accelerating
and the Earth is reaching or has surpassed key tipping points in planetary systems that will alter life for thousands of years. If the
present rate of accumulation of greenhouse gases is not reversed, the Earth will become uninhabitable for humans and all living
species.¶ This
“metabolic rift”constitutes a basic contradiction between the relentless and
destructive expansion of capitalist production and the finite resources of the world and the
planetary systems that sustain life.¶ Scientists have identified planetary boundaries that must not be surpassed in
order to sustain life on the planet. Nine have been identified: climate change, ocean acidification, stratospheric ozone depletion,
nitrogen and phosphorus cycles, global freshwater use, change in land use, biodiversity loss, atmospheric aerosol loading and
chemical pollution.¶ In three cases boundaries or “tipping points” have already been surpassed – climate change, the nitrogen cycle
and biological diversity.¶ Climate change
is causing extreme weather conditions – excessive heat,
droughts and flooding. It is estimated 70 percent of the Earth’s land surface will experience drought conditions. It is
projected agricultural production will be reduced by 30 percent in the US and globally.¶ Global climate change will force
hundreds of millions of people to relocate from low lying and coastal areas. There is and will
be growing competition over energy, water, food and other scarce resources leading to the
possibility of conflict.¶ These are urgent issues facing the US working class and people and the world as a whole. The
resolution of these crises, the redirection of policy and resources, can’t wait until “socialism”
and must be part of today’s struggles.¶ Mass struggles can and must force necessary reforms and
regulations on capitalist development, to regulate it’s destructive capacity and force the
redistribution of wealth and redirection of resources toward the needs of the people.¶ But
capitalism is inherently limited and it is increasingly apparent more fundamental reforms are necessary. To solve the urgent
problems requires the massive reallocation of social resources, global cooperation on an unprecedented scale, and a reorganization
of production to meet human needs not profits.¶ The struggle to redistribute the wealth to create millions of living wage jobs
through expanding education, universal health care, mass transit and affordable housing, modernizing the infrastructure, and
building a sustainable, demilitarized, democratic economy that begins to heal the Earth can unite a majority of Americans and is the
path to democratic socialism.
C. Alternative - The alternative is to vote neg as an abandonment of belief in
capitalism
Johnston 04 [Adrian Johnston, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Philosophy, University of New Mexico, 2004, Psychoanalysis, Culture and Society,
Volume 9 // Issue 3]
Perhaps the
absence of a detailed practical roadmap in Žižek’s political writings isn’t a major shortcoming.
most important task is simply the negativity of the critical
struggle, the effort to cure an intellectual constipation resulting from capitalist ideology and thereby
truly to open up the space for imagining authentic alternatives to the prevailing state of the situation.
Another definition of materialism offered by Žižek is that it amounts to accepting the internal inherence of what
fantasmatically appears as an external deadlock or hindrance 127 (with fantasy itself being defined as the false
externalization of something within the subject, namely, the illusory projection of an inner obstacle 128). From this
perspective, seeing through ideological fantasies by learning how to think again outside the confines
of current restrictions has, in and of itself, the potential to operate as a form of real revolutionary
practice (rather than remaining just an instance of negative/critical intellectual reflection). Why is this the case? Recalling the
earlier analysis of commodity fetishism, the social efficacy of money as the universal medium of exchange (and the entire
political economy grounded upon it) ultimately relies upon nothing 93 more than a kind of “magic,”
that is, the belief in money’s social efficacy by those using it in the processes of exchange. Since the value of currency is,
at bottom, reducible to the belief that it has the value attributed to it (and that everyone believes that
everyone else believes this as well), derailing capitalism by destroying its essential financial substance is ,
in a certain respect, as easy as dissolving the mere belief in this substance’s powers. The “external”
obstacle of the capitalist system exists exclusively on the condition that subjects, whether
consciously or unconsciously, “internally” believe in it—capitalism’s life-blood, money, is simply a fetishistic crystallization of a
Maybe, at least for the time being, the
belief in others’ belief in the socioperformative force emanating from this same material.
2NC
EXT: Links
Oceanic exploration and development only serves to exploit nature for
capitalistic gain and aims to solve these issues without first identifying them as
products of capitalism will only worsen the cause.
Clark and Clausen ’08 [Brett Clark teaches sociology at North Carolina State University in Raleigh. Rebecca Clausen
teaches sociology at Fort Lewis College in Durango, Colorado. “The Oceanic Crisis: Capitalism and the Degradation of Marine
Ecosystem.” The Monthly Review. 2008, Volume 60, Issue 03 (July-August). Date Accessed: June 27, 14. O’B]
Scientific analysis of oceanic systems presents a sobering picture of the coevolution of human
society and the marine environment during the capitalist industrial era. The particular environmental
problems related to the ocean cannot be viewed as isolated issues or aberrations of human ingenuity,
only to be corrected through further technological development. Rather these ecological
conditions must be understood as they relate to the systematic expansion of capital and the
exploitation of nature for profit. Capital has a particular social metabolic order—the material
interchange between society and nature—that subsumes the world to the logic of accumulation. It is a
system of self-expanding value, which must reproduce itself on an ever-larger scale.4 Here we examine the social
metabolic order of capital and its relationship with the oceans to (a) examine the anthropogenic causes of fish stock depletion, (b)
detail the ecological consequences of ongoing capitalist production in relation to the ocean environment, and (c) highlight the
ecological contradictions of capitalist aquaculture.5
The world’s oceans are integral to the capitalist system and plans to develop or
explore will only lead to increasing its efficiency.
Steinberg ’98 [Philip E. Steinberg, Professor in Dept. of Geography at Florida State University. “The maritime mystique:
sustainable development, capital mobility, and nostalgia in the world ocean.” October 28, 1998. Date Accessed: June 27, 14. O’B]
These different regulatory strategies are centrally related to the intensification of a single tension within the spatial organization of
society, the tension between capital's contradictory needs for fixity in discrete locations and for mobility across space. This tension
has been discussed extensively with regard to land space, most notably by Harvey (1982), but I seek to extend the analysis to the
world ocean. Key to this argument is that ocean
space, like land space, is an integral component of society,
transformed amidst the dynamics of the world economy (Steinberg, 1998; 1999). The social processes that
shape the ocean arc linked to those that operate on land, but the actual constructions that have emerged from these contradictions
in ocean space have been specific owing to the sea's unique physical properties, most significantly its unsuitability for the placement
of spatially fixed investments. In
recent decades, new opportunities have emerged for utilizing the sea,
and the old order of the oceans has proven insufficient for serving the needs of various ocean
users. Thus, it is argued below that the world ocean is presently undergoing a crisis of regulation.
Ocean uses associated with capital fixity and those associated with capital mobility are both
intensifying and spreading out across ocean space, to the point that the two groups of uses
increasingly overlap. Regulatory regimes and institutions that support one set of uses are
fundamentally incompatible with those that support the other set of uses. The ocean has emerged as
a site of conflict, as is reflected in the multiple images of marine space outlined above.
Ocean development is a capitalist tool– empirics prove it directly aids in the
destruction of the ocean.
Earth First ’11 [Earth First! Sunday, September 4th, 2011. “Can a fight for South Florida reefs help block the expansion
global capitalism?” (http://earthfirstjournal.org/newswire/2011/09/04/can-a-fight-for-south-florida-reefs-help-block-the-expansionglobal-capitalism/) Date Accessed: July 1, 14. O’B]
Miami—This
fight for the wild ocean maybe be a critical part of defending all life on Earth from
the clutches of the industrial economy. Yesterday’s New York Times reported that as Miami prepares to
dredge its port to accommodate supersize freighters, environmentalists are making a lastditch effort to protect threatened coral reefs and sea grass that would be destroyed by the
expansion. Sounds like the locals might be in need of some direct action reinforcements.¶ The state’s Department of
Environmental Protection is on the verge of granting a final permit to the Army Corps of Engineers, which will be
free to conduct 600 days of blasting to widen and deepen the channel for the port of Miami,
across from the southern part of Miami Beach.¶ About seven acres of coral, some of which is part of a state preserve, is
expected to be directly affected by the blasts, including Elkhorn and staghorn coral, which are categorized as
threatened under the Endangered Species Act. Nearly eight acres of sea grass will be damaged during the
expansion. All for the purpose of receiving superfreighters that will sail through the Panama
Canal in 2014 once it has been widened.¶ Florida has seen steep declines in coral in the last 25 years, and last year’s
cold snap devastated the reefs closest to shore. Some of those lost 70 percent to 75 percent of their coral, according to Diego
Lirman, a University of Miami scientist who was part of a team that conducted a survey of the coral last year and published its
findings in August.¶ Another study by biologists found that bacteria from human fecal waste had played a major role in choking
elkhorn coral. For years, human waste from the Florida Keys seeped, or in some cases poured, into the ocean via septic tanks and
pipes.¶ “There were a couple of acres of this coral, and now there is enough to cover your desk,” said Ken Nedimyer, president of
the nonprofit Coral Restoration Foundation in the Florida Keys, which grows and restores coral through an underwater nursery.¶
“Biscayne Bay is actually a crystal-clear bay. It’s that way because we have acres and acres of sea grass beds filtering silt and sand
out. It’s part of the beauty. It’s a shallow tropical lagoon that was never contemplated as a deep-dredge port.” That’s what Blanca
Mesa, volunteer for the Sierra Club Miami, had to say.¶
Capitalists exploit the ocean through development and exploration at the cost
of the rest of the Earth – extinction is unavoidable unless political action is
taken.
Farrell ’13 [Paul B. Farrell, currently a writer for Market Watch behavioral economics, an investment banker with Morgan
Stanley; executive vice president of the Financial News Network; executive vice president of Mercury Entertainment Corp; and
associate editor of the Los Angeles Herald Examiner. “10 ways capitalists get rich destroying our oceans
Commentary: Focus on profits turns back evolutionary clock a billion years.” Market Watch, December 4, 2013.
(http://www.marketwatch.com/story/10-ways-capitalists-get-rich-destroying-our-oceans-2013-12-04) Date Accessed: July 1, 14.
O’B]
SAN LUIS OBISPO, Calif. (MarketWatch) — Yes, many capitalists are getting rich off the high seas, a vast reservoir of
wealth holding 95% of the planet’s water, spanning 70% of the Earth’s surface. Often called the last frontier, a return to America’s
18th century Wild West. it’s
virtually unregulated, a new free market where capitalists roam like
pirates, plundering wealth and treating our oceans as a freebie gold mine and trash dump.¶ Bad
news for seven billion people living on the planet. And by 2050 we’ll be adding three billion more people. We already know we can’t
feed 10 billion. Now we’re
polluting their water. Won’t be enough clean water for all to drink,
triggering wars.¶ Yes, bad news getting worse: As Alan Sielen of the Scripps Institute of Oceanography warns in the Foreign
Affairs journal: “Over the last several decades, human activities have so altered the basic chemistry of the seas that they are now
experiencing evolution in reverse: a return to the barren primeval waters of hundreds of millions of years ago.Ӧ Capitalism
is
turning back the evolutionary clock a billion years¶ Evolution in reverse? Yes, planet Earth is regressing eons to
an earlier primitive era. Unregulated free-market competition on the high seas is turning back the evolutionary clock. That doesn’t
bother today’s short-term-thinking capitalists. But it should. Because, ironically, shifting
evolution into reverse will
also self-destruct the very global economy that capitalism needs for future growth.¶ Today’s
capitalists see another three billion people as the new customers needed to expand free markets globally. But in the process they
are also cutting their own throats, unaware they’re pushing a hidden self-destruct button lodged in their brains.¶ Nature designed all
systems with these built-in termination buttons. Deny it all you want, but humans have our entrances and exits, as Shakespeare said.
We all do. Same with economic systems: Yale’s Immanuel Wallerstein sees capitalism at the end of its 500-year cycle. Solar systems
last for billions of years. Someday, as our sun cools, Earth could go the way of Mars. And the sun will eventually exit in a blazing
supernova.¶ Grabbing short-term profits, leaving long-term losses to the public¶ Capitalists deny their role in their endgame, dismiss
the long economic cycle. That’s natural. Capitalist brains are designed to focus on the short term, profits, high frequencies,
microseconds, day-end closing prices, quarterly earnings, annual bonuses. Rarely longer. Myopia is the built-in self-destruct trigger
for capitalists, their society, the human race, our planet’s water. Can’t blame them, the capitalist’s brain isn’t designed to think longterm.¶ Why? Capitalists see a new world like the Wild West. No lawmen, just free-market competitors, free to do whatever they
want, whenever, unregulated, uncontrolled, no restraints, skimming, mining, plundering the wealth of the high seas, free to use,
misuse and abuse vast oceans of water at no real cost.¶ Here are 10 ways capitalists are pocketing their short-term profits, leaving
long-term losses for the public to pay:¶ 1. Pollution creating new oceanic garbage dump¶ Sielen’s imagery is powerful: “The
oceans’ problems start with pollution, the most visible forms of which are the catastrophic
spills from offshore oil and gas drilling or from tanker accidents.” But that “pollution pales in comparison to
the much less spectacular waste that finds its way to the seas through rivers, pipes, runoff, and the air ... trash, plastic bags, bottles,
cans” washing into “coastal waters or discarded by ships ... drifts out to sea ... forms epic gyres of floating waste” covering
“hundreds of miles.”¶ 2. Destruction of marine life costs jobs and more¶ “The prospect of vanishing whales, polar bears, bluefin tuna,
sea turtles, and wild coasts should be worrying enough on its own,” warns Sielen. “But the
disruption of entire
ecosystems threatens our very survival, since it is the healthy functioning of these diverse
systems that sustains life on earth.” Destruction on this level” has massive consequences, and
costs “humans dearly in terms of food, jobs, health, and quality of life.”¶ 3. Toxic chemicals polluting our
waters¶ It gets far worse: “The most dangerous pollutants are chemicals” poisoning the oceans with toxins, says Sielen. They “travel
great distances, accumulate in marine life, and move up the food chain.” Mercury from burning coal “rains down on the oceans,
rivers, and lakes.” Each year hundreds of new untested industrial chemicals “build up slowly in the tissues of fish and shellfish,” get
passed to larger creatures and humans “causing death, disease, and abnormalities,” adversely affecting “development of the brain,
the neurologic system, and the reproductive system in humans.”¶ 4. Deadly fertilizers are polluting oceans¶ Add to this disaster
scenario fertilizers, which are now rising at excessive levels causing “havoc on the natural environment,” an explosive growth of
algae, decomposition, a loss of “oxygen needed to support complex marine life.” This trend is creating “dead zones devoid of the
ocean life” that “have more than quadrupled” in a decade.¶ 5. Humans are eating too many fish¶ World population was less than 3
billion in 1950, 6 billion in 2000. Projected at 10 billion in 2050. Sielen warns: “Humans
are simply killing and eating
too many fish,” with fish supplies falling “dramatically.” Tuna, swordfish, halibut, flounder populations dropped 90% since
1950. “Human appetite has nearly wiped those populations out.”¶ 6. Fish supplies disappear, demand is increasing¶ And demand
keeps growing as supplies “are rapidly dwindling.” Exploding prices add to the demand: This year, a 489-pound bluefin tuna sold for
$1.7 million making it “profitable to employ airplanes and helicopters to scan the ocean for the fish that remain; against such
technologies, marine animals don’t stand a chance.” Small fish like sardines, anchovy, herring, are also disappearing, meaning less
food for bigger fish up the food chain.¶ 7. Destructive, wasteful fishing methods¶ Unfortunately, “modern
industrial fishing
fleets drag lines with thousands of hooks miles behind a vessel,” with “nets thousands of feet below the
sea’s surface.” Untargeted seals, turtles, dolphins, whales, albatross get entangled, killing millions of tons each year.
“Some of the most destructive fisheries discard 80% to 90%.” In the Gulf of Mexico, “for every pound of shrimp ... over three pounds
of marine life is thrown away.”¶ 8. Destroying marine habitats kills future growth¶ Another factor destroying our oceans: “The
destruction of the habitats that have allowed spectacular marine life to thrive for millennia,” says Sielen. And yet capitalism
continues the “wholesale destruction of deep-ocean habitats ... submerged mountain chains called
seamounts,” some higher than Mt Rainier. They are “homes to a rich variety of marine life.” Yet, industrial trawlers
bulldoze their way” destroying “deep cold-water corals, some older than the California redwoods.”¶ 9. Acid
buildup in oceans weakens marine life¶ “The buildup of acid in ocean waters,” warns Sielen “reduces the availability of calcium
carbonate, a key building block for the skeletons and shells of corals, plankton, shellfish, and many other marine organisms” that
need it “to grow and also to guard against predators.”¶ 10. Our planet Earth is in hot water¶ Echoing findings by 2,000 scientists in
the recent Fifth Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Sielen says scientists predict “climate change will drive the planet’s
temperature up by between 4 and 7 degrees Fahrenheit over the course of this century” causing “hotter oceans ... rising sea levels ...
stronger storms” as the “life cycles of plants and animals are upended, changing migration patterns, causing other serious
disruptions ... surface waters mixing less with cooler, deeper waters,” reducing phytoplankton population, “the foundation of the
ocean’s food chain.”¶ The
recent Warsaw Agreement on Climate Change, like earlier United Nations accords in
how capitalist power-players control governmental decision-makers,
prompting Sielen’s final warning: “So long as pollution, overfishing, and ocean acidification remain
concerns only for scientists ... little will change ... Diplomats and national security experts,
who understand the potential for conflict in an overheated world, should realize that climate
change might soon become a matter of war and peace ... Business leaders should understand better than
Kyoto and Copenhagen, exposes
most the direct links between healthy seas and healthy economies ... And government officials, who are entrusted with the public’s
well-being, must surely see the importance of clean air, land, and water.”¶ “The
world faces a choice,” warns Sielen: “We
we “summon the political will and moral courage to
restore the seas to health before it is too late?” The consequences are catastrophic ... the risks
enormous ... odds very long ... fuse short ... yet the denial may be too overwhelming.
do not have to return to an oceanic Stone Age.” But can
Link – Environment
Environmental reform within capitalism will be ineffectively shallow to
maintain profit levels
DeFusco, Past Director of Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies, 8 —
(David is Communications Director at Highstead, James Gustave Speth [cited in the card] is the dean of the Yale School of Forestry &
Environmental Studies and is Co-founder of the Natural Resources Defense Council and the World Resources Institute and former
White House advisor. (“Book Examines Clash of Capitalism and the Environment”—4/1/2008
http://livinglies.wordpress.com/2008/04/19/capitalism-and-environmental-policy-ultimate-reality-show/)
New Haven, Conn. — The
environment will continue to deteriorate so long as capitalism continues
to be the modern world’s economic engine , argues Gus Speth, dean of the Yale School of
Forestry & Environmental Studies, in his new book, The Bridge at the Edge of the World: Capitalism, the Environment,
and Crossing from Crisis to Sustainability. Seeing an “emerging environmental tragedy of unprecedented proportions,” Speth says
the book’s aim is to describe a non-socialist alternative to capitalism. That alternative includes moving to a post-growth society and
environmentally honest prices, curbing consumerism with a new ethic of sufficiency, rolling back growing corporate control of
American political life, and addressing the enormous economic insecurity of the average person. “My point of departure is the
momentous environmental challenge we face,” Speth says. “But today’s environmental reality is linked powerfully with other
realities, including growing social inequality and neglect and the erosion of democratic governance and popular control.” Speth
examines how these seemingly separate areas of public concern are intertwined and calls upon citizens to mobilize spiritual and
political resources for transformative change on all three fronts. Donald Kennedy, editor-in-chief of Science, calls Speth’s book, “A
powerful and ambitious attempt to characterize the changed strategies that environmental organizations need to adopt to become
more effective. This book challenges many things that would seem to have political immunity of a sort—among others, corporate
capitalism, the environmental movement itself and the forces of globalization.” Co-founder of the Natural Resources Defense
Council and the World Resources Institute and former White House advisor, Speth has been called “the ultimate insider” by TIME
magazine. But now, faced with evidence of galloping degradation of the planet, Speth has concluded that “all in all,
today’s
environmentalism has not been succeeding.” He calls on environmentalists to “step outside
the system and develop a deeper critique of what is going on.” Speth argues that aggregate economic
growth is no longer improving the lives of most Americans and suggests that in some ways it is
making individuals worse off—environmentally, socially and psychologically. “It is said that growth is good—so
good that it is worth all the costs, that somehow we’ll be better off,” says Speth, “We are substituting economic growth and more
consumption for dealing with the real issues—for doing things that would truly make us better off.” The book calls for measures
that provide for universal health care and alleviate the devastating effects of mental illness; guarantee good, well-paying jobs and
increase employee satisfaction, minimize layoffs and job insecurity and provide for adequate retirement incomes; introduce more
family-friendly policies at work, including flextime and easy access to quality child care; and provide individuals with more leisure
time for connecting with their families, communities and nature. “My
hope is that all Americans who care about
the environment will come to embrace these measures—these hallmarks of a caring community
and a good society— as necessary to moving us beyond money to sustainability and
community,” he says. “Sustaining people, sustaining nature—they are just one cause, inseparable.” Speth writes that Gross
Domestic Product (GDP), the dollar value of all goods and services produced by the economy, is a poor gauge of human well-being or
welfare. The book cites studies showing that throughout the entire period following World War II, as incomes skyrocketed in the
United States and other advanced economies, reported life satisfaction and happiness levels stagnated or even declined slightly.
Speth says that these studies suggest the need for a radical rethinking and reordering of society’s priorities. Obsession
with
growth has now causes more harm—to the environment, social fabric and world
security—than good. It took all of history, Speth notes, to build the $7 trillion world economy of 1950; today, economic activity
consumption and GDP
grows by that amount every decade. At current rates of growth, the world economy will double in size in less than two decades.
“Society
is facing the possibility of an enormous increase in environmental deterioration, just
when we need to move strongly in the opposite direction.” The Bridge at the Edge of the World: Capitalism,
the Environment, and Crossing from Crisis to Sustainability is published by Yale University Press (yalebooks.com). See the Bridge at
the Edge of the World website for more information.
Promoting both economic growth and preventing destruction of nature is
impossible, profits take priority
Sullivan, phD in Anthropology, 9 Sian--Senior Lecturer in Environment and Development 2008 Fellow of the
Higher Education Academy 1998 PhD Anthropology (University College London) and is in the Department of Geography,
Environment and Development Studies at Birkbeck, University of London. (“Green capitalism, and the cultural poverty of
constructing nature as service provider”—Sian Sullivan 2009 http://siansullivan.files.wordpress.com/2010/02/sian-article.pdf)
In recent years, two phenomena have conspired to push these concerns and concepts
together to generate a utopian win-win scenario of both mitigating environmental
degradation and facilitating economic growth through pricing the ecological services provided by nature. The
first is the 2005 publication of the influential United Nations Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MEA), which highlights humangenerated change of the biosphere and overwhelmingly uses the language of ecosystem services in speaking of the non-human
world. These are further categorised into provisioning services (food, water, timber, fibre, etc.), regulating services (floods,
droughts, land degradation and disease), supporting services (such as soil formation and nutrient cycling), and non-material
cultural services (recreational, spiritual, religious, etc.).19 Through
combining the quantification skills of
ecological science and economics, the MEA proposes that breaking nature down into these
increasingly scarce services,20 quantifying their functionality, and assigning a price to them,
will assist conservation by asserting their financial value; at the same time as fostering
economic growth by creating new tradeable assets.21 The second is the creation of a multi-billion dollar market in a new
commodity – carbon – intended to mitigate (i.e. minimise) climate change by providing the possibility of profitably exchanging
one of the gases contributing to anthropogenic global warming. As noted above, this is generating a market-based context for
approaching the broader environmental concerns of the MEA. Like Adam Smith’s putative economic ‘invisible hand’,22 the
assumption is that both good environmental governance and the equitable distribution of
environmental services will derive from the correct pricing of quantified environmental
goods and services, combined with the self-regulating market behaviour that will emerge
from their market exchange. In this case, the financial price attributed to carbon is allocated to, and therefore
captured by, heavy industry emitters. It is they who gain tradeable carbon credits (i.e. the currency representing carbon), for
example, under the European Union’s Emissions Trading Scheme.23 Some (currently minimal) scarcity is built into the market by
allocating credits at a level below what major installations require to cover their emitting levels, so as to meet the emissions
reducing targets set by the Kyoto Protocol of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Once these credits
enter the international financial system their future value can be speculated on (as with any other currency or commodity,
including derivatives) and significant profits can ensue. In the wake of this, a veritable ecosystem of economists, stockbrokers and
financial advisors has emerged to service trade in this new commodity, as epitomised by the Europe Climate Exchange in the City
of London. This is “the leading marketplace for trading carbon dioxide (CO2 ) emissions in Europe and internationally”,24 and
basically a stock exchange for the 20 Radical Anthropology currency of tradeable carbon credits. Interestingly, the website of the
Europe Climate Exchange provides very little information connecting this exchange with environmental impacts through the
reduction of atmospheric CO2 . Such presentation seems to emphasise that this is a product with a great deal to do with trade,
finance and profit, operating at a rather large remove from the materiality of global climate and ecosystems.
The shallow ‘green capitalism’ of the aff is used to help profits, not the
environment
Smith, Rutgers University professor, 11 Richard Smith has taught history at Rutgers University in New
Brunswick, and has written on the social and environmental impact of the transition to capitalism in China for the New Left Review,
the Ecologist, and other publications. (“Green capitalism: the god that failed” –2011
http://paecon.net/PAEReview/issue56/Smith56.pdf)
In rejecting the antigrowth approach of the first wave of environmentalists in the 1970s, pro-growth “green capitalism” theorists of the
1980s-90s like Paul Hawken, Lester Brown, and Francis Cairncross argued that green technology, green taxes, eco-conscious shopping and the like
could “align” profit-seeking with environmental goals, even “invert many fundamentals” of business practice such that “restoring the environment
and making money become one and the same process.” This strategy has
clearly failed. I claim first, that the project of
sustainable capitalism was misconceived and doomed from the start because maximizing profit and
saving the planet are inherently in conflict and cannot be systematically aligned even if, here and there, they
might coincide for a moment. That’s because under capitalism, CEOs and corporate boards are not responsible
to society, they’re responsible to private shareholders. CEOs can embrace environmentalism so
long as this increases profits. But saving the world requires that the pursuit of profits be
systematically subordinated to ecological concerns: For example, the science says that to save the
humans, we have to
drastically cut fossil fuel consumption, even close down industries like coal. But no corporate board can sacrifice earnings to save the humans because
to do so would be to risk shareholder flight or worse. I claim that profit-maximization
is an iron rule of capitalism, a
rule that trumps all else, and this sets the limits to ecological reform -- and not the other way around as
green capitalism theorists supposed. Secondly, I claim that contrary to green capitalism proponents, across the spectrum from resource extraction to
manufacturing, the practical possibilities for “greening” and “dematerializing” production are severely limited. This means, I contend, that the only
way to prevent overshoot and collapse is to enforce a massive economic contraction in the industrialized economies, retrenching production across a
broad range of unnecessary, resource-hogging, wasteful and polluting industries, even virtually shutting down the worst. Yet this option is foreclosed
under capitalism because this is not socialism: no one is promising new jobs to unemployed coal miners, oil-drillers, automakers, airline pilots,
chemists, plastic junk makers, and others whose jobs would be lost because their industries would have to be retrenched -- and unemployed workers
don’t pay taxes. So CEOs, workers, and governments find that they all “need” to maximize growth, overconsumption, even pollution, to destroy their
childrens’ tomorrows to hang onto their jobs today because, if they don’t, the system falls into crisis, or worse. So we’re all onboard the TGV of
ravenous and ever-growing plunder and pollution. And as our locomotive races toward the cliff of ecological collapse, the only thoughts on the minds
of our CEOS, capitalist economists, politicians and labor leaders is how to stoke the locomotive to get us there faster. Corporations aren’t necessarily
evil. They just can’t help themselves. They’re doing what they’re supposed to do for the benefit of their owners. But this means that,
as the global economy is based on capitalist
private/corporate property and competitive
we’re doomed to collective social suicide and
production
so long
for market,
no amount of tinkering with the market can brake the drive to global
ecological collapse . We can’t shop our way to sustainability because the
problems we face cannot be solved by individual choices in the
marketplace. They require collective democratic control over the economy to prioritize the needs of society and the environment. And they require
national and international economic planning to re-organize the economy and redeploy labor and resources to these ends. I conclude, therefore, that
if humanity is to save itself, we have no choice but to overthrow capitalism and replace it with a democratically-planned socialist economy.
Modern environmentalism was created to legitimize capitalism
Barker, alternative journalist, 10 Michael James has been writing for alternative media outlets since 2006, and
at present is a regular contributor to Swans Commentary. His work has been published by the following media organizations:
Ceasefire Magazine, Corporate Watch (UK), Countercurrents, CounterPunch, Dissident Voice, Fifth Estate Online, Green Left Weekly,
Jacobin, Media-ocracy, Monthly Review Zine, New Community Quarterly, New Left Project, One Struggle, PULSE Media, Spinwatch,
Socialist Project, State of Nature, Upside Down World, Variant, and in the past I was a regular contributor to Znet. (“Co-opting the
Green Movement”—8/1/2010 http://www.newleftproject.org/index.php/site/article_comments/coopting_greens_the_environmental_foundations_of_capitalism)
“American environmentalism
emerged in the context of the most rapid economic expansion in history
and matured in the technological culture that capitalism had spawned. To the extent that it has been a response to technology itself, American
environmentalism has been shaped by it. And it has been shaped by capitalism as well.” Mark Dowie, 1995.1 Needless to
say, the ‘green’ ideas spewing forth from the world’s leading capitalists are unlikely to bring about any
sort of meaningful resolution to the environmental destruction wrought by capitalism. This
has not, however, stopped representatives of the world’s most toxic corporations from using their wealth to
create well-endowed grantmaking bodies to manage their environmental opposition; a manipulative process that was
successfully institutionalized by America’s leading robber barons in the early 20th century through the creation of not-for-profit corporations,
otherwise known as philanthropic foundations. Thankfully, prominent environmental historian Mark Dowie has traced the insidious influence of such
so-called liberal foundations on popular struggles against the powers that be in two excellent books. The first, Losing Ground: American
Environmentalism at the Close of the Twentieth Century (MIT Press, 1996), dealt specifically with the environmental movement, while the second,
American Foundations: An Investigative History (MIT Press, 2001), provided an overview of the manipulative nature of elite philanthropoids. While in
recent years a number of other writers have scrutinized the problematic relationship between liberal foundations and environmentalism, for example
Daniel Faber and Robert Brulle, this article draws upon only Dowie’s work in an attempt to provide a brief introduction to this vitally important but oftneglected subject. For over a century foundation executives have adopted grantmaking practices that ensure they “fund research projects that
document social pathologies… perhaps even ameliorate them, all the while protecting corporate capitalism.” It is therefore unsurprising that, in their
multitudinous forays into managing “America’s signature social movements - for women’s rights, peace, environment, environmental justice, students,
gay liberation, and particularly labor”, one finds that “foundations have generally favored middle-class over lower-class social movements.”2 And
rather than helping citizens to work through existing democratic channels, it appears that “ if there is a central motive behind social-movement
philanthropy” it is to encourage “concerned citizens to struggle outside the government domain” within a g eneral “rights”-based
framework for social change.3 This has the unfortunate effect of deflecting legitimate concerns away from the one democratic body that could
arguably resolve these problems, the government. Concerned people are encouraged to seek justice (or simply democracy) in an indirect fashion by
working through non-profit organizations that act as a moderating buffer between the citizenry and the government - a problem amplified by the fact
that the most powerful and influential non-profits tend not to be run or organized around democratic principles. Yet even with the focus on activism
outside of government channels, “most foundation trustees [still] see environmental groups as too adversarial, too confrontational to rank alongside
family, neighborhood, church, and palliative charities as legitimate institutions of civil society.” In this way, thousands of grassroots environmental
groups tend to be “ignored by most foundations” while a handful of national organizations, which the corporate “media identify as the major players
and agenda setters of American environmentalism,” receive the noblesse oblige of the major foundations. As one might expect, most of these
“national” groups, like the Sierra Club, the Wilderness Society, the Environmental Defense Fund, the National Wildlife Federation, and the Audubon
Society, “carefully avoid challenging the power structures and relationships that have the most profound environmental impacts.”4
Link – Hegemony
The modern Globalization is a reaffirmation of labor control techniques,
Specifically the American hegemon is a construction of racial division and
domination
Quijano 2k, (Anibal Quijano, PhD and professor in sociology, “Coloniality of power and
Eurocentrism in Latin America”, 7/5/13 SS,
http://www.unc.edu/~aescobar/wan/wanquijano.pdf)
What is termed globalization is the culmination of a process that began with the constitution
of America and colonial/modern Eurocentered capitalism as a new global power. One of the¶
fundamental axes of this model of power is the social classification of the¶ world’s population
around the idea of race, a mental construction that expresses the basic experience of colonial
domination and pervades the more¶ important dimensions of global power, including its
specific rationality:¶ Eurocentrism. The racial axis has a colonial origin and character, but it¶ has
proven to be more durable and stable than the colonialism in whose¶ matrix it was established.
Therefore, the model of power that is globally¶ hegemonic today presupposes an element of
coloniality. In what follows,¶ my primary aim is to open up some of the theoretically necessary
questions¶ about the implications of coloniality of power regarding the history of Latin¶ America.
America was constituted as the first space/time of a new model of power¶ of global vocation,
and both in this way and by it became the first identity of modernity. Two historical processes
associated in the production of¶ that space/time converged and established the two
fundamental axes of the¶ new model of power. One was the codification of the differences
between¶ conquerors and conquered in the idea of “race,” a supposedly different biological
structure that placed some in a natural situation of inferiority to¶ the others. The
conquistadors assumed this idea as the constitutive, founding element of the relations of
domination that the conquest imposed. On this basis, the population of America, and later the
world, was classified¶ within the new model of power. The other process was the constitution
of a¶ new structure of control of labor and its resources and products. This new¶ structure
was an articulation of all historically known previous structures¶ of control of labor, slavery,
serfdom, small independent commodity production and reciprocity, together around and
upon the basis of capital and¶ the world market.
Link - Human Rights
‘Human rights’ subordinate everyone to the only people who count as human,
a determination made by global capital.
Moufawad-Paul, PhD in Philosophy,13,
(Josh, 4/10/13, M-L-M Mayhem!: Marxist-Leninist-Maoist reflections, “Bourgeois Moralism,”
http://moufawad-paul.blogspot.com/2013/04/bourgeois-moralism.html, [Accessed 7/4/13], JB).
Of course, it is worth recognizing that Marx did tend to philosophically ground the necessity of socialism/communism upon the
concept of a specific notion of human commonality. In the introduction to the Grundrisse, for example, he distinguishes his
approach from bourgeois political economy by declaring solidarity with the concept of the social rather than individual animal.
Elsewhere, both Marx and Engels were wont to speak of socialism as being a humanization (or more properly "rehumanization") of
society. And yet, as much as this is important on an abstract theoretical level, it is clear that Marx
understood this final
"humanization" as something that was only possible outside of a bourgeois humanism that
understands the bourgeois concept of "Man" (and here I am intentionally using the gendered concept because it
really does speak to the ideology of bourgeois humanism and was not a concept, in my opinion, accidentally chosen by bourgeois
utopians) as
being universal. And it is precisely this understanding of humanity, which is one
thoroughly compromised by a class society which can only speak of humanity according to
bourgeois rights, that is behind our "common sense" morality. We are drawn to a vague
humanitarian ethics because we glimpse the contradictions of bourgeois morality, because we
see the rational kernel behind its platitudes, but we are still caught up in its ideology: we see
"rights" violated and we are enraged, we must be equally enraged when "the sanctity of life" of reactionaries are mocked by
the victims of said reactionaries. We do not think of the necessities that can sling-shot us past this bourgeois humanism of equal
rights. We do not often grasp what it might mean to struggle for a deeper concept of humanization because we cannot recognize
that the current
ideology of "common humanity", where everyone must be murderously
subordinated to the only people who count as human, is actually standing in the way of the
re/humanization proclaimed by Marx and Engels. We are troubled by the notion that the expropriators must be
expropriated in order for such a moment of commonality to actually exist; we want to believe that this commonality can
already be understood and that, in order to be truly moral, we have to equivocate between the rights of
the oppressed and the rights of the oppressors… But between equal rights, as Marx pointed out in the
first volume of Capital, greater force decides.
No risk of turn- the oppressed don’t need moral exhortation to convince them
to rise up.
Moufawad-Paul PhD in Philosophy,13,
(Josh, 4/10/13, M-L-M Mayhem!: Marxist-Leninist-Maoist reflections, “Bourgeois Moralism,”
http://moufawad-paul.blogspot.com/2013/04/bourgeois-moralism.html, [Accessed 7/4/13], JB).
Obviously I am reaching the point of philosophical obscurantism, if I haven't reached it already, and I apologize if I've been too hasty
or opaque. The best way to escape with this descent into conceptual interrogation––a descent, I think it is only fair to argue, into
which this bourgeois humanism necessarily leads––is to simply point out something that should be terrifyingly obvious: those who
concretely occupy the social positions of exploitation and/or oppression do not care about the shared humanity of their
exploiters/oppressors. That is, the
agent of revolution has never needed to be convinced of its agency
because of some ethical assumption of a "shared humanity" or any of that sentimental
moralism that has convinced some of us ("some of us" generally a cipher for economic/social privilege and petty-bourgeois
academicism) to question bourgeois morality. If you have nothing left to lose but your chains, and are forced to
recognize the class responsible for enforcing these chains, you are not drawn to revolution because of some
moralistic argument but because you viscerally recognize the necessity … And this is the moment, if
properly understood, where all moralistic arguments about violence––the ethics of revolutionary violence, the death of
reactionaries, etc.––are annihilated. Does a revolutionary movement consisting of the most wretched of the earth spend much time
contemplating the humanity of those whose Humanity is premised upon this very wretchedness? The question is rather rhetorical
because it is extremely doubtful: Fanon, for instance, talks about how the oppressed/exploited masses' "permanent dream" is to
tear the oppressor/exploiter from hir pedestal. And in the face of this permanent dream all of us who speak of revolution and
socialism will be forced to reassess our politics.
The unequal treatment of human rights is rooted in the capitalist model
Rimlinger, professor of economics at rice, 83
[Gaston V, fall 1983, Daedalus, “capitalism and human rights” vol 112 No. 4, p.
51-52, accessed 7-5-13, CSO]
This essay relates to the crisis of the welfare state to the extent that this crisis is a
dramatic manifestation of one of
the dilemmas of human rights inherent in capitalism under mass democracies. It is a dilemma that derives
from a conflict in human rights which is deeply embedded in the history of capitalism and modern
mass democracy, the conflict between private property rights and social rights. In spite of the conflict, both kinds
of rights have contributed in major ways to the historic success of capitalism as an economic system and as
a civilization. Private property rights protect the freedom of the individual to dispose of his property and his labor. Property
rights are part of the civil rights that are essential to individual freedom, and in the form of the freedom of contract, they
constitute the governing principle of a free market economy . Social rights, on the other hand, entitle the
individual to some share of the social product based on membership in the community rather than on property or labor! To be a
genuine social right, however, such an entitlement has to be effectively protected by custom or statute and be subject to due
process. It cannot be a gift bestowed upon the individual by a benevolent or calculating dictatorial power that may cancel or alter
the entitlement any time it suits its purpose. Social rights may be guaranteed by the strength of tradition, but in a modern setting,
they normally presuppose mass democratic forces, though not necessarily democratic institutions. In a capitalist economy,
social rights represent an inevitable curtailment of property rights and, by logical extension, of individual freedom. This has always
been the message of classical liberalism. Classical economists since
Adam Smith have argued that, in addition to
reducing individual freedom, infringements of property rights tend to reduce economic effort, initiative, efficiency,
willingness to take risks, and, ultimately, national prosperity. This is the central message of Milton Friedman’s Capitalism and
Freedom; and of the other critics of the welfare state.
The market in the status quo empirically exploits humans’ rights
Flere, writer for the monthly review, 01
[sergej, January 2001, Issue 08 Volume 52, Monthly Review, “Human rights and
the Ideology of Capitalist
globalization,http://monthlyreview.org/2001/01/01/human-rights-and-theideology-of-capitalist-globalization, accessed 7-5-13, CSO]
The concept of human rights, and the national and international legal instruments that protect them, are not
without potential for the improvement of the human condition. But human rights as a legal
instrument are implemented and realized within certain finite, social, economic, and cultural
circumstances that determine the conditions of their meaning for human dignity. Absent successful
struggle to change those conditions for the better, human rights talk is but cruel mockery. Public property may lead to one distortion
in the realization of human rights, primarily if it leads to bureaucratization and its evils. On
the other hand, huge
disparities and inequalities of a social nature in private property represent a fundamental limitation in the
achievement and use of human rights (not to speak of human dignity). It may even represent a denial of the existence and use
of human rights. Therefore, the idea of individual and collective human rights is a limited one at best. On
inspection, it proves no better than any other ideological instrument, in spite of the rich international and domestic legal protection
mechanisms it extends. The
existing domestic and international instruments of legal protection of
human rights may have little to offer to those thrown to the wolves in the arena of market exploitation, where full
employment is becoming ever more rare and welfare protection measures are being dismantled. It is necessary to draw
attention to double standards in the application and enforcement of human rights and to the fact
that these double standards are not accidental, but part and parcel of ideological discourse.
Capitalism controls the direction of human rights
Douszinas, Professor of Law and Director of the Birkbeck Institute, 13
[Costas, 5-23-13, Critical Legal Thinking, “seven theses on human rights: (3)
Neoliberal Capitalism and Voluntary Imperialism”,
http://criticallegalthinking.com/2013/05/23/seven-theses-on-human-rights-3neoliberal-capitalism-voluntary-imperialism/, accessed 7-5-13, CSO]
Similarly, human rights and their dissemination are not simply the result of the liberal or charitable disposition of the West. The predominantly negative meaning of freedom as the absence of external constraints — a euphemism for keeping state regulation of the economy at a minimum – has dominated the Western conception of human rights and turned them into the perfect companion of neoliberalism. Global moral and civic rules are the necessary companion of the globalization of economic production and consumption, of the completion of world capitalism that follows neoliberal dogmas. Over the last 30 years, we have witnessed, without much comment, the creation of global legal rules regulating the world capitalist economy, including rules on investment, trade, aid, and intellectual property. Robert Cooper has called it the voluntary imperialism of the global economy. “It is operated by an international consortium of financial Institutions such as the IMF and the World
Bank … These institutions … make demands, which increasingly emphasise good governance. If
states wish to benefit,
they must open themselves up to the interference of international organisations and foreign
states.” Cooper concludes that “what is needed then is a new kind of imperialism, one acceptable to a world of human rights and
cosmopolitan values.”2 The (implicit) promise to the developing world is that the violent or voluntary adoption of the marketled, neoliberal model of good governance and limited rights will inexorably lead to Western economic standards. This
is fraudulent. Historically, the Western ability to turn the protection of formal rights into a limited guarantee of material, economic,
and social rights was partly based on huge transfers from the colonies to the metropolis. While universal morality militates in favour
of reverse flows, Western policies on development aid and Third World debt indicate that this is not politically feasible. Indeed,
the successive crises and re-arrangements of neoliberal capitalism lead to dispossession and
displacement of family farming by agribusiness, to forced migration and urbanization. These processes expand the number of people without skills, status, or the basics for existence. They become
human debris, the waste-life, the bottom billions. This neo-colonial attitude has now been extended from the periphery to the European core. Greece, Portugal, Ireland, and Spain have been subjected to the rigours of the neoliberal “Washington Consensus” of austerity and destruction of the welfare state, despite its failure in the developing world.
More than half the young people of Spain and Greece are permanently unemployed and a whole generation is being destroyed. But
this gene-cide, to coin a term, has not generated a human rights campaign.
Link - Natives
The governments protect and guard capitalism – military and police domination
are utilized in every way possible to put down nonviolent challenges to the
capitalist system
Martin 01
(Brian, professor at the University of Wollongong, 2001, “Nonviolence versus capitalism”,
http://www.bmartin.cc/pubs/01nvc/nvc03.html)
From the point of view of nonviolence, a crucial feature of capitalism is its links with systems of
violence, notably the military and police. For some capitalist countries, which are run as
repressive states, this connection is obvious. But for capitalist countries with representative
governments, the connections between the military, police and capitalist social relations are
less overt. For most of the time, overt state violence is not required to defend capitalism, since
most people go along with the way things are. If the challenge to capitalism is violent, such as
by a revolutionary party that uses bombings or assaults, then police and military forces are
used to crush the challengers. But sometimes there are serious nonviolent challenges,
especially when workers organise. Troops are typically called out when workers in a key sector
(such as electricity or transport) go on strike, when workers take over running of a factory or
business, or when there is a general strike. Spy agencies monitor and disrupt groups and
movements that might be a threat to business or government. Police target groups that
challenge property relations, such as workers and environmentalists taking direct action. At the
core of capitalism is private property.[11] Military and police power is needed to maintain and
extend the system of ownership, but this is hidden behind the routine operation of the legal
and regulatory system, which is seldom perceived as founded on violence. If a person or
corporation believes that their money or property has been taken illegally -- for example
through insider trading or patent violation -- they can go to court to seek redress. The court
decision, if not obeyed voluntarily, can be enforced by police, for example confiscation of
goods or even imprisonment. For most of the time, property rights, as interpreted by the
courts and various other government agencies, are accepted by everyone concerned. That goes
for billion-dollar share transactions as well as everyday purchases of goods. Petty theft, bigtime swindles and organised crime are not major challenges to the property system, since they
accept the legitimacy of property and are simply attempts to change ownership in an illegal
manner. Criminals are seldom happy for anyone to steal from them. Principled challenges to
property, such as squatting and workers' control, are far more threatening. Many people,
especially in the United States, believe that government and corporations are antagonistic,
with opposite goals. When governments set up regulations to control product quality or
pollution, some corporate leaders complain loudly about government interference. But beyond
the superficial frictions, at a deeper level the state operates to provide the conditions for
capitalism. The state has its own interests, to be sure, especially in maintaining state authority
and a monopoly on what it considers legitimate violence, but it depends on capitalist
enterprises for its own survival, notably through taxation. In capitalist societies, states and
market economies depend on and mutually reinforce each other.[12] In recent decades there
has been an enormous expansion of private policing. In the US, for example, there are now
more security guards, private detectives and others privately paid to carry out policing duties
than there are government-funded police. In the military arena, there are now private
mercenary capitalism is built on relationships between people, production and distribution
ultimately protected by armed force. As capitalism is increasingly globalised, international
policing and military intervention become more important to protect and expand markets and
market relationships. For example, economic blockades, backed by armed force, can be
imposed on countries such as Cuba. Usually, though, the lure of the market for elites in weaker
countries is more effective than military coercion.[13] Investment has done more to promote
capitalism in Vietnam than decades of anticommunist warfare.
Simply constructing a laundry list of atrocities, or morally condemning US
policies misses the point— the universal “we should” assumes we actually have
a voice in the formation of policy, and misidentifies the enemy.
Herod 2001 (James, “A Stake, Not a Mistake: On Not Seeing the Enemy”, October,
http://www.jamesherod.info/index.php?sec=paper&id=9&print=y&PHPSESSID=4387a9147ad42723ea101944dd538914)
The widespread belief that the US government has good intentions, a belief held onto
tenaciously in spite of decades of overwhelming empirical evidence refuting it, has got to be
one of the greatest phenomena of mass delusion in history . It would take a twenty-first century Freud
to unravel this one. Here is a government that has already bombed two other countries to smithereens just in the past
ten years, first Iraq and then Yugoslavia (not to mention endless interventions abroad since its inception [7]). Now it is
bombing Afghanistan to smithereens -- hospitals, fuel supplies, food depots, electrical systems, water systems, radio
stations, telephone exchanges, remote villages, mosques, old folks homes, UN offices, Red Cross warehouses, clinics,
schools, neighborhoods, roads, dams, airports -- and a victim of the assault escapes to plead for help from the very
people who are attacking him. To have created such an illusion as this is surely one of the greatest feats of propaganda
ever seen.[8]
So although it is important to try to shatter this illusion, it is ultimately not
enough, and of very limited effectiveness, simply to list all the atrocities committed by our
rulers, carefully expose all their double standards, accuse them of being the real terrorists,
morally condemn what they are doing, or call for peace . All these arguments are useful of course in the
battle for the hearts and minds of average people,
if average people ever heard them , which they do
not, for the most part. And if they do hear them, it's like they (most of them) are tuning in to madness, they're so
brainwashed. It takes a lot more than mere arguments to break through the mind set of a thoroughly indoctrinated
people. Of all the dozens of comments that I read on the government's response to the attacks of September Eleven,
precious few raised the key question: How do we stop them (the government, from attacking Afghanistan)? For the
most part, progressive commentators don't even raise questions of strategy.[9] They are too busy analyzing ruling class
ideology, in order to highlight its hypocrisies. Proving that the ruling class is hypocritical doesn't get us very far. It's
useful of course. Doing this work is an important task. Noam Chomsky, for example, devotes himself almost exclusively
to this task, and we should be thankful that we have his research. He usually does mention also, somewhere in almost
every speech, article, or interview, that 'it doesn't have to be this way', that this situation we are in is not inevitable,
and that we can change it. But when asked "How?", he replies, "Organize, agitate, educate." Well, sure. But the
Christian Coalition organizes, agitates, and educates. So did the Nazis and the Klu Klux Klan. The Taliban organizes,
agitates, and educates. So does the ruling class, and it does so in a massive and highly successful way, which results in
overwhelming hegemony for its point of view.
In spite of more than three decades of blistering exposés of US
foreign policy, and in spite of the fact that he is an anarchist, and is thus supposedly against all government, at least in
the long run, Chomsky still regularly uses the 'universal we'. Much of the time Chomsky says
"The US government does this, or does that," but some of the time he says "We do this, or
we do that," thus including himself, and us, as agents in the formation and execution of US
foreign policy. This is an instance of what I call the 'universal we'. It presumes a democracy
that does not exist. The average American has no say whatsoever in the formation and
execution of US foreign policy. Nor do we even have any influence in picking the people who
are making it, since we have no say over who gets to run for office or what they do after they
are elected. So to say something like "we shouldn't be bombing Afghanistan" , as so many
progressives do, is highly misleading, and expresses a misperception and misdiagnosis of the
situation we are in. In the question period following Chomsky's major address on "The New War Against
Terror" (delivered at MIT on October 18) [10], Chomsky was challenged by a man in the audience who accused
Chomsky of blaming America for the tragedy of September 11. Chomsky correctly said that the term America is an
abstraction and cannot do anything. But then he said that he blamed himself, and his questioner, and others present,
for this event (implying that 'we' are responsible for what 'our' government does). This is a half-truth at best. The
blame for September Eleven rests squarely on those who did it. Next, to the extent that a connection can be proved
between their actions and US foreign policy, the US government is to blame, and the ruling class that controls the
government. Average Americans are to blame for what the US government does only in the sense that they have not
managed to change or block its policies, either because they haven't tried or because they have tried but have
failed.
Of course, the category of Average American is an abstraction as well. Many average Americans vigorously
support US foreign policy. Others oppose it, but have failed to change it. Those of us who want a real democracy, and
want to put an end to Empire, have so far failed to do so, and only in this sense are we in anyway responsible for
September Eleven. But even this failure must be judged in light of the relative strengths that the parties bring to the
fight. We cannot fault ourselves for being defeated by an opponent with overwhelmingly superior forces, as long as we
fought as bravely and as hard as we could. Our task is to find ways to enhance our strengths and
weaken theirs. To fail to make a distinction between the ruling class and the rest of us
hinders this task, causes us to presume a democracy that does not exist, to misunderstand
exactly what we are up against, and to misidentify the enemy. It thus prevents us from
devising a successful strategy for defeating this enemy.
Even if it is not directly identified with it, the state acts as the key catalyst to
capitalism – it manages, consolidates, and protects it with any means necessary
Harman 06
(Chris, editor of International Socialism Journal and, before that, of Socialist Worker, and a leading figure
in the Socialist Workers
Party, September 26th, 2006, “The state and capitalism today”,
http://www.isj.org.uk/?id=234)
The state may be a structure that developed historically to provide the political prerequisites
for capitalist production—to protect capitalist property, to police the dealings of different
members of the ruling class with each other, to provide certain services which are essential for
the reproduction of the system, and to carry through such reforms as are necessary to make
other sections of society accept capitalist rule—but it is not to be identified with the system
itself. This view of the state claims to be based on the Communist Manifesto: ‘The executive of
the modern state is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole
bourgeoisie.’ But its origins do not lie in Marx himself so much as in the classical economists
who preceded him: in the Communist Manifesto Marx simply takes their insistence on the need
for a minimalist, ‘nightwatchman’ state and draws out its class character. Nevertheless it is the
view that is to be found in most modern academic Marxism. So, for instance, it was to be found
on both sides of the debate which took place in New Left Review between Ralph Miliband and
Nicos Poulantzas.2 Miliband argued what has been called the ‘instrumental’ view of the state:
it was tied to the capitalist class because its leading personnel came from the same milieu as
the owners of private capital.3 Poulantzas argued that this was to see a merely contingent
relationship between the state and capitalism, to see the state’s character as depending simply
on who manned its top structures. He argued what has been called the ‘functional’ view: the
state has to fulfil the needs of the society of which it is part; since this is a capitalist society it is
necessarily a capitalist state. The state is, as Poulantzas puts it, ‘a condensate of class forces’,
and the forces it ‘condenses’ are capitalist forces.
Link - Natural Resources
Capitalism leads to economic degradation and the exploitation of natural
resources
MacLeod, Legal and Social Theorist at the University of Oxford, no date
(Jason, JDM, “Marx, Capitalism, Globalization, and Climate Change:
Revolutionary Ideas For Climate Mitigation”, Changehttp://www.jasondmacle
od.com/marx-capitalism-globalization-climate-change-revolutionary-ideasclimate-change-mitigation/, 7/2/2013) GM.
The Industrial Revolution, the introduction of neoliberal economic ideology, and the capitalist
notion of maximizing efficiency and production, have subjugated the environment to the
limitless growth potential of capitalism. The arrival of free or near-free market resources, in tandem
with globalization and cheap labor, produced a cycle of exploitation, thereby allowing industry to abandon
the resource exploited sites to move on to other more efficient and exploitable sites without
regarding long-term environmental effects. Professor Kütting from the State University of New York concluded,
“this liberalization and its supporting institutional framework have led to a new form of ecological
imperialism that subjugates resource extraction and production to market ideology.”[1] Capitalism’s
infinite potential for growth is incompatible with the finite natural resources available. The
current ideology degrades environmental health as corporations fail to internalize the cost of
environmental protection. A recent study commissioned by the United Nations Principles for Responsible Investment,
concluded that in 2008, “the top 3,000 companies had an environmental impact of $2.2 trillion
dollars…the estimated annual environmental costs from global human activity equat[es] to
11% of global GDP or $6.6 trillion.”[2] They projected the cost to be $28 trillion by 2050 (excluding the
costs of invaluable ecosystem services, pollution and waste).[3] In the report, “impact” is a euphemism for
environmental degradation. This process is accumulation by dispossession, the exploitation of
a resource without appropriate reimbursement. The ultimate outcome of market growth and
environmental exploitation is climate change. Global society’s recreation of this relationship is
essential to safeguard natural resources for future generations. The nature of capitalism and its agents is that
they operate(s) in a short time horizon – profits cannot be guaranteed in the future and
capitalists want to receive their profit in the moment. This profit maximization, in the moment, will
lead to faster and faster depletion of non-renewable energy and resources. Marx noted how this
short time horizon exhausts resources –¶ Anticipation of the future—real anticipation—occurs in the
production of wealth in relation to the worker and to the land. The future can indeed be
anticipated and ruined in both cases by premature overexertion and exhaustion, and by the
disturbance of the balance between expenditure and income. In capitalist production this
happens to both the worker and the land…What is shortened here exists as power and the life span of this power is
shortened as a result of accelerated expenditure.[4]¶ ¶ The unprecedented growth of advanced capitalist
nations, post industrial revolution, and the current growth rate of developing countries expends vast
natural capital, much of it non-renewable.
A Few Centuries of Capitalist Development causes the exploitation of natural
resources, especially water
Liodakis, Professor of Political Economy at the Technical University of Crete, 10
(George, 8/18/10, Greece, “Political Economy, Capitalism, and Sustainable
Development”, Sustainability, 7/3/13) GM.
Coming now to a more detailed explanation of this increasing ecological rift, we might stress that, under capitalism, an
increase in labour productivity is essentially tantamount to a reduction in the amount of
abstract socially necessary labour required for the production of any particular commodity
(including labour power itself), which is a condition for an increased extraction and appropriation of
surplus value [19]. This, as I have noted, is the dominant goal of capitalism, and hence all increases in
the productivity of labour should serve this goal. Under this context, an increasing productivity of
labour does not imply a process economizing on labour or any other productive resources. On
the contrary, insofar as capital can proceed with a free appropriation of nature “as a gift to capital”, there will be a
permanent bias towards developing a labour-saving technology, but this technology is
conducive to a maximum throughput of natural resources and energy, which further implies a
rapidly increasing depletion of natural resources and an increasing pollution contributing to a
systemic environmental degradation. A labour-saving technology, therefore, and a rising productivity of labour do
not necessarily imply an increasing social and ecological efficiency, but rather an increasing potential for material and energy
throughput, with an enhanced ecologically damaging impact. What is more,
even a resource-saving technological
innovation cannot have, under capitalism, an environmentally protective impact insofar as it will,
most likely, imply lower commodity prices and hence an increasing market demand, which will result in
an increased (rather than decreased) extraction of the natural resource concerned. This implication is
clearly related with the so-called Jevon‟s Paradox [10,14,18]. Economic efficiency, at a societal
level, is not simply a technical issue (a matter of input/output relation) and should not be understood, in general, as
market (capitalist) efficiency. In fact it is largely determined, not only by the dominant goals of production, but also by
the prevailing social relations and the scale of production, as well as relations of distribution and property regimes. Apart from other
reasons, it should be noted that, insofar as negative externalities (cost shifting) are not taken into account and positive externalities
a maximum
social efficiency goal cannot be achieved under capitalism, and this has clear and significant
ecological implications [14,16,18,23]. This would also largely apply within a context of “market
socialism”, but on this issue we will return below. It should further be stressed that the
expropriation and privatization of common property under contemporary capitalism has
increased class tensions, economic inequality and environmental degradation, while maldistribution and inequality undermine economic efficiency and the sustainability of
production [16,17,30-32]. On the other hand, a large number of studies have recently questioned the assumed
efficiency of private property and pointed out a remarkably efficient allocation and utilization
of resources in some traditional or alternative property regimes, such as common property or
open access regimes, which partly explains the long run sustainability of these regimes [18,3134]. Despite this evidence, the rapid privatization and commodification of natural resources within
the context of the current neoliberal and rapidly globalizing capitalism, along with the
commodification of scientific research and technological innovation, tend to a detrimental
and multifaceted ecological impact [35]. Among other forms of this ecological degradation, one might stress the
are insufficiently utilized due to the fragmented and (individually) antagonistic character of capitalist production,
rapid loss of biological diversity and the recent dramatic climate changes, as having far-reaching both ecological and economic
While this ecological degradation may imply an upward push of the regulating cost of
production without immediately putting absolute barrier to the reproduction of capital, this
process cannot continue without ultimately causing crucial and perhaps insurmountable
economic and environmental problems. Here, of course, we need to take into account the
possibility of extending nature, of producing a “second nature” or alternative natures, which may have
important implications for the sustainability of capitalism. There is an extensive research concerning this
implications.
production of a “second nature” or alternative natures and their socioeconomic and ecological implications [29,36-38]. As E.
Swyngedouw points out: “While one sort of sustainability seems to be predicated upon feverishly developing new natures ... forcing
nature to act in a way we deem sustainable or socially necessary, the other type is predicated upon limiting or redressing our
intervention in nature, returning it to a presumably more benign condition so that human and non-human sustainability in the
medium and long term can be assured. Despite the apparent contradictions of these two ways of „becoming sustainable‟ (one
predicated upon preserving nature‟s status quo, the other predicated upon producing new natures), they share the same basic
vision that technonatural and sociometabolic interactions are urgently needed if we wish to secure the survival of the planet and
much of what it contains” [39]. Although the possibility of producing new nature may extent the potential terrain of capitalist
accumulation, and this may have important implication for an epoch characterized by a tendency towards a universal subsumption
of nature under capital, it must be stressed that it does not imply that capitalism could ever escape all natural constraints. It is a
Neo-Malthusian
approaches to the environmental problem, by assuming a finite availability of natural
resources, have tended to overstress natural limits, presenting them usually in a naturalistic
and absolute manner, while blaming overpopulation as the main source of environmental
degradation and crisis [4,6]. On the other hand, Marx and contemporary Marxists, without ignoring natural and biological
rather limited and consequential potential [40]. Distinct from this potential of producing new nature,
limits, conceive that social (organizational) or technological factors may, occasionally, relax or defer such limits. Reflecting on Marx‟s
view, P. Burkett points out that, “with
its exploitative scientific development of productive forces, its intendency to reproduce itself upon a constantly increasing scale, and the attendant extension of
production’s natural limits to the global, biospheric level, capitalism is the first society capable
of a(n) truly planetary environmental catastrophe, one that could ultimately threaten even capital‟s
own material requirements” [23]. As I have argued, referring to a particular example, “The increasing water
scarcity, the declining quality of water, and the inequitable pattern of its use across countries
and in each particular country, along with a green-house warming that increasingly dries up mother earth, are not of
course the result of some natural evolution, nor mainly the result of overpopulation, but rather an
outcome of a few centuries of capitalist development and a particularly rapid economic growth
built
during the last half of the twentieth century” [14]. In this case, as also in the case of energy, neo-Malthusian approaches are
misleading insofar as they naturalize external limits (emphasizing natural scarcity), while largely ignoring the potentially important
impact of drastic technological and organizational changes on both the supply and the demand side. On the latter side, quantitative
and qualitative developments in social needs may be more the result of changes in technology and social organization, than the
result of any population growth. But more importantly, neo-Malthusian approaches are misleading because they erroneously
divorce the allocation of resources from the scale of production and, taking at face value the presumable allocative efficiency of the
market mechanism, end up stressing a fixed scale of production and hence a steady-state model as a necessary condition for the
sustainability of capitalism [41]. As R. Smith has plausibly argued, however, economic growth (and growthmania) is an inherent
tendency of the market system and capitalism, and therefore
a sustainability of capitalism through a steady-
state adjustment is impossible [42]. It becomes rather clear from the preceding analysis and an increasing number
of studies that capitalism, as a specific mode of production, tends to undermine the most basic conditions of
ecological sustainability, jeopardizing thus the survival of human beings and of the capitalist
system itself [14,15,43,44]. It would be rather misleading, however, to consider ecological sustainability separately from the
conditions of economic and social sustainability of capitalism. Although this is not the place to expand on the deeper causes of the
currently evolving and aggravated economic crisis, which tends to directly and indirectly undermine the conditions of economic and
take into account the fundamental role of the law of the
tendency of the rate of profit to fall [28], lying behind the overaccumulation crisis of the early 1970s which
continues, with some fluctuations, until the currently aggravated worldwide recession. This crisis, through a variety of
processes and mechanisms, has fuelled the exacerbation of ecological crisis in various forms. Among
these processes, we might consider the intensification of capitalist competition, the increasing
externalities (cost-shifting), and the over-exhaustive exploitation of both labour power and
natural resources. At the same time, there is an equally important dialectical feedback of the exacerbated ecological crisis on
social sustainability of capitalism, we should briefly
the further aggravation of economic and social crisis. At this point it may be pertinent to briefly address the “dematerialization”
hypothesis as it might possibly have significant implications for both ecological crisis (reduction of materials and energy use) and the
economic crisis caused by a rising organic composition of capital, namely the relation between constant to variable capital (C/V), and
falling profits rates (as noted above). According to this hypothesis, the increasing information and knowledge content of production
in modern capitalism, along with a relative expansion of the sector of services and a more energy-efficient technology imply a
significant reduction in the material requirements of production. There are good reasons however, to argue that this
“dematerialization” has not any significant real dimensions [45,46]. More importantly, I would further argue that this presumable
“dematerialization” trend cannot have a significant impact on the material requirements of production, negating the tendency
towards a rising composition of capital. The capitalist imperatives behind this rising organic composition of capital relate to three
any process of production in capitalism encompasses a use-value
production and a valorization process, and labour has necessarily to be materialized through the
use and transformation of energy and natural resources. Secondly, competition implies the need of
an incessant mechanization and automation drive aiming at an increased labour productivity.
Thirdly, the capitalist need to discipline and exploit labour in production can again be met by
interrelated processes. In the first place,
an increasing mechanization. This increasing mechanization requires increased energy and
resource use and implies further a potentially maximum throughput of material resources with a
minimum labour power. It follows, therefore, that these necessities cannot be significantly changed by any
“dematerialization” trend, and hence it cannot have any significant ameliorating impact of economic and ecological crisis. Capital, of
course, deploys all sorts of strategies and methods to stave off or ameliorate crisis, and popular pressure may also have some effect
in limiting the implications of economic and ecological crisis. Despite this pressure and all attempts or policies aiming at an ecological
adjustment, however, it is rather impossible to adequately tackle the ecological problem within the context of the currently
prevailing capitalist relations of production [10,14,18,21].
Corporate America continues to consume natural resources- Lead to more
environmental problems
Heimonen, Computer Software and a think tank blogger, 04,
(Mark, 7/25/2004, Group Think, “Capitalism, Exploitation, and OverConsumption”,http://markheimonen.blogspot.com/2004/07/capitalismexploitation-and-over.html/ 7/4/13) GM.
There are no more needs in our society, yet corporations have convinced Americans to
continually desire and upgrade the newest, greatest fads, while disposing of perfectly good products that are no
longer in style. We produce more food, housing, and other goods than we need, yet we continue to feel pressure to work hard to
keep our jobs, all in the name of profitability. We have turned into a disposable nation, where it is cheaper to buy a new printer or
monitor, than it is to have it repaired. One only needs to watch the recent documentary, Super Size Me, to recognize that we have
become an over-indulgent nation. We
continue to consume vast quantities of our natural resources,
with literal regard for environmental concerns. Here is but a small sample of the issues we face: Ozone
Layer Depletion, Greenhouse Effect, Deforestation, Over-harvesting of fish, Overflowing
landfill sites, Toxic waste dumping, nuclear waste sites, Over-consumption of non-renewable
resources. ¶ In the capitalist system, there are no checks in place to ensure that corporations
function in an environmentally responsible manner. Each individual and company is motivated to
keep up with the mechanisms of the giant profit-driven corporate machine. The United States is
currently waging war, all in the name of keeping prices of gas and oil as low as possible (Even as they
refuse to publicly say so) The fact is, the Bush campaign has lied through their teeth, and have failed to come up with a
single plausible explanation for the war. One multinational company, Halliburton, is going to profit more from the
Iraqi war than any other. This company, formerly headed by vice president Dick Cheney, was awarded hundreds of millions of dollars
in no-bid contracts by the United States government. In 1999-2000, Halliburton gave $709,320 in political contributions, of which
95% went to the Republicans. At the same time, Halliburton’s Subsidiary, kellog Brown and Root (KBR), is under now under scrutiny
for illegally operating in Iran, and wasting tremendous amounts of money. Corporate
America is in bed with the United
government, and for these reasons, the government cannot be relied upon to hold these
companies accountable.
States
Nature is limited- Must save resources for future resources
Kikkawa, 11, (Khan, 4/2011, Wesleyan University, “Sustainable Capitalism Under Lockean Ethics”,
http://wesscholar.wesleyan.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1
771&context=etd_hon_theses&seiredir=1&referer=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2Furl%3Fsa%3Dt%26rct%3Dj%26q%3Dcapit
alism%2520and%2520over%2520consumption%2520and%2520resources%26source%3Dweb%26cd%3D9%26ved%3D0CHAQFjAI%2
6url%3Dhttp%253A%252F%252Fwesscholar.wesleyan.edu%252Fcgi%252Fviewcontent.cgi%253Farticle%253D1771%2526context%2
53Detd_hon_theses%26ei%3DtZncUYLcKH8iwKr1oCgCw%26usg%3DAFQjCNE_B4ViKgaxot9BCCD0wgSYhm5gDA%26sig2%3DIGdDml
ByU5nRVK20mVIkaA%26bvm%3Dbv.48705608%2Cd.cGE#search=%22capitalism%20over%20consumption%20resources%22,
.
7/9/13) GM
Humanity has struggled to remedy the conflict between environmental sustainability and
capitalism since the privatization of resources and overconsumption of resources creating a shortage of
natural resources. Due to improper market pricing, capitalism undervalues natural resources which
discourages entrepreneurs from investing in technology to improve the yield of natural
resources or to limit their consumption of natural resources. The positive externalities of
natural resources are unaccounted for in modern capitalism, creating a shortage in natural
resources. Since the production of natural resources is limited by Nature’s capacity to
reproduce, the current capitalist framework promotes a permanent shortage of natural
resources where the demand for natural goods is always in excess to the supply of goods
obtainable.¶ Unlike other producers, Nature is a limited producer in that its ability to reproduce goods
available in the commons for all individuals to access is dependent on the natural resources that remain in the
common. Natural goods are both the final product as well as the initial input where a certain
quantity of the resources needs to remain in Nature untouched by mankind so those resources can
reproduce to increase the quantity of that resource for future populations. Given that humanity’s goal is to exist in
the long run, it is in the best interest for humanity to regulate their consumption levels and to
appropriate resources to meet their own needs while maintaining a base level of supply in
Nature so that future generations can enjoy the same resources as our current generation. ¶
Unfortunately, modern environmental philosophy is divided on how to define “sustainability,” let alone the method with which
society can hope to achieve a sustainable society. Modern
environmental philosophy is currently debating
between basic definitions given the feasibility on how sustainability can be assessed. Modern
definitions are torn between “weak” sustainability and “strong” sustainability, the difference between definitions contingent on the
substitutability of resources and the mechanisms available to society to value those resources in question. Economists strongly
defend weak sustainability, arguing that resources can be substituted with other resources and that weak sustainability is the only
feasible definition society can adopt to maintain a capitalist society that encourages innovation and entrepreneurship to promote
growth while being “sustainable.” Environmentalists
advocate strong sustainability however, arguing
that natural resources possess various functions that cannot be substituted by manufactured
goods that only possess single functions. Due to differences in the value of natural resources
as well as the practicality of measuring sustainability, advocates for both are divided by
definitions of sustainability.
Capitalism exploits natural and human resources- Root cause of environmental
problems
MIM, Movement Group, 96, (Maoist Internationalist Movement, 3/1996, Prison
Censorship, “On Capitalism and the Environment”, http://www.prisoncensorshi
p.info/archive/etext/mt/mt12capenv.html, 7/4/13) GM.
The root cause of environmental problems is capitalism, the private ownership of the means of production by
a relative handful of people. This essence of capitalism is one reason why capitalism creates environmental
problems: while the majority of the world's people have a material interest in maintaining a healthy planet, the small capitalist
ruling class is not accountable to this majority, except in the indirect sense that the ruling class seeks to co-opt
the demands of the majority in order to maintain the capitalist system. A second reason why capitalism
creates environmental problems is that although the world's resources are controlled by a relative
handful of people, planning is not centralized under capitalism. Instead, production is anarchic; it is
centered around making profits, not around meeting basic human needs in the short or long runs. Much of
what is produced by the capitalist system is unnecessary and wasteful, and the system is not fundamentally capable of incorporating
long-term human survival as a need. Finally, the
capitalist system does not distribute resources equitably.
many people do not have adequate resources for survival. Many environmental
problems stem from this root problem. Furthermore, capitalism is not static. It has changed since
Marx's day. Today, it has developed to its highest stage: imperialism.(1) Under imperialism, the
capitalists carve and recarve the world. The unequal distribution of resources takes on a distinctly
national flavor, with a division of the world into imperialist countries on the one hand and colonies
and neocolonies on the other hand. Imperialism exploits both the natural and the human resources of its
colonies and neocolonies.
Under capitalism,
Link - Oil
Oil policies and attempts to secure oil have historically been about control and
propping up American capitalism.
North 2003
(David, the national chairman of the Socialist Equality Party in the United States (SEP), “The crisis
of American capitalism and the war against Iraq”, March 21st 2003,
http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/03/19/iraq-m19.html, accessed 7/11/13, JK)
3. That the United States is the instigator of this war is beyond question. The principal objective of the war is to seize control of
Iraq’s oil resources. All
efforts to deny the central role of oil in the American drive to conquer Iraq
reek of dishonesty and cynicism. No other natural resources have played such a central role in
the political and economic calculations of American imperialism over the last century as oil
and natural gas. Involved in this central preoccupation is not only the profits of Americanowned oil conglomerates—though this is by no means an insignificant concern. American industry, the
stability of America’s financial-monetary structure and its dominant world position are all
dependent upon unimpeded access to, and control of, the vast oil resources of the Persian Gulf and, more
recently, the Caspian Basin.¶ The history of American foreign policy and military strategy over the last
three decades can be studied, from a purely economic standpoint, as a response to the “oil
shock” of 1973, when the oil embargo declared by leading Arab oil producers in response to
the Arab-Israeli War of that year led to a quadrupling of petroleum prices—a development that
staggered the American and world capitalist economy. The second oil shock in the aftermath of the Iranian Revolution in 1979 led to
the proclamation of the Carter Doctrine, which declared unimpeded access to the Persian Gulf to be a major strategic concern of the
United States. This
set the stage for the massive buildup of US military forces that has proceeded
without interruption for the last 23 years.¶ The world position of the United States as the
principal imperialist power depends not only on preserving its own unimpeded access to oil,
but also on its ability to determine how much of this diminishing natural resource is available
to other countries—especially to present-day or potential rivals. The approach the United
States has taken to this international geo-political aspect of oil as a critical resource has been
profoundly affected by the most significant political event of the last quarter of the twentieth
century—the dissolution of the USSR.¶ The collapse of the Soviet Union was interpreted by the American ruling elite
as an opportunity to implement a sweeping imperialist agenda that had been impossible in the aftermath of World War II and during
nearly a half-century of Cold War. Proclaiming
the arrival of a “unipolar moment,” the United States set
out to prevent, as a principal strategic objective, the emergence of another power—whether a
newly-unified Europe, Japan, or, potentially, China—that might challenge its dominant international position.
Aware of the significant decline in the position of the United States in the world economy, the strategists of American
imperialism came to see its overwhelming military power as the principal means by which the
United States could effect a fundamental reordering of the world in its own interests. Within
this context, the use of military power to establish effective control of oil producing regions
and the worldwide distribution of this essential resource was transformed from a strategic
idea into a concrete plan of action.¶
EXT: Impacts
Capitalism poses a grave threat to future of life on Earth and the only solution is
active social transformation through social reform at every level of discourse.
Bachtell ’11 [John Bachtell, writer for Political Affairs Magazine. “Three Irresolvable Crises of Capitalism.” Political Affairs
Magazine, August 9, 2011. (http://www.politicalaffairs.net/three-irresolvable-crises-of-capitalism/) Date Accessed: July 1, 14. O’B]
Among the serious crises facing civilization are three major ones created by modern capitalism
that the system is inherently incapable of resolving – the growing wealth gap, the technological displacement of
workers and looming environmental catastrophe.¶ A fourth crisis could be termed, the crisis of democracy. The growing wealth gap
and the concentration of economic power in fewer hands continuously undermines democracy and democratic institutions. This is
best illustrated by the flooding of corporate money into the electoral and legislative process and corruption of the US Supreme Court
with the Citizen’s United case.¶ Capitalism is a
system of inherent crisis based on the exploitation of
labor by capital. It has lurched from one economic crisis to the next throughout its history due to the anarchy of
overproduction. Today we are experiencing a different kind of global financial and economic crisis begun in 2007, on the scale of the
crises of the Great Depression of the 1930s and the Panic of 1873.¶ But
the crises being brought on by the wealth
gap (which is also a major factor in the current economic and financial crisis), technological revolution and
environmental crisis, are of a different overall magnitude, have reached a new quantitative and qualitative character, pose
far reaching disruptive threats to society, and in the case of the environmental crisis, to the very
existence of life on planet Earth.¶ These crises are beyond the capacity of capitalism to effectively resolve and reflect
the system’s growing instability and its ultimate unsustainability. They represent a crisis for the system itself.¶ The havoc and
suffering being wreaked on human kind and the planet by modern capitalism underscore the
growing necessity for active social transformation to a sustainable, demilitarized, equitable
and democratic economy and society. Such a transformation is necessary for human survival.¶
Transforming society requires a highly mobilized and conscious working class and people, majority movements led
by organized labor and it’s allies at every level for democratic reform and socialism, that will “by degrees wrest
control” of the direction of social development from the capitalist class.¶ But the most reactionary ruling class
sectors of finance, energy and military industrial complex and those they influence politically especially the
extremists dominating the Republican Party – represent the immediate danger and generally oppose even
minimum reform at every step.¶ For example, the highly monopolized oil and energy industry is the creator and biggest
funder of global warming deniers and drive reactionary, warlike tendencies in foreign policy.¶ Without a decisive defeat of reaction
and the Tea Party extremists, the path to more fundamental democratic reforms and revolutionary change is not conceivable. ¶
Capitalism has created a destructive “metabolic rift” that will destroy nature,
along with mankind. This is where the grassroots movement needs to start.
Bachtell ’11 [John Bachtell, writer for Political Affairs Magazine. “Three Irresolvable Crises of Capitalism.” Political Affairs
Magazine, August 9, 2011. (http://www.politicalaffairs.net/three-irresolvable-crises-of-capitalism/) Date Accessed: July 1, 14. O’B]
Marxism views the contradiction between labor and capital as the main social contradiction; labor is the source of wealth creation
which is privately appropriated by capital.¶ But as a growing trend of Marxists are rediscovering, Marx also viewed
nature
as the source of wealth, having said, “If labor is the father of wealth, nature is the mother.” ¶
This illustrated Marx’s view of the dialectical relationship between Nature and society.¶ “Many lives from nature, i.e. nature is his
body and he must maintain a continuing dialogue with it if he is not to die. To
say that man’s physical and mental
life is linked to nature simply means that nature is linked to itself, for man is a part of nature,”
wrote Marx in the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844.¶ Humans interact with nature for their existence and the
reproduction of society. Marx referred to this interaction as a “metabolism,” much like any self-regulated, metabolic process in the
human body or nature.¶ But he noted there
is an inherent destabilizing, destructive antagonism between
the capitalist system of production and nature, which has led to a “metabolic rift.” An early
expression of this was the revolution in capitalist agriculture and the destructive tendency toward soil exhaustion.¶ I got to thinking
further about these contradictions after learning how the city of Chicago is preparing for the consequences of long term climate
change through implementation of a far reaching Climate Action Plan.¶ Even if greenhouse gas emissions are curtailed or reversed in
the near future, the city’s climate will be like Baton Rouge, Louisiana according to climate experts. It will be wetter in the spring and
fall and dryer in the summer. Extreme
weather events will increasingly overwhelm the present day
infrastructure. The number of 90 degree weather days will skyrocket and heat emergencies will endanger thousands of lives.
These things are happening now.¶ Climate change requires many adjustments including planting different tree species, laying
permeable paving to absorb the increased runoff, reducing the heat island effect and air conditioning all public buildings including
schools. Everything, according to the Climate Action Plan, except shutting down the coal burning generating plants that are spewing
greenhouse emissions!¶ Most climatologists recognize these changes are inevitable even if greenhouse gas emission is curbed today.
The damage is done and even if we begin to reverse it, it will take many generations to heal the Earth.¶ Globally, the
most
severe damage and risk to life will be in the ocean coastal areas due to sea level rise and river
flood plains in the developing, poorest nations of the world.¶ It will likely require the relocation of large
numbers of people from areas that will be underwater, including perhaps parts of Manhattan.¶ Society has to begin implementing
plans to anticipate these changes now on a grand scale while fighting to radically curb greenhouse gas emissions Total
global
costs to adapt to the new conditions and ultimately heal the Earth will be staggering and
mean the reallocation of immense national and global resources, much that is either in the coffers of the
rich or wasted on such things as military production.¶ Is there a natural limit to the capitalist reproductive forces of society and are
we reaching those limits? Can
capitalism deal with such problems? Certainly it’s a system constantly
revolutionizing the means of production, highly inventive, fluid, flexible, adaptable and resilient. It could
continue on for years in crisis and stagnation, especially given the current austerity policies being imposed in an
effort to further redistribute wealth upward.¶ And it’s not that the capitalist class isn’t aware of these problems and doesn’t have
some answers. Substantial sections are aware, especially of the environmental crisis. Al Gore even speaks of a “sustainable
capitalism” and urges immediate action. Some do so on the basis of self interest, seeing their own fortunes at stake. Some even seek
to profit off its solution, including through “cap and trade” schemes.¶ But the
system as a whole is inherently
incapable of reorganizing in a way that will be able to solve theses crises long term. The
rivalries and conflicts of interest within the ruling circles make unity on a direction difficult if
not impossible, and especially on the scale of action needed.¶ Some sections of the ruling class, gripped by the fever of
immediate and maximum profits (especially in the energy industry) are compelled to pursue a death march, blind to the
consequences.¶ Propelled by the profit motive, the system must constantly expand in all directions. The
tendency is to
intensify these contradictions and crises.¶ As the crisis of everyday life deepens, more people
are being drawn into struggle to meet their needs and those of their families and
communities. Each struggle heightens awareness and unity and helps people to gain a deeper
understanding of the “nature of the system.” But it will take mass grassroots democratic
movements on a much greater scale than present to win basic social reforms, and to take our
country on a different path.
Capitalism is the root of social and racial inequality - it perpetuates the wealth
gap through poverty and will be the end of society.
Bachtell ’11 [John Bachtell, writer for Political Affairs Magazine. “Three Irresolvable Crises of Capitalism.” Political Affairs
Magazine, August 9, 2011. (http://www.politicalaffairs.net/three-irresolvable-crises-of-capitalism/) Date Accessed: July 1, 14. O’B]
The drive for accumulation of wealth and maximization of profits is an iron clad law of
capitalist development, relentlessly compelling the system toward monopolization. ¶ The system
has developed from monopolization of the home markets to monopolization of global markets. This has developed to such a degree
that most global production and financial sectors are now controlled by 6-8 behemoth transnational corporations.¶ “The share of
foreign assets, sales, and employment represented by General Electric’s (GE’s) foreign affiliates rose from 36 percent, 38 percent,
and 46 percent, respectively, in 2000, to 50 percent, 53 percent, and 53 percent in 2008—making GE primarily a global, as opposed
to U.S., producer."¶ A similar trend developed with Ford, whose sales and employment of foreign affiliates now constitutes 58% and
foreign assets 46% of its operation, note John Bellamy Foster, Robert McChesney and Jamil Jonah write in article entitled, The
Internationalization of Monopoly Capital.¶ As far back as 1999, the Wall Street Journal noted:¶ In industry after industry the march
toward consolidation has seemed inexorable….The world automobile industry is coalescing into six or eight companies. Two U.S. car
makers, two Japanese and a few European firms are among the likely survivors.¶ The world’s top semiconductor makers number
barely a dozen. Four companies essentially supply all of the worlds recorded music. Ten companies dominate the world’s
pharmaceutical industry, and that number is expected to decline through mergers as even these giants fear they are too small to
compete across the globe.¶ In the global soft drink business, just three companies matter, and the smallest, Cadbury Schweppes
PLC, in January sold part of its international business to Coca-Cola Co., the leader. Just two names run the world market for
commercial aviation: Boeing Co. and Airbus Industrie.¶ This development has also led to an increase in global labor solidarity
including the beginnings of global trade unions for example in the steel industry.¶ As
a consequence of this
monopolization, the top one percent of wealthiest US families own half the nation’s wealth. In
2009 they had a net worth 225 times that of the median family net worth, the largest gap in history. In 1960 that gap was 125
times.¶ Since the 1970s wages have stagnated while productivity has soared. This extra surplus value created by this productivity has
gone into the pockets of the rich.¶ Meanwhile,
43 million are living in poverty by official estimates, or
14.3 percent of the population. This is one in seven Americans, the highest rate since 1959.¶ Hundreds of billionaires and
10s of millions in poverty go hand in hand. The existence of one depends on the other.¶ The drive for maximization of
profit engenders further economic and social inequality based on race and gender. While 9.4
percent of whites are in poverty, 25.3 percent of Latinos and 25.8 percent of African Americans are poor. Communities of
color face worse housing, schools, health care, infrastructure, environmental conditions, and
access to fresh foods.¶ The growing wealth gap means today's youth will have a bleaker future
– a lower standard of living, higher rates of permanent joblessness, part time and temporary
work and a lifetime of debt associated with university education. Unemployment rates among African American teens are
90% in some urban areas. There are over 5 million African American youth between 18-24 who are out of school and out of work,
which contributes to the "pipeline from school to prison."¶ At one time the US capitalist class needed a large highly educated and
trained domestic workforce and a first rate infrastructure. Now with the globalization of production, it’s no longer an essential.¶
“The commitment of major sections of the transnational elite to a people-friendly public sector, a vibrant national economy and a
modern society has waned in recent decades,” wrote Sam Webb in a recent article in the People’s World. “In fact, this
elite is
turning the state into its personal ATM machine and a military juggernaut to enforce its will at
home and abroad. It's not an exaggeration to say that this social grouping has become a parasite sucking
the life out of our government, economy and society, while living in bubbles of luxury, racial
exclusion and class privilege and exploiting labor globally.” ¶ The American Society of Civil Engineers has
estimated it will take $2 trillion to modernize and bring up to code the US infrastructure. There is no outcry by large sections of US
ruling circles to pour money into domestic development and bolster public education.¶ But austerity is in. Austerity measures are
being imposed by global capital to radically cut labor costs, dismantle, diminish, privatize and eliminate government and rob social
wealth.¶ This is a stark reality in Greece, Spain and Portugal and in Wisconsin, Ohio, Indiana and New Jersey. And the Republican
right and Tea Party extremists will aggressively carry out such a policy for the entire nation if they win in 2012.¶ Wall Street has
recovered from the “Great Recession” and is earning record profits. But this is being called a jobless recovery for workers, with a
double dip crisis looming without substantial governmental economic stimulus.¶ Big business economists and mouthpieces of
corporate “think tanks” speak of the “new normal”: eight percent unemployment, lower standard of living, less public services and
less democracy.¶ The National Jobs for All Coalition estimates the current number of unemployed or underemployed in the US at
28.6 million or 18 percent off the population. In the African American and other communities of color, the unemployment rate is 20
percent. And among African American youth, 90 percent.¶ Without
a policy of massive rebuilding of the
country funded by a redistribution of wealth, these conditions will persist and worsen.
Impact – Ethics
The State has a distorting effect on social relations- actively creating and
sustaining hierarchical social structures – these inequalities manifest in wage
labor, economic disparity and unequal distribution of wealth – This system of
capital necessitates such horrific, senseless violence that you’re ethically
obligated to reject it.
Daly ‘4
(Glyn Daly, senior lecturer in politics in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at University College Northampton, Conversations
With Zizek, 2004, pp. 14-16) BSH
our ethico-political responsibility is
to confront the constitutive violence of today’s global capitalism and its obscene
naturalization / anonymization of the millions who are subjugated by it throughout the world.
Against the standardized positions of postmodern culture – with all its pieties concerning ‘multiculturalist’ etiquette – Zizek is arguing for a politics
that might be called ‘radically incorrect’ in the sense that it break with these types of positions 7 and focuses instead on the very organizing
principles of today’s social reality: the principles of global liberal capitalism. This requires some care and subtlety. For far too long, Marxism has
For Zizek it is imperative that we cut through this Gordian knot of postmodern protocol and recognize that
been bedeviled by an almost fetishistic economism that has tended towards political morbidity. With the likes of Hilferding and Gramsci, and more recently Laclau and Mouffee,
crucial theoretical advances have been made that enable the transcendence of all forms of economism. In this new context, however, Zizek argues that the problem that now
presents itself is almost that of the opposite fetish. That is to say, the prohibitive anxieties surrounding the taboo of economism can function as a way of not engaging with
economic reality and as a way of implicitly accepting the latter as a basic horizon of existence. In an ironic Freudian-Lacanian twist, the fear of economism can end up reinforcing
a de facto economic necessity in respect of contemporary capitalism (i.e. the initial prohibition conjures up the very thing it fears). This is not to endorse any kind of retrograde
return to economism. Zizek’s point is rather that in rejecting economism we should not lose sight of the systemic power of capital in shaping the lives and destinies of humanity
in order to create a universal global
system the forces of capitalism seek to conceal the politico-discursive violence of its
construction through a kind of gentrification of that system. What is persistently denied by neo-liberals such as Rorty (1989)
and Fukuyama (1992) is that the gentrification of global liberal capitalism is one whose ‘universalism’ fundamentally reproduces
and depends upon a disavowed violence that excludes vast sectors of the world’s populations.
In this way, neo-liberal ideology attempts to naturalize capitalism by presenting its outcomes of
winning and losing as if they were simply a matter of chance and sound judgment in a neutral
market place. Capitalism does indeed create a space for a certain diversity, at least for the central capitalist regions, but it is neither neutral nor ideal and its price in
terms of social exclusion is exorbitant. That is to say, the human cost in terms of inherent global poverty and degraded
‘life-chances’ cannot be calculated within the existing economic rationale and, in consequence, social
exclusion remains mystified and nameless (viz. the patronizing reference to the ‘developing world’). And Zizek’s point is that this
mystification is magnified through capitalism’s profound capacity to ingest its own excesses
and negativity: to redirect (or misdirect) social antagonisms and to absorb them within a culture of
differential affirmation. Instead of Bolshevism, the tendency today is towards a kind of political boutiquism that is readily sustained by postmodern forms of
consumerism and lifestyle. Against this Zizek argues for a new universalism whose primary ethical directive is to
confront the fact that our forms of social existence are founded on exclusion on a global scale.
While it is perfectly true that universalism can never become Universal (it will always require a hegemonic-particular embodiment in order to have any meaning), what is
novel about Zizek’s universalism is that it would not attempt to conceal this fact or reduce the
status of the abject Other to that of a ‘glitch’ in an otherwise sound matrix.
and our very sense of the possible. In particular we should not overlook Marx’s central insight that
Impact – Environment
It’s reverse causal – we must destroy capitalism before we can fight
environmental exploitation and degradation
Altvater Former Prof. of Political Science at University of Berlin 2007 (Elmar, “The Social and
Natural Environment of Fossil Capitalism,” http://www.globallabour.info/en/Altvater-FossilismSR-2007%20(rev.).doc, NMS)
The reason for capitalism’s high economic impact on the environment is to be found in its
double character. It has a value dimension (the monetary value of the gross national product, of
world trade, of FDI, of financial flows, etc.) but is also a system of material and energy flows in
production and consumption, transportation and distribution. ¶ Economic decisions concerning
production first consider values and prices, profit margins and monetary returns, on capital
invested. In this sphere the ruling principle is only the economic rationality of profitmaximizing decision-makers. But the decisions they take have important impacts on nature,
due to the material and energy dimension of economic processes. ¶ Under capitalist conditions
the environment is more and more transformed into a contested object of human greed. The
exploitation of natural resources, and their degradation by a growing quantity of pollutants,
results in a man-made scarcity, leading to conflicts over access to them. Access to nature (to
resources and sinks) is uneven and unequal and the societal relation of man to nature therefore
is conflict-prone. The “ecological footprints” of people in different countries and regions of the
world are of very different sizes , reflecting severe inequalities of incomes and wealth.
Ecological injustices therefore can only usefully be discussed if social class contradictions and
the production of inequality in the course of capital accumulation are taken into account.
Capitalism exploits the environment in order to continue expanding and making
profits
Foster, Professor of Sociology at University of Oregon, 2009(John Bellamy. The Monthly
Review “A Failed System: The World Crisis of Capitalism and its Impact on China”
http://monthlyreview.org/2009/03/01/a-failed-system-the-world-crisis-of-capitalistglobalization-and-its-impact-on-china NMS)
As the foregoing indicates, the world is currently facing the threat of a new world deflationdepression, worse than anything seen since the 1930s. The ecological problem has reached a
level that the entire planet as we know it is now threatened. Neoliberal capitalism appears to
be at an end, along with what some have called “neoliberalism ‘with Chinese characteristics.’”54
Declining U.S. hegemony, coupled with current U.S. attempts militarily to restore its global
hegemony through the so-called War on Terror, threaten wider wars and nuclear holocausts.
The one common denominator accounting for all of these crises is the current phase of global
monopoly-finance capital. The fault lines are most obvious in terms of the peril to the planet. As
Evo Morales, president of Bolivia, has recently stated: “Under capitalism we are not human
beings but consumers. Under capitalism mother earth does not exist, instead there are raw
materials.” In reality, “the earth is much more important than [the] stock exchanges of Wall
Street and the world. [Yet,] while the United States and the European Union allocate 4,100
billion dollars to save the bankers from a financial crisis that they themselves have caused,
programs on climate change get 313 times less, that is to say, only 13 billion dollars.Ӧ
Capitalism’s need to dominate and exploit the environment, just like the
working class, will only lead to our destruction
International Perspective 2009 (Internationalist Perspective “Capitalism, Technology and
the Environment” http://internationalist-perspective.org/IP/ip-archive/ip_50_environment.html
NMS)
Fundamental to my whole approach to capitalism’s relationship to nature is that it is, in the
end, essentially the same as capital’s relationship to wage labour. Capital dominates both,
living labour and nature, in order to exploit them both. In both cases, capital uses technology
as a mediating factor in order to realize, enforce and reproduce at a higher level these relations
of domination and exploitation. In both cases, the relationships and the processes involved are
linked and analogous. Capital is antagonistic toward the natural environment just as it is
antagonistic to wage labour. Capital’s domination and exploitation of nature, given the latter’s
finite limits and specificities, leads to destruction, degradation and despoliation of that nature,
just as its domination and exploitation of wage labour, given the physical limits and specificities
of human beings, leads to destruction, degradation and exhaustion of the working class. Capital
utilizes technological means in order to facilitate its maximum exploitation of both living labour
and ‘natural resources’. Further still, just as the working class fights back against capital’s
depredations, so too does nature in ways we are all too familiar with today, such as
irreversible climate change, widespread industrial diseases such as cancer, ‘natural disasters’
of all sorts, etc. But in reality, it is not nature taking revenge on humanity. That would be to
personify or subjectify nature, to ascribe to it intentionality. In fact, all of these environmental
catastrophes, which constitute an expanding environmental crisis, result from capital’s
technological transformation (and mutation (thus: trans-mutation?)) of natural ecosystems and
processes into monstrously destructive forces for humankind which previously, naturally, they
were not. Highly developed capitalist domination of humanity and nature has intervened in
and transformed the myriad intricate and inter-related natural processes of the planet to such
an extent that the current ‘natural environment’ we live within cannot be truly said to be
natural; it has been adulterated, contaminated, poisoned and destroyed to such an extent
that it is more accurately described as the capitalistically modified ‘natural’ environment.
Capitalist drive for profit exploits the environment and threatens life itself
One Struggle 2011 (Kasama Project, “Earth Day to May Day: Targeting Exploitation and
Ecocide” http://kasamaproject.org/environment/3186-18earth-day-to-may-day-targetingexploitation-and-ecocide NMS)
Capitalism is the economic system that dominates the planet. It runs on the exploitation of
human labor to turn the living world into dead commodities, for the profit of a few . The
small, powerful minority who own the means of production enforce their dominance through
their control over political and cultural institutions, and their monopoly on force. They create a
situation of dependency—forcing us to work for them to obtain basic needs like food and
shelter. They annihilate those who resist or refuse to assimilate.¶ This system values profit over
life itself. It has been built on land theft and destruction, genocide, slavery, deforestation and
imperialist wars . It commits numberless atrocities as a matter of routine daily functioning. It
kills nearly 10 million children worldwide under age 5 each year, because it’s not profitable to
save them.* It kills 100,000 people annually in the US by denying decent health care. More
than 54% of the US discretionary budget is spent on imperialist aggression. Recent casualties
include more than a million civilians in Iraq, and more than 46,000 American soldiers in
Afghanistan and Iraq. The economic and psychological violence wrought upon the world’s
inhabitants is so extensive and comprehensive that it’s effectively all-encompassing.¶ The
system is killing the entire planet, the basis for all life. It’s converted 98% of old growth forests
into lumber. 80% of rivers worldwide no longer support life. 94% of the large fish in the
oceans are gone. Phytoplankton, the tiny plants that produce half of the oxygen we breathe,
have declined by 40% since 1950. 120 species per day become extinct.¶ Industries produce 400
million tons of hazardous waste every year. Recently, the water in 89% of US cities tested has
been found to contain the carcinogen hexavalent chromium. To feed capitalism’s insatiable
need for economic expansion, increasingly dangerous methods of energy extraction are being
perpetrated: deep sea drilling, oil extraction from tar sands, mountaintop removal, fracking.
No matter the consequences, no matter what the majority of people may want, those in
power insist on (and enforce) their non-negotiable right to poison the land, water and air in
pursuit of maximum profit.¶ The threat to our common existence on Earth is accelerating and
intensifying. This is a situation of extreme urgency.¶ Clearly, a global economic system based
on perpetual expansion is unsustainable. A system characterized by oppression and coercion is
pure misery for the majority. The obvious conclusion is that we need to get rid of it, and change
to a way of life that doesn’t involve exploitation and ecocide. But first we must face one hard
fact: this system won’t stop unless it’s stopped. It can not be escaped, reformed, redeemed,
cajoled, abandoned, or rejected. The system must be fought, defeated and dismantled.¶
Capitalist drive for profit disregards environmental concerns
Magdoff and Magdoff, Editor of Monthly Review and worked for the United States
Department of Commerce, Professor of Plant and Soil Science at University of Vermont and a
director of the Monthly Review Foundation, 2005 (Harry and Fred. July 1st 2005. Monthly
Review. “Approaching Socialism” http://monthlyreview.org/2005/07/01/approaching-socialism
NMS)
Ecological degradation occurred in numerous precapitalist societies. But with capitalism there is
a new dimension to the problem, even as we have better understood the ecological harm that
human activity can create. The drive for profits and capital accumulation as the overriding
objective of economic activity, the control that economic interests exert over political life, and
the many technologies developed in capitalist societies that allow humans rapidly to change
their environment—near and wide, intentionally or not—mean that adverse effects on the
environment are inevitable. Pollution of water, air, and soil are natural byproducts of
production systems organized for the single goal of making profits.¶ Under the logic of
capitalist production and exchange there is no inherent mechanism to encourage or force
industry to find methods that have minimal impact on the environment. For example, new
chemicals that are found useful to produce manufactured goods are routinely introduced into
the environment—without the adequate assessment of whether or not they cause harm to
humans or other species. The mercury given off into the air by coal-burning power plants
pollutes lakes hundreds of miles away as well as the ocean. The routine misuse of antibiotics,
added to feeds of animals that are being maintained in the overcrowded and unhealthy
conditions of factory farms, has caused the development of antibiotic resistant strains of
disease organisms. It is a technique that is inconsistent with any sound ecological approach to
raising animals, but it is important to capital because profits are enhanced. In addition, the
development of an automobile-centered society in the United States has had huge
environmental consequences. Vast areas of suburbs, sometimes merging into a “megatropolis,”
partially erase the boundaries between communities. The waste of fuel by commuting to work
by car is only part of the story of suburbanization, as some people work in the city while others
work in different suburbs. Shopping in malls reachable only by cars and taking children to school
and play require transportation over significant distances.¶ Climate change resulting from global
warming, not completely predictable, but with mostly negative consequences, is another
repercussion of unfettered capitalist exploitation of resources. As fossil fuels are burned in
large quantities by factories, electrical generation plants, and automobiles and trucks, carbon
dioxide levels in the atmosphere have increased. There is some concern that the gradual
warming could actually lead to a fairly rapid change, with such factors as the melting of polar
ice, changes in precipitation and river flow, and a cessation of the thermohaline conveyor (of
which the Gulf Stream is a part) that brings warm water to the north Atlantic and helps keep
North America and Europe warm (see “The Pentagon and Climate Change,” Monthly Review,
May 2004).
Impact – Genocide
The economic exploitation and expansion spurred by Capitalism leads to
genocide
Sethness 13- author of Imperiled Life: Revolution against Climate Catastrophe (Javier, “The
Structural Genocide That Is Capitalism”, Truthout 2013, http://truthout.org/opinion/item/16887-the-structural-genocide-that-is-capitalism, MB)
In this book, Leech guides his readers through theoretical examinations of the concept of genocide, showing why the term
should in fact be applied to the capitalist mode of production. He then illustrates capitalism's genocidal proclivities by
exploring four case studies: the ongoing legacy of the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in Mexico; the
relationship between trade liberalization and genetically-modified seeds on the one hand and masssuicide on the part of Indian agriculturalists on the other; material deprivation and generalized premature death throughout much of the
African continent and the global South, as results from hunger, starvation, and preventable disease; and the ever-worsening climatic and environmental crises. Leech then closes
by considering the relevance of Antonio Gramsci's conceptions of cultural hegemony in attempting to explain the puzzling consent granted to this system by large swathes of the
world's relatively privileged people - specifically, those residing in the imperial core of Europe and the United States - and then recommending the socialist alternative as a
.
concrete means of abolishing genocide, while looking to the Cuban and Venezuelan regimes as imperfect, but inspirational experiments in these terms In sum, while I take issue
with some of his analysis and aspects of his conceptualization of anticapitalist alternatives, his work should certainly be well-received, read and discussed by large multitudes.¶
the theoretical case for considering capitalism to be genocidal, Leech takes a few
examples from the contemporary world to illuminate his argument. In Mexico, the passing of
NAFTA in 1994 has led to the dispossession of campesinos (peasants) on a grand scale, as the
country's stipulated importation of heavily subsidized maize and other crops from the United States effectively led millions
Following this opening discussion of
particularly devastating
to abandon agriculture and migrate to Mexican and US cities in search of employment in the manufacturing sector, in accordance with neoclassical theories of "comparative
this forcible
displacement has resulted in the explosion of precarity within the informal sector of the
economy in Mexico, as many ex-campesinos fail to find traditional proletarian jobs, and it has also driven the horrifying
feminicides of maquiladora workers in the Mexican border regions, migration en masse to the United States (and
advantage" - and very much mirroring the means by which capitalism emerged historically through the destruction of the commons in England. For Leech,
attendant mass death in the Sonoran desert), as well as the horrid drug war launched in 2006 by then-president Felipe Calderón. Leech sees similar processes in Colombia, which
hosts the second-largest number of internally displaced persons in the world (4 million), with many of these people having been removed from their lands due to military and
in India, Leech reports that more than 216,000
farmers committed suicide between 1997 and 2009, largely out of desperation over crushing
debts they accumulated following the introduction of genetically-modified seed crops, as demanded
paramilitary operations undertaken to make way for megaprojects directed by foreign corporations.¶ Alarmingly,
by the transnational Agreement on Trade-Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS, 1994) and the general shift from subsistence to export-oriented agriculture. In many cases,
the genetically engineered seed varieties failed to expand yields to the levels promised by Monsanto, Cargill, and co., leading farmers then to take on further debt merely to
cover the shortfalls as well as to pay for the next iteration of crops - which by conscious design were modified at the molecular level so as not to be able to reproduce naturally,
thus ensuring biotech firms sustained profitability (a "captured market," as it were). That such a dynamic should end in a downward spiral of death and destruction should be
capitalism's structurally genocidal nature in a chapter
examining Africa south of the Sahel. It is this world region that has been "most severely impacted"
by capital's genocidal imperatives, claims Leech, and it is difficult to argue with this claim: Merely consider the millions who succumb to AIDS on the
unsurprising, for all its horror.¶ Leech further illustrates his case regarding
continent each year or the other millions who perish in the region annually due to lack of medical treatment for complications within pregnancy or conditions such as diarrhea
and malaria, themselves catalyzed by pre-existing background malnutrition. All this deprivation is exacerbated, argues Leech, by food-aid regimes overseen by wealthier
societies - which in the US case demands that food be purchased from and shipped by US companies, thus effectively removing a full half of the total resources intended for the
hungry - and the infamous land-grabs being perpetrated on the continent in recent years by investors from such countries as Saudi Arabia and South Korea. Fundamentally,
the conflict is one based on the guiding principles of capital: Because Africans in general
do not possess the requisite income to "demand" food commodities within international
capitalism, they themselves do not constitute a "viable market" and so are rendered invisible nonpersons, or "unpeople."
though,
The imperial empires supported by capitalism perpetuate genocide
Ahmed 11- Writer for The Guardian and director of the Institute for Policy Research and
Development (IPRD) (Nafeez Mosaddeq, “Colonial Dynamics of Genocide Imperialism, Identity
and Mass Violence*”, Cesran International 2011,
http://cesran.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1231%3Acolonial-
dynamics-of-genocide-imperialism-identity-and-mass-violence&catid=58%3Amakale-veraporlar&Itemid=99&lang=en, MB)
Modern empires have invariably been associated with violence. Historical cases such as the European
conquest of the Americas or the British colonization of Australasia are viewed by some scholars as
constituting or at least containing genocidal episodes. Yet this conclusion is problematized by the sheer variegation in the
experiences of colonized peoples in different regions, who died in large numbers for many reasons, not all of them obvious, and
many of them inextricably intertwined – for instance due to the impact of European diseases, massacres, onerous labour conditions,
alcohol abuse, and even depression (and suicide) due to socio-cultural dislocation. The question of whether such cases of European
imperial violence were genocidal, cannot be resolved without re-examining the conceptual evolution of genocide against the
background of European imperial mass violence.¶ These examples underscore the need to interrogate the relationship between
imperialism, mass violence and genocide. Is genocide intrinsic to imperialist practices? If not, why
does imperialism
frequently involve diverse forms of mass violence against civilian populations? And if the concept of
genocide excludes the aforesaid examples of imperial mass violence despite their prevalence, does this suggest that the concept
itself needs re-evaluation? Of course, how scholars answer such questions depends ultimately on their preferred definitions of
genocide.[iv] These range from minimalist exclusivist conceptualizations restricting its theoretical scope to a highly specified type of
mass killing,[v] to maximalist inclusivist conceptualizations encompassing a wide variety of forms of group violence.[vi] ¶ These
prevalent approaches are also in tension with the original sociological conceptualization of genocide elaborated by Polish Jewish
jurist Raphael Lemkin (1900-1959), for whom genocidal perpetrators could be states as well as decentralized and dispersed groups
such as settler-colonists. Critically, Lemkin’s insight into the inherently
colonial form of genocide reveals the
inner dynamics of its ideological radicalization process in the context of socio-political contestations, that
can fuel the construction of new bifurcated “inside” and “outside” group identities and justify mass
violence against the ‘Other’. This paper thus excavates Lemkin’s sociological definition of genocide to develop a working
theoretical framework by which to understand the social causes of contemporary mass violence. It explores the implications of this
framework by briefly exploring the examples of Rwanda, Yugoslavia and Indonesia, and how a Lemkininian approach might require if
not a re-interpretation, a re-contextualisation of these genocidal episodes in a global context. The paper thus demonstrates that a
Lemkininian model, arming us with a better understanding of the socio-political and transnational relations of ideological
radicalization, could lead to more robust early warning systems, as well as a more refined understanding of how to respond
preventively by transforming the specific process that can lead to the radicalised construction of exclusionary group identities that
can culminate in genocide.
Imperialistic expansion inevitably leads to genocide—Rwanda proves
International Communist Current 04- (“Genocide in Rwanda: The crimes of French
imperialism”, ICC 2004, http://en.internationalism.org/wr/274_france_rwanda.htm, MB)
We are currently celebrating a sad anniversary: ten years ago, French imperialism, under the banner of humanitarianism,
re-entered Rwanda in force, armed to the teeth with assault cars at the front. It was to preside over one of the
worst cases of genocide in history. According to the official figures between 500,000 and a million
people were killed in 100 days, almost unnoticed by the world at large. The French army had waited cynically at the
frontiers of Rwanda for the ethnic slaughter to reach its climax before intervening. Meanwhile inside Rwanda our country’s troops,
under orders, had trained the killers who carried out the genocide against the Tutsi. We armed them, encouraged them and, when
the day came, provided cover for them. I discovered this story in the Rwandan hills. It was hot, it was summer time. It was wonderful
weather, it was magnificent. It was the time of the genocide (Patrick de Saint Exupery, journalist from Figaro and author of the book
L’inavouable: la France au Rwanda; see Le Monde Diplomatique March 2004). It was indeed France which, for a number of years,
had been training and arming the local gendarmerie, the Hutu militia, and the Rwandan Armed Forces. It was France which had fully
supported the regime of president Habyarimana. From
the early 90s Rwanda had become a prize in the geostrategic game between French imperialism and American imperialism. Rwanda had an
obvious importance in this inter-imperialist conflict because it is at the frontier of the zone under French
control and the one under US control.¶ Meanwhile 300,000 orphans were wandering the country. Cholera and famine were on the
rise and rapidly carried off more than 40,000 Hutu refugees, while combat helicopters, Mirages and Jaguars belonging to the French
army waited for another opportunity to intervene. The
power mainly responsible for this vast death-toll was
without doubt French imperialism, which used the ethnic conflict to strike at its US rival. It’s
the same French imperialism which today hides behind the ideology of pacifism. The humanitarian
alibi: a weapon of war¶ The humanitarian alibi was used to cover the barbaric policy of France ten years ago. It was used again in
1999 to justify the bombing of Serbia and the military occupation of Kosovo. Today in Kosovo there is a renewal of ethnic conflict,
and the French army, as it did in Rwanda, is using the opportunity to increase its presence on the ground. Meanwhile, Tony Blair
points to the lack of humanitarian intervention in Rwanda to argue in favour of the Iraq war, telling us that the only hope for
countries subjected to ethnic slaughter or mass murder by undemocratic states is the benign intervention of the civilised powers.
Rwanda, like the Balkans, like Iraq, provides us with proof that there can be nothing benign in the intervention of an imperialist
state. On the country, its only result can be to take the local barbarism onto a higher level .
Unless the world capitalist
system is overthrown, the Rwandan genocide is a foretaste of humanity’s future.
The capitalist system creates disparities that perpetuate mass genocide
Corrigan, Department of Psychology @ University of Portsmouth, 11
[Stephen, January 2011, “The Role of Capitalism in Constructing and Maintaining Mass Hate and
Genocide,” p. 1-2, accessed 7/8/13, YGS]
Marxism focuses on the State creating polarised socio-classes; the proletariat (work¶ force)
and the bourgeoisie (ruling class), making inequality inevitable (Quinney, 1975,¶ pl92). Social
Disorganisation highlights inner-city areas consisting highly of ethnic minority populations as
they are largely ascribed to the proletariat socio-class (cited by¶ Rock, 2007, pl9). This sociopolarisation limits ethnic minorities from achieving¶ transgression up the socio-economic
ladder as their working opportunities are¶ restricted, and they are depicted socially inferior to
the ruling bourgeoisie (Quinney,¶ 1975, pl93). This allows blame for unattainable economic
progression to be mobilised¶ against the minority faction making them appear harmful to society
(Hall, Critcher,¶ Jefferson, Clarke & Roberts, 1978, p387). The role of Capitalism is therefore
centred on¶ its differentiation between socio-classes, enabling discrimination to ensue by
allowing¶ the powerful to form prejudices against the powerless. Capitalism can extend masshate¶ beyond initial borders, with economic progression being an overriding principle.¶
Marxism argues Colonialism extends Capitalism, promoting social inequality elsewhere¶ to
profit the metropole (Head State) at the expense of the indigenous people (Stoler &¶ Cooper,
1997, p3). This can result in social inequality being manufactured against the¶ indigenous
majority, making Capitalism instrumental in constructing mass-hate and¶ genocide. Capitalist
regimes promote 'individualistic concerns,' but can individual¶ prejudice flourish under collective
powers?
Capital is intrinsically linked to the Western power identity that promotes silent
genocide
Nelson, PhD in the Department of PolSci @ Carleton University, 12
[Matthew, 2012, “Book Review: The Politics of Genocide,”
http://www.alternateroutes.ca/index.php/ar/article/viewFile/15879/15778, p. 300-303,
accessed 7/8/13, YGS]
While genocide commonly refers to the killing or attempted killing ¶ of an entire ethnic group or people, its definition is highly
controversial ¶ and the subject of extensive debate. The term is
often used to describe ¶ diverse forms of direct
or indirect killing, which has resulted in its “frequency of use and recklessness of application”
over the past several ¶ decades (103). In The Politics of Genocide, Herman and Peterson argue ¶ that while members of the
Western establishment and news media ¶ have rushed to denounce bloodbaths in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Rwanda, ¶ Kosovo,
and Darfur, they have largely remained silent over war crimes ¶ and mass atrocities committed by
allied regimes in Southeast Asia, ¶ Central America, the Middle East, and Sub-Saharan Africa. As Noam ¶ Chomsky suggests in
the foreword to the book, since the end of the Cold ¶ War, we have witnessed the emergence of an era of
virtual “Holocaust ¶ denial” or “genocide denial with a vengeance” (7-9).¶ In substantiating their
argument, Herman and Peterson draw on ¶ years of meticulous research, careful documentation and indepth, ¶ empirical analysis of atrocities and bloodbaths around the world. The ¶ authors have done an excellent job
at exposing the double standards of ¶ the US news media and its hypocritical system of propaganda. In this ¶ sense, The
Politics
of Genocide offers a needed corrective to those who ¶ manipulate and abuse the genocide label
for the purposes of promoting ¶ the expansion of imperial power interests around the globe.
Similar ¶ to Herman’s past work, however, the book offers less in the way of a ¶ theoretical addition to debates surrounding the
nature of genocide ¶ and imperialism, instead providing a series of well-documented case ¶ studies. Like the five ‘filters’ in Herman
and Chomsky’s Manufacturing ¶ Consent, the phenomenon of genocide is simply classified through four ¶ categories—in this case, of
bloodbaths. Moreover, while
Herman and Peterson, like Chomsky, do perceive imperialism
fundamentally in race ¶ and class terms, their use of terms such as ‘elite’ and Western
‘establishment’ rather than class or ruling class tends to obscure the real material ¶ links
between genocide, capitalism and Western imperialism.¶ For Herman and Peterson, “a remarkable
degree of continuity stretches ¶ across the many decades of bribes and threats, economic
sanctions, subversion, terrorism, aggression, and occupation ordered-up by the policymaking
elite of the United States” (13). After the US emerged from the ¶ Second World War in a dominant
economic, political and military position, ¶ it had to confront numerous nationalist upheavals
in former colonial areas ¶ by peoples seeking “independence, self-determination and better lives” ¶ (14). To counter
these increasingly popular demands for improvement in ¶ living standards, the US supported a series of
dictatorships in countries ¶ like Indonesia, South Vietnam and Chile. Although these “national security” states
were “torture-prone” and “deeply undemocratic,” they helped ¶ improve the overall climate
of capitalist investment by keeping their majorities fearful and atomized (14). When local dictators
failed, direct US military ¶ intervention often followed, as illustrated in the cases of Vietnam, and more ¶ recently, in Iraq and
Afghanistan. ¶ The authors draw on the framework for analyzing mass killings provided by Chomsky, and Herman himself in their
Counter-Revolutionary ¶ Violence: Bloodbaths in Fact and Propaganda (CRV), first published in 1973. ¶ In this work, Herman and
Chomsky conclude that it is obvious and ¶ demonstrable that US
officials, with the help of the established media, ¶
would engage in “atrocities management,” by producing incessant propaganda to deflect
attention away from US-approved violence, and onto ¶ its enemies. In its framework of analysis, CRV
provided four categories ¶ of bloodbaths: “Constructive,” “Benign,” “Nefarious,” and “Mythical” ¶ (a sub-category under Nefarious).
As Herman and Peterson explain, ¶ “[t]hose bloodbaths carried out by the United States itself
or that serve ¶ immediate and major US interests are Constructive; those carried out ¶ by allies
or clients are Benign; and those carried out by US target states ¶ are Nefarious and (sometimes)
Mythical” (16). In essence, instances of ¶ mass violence are evaluated differently by the US political
establishment ¶ and media depending on who is responsible for carrying them out. The ¶ authors
apply this analytical framework in their current work by subsuming more recent bloodbaths under the four categories, which they ¶
argue are “eerily applicable to the present”, and “apply now with the ¶ same political bias and rigor” (17-19). Using empirical
measures such ¶ as the coverage of key events in the media, what the authors offer the reader is more or less a classificatory
schema or conceptual model for ¶ understanding bloodbaths rather than a specific interjection into theoretical debates surrounding
critical accounts of genocide, imperialism ¶ and international law. ¶ Today’s
leading ‘experts’ on genocide and mass
are often ¶ careful to exclude from
consideration the Vietnam War, the 1965-1966 ¶ Indonesian massacres, and the invasion and occupation of
East Timor ¶ by Indonesia in 1975, the latter of which resulted in the deaths of somewhere between 100,000
and 200,000 civilians (although this is a hugely ¶ debatable claim) (18). The Vietnam War, and the massive “sanctions
¶ of mass destruction” directed at Iraq during the 1990s, are examples ¶ of Constructive
atrocities, where the victims of war crimes are deemed ¶ unworthy of our attention. However, when the
perpetrators of genocide ¶ are considered enemies of the West, the atrocities are Nefarious and
their ¶ victims are seen to be worthy of our focus and sympathy. Examples of ¶ Nefarious atrocities include: Cambodia
under the Khmer Rouge, Iraq ¶ under Saddam Hussein, Halabja, Bosnia, Rwanda, Kosovo and Darfur. ¶
When systematic violence is carried out by US clients—such as Indonesia in East Timor from
1975-1999, Israel in the Gaza Strip and West ¶ Bank from 1967 to the present, or Rwanda and Uganda in
Congo—they ¶ are viewed by the US political establishment as Benign and not worthy of ¶
condemnation. The final category, Mythical, results from the inflation of ¶ numbers or invention of incidents by the
US government, media sources ¶ and NGOs to implement pre-planned interventions such as sanctions, ¶ embargoes and
the funding of various ‘color revolutions. The Politics of Genocide has done much to
atrocities, including ¶ many journalists, academics, legal scholars and policymakers,
emphasize the biases and ¶ contradictions of US foreign policy, but it should be read in conjunction
¶ to themes related to genocide, imperialism and international law. First, while Herman and Peterson with other theoretical
contributions recognize that the history of ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity ¶ demonstrates “the centrality of
racism to the imperial project” (22), there ¶ is little discussion of why advanced capitalist powers and
oppressed ¶ nations are, in the first place, not equal partners in shaping the world. ¶ Due in part to
their use of terms such as ‘elite’ and Western ‘establishment’ rather than class, their analysis should be
complimented by recent ¶ work that is more explicit in highlighting the centrality of racism to ¶ issues of
class, capitalism and imperialism in the international system. ¶ While not directly touching on the topic of
genocide, Marxist theorists writing on current modes of imperialism such as Leo Panitch and Sam Gindin (Global
Capitalism and American Empire, 2004) and David ¶ Harvey (The New Imperialism, 2003) emphasize the extent to which
current modes of imperialism continue to exacerbate racial as well as global ¶ class
inequalities. Identifying the class basis of the new imperialism ¶ would help identify some of
the underlying reasons for why media ¶ coverage of genocides in the West is often silent with
respect to crimes ¶ committed by the various client regimes of advanced capitalist states. ¶
Second, Herman and Peterson are highly critical of the “selective investigation” and “selective impunity” of the International
Criminal Court ¶ (ICC) in prosecuting alleged perpetrators of genocide, especially, in the ¶ contemporary age of ‘responsibility to
protect,’ the exclusion from its ¶ jurisdiction of the international crime of aggression, judged at Nuremburg to be the “supreme
international crime” (21).
Western interventionism and capitalist domination has led to the poverty and
genocide of Latin America
Mallon, Julieta Kirkwood Professor of History Department Chair @ the
University of Wisconsin-Madison, 85
[Florencia E., January 1985, “The Poverty of Progress: Latin America in the Nineteenth Century
by E. Bradford Burns Review by Florencia E. Mallon,” The Americas, Volume: 41, p. 118-119,
YGS]
The main theme of the book is that Latin
American elites, in their enthusiasm ¶ to copy European-style
modernization and economic growth, came into conflict with and ultimately destroyed a much more
autochthonous and viable "folk" culture that Latin Americans had built up, through the judicious blending of
African, ¶ Indian, and Iberian influences, during three hundred years of colonial rule. But the ¶ "folk" did not give up
their culture without a major struggle. Indeed, Burns argues ¶ that the seemingly random and
recurrent violence of the nineteenth century can ¶ best be explained as the ongoing
confrontation between Europeanized elites and ¶ the "folk" over the definition of Latin
American culture and society. At bottom, ¶ Burns sees this as a cultural rather than a class
conflict, since the lower classes ¶ allied with the more traditional sectors of the elite (the "patriarchs" or feudal ¶ landowners) and
with populist caudillos in their efforts to preserve folk culture. ¶ With few exceptions, however-some of which are highlighted in the
book-the ¶ alliance of traditional patriarchs, populist caudillos, and lower class "folk" did ¶ not succeed in taking over the state and
fashioning society in their own image. ¶ Quite
the contrary. Throughout Latin America it was statesmen from
the Europeanized elite who, by the turn of the century, had consolidated political power ¶ and placed
their new nations firmly in the orbit of Western Europe and the United ¶ States. Rather than bringing their
countries development, however, these leaders ¶ instituted a limited amount of economic growth that
generated increasing dependency on the world market and on foreign capital, conspicuous
consumption for ¶ the few, and increasing misery for the majority. The "folk" were forced to
abandon ¶ a communally oriented culture that provided everyone with the basic necessities of
¶ life, getting in return an ever more commoditized existence in which no aspect of ¶
subsistence was guaranteed. More than anything else, Burns concludes, it was this ¶ triumph of
"progress" over "folk" that set the conditions for enduring poverty ¶ and conflict in twentiethcentury Latin America.
The aff’s elevation of the law of value is the basis upon which racism and
genocide become possible—the Other becomes the atomized “thing” toward
which capitalist, hegemonic hatred is directed
Internationalist Perspective, Marxist political organization, 2k
[Spring 2000, “Capitalism and Genocide,” Internationalist Perspective, Volume: 36, YGS]
One way in which this ideological hegemony of capital is established over broad strata of the
population, including sectors of the working class, is by channeling the dissatisfaction [sic] and discontent of the
mass of the population with the monstrous impact of capitalism upon their lives (subjection to
the machine, reduction to the status of a "thing", at the point of production, insecurity and
poverty as features of daily life, the overall social process of atomization and massification,
etc.), away from any struggle to establish a human Gemeinwesen, communism. Capitalist hegemony entails the
ability to divert that very disatisfaction [sic] into the quest for a "pure community", based on
hatred and rage directed not at capital, but at the Other, at alterity itself, at those marginal social groups which
are designated a danger to the life of the nation, and its population. ¶ One of the most dramatic effects of the
inexorable penetration of the law of value into every pore of social life, and geographically across the face of the whole
planet, has been the destruction of all primitive, organic, and pre-capitalist communities.
Capitalism, as Marx and Engels pointed out in the Communist Manifesto, shatters the bonds of immemorial
custom and tradition, replacing them with its exchange mechanism and contract. While Marx and
Engels stressed the positive features of this development in the Manifesto, we cannot ignore its negative side, particularly in light of
the fact that the path to a human Gemeinwesen has so far been successfully blocked by capital, with disastrous consequences for
the human species. The
negative side of that development includes the relentless process of
atomization, leaving in its wake an ever growing mass of rootless individuals, for whom the
only human contact is by way of the cash nexus. Those who have been uprooted geographically,
economically, politically, and culturally, are frequently left with a powerful longing for their lost
communities (even where those communities were hierarchically organized and based on inequality), for the certainties and
"truths" of the past, which are idealized the more frustrating, unsatisfying, and insecure, the world of capital becomes. Such longings
are most powerfully felt within what Ernst Bloch has termed non-synchronous strata and classes. These are stata and classes whose
material or mental conditions of life are linked to a past mode of production, who exist economically or culturally in the past, even
as they chronologically dwell in the present. In
contrast to the two historic classes in the capitalist mode of
production, the bourgeoisie and proletariat, which are synchronous, the products of the capitalist
present, these non-synchronous strata include the peasantry, the petty bourgeoisie, and -- by virtue of their
mental or cultural state -- youth and white-collar workers. In my view, Bloch's understanding of non-synchronicity
needs to be extended to segments of the working class, in particular those strata of the blue-collar proletariat which are no longer
materially synchronous with the high-tech production process upon which late capitalism rests, and the mass of workers ejected
from the production process by the rising organic composition of capital and its comcomitant down-sizing. In addition, the even
greater mass of peasants streaming into the shanty towns around the great commercial and industrial metropolitan centers of the
world, are also characterized by their non-synchronicity, their inability to be incorporated into the hyper-modern cycle of capital
accumulation. Moreover, all of these strata too are subject to a growing nostalgia for the past , a longing
for community, including the blue-collar communities and their institutional networks which were one of the features of the social
landscape of capitalism earlier in the twentieth century. ¶ However, no matter how powerful this nostalgia for past community
becomes, it cannot be satisfied. The organic communities of the past cannot be recreated; their destruction by capital is irreversible.
At the same time, the path to a future Gemeinwesen, to which the cultural material and longings embodied in the
non-synchronous classes and strata can make a signal contribution, according to Bloch, remains obstructed by the
power of capital. So long as this is the case, the genuine longing for community of masses of people, and especially the
nostalgia for past communities especially felt by the non-synchronous strata and classes, including the newly non-synchronous
elements which I have just argued must be added to them, leaves them exposed to the lure of a "pure community" ideologically
constructed by capital itself. In place of real organic and communal bonds, in
such an ideologically constructed pure
community, a racial, ethnic, or religious identification is merely superimposed on the existing
condition of atomization in which the mass of the population finds itself. In addition to providing some
gratification for the longing for community animating broad strata of the population, such a pure community can also provide an
ideological bond which ties the bulk of the population to the capitalist state on the basis of a race, ethnicity, or religion which it
shares with the ruling class. This latter is extremely important to capital, because the atomization which it has brought about not
only leaves the mass of humanity bereft, but also leaves the ruling class itself vulnerable because it lacks any basis upon which it can
mobilize the population, physically or ideologically. ¶ The
basis upon which such a pure community is
constituted, race, nationality, religion, even a categorization by "class" in the Stalinist world, necessarily
means the exclusion of those categories of the population which do not conform to the
criteria for inclusion, the embodiments of alterity, even while they inhabit the same geographical space as the members of
the pure community. Those excluded, the "races" on the other side of the biological continuum, to use Foucauldian
terminology, the Other, become alien elements within an otherwise homogeneous world of the pure
community. As a threat to its very existence, the role of this Other is to become the scapegoat
for the inability of the pure community to provide authentic communal bonds between
people, for its abject failure to overcome the alienation that is a hallmark of a reified world. The Jew in Nazi Germany,
the Kulak in Stalinist Russia, the Tutsi in Rwanda, Muslims in Bosnia, blacks in the US, the
Albanian or the Serb in Kosovo, the Arab in France, the Turk in contemporary Germany, the Bahai in Iran, for example, become
the embodiment of alterity, and the target against which the hatred of the members of the pure
community is directed. The more crisis ridden a society becomes, the greater the need to find
an appropriate scapegoat; the more urgent the need for mass mobilization behind the integral
state, the more imperious the need to focus rage against the Other. In an extreme situation of social
crisis and political turmoil, the demonization and victimization of the Other can lead to his (mass)
murder. In the absence of a working class conscious of its historic task and possibilities, this
hatred of alterity which permits capital to mobilize the population in defense of the pure
community, can become its own impetus to genocide. ¶ The immanent tendencies of the
capitalist mode of production which propel it towards a catastrophic economic crisis, also
drive it towards mass murder and genocide. In that sense, the death-world, and the prospect of an Endzeit
cannot be separated from the continued existence of humanity's subordination to the law of
value. Reification, the overmanned world, bio-politics, state racism, the constitution of a pure
community directed against alterity, each of them features of the economic and ideological
topography of the real domination of capital, create the possibility and the need for genocide.
We should have no doubt that the survival of capitalism into this new millenium will entail more and more
frequent recourse to mass murder.
Impact – Hunger
Capitalism leads to hunger – GMOs
Ikerd, Professor Emeritus of Agricultural & Applied Economics University of
Missouri Columbia, 2006
(John Ikerd, Professor Emeritus of Agricultural & Applied Economics University of Missouri
Columbia, 2006, University of Missouri, “The Economics of Hunger: Challenges and
Opportunities for Future Food Systems” ,
http://web.missouri.edu/ikerdj/papers/Eastern%20Oregon-%20Econ%20Hunger.htm, accessed
7-9-13, JF)
Biotechnology, on the other hand, is simply the latest tool for agricultural industrialization. The magnitude of risks that genetically
engineered foods pose to human health and the natural environment may not be fully known for decades. But at the very least,
genetic modification represents the greatest experiment to which humanity has ever been subjected with so little justification.
Genetic modification does nothing to increase crop yields; it simply makes farming easier to
carry out on larger operations. It does nothing to enhance food quality that cannot be
accomplished more effectively through the conscientious selection of natural foods.¶ ¶ Perhaps
most relevant to hunger, widespread acceptance of genetic modification of foods would grant
control of the world’s food supply to a handful of global agribusiness corporations, under
current plant and animal patenting laws. These food corporations are not charitable
organizations. They will sell their products to whatever people, wherever in the world, they can
generate the greatest economic return for their stockholders. Their markets most certainly will
not be the hungry people of the poor countries of the world or the poor people of the wealthy
countries of the world. The goal of industrial agriculture in a capitalistic economy is to sell
food for profit, not to provide food for everyone. An industrial agriculture will not feed the hungry.
Cap leads to hunger – it leaves the poor behind
Ikerd, Professor Emeritus of Agricultural & Applied Economics University of
Missouri Columbia, 2006
(John Ikerd, Professor Emeritus of Agricultural & Applied Economics University of Missouri
Columbia, 2006, University of Missouri, “The Economics of Hunger: Challenges and
Opportunities for Future Food Systems” ,
http://web.missouri.edu/ikerdj/papers/Eastern%20Oregon-%20Econ%20Hunger.htm, accessed
7-9-13, JF)
But industrialization never made its way around the world and significant pockets of hunger
have persisted even in the wealthiest industrial nations of the world. Somehow, the people of the world
lost their way on the road to utopia. Far too many people have been left behind – poor and hungry – to
feel any sense of victory over poverty and starvation. In terms of total productivity and wealth, industrialization
far exceeded the expectations of even the most optimistic. The people of the late 1700s could not possibly have imagined all of the
material wealth in the world today. But neither could they have imagined that so few people would claim so much of the world’s
wealth and so many others would be left with so little. The dreams of the American industrial revolution were not just dreams of a
world of wealth but also of a world of equity and justice, a world in which all people would share in the wealth.¶ ¶ The
fundamental flaw was not in the productivity of industrialism but instead in the economics of
industrialism, in the means by which resources were allocated among the competing needs of
people. For most of two centuries, capitalism and communism struggled for economic supremacy among the industrial nations of
the world. With the fall of the former Soviet Union, however, political leaders around the world declared global victory for
capitalism. Free market capitalism quickly spread around the world. Even the Peoples Republic of China, while still clinging to
political socialism, turned to free markets to guide its economic boom. Admittedly, capitalism has resulted in impressive economic
growth and prosperity. But as we enter the twenty-first century, serious questions are emerging concerning the sustainability of
capitalism.
Capitalism causes hunger – it destroys social connections that are necessary to
address hunger
Ikerd, Professor Emeritus of Agricultural & Applied Economics University of
Missouri Columbia, 2006
(John Ikerd, Professor Emeritus of Agricultural & Applied Economics University of Missouri
Columbia, 2006, University of Missouri, “The Economics of Hunger: Challenges and
Opportunities for Future Food Systems” ,
http://web.missouri.edu/ikerdj/papers/Eastern%20Oregon-%20Econ%20Hunger.htm, accessed
7-9-13, JF)
But what does entropy have to do with hunger? Capitalism not only uses up physical energy, it also uses up
human energy. The law of entropy applies to social energy as well as physical energy. All human
resources – labor, management, innovation, creativity – are products of social relationships. No
person can be born or reach healthy maturity without the help of other people who care about
them personally, including their families, friends, neighbors, and communities. People must be
educated, trained, civilized, and socialized before they can become productive members of complex societies. All
organizations – including businesses organizations and economies – also depend upon the
ability of people to work together for a common purpose, which in turn depend upon the
sociability and civility of the society in which they were raised. ¶ ¶ Capitalism inevitably
dissipates, disperses, and disorganizes social energy because it weakens personal
relationships. Social capital is the value embodied in the willingness and ability of people to
form and maintain positive personal relationships. However, maximum economic efficiency
requires that people relate to each other impartially, which means impersonally. People must
compete rather than cooperate, if market economies are to work efficiently. When people
spend more time and energy working – being “productive” – they have less time and energy to spend
on personal relationships within families and communities, and social capital is depleted. When
people buy things based on price rather than from people they know and trust, personal relationships within
communities suffer from neglect, and social capital is dissipated. Neoclassical capitalism devalues personal
relationships and disconnects people and thus dissipates, disperses, and disorganizes social energy.¶ ¶ Capitalistic
economies are so efficient because they use people to do work but do nothing to restore the
social capital needed to sustain positive personal relationships within society. It makes no
economic sense for corporations to invest in building relationships within families,
communities, or society for the benefit of future generations. It’s always more economically
efficient to find new people and new communities to exploit. Capitalistic economies don’t waste energy by
investing in society, and they resist all attempts of people, through government, to tax private enterprises to promote societal wellbeing.
That’s why capitalism is so efficient. But, neoclassical capitalism inevitably tends toward social entropy; that’s
did not eliminate hunger because, in devaluing personal
relationships, it diminished our ability to care and destroyed our willingness to share. Hunger
is a symptom of a society that is lacking in social capital. People who care and are willing to
share; they don’t allow others to go hungry when they have plenty for themselves. As social
capital is depleted, the gap in wealth between the haves and have-nots continues to grow, as those who have
increase their power to exploit those who have not. As social capital is depleted, the haves are
numbed to the reality that many of the have-nots have no food; they feel no need to share.¶ ¶
It’s not economically efficient to share with the poor and hungry. Economic efficiency
why it is not sustainable.¶ ¶ Industrialization
demands that people be rewarded according to their productivity, not according to their need.
Income redistribution and feeding the hungry penalizes those who produce and rewards those
who do not; such actions promote inefficiency. The invisible hand of free markets is fair and just, we are told. Let
the free markets work. If people get hungry, they will find work. The rising tide of prosperity raises all boats. If we become wealthy,
others will surely have enough to eat. But,
the invisible hand of Adam Smith’s capitalism has been mangled
in the machinery of industrialism. Today’s capitalism is not fair and just. The rising tide of
prosperity simply blinds us to growing poverty. Growing poverty and hunger are the inevitable
consequences of social entropy.
Cap causes hunger – unsustainability
Ikerd, Professor Emeritus of Agricultural & Applied Economics University of
Missouri Columbia, 2006
(John Ikerd, Professor Emeritus of Agricultural & Applied Economics University of Missouri
Columbia, 2006, University of Missouri, “The Economics of Hunger: Challenges and
Opportunities for Future Food Systems” ,
http://web.missouri.edu/ikerdj/papers/Eastern%20Oregon-%20Econ%20Hunger.htm, accessed
7-9-13, JF)
Serious questioning of capitalism began in the 1960s, with the emergence of the environmental and civil rights movements.
Growing environmental degradation and persistent social discrimination were linked directly
to the industrialization of capitalistic economies. The energy crisis of the 1970s raised concerns
about the extractive nature of capitalistic economies and the dependence of industrialization on
finite supplies of non-renewable resources. The “trickle down economics” of the 1980s raised
further questions of social equity, with large and growing gaps between the “haves and havenots.” The U.S. economy languished after the “economic bubble” of the 1990s burst at the turn of the century. Today’s “robust”
economy is propped up by record-large federal budget and trade deficits. Corporate profits were restored only by
exporting America’s middleclass jobs to lower-cost foreign labor markets, notably China and
India. Many Americans are now questioning not only the ecological and social sustainability of
capitalism, but also its economic sustainability.¶ ¶ Persistent hunger, in America and around
the world, is not simply a reflection of social equity, although today’s hunger most certainly is
inequitable. Hunger is an inevitable consequence of an economic system that lacks both
ecological and social integrity. Persistent hunger is rooted in the economy – in the means by
which we manage complex relationships with each other and with nature. The economy
determines who gets to manage the resources needed to produce food, clothing, shelter, as
well as the non-necessities of life. The economy determines who receives the benefits and
who pays the costs – how the bounties of industrial production are shared. An economy cannot be sustained if
it extracts wealth from nature and society but fails to distribute that wealth equitably, both
within and among generations. Persistent hunger, in the U.S. and around the world, is a direct
consequence of an unsustainable global economy. If we are serious about alleviating hunger, we must be willing
to work for sustainability.
Impact- Poverty
The globalizing process of the 1AC increases the suppression of the lower
classes and entrenches poverty, studies prove
Robinson 04,
(William Robinson, PhD and professor of sociology at the University of California, Santa Barbara,
April 2004, “Global Crisis and Latin America“, Bulletin of Latin American Research, 7/8/13 SS,
http://www.ncsu.edu/acontracorriente/winter_05/Robinson.pdf)
The hegemony of transnational capital and new patterns of post-Fordist “flexible”¶ accumulation has
involved a restructuring of the capital-labor relation in Latin America¶ and worldwide. In this new
relation, capital has abandoned reciprocal obligations to labor¶ in the employment contract with the emergence
of new post-Fordist “flexible” regimes of¶ accumulation, which require “flexible” and “just in time”—that is casualized and¶
contingent—labor. And states, with
their transmutation from developmentalist to Neoliberal, have all
but abandoned obligations to poor and working majorities.¶ Globalization, hence, has been associated
with a dramatic sharpening of social¶ inequalities, increased polarization, and the persistence of
widespread poverty in Latin¶ America (table 6) [Roberts, 2002; Portes and Hoffman, 2003; Green, 1995]. This reflects¶
the broader pattern of global social polarization (see next section). Between 1980 and¶ 1990 average per capital
income dropped by an unprecedented 11 percent, so that by¶ 1990 most of the region's inhabitants found that
their income had reverted to 1976 levels¶ (World Bank, 1997). The absolute number of the poor also increased throughout the¶
1980s and 1990s. Between
1980 and 1992, some 60 million new people joined the ranks¶ of the poor.
The number of people living in poverty went from 136 million in 1980, to¶ 196 million in 1992,
and then to 230 million in 1995, an increase from 41 percent to 44¶ percent, and then to 48
percent, respectively, of the total population (CEPAL, various¶ years)
The nature of Capitalism makes poverty and exploitation inevitable, it needs
new forms of production to create a surplus of profit, specifically in Latin
America.
Kat 2001
(Claudio, an economist, is a professor and researcher at the University of Buenos Aires, “The
Manifesto and Globalization”, November 6th 2001, http://www.sagepub.com/upmdata/2943_11lap01.pdf, accessed 7/8/13, JK)
Since the 1980s, the new international rivalry on the production level has¶ caused a
spectacular wave of mergers that have required reduction of costs¶ and an increase in
productivity. It has also produced an increase in the centralization¶ of capital (in no important
sector are there more than ten huge competitors¶ operating), the formation of complexes that integrate
services to industry’s¶ requirements, and the proliferation of agreements between firms to ¶ ensure the
distribution of the various goods. The substitution of the label¶ “Made in such-and-such a
country” with “Made by such-and-such a company”¶ symbolizes this transformation. The
“global factory” and the “global¶ product” are not yet the norm, but this is the central
tendency of capitalism¶ today.¶ An important theoretical implication of this process is the potential
transformation¶ in the determination of prices under the law of value. A significant ¶ portion of the
production undertaken in the internal space of these internationalized¶ firms is based on the “transfer
price” administered by managers¶ who are to some extent independent of market instability. Thus, a
fracture¶ emerges in the classical process of the determination of average profit and the ¶ costs of
production based on national prices and currency, contributing to a ¶ regional structuring of new monetary
standards and policies regarding subsidies¶ and tariffs.¶ At the same time, the internationalization of
production is responsible for¶ the dynamic acceleration of innovation in the field of information
technologies.¶ It simultaneously constitutes a great stimulus to the ongoing technological revolution and is
the determinant of its major contradictions (developed¶ in Katz, 1998). On this point, two major ideas
in the Manifesto have special¶ relevance: the characterization of the bourgeoisie as a class
that “cannot¶ exist without constantly revolutionizing the means of production” and the¶
appearance of an “epidemic of overproduction” as a consequence of this idiosyncrasy.¶ Both
phenomena are evident today. Under capitalism, the multiplication¶ of new goods and forms
of production is indissolubly linked to the production¶ of surpluses in relation to the
purchasing capacity of the population.¶ It is for this reason that poverty, unemployment, and
exploitation are increasing¶ alongside the internationalization of the productive process. Latin
America¶ is one of the regions most affected by this transformation.
Capitalism creates unemployment; technology and fluctuations in the market.
Harriss-White 2006
(Barbara, Professor of Development Studies, Oxford University “Poverty and Capitalism,
Economic and Political Weekly, April 7th 2006,
http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/4418024.pdf?acceptTC=true, accessed 7/8/13, JK)
Capitalism does not only search for cheap and even unwaged labour. Two mechanismsc two
mechanisms create unemployment. First, technological change: capitalism permeates society
through a dynamic process based on the logic of growth and profit in which the productivity of
wage labour is continually enhanced by machines.10 By itself the elasticity of labour
absorption with respect to growth declines - and indeed this is happening in agriculturally
advanced regions of India now. 1 The second mechanism concerns the ways in which markets
make adjustments to fluctuations. Under capitalism, all markets are related to each other in
ways which are structured (at the very least through norms about future expectations).In practice
supply, demand, property rights, prices and contracts are structured in densely instituted and
specific ways. One of the elements of such a structure is the physical nature and cultural
meaning of things transformed as commodities. For one instance, labour is a commodity with
consciousness, which may reflect on and resist contracts in markets; labour is also not
produced for sale. For another, money is not only a commodity but also a stock of wealth. As a result,
its value vis-a-vis other commodities is, and must be, stickier. It will change more slowly than
commodity prices do. As Patnaik (2005)has recently argued, it then follows that excess demand
between money and commodities requires quantity adjustments in commodities and labour.
So the dynamic of capitalism requires there to be idle capacity in machinery and plant, cash
balances and unemployment regardless of the impact on labour of technological change. The
result is the creation of pools of unemployed labour.12 Some people float in and out of work
while others are seasonal migrants and a particularly stagnant pool is filled by those without
work for long periods. These reserves of unemployed people are functionally useful to capital
since their very existence disciplines and disempowers those in work, discouraging them
politically from struggles over the distribution of wages and profits which might result in their
being deprived of¶ livelihoods- and depressing the wages of¶ workers by their mere existence. In
the¶ absence of state intervention, they reproduce¶ a system which is self-reinforcing.
Impact – Power Wars
Capitalism fosters an imperialist mindset that inevitably leads to war—empirics
prove
Packer 03- hold primary leadership roles at the International Socialist Group and the Fourth
International (Dave, “Theory and history¶ Capitalism means War”, The International Socialist
Group 2003, http://www.isg-fi.org.uk/spip.php?article10, MB)
¶ The twentieth century was the bloodiest century in human history, easily exceeding the previous record,
held by the nineteenth century, which began most notably with the Napoleonic wars. During these two centuries, the
capitalist world was marked by the rise of competing imperialisms , at first in Europe but soon joined by
the USA and Japan. Between 1876 and 1914 European powers annexed approximately eleven million square miles of territory,
mainly in Asia and Africa. By the twentieth century, inter-imperialist competition
for colonies and markets
was to drag nearly the entire world into two devastating world wars, with over one hundred and sixty
additional wars since the end of World War Two.¶ ¶ The competition between capitals inherent within the capitalist system forced it
to continually revolutionise and expand the means of production, which eventually led to a scramble across the world for colonies,
markets and empires, like the British Empire, or its main competitor empires of France and latecomer Germany. Inter-
imperialist competition eventually progressed beyond the numerous colonial wars of conquest, to
armed conflict between the ‘great’ nations themselves. However, this now took the form of a struggle for
world hegemony. Here lay the origins of the two World Wars of the twentieth century . Capitalism, at first
by establishing direct colonial rule and later through economically dominated neo-colonies, was now transformed from a
progressive to a reactionary imperialist force in the world. As Ernest Mandel writes in his book on the Second World War:¶ The
imperialist conquest of the world is not only, or even mainly, a drive to occupy huge territories . . . The
motor force of the
Second World War was the need to dominate the economy of whole continents through
capitalist investment, preferential trade agreements, currency regulations and political hegemony. The aim of the
war was the subordination not only of the less developed world, but also of other industrial states, whether enemies or allies, to
one hegemonic power’s priorities of capital accumulation. (1)¶ ¶ Capitalism means war because
it is driven,
in the last analysis,
by economic forces, which require ever-expanding markets and
opportunities for investments. It does this within the framework of competition between
capitals which, after World War Two, resulted in the world hegemony of US imperialism. This hegemonic drive is in the nature of
every imperialism: ‘There is not the slightest proof of any limitation on the war aims of Japan, Germany or the USA,’ writes Mandel
of the Second World War. ‘Very early on the Tanaka memorandum established that for the Japanese army, the conquest of China
was only a stepping stone to the conquest of world hegemony, which could be achieved after crushing US resistance.’ (2)
Imperialistic policies of accumulating capital historically lead to war
Judis 07- is a senior editor at The New Republic and a visiting scholar at the Carnegie
Endowment for International Peace (John, “Bush's Neo-Imperialist War”, The American Project
2007, http://prospect.org/article/bushs-neo-imperialist-war, MB)
Our Iraqi occupation not only rejects American foreign policy since Wilson, it's a throwback to the
great power imperialism that led to World War I.¶ Bush's foreign policy has been variously
described as unilateralist, militarist, and hyper-nationalist. But the term that fits it best is imperialist. That's not
because it is the most incendiary term, but because it is the most historically accurate. Bush's foreign policy was framed as an
alternative to the liberal internationalist policies that Woodrow Wilson espoused and that presidents from Franklin D. Roosevelt to
Bill Clinton tried to put into effect as an alternative to the
imperialist strategies that helped cause two world
wars and even the Cold War. Bush's foreign policy represents a return not to the simple unilateralism of 19th-century
American foreign policy, but to the imperial strategy that the great powers of Europe -- and, for a brief period,
America, too -- followed and that resulted in utter disaster.¶ There were two kinds of imperial rule: direct, where
the colonial power assigned an administrator -- a viceroy or proconsul -- who ran the country directly; and indirect, where the
colonial power used its financial and military power to prop up a native administration that did its bidding and to prevent the rise of
governments that did not. The latter kind of imperial rule was developed by the United States in Cuba in 1901 after Roosevelt's
Secretary of War Elihu Root realized that direct rule could
bring war and rebellion, as it had done, to the
the Philippines. The British later adopted this kind of imperial rule in Egypt and Iraq.¶
This growth of imperialism eventually created the conditions for its undoing. By encouraging not
merely trade rivalry, but growing competition for national power -- epitomized in the pre–
World War I naval arms race between Britain and Germany -- imperialism helped spawn wars
McKinley administration's surprise, in
among the great powers themselves.
The rivalry between top dog England and challenger Germany, and between
Germany and Austria, on the one hand, and France and Russia, on the other, contributed to the outbreak of World War I. The
Second World War also represented, among other things, an attempt by the Axis powers, a subordinate group of capitalist nations,
to redivide the world at the expense of the U.S., Great Britain, France, and the USSR. And the Cold War stemmed from the attempt
by the Soviet Union, one of the most vocal critics of Western imperialism, to fulfill the imperial dreams of Czarist Russia by
expanding westward and to the south
Impact - Racism
Racism was born out of capitalism to justify the suppression, exploitation of the
working class and oppression of slaves
Taylor, doctoral candidate in the department of African American Studies at Northwestern
University, 2011 (Keeanga-Yamahtta. January 4th 2011. The Socialist Worker “Race, Class and
Marxism” http://socialistworker.org/2011/01/04/race-class-and-marxism NMS)
Marxists argue that capitalism is a system that is based on the exploitation of the many by the
few. Because it is a system based on gross inequality, it requires various tools to divide the
majority--racism and all oppressions under capitalism serve this purpose. Moreover, oppression
is used to justify and "explain" unequal relationships in society that enrich the minority that
live off the majority's labor. Thus, racism developed initially to explain and justify the
enslavement of Africans--because they were less than human and undeserving of liberty and
freedom.¶ Everyone accepts the idea that the oppression of slaves was rooted in the class
relations of exploitation under that system. Fewer recognize that under capitalism, wage
slavery is the pivot around which all other inequalities and oppressions turn. Capitalism used
racism to justify plunder, conquest and slavery, but as Karl Marx pointed out, it also used
racism to divide and rule--to pit one section of the working class against another and thereby
blunt class consciousness.¶ To claim, as Marxists do, that racism is a product of capitalism is
not to deny or diminish its importance or impact in American society. It is simply to explain its
origins and the reasons for its perpetuation. Many on the left today talk about class as if it is
one of many oppressions, often describing it as "classism." What people are really referring to as
"classism" is elitism or snobbery, and not the fundamental organization of society under
capitalism.¶ Moreover, it is popular today to talk about various oppressions, including class, as
intersecting. While it is true that oppressions can reinforce and compound each other, they are
born out of the material relations shaped by capitalism and the economic exploitation that is at
the heart of capitalist society. In other words, it is the material and economic structure of
society that gave rise to a range of ideas and ideologies to justify, explain and help perpetuate
that order. In the United States, racism is the most important of those ideologies.
The ideological explanations of racism is a tool of the capitalist system to divert
attention from the socio-economic causes of racism in order to uphold the
myth of market equality
The Red Critique 2002(November/December 2002. The Red Critique “Race is Class”
http://redcritique.org/NovDec02/raceisclass.htm NMS)
The politics of racist segregation are, in other words, the direct product of U.S. capitalism.
Recent statistics demonstrate the actual fact that while segregation might have been made
"illegal" before the courts (a point which the Bush administration is trying to change), in practice
segregationist policies are one of the main tools of capitalist bosses to divide the working class
along racial lines while driving down wages, by eliminating necessary public services such as
health care and education that affect all workers, for example. While the capitalist bosses enjoy
the full benefits of their workers' labor and live a life without fear of not being able to afford
basic necessities, 22% of African-American workers and 34% of Latino workers do not have
access to health care and 27% of both African-American and Latino workers live below the
poverty line. At the same time, the U.S. capitalist class is trying to extend the policing tactics it
has used against the African-American members of the working class—for instance, while
African-Americans constitute roughly 13% of the population in the United States, they
represent almost half (48%) of all prison inmates and half of all death-row convictions in what
has become a form of "legal lynching"—by criminalizing all people of color as part of their "war
on terror". INS lock-ups, draconian immigration laws that are going to require all working
people to carry ID cards, and Ashcroft's on-going policy of detainment without trial are all
aimed at dividing the working class and ensuring that a segment of the population forever
remains available as a "cheaper" source of labor (and a "scapegoat" when crisis emerges).¶
While Lott's comments have made all of this (momentarily) "visible" in the mainstream press,
the unfolding cultural commentary has trivialized the issue by focusing on the personalities and
speculating about whether the American people are ready to accept a racist message from their
leaders. In other words, the corporate media does what it always does and turns what should be
an occasion for investigating the social effects created by the powers that be, which should be
the role of the press in a democracy, into a cultural debate about people's "values" that silently
normalizes the rule of the powerful whose material interests in fact dictate what counts as
public opinion because in actuality they own and control the culture industry and government.¶
The political economy of race, in short, is systematically suppressed by the ruling ideology. The
common sense of "race" trivializes it as a cultural "stigma" that blocks the free play of market
forces and produces unfair "discrimination" in the job market that, if left to itself, gives all an
"equal opportunity". By turning racism from an economic to a cultural matter, the commonsense view of race diffuses the issue into a private matter of individuals—that is, there is racial
discrimination because there are racist people; a circular logic that fails to explain what it
claims to. This privatized view of race as discriminatory ideas, however, reflects the rule of a
society that enshrines private property as the motor of economic life and normalizes the
exploitation of the majority who are therefore forced to produce profit for the few just in order
to survive. In other words, the common-sense of race in capitalism silently accepts and
normalizes the unequal class relations that systematically contradict the ideal of "equal
opportunity" and produce racism today: in an economy based on private control of the social
means of production, competition is the rule and racism is a tool for increasing profits because
it justifies unequal wages and undermines the unity of workers in the face of their exploiters.
This class-consciousness of race is suppressed under the false consciousness that if left to itself
the market frees the people from discriminatory ideas and gives everyone a chance to benefit
equally: i.e., that the market is "colorblind". The common-sense that race is a matter of ideas
that contradict the principles of the free market is a not so subtle ruse to deflect attention
from the socio-economic causes of racism in capitalism onto its cultural effects and serves the
interests of the few who alone actually benefit from racism in the world of wage-labor and
capital. The cultural debate over the racism of the Republicans, the speculation of whether such
and such politician is or is not racist, makes racism a matter of the ideas and beliefs of
individuals so as to instill faith in the underlying class relations that systematically breed racism
today
Taylor, doctoral candidate in the department of African American Studies at Northwestern
University, 2011 (Keeanga-Yamahtta. January 4th 2011. The Socialist Worker “Race, Class and
Marxism” http://socialistworker.org/2011/01/04/race-class-and-marxism NMS)
Today, the need for a revolutionary alternative to the failures of capitalism has never been
greater. The election of Barack Obama came 40 years after the passage of the 1968 Civil Rights
Act, the last piece of civil rights legislation from the civil rights era of the 1960s. Despite the
enormous shift in racial attitudes symbolized by the election of a Black president in a country
built in large part on the enslavement of Black people, the condition of the vast majority of
African Americans today is perilous.¶ For almost two years, Black unemployment has fluctuated
between 15 and 17 percent. Almost 20 percent of African Americans under the age of 65 are
without health insurance compared to 15 percent for the rest of the population. According to
the Center for Responsible Lending, a home owned by an African American or Latino family is 76
percent more likely to be foreclosed upon than a white-owned home.¶ The wipeout of home
ownership among African Americans threatens to widen even more the gap in median family
net worth. In 2007, the average white family had a net worth of more than $171,000 compared
to less than $29,000 for African American and Latino families. More than 25 percent of Blacks
and Latinos languish below the official poverty line, and more than a third of Black and Latino
children live in poverty.¶ The distressing numbers that document the full impact of racism and
discrimination in the United States have no end. But while conditions across Black America
threaten to wipe out the economic gains made possible by the civil rights movement, millions
of white workers are meeting their Black brothers and sisters on the way down. Tens of millions
of white workers are stuck in long-term joblessness, without health insurance and waiting for
their homes to be foreclosed upon.¶ Thus, the question of Black, Latino and white unity is not
abstract or academic, but must be a concrete discussion about how to collectively go forward.¶
For most of the 20th century, legal racism both North and South created a tension-filled crossclass alliance in the African American community that was focused on freedom and equal
treatment. The legislative fruition of that in the form of legal civil rights removed the barriers to
advance for a small section of Black America. To be sure, the "Black middle class" is tenuous,
fragile and, for many, a paycheck or two away from oblivion, but a more stable and ambitious
Black elite most definitely exists, and their objectives and aspirations are anathema to the future
of the mass of Black people.¶ No serious Marxist organization demands that Black and Latino
workers put their struggles on the backburner while some mythical class struggle is waged
beforehand. This impossible formulation rests on the ridiculous notion that the working class is
white and male, and thus incapable of taking up issues of race, class and gender. In fact, the
American working class is female, immigrant, Black and white. Immigrant issues, gender issues
and anti-racism are working-class issues and to miss this is to be operating with a completely
anachronistic idea of the working class.¶ Genuine Marxist organizations understand that the
only way of achieving unity in the working class over time is to fight for unity today and every
day. Workers will never unite to fight for state power if they cannot unite to fight for workplace
demands today. If white workers are not won to anti-racism today, they will never unite with
Black workers for a revolution tomorrow. If Black workers are not won to being against antiimmigrant racism today, they will never unite with Latino workers for a revolution tomorrow.¶
This is why Lenin said that a revolutionary party based on Marxism must be a "tribune of the
oppressed," willing to fight against the oppression of any group of people, regardless of the
class of those affected. And this is why, despite the anti-Marxist slurs from academics and even
some who consider themselves part of the left, the idea that Marxism has been on the outside
of the struggle against racism in the U.S. and around the world defies history and the legacy of
Black revolutionaries who understood Marxism as a strategy for emancipation and liberation.¶
The challenge today is to make revolutionary Marxism, once again, a part of the discussion of
how to end the social catastrophe that is unfolding in Black communities across the United
States.
Attempts to resolve racism that leave capitalism intact will fail
Hall, leader and chairman of the CPUSA, 85—Gus, born Arvo Kustaa Halbergwas, was a leader and
Chairman of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) was four-time U.S. presidential candidate [Courtesy Wikipedia].”(Fighting Racism:
Selected Writings 1985 pgs. 266-267 http://www.questiaschool.com/read/22117083/fighting-racism-selected-writings [URL may be
inaccessible])
One can not help but admire the groups which get together and go into the ghettos to "clean up a block." The clergy who inititate
such actions do so with the best of intentions. But such efforts are not solutions. In fact they are misleading, since ghettos are not
the result of people failing to clean up their neighborhoods. These well-meaning efforts are fruitless because they do not come to
grips with the underlying causes of the problem .
Any action that does not lead to a search for basic causes
will not result in even temporary solutions . Mass actions must lead to inquiry that in turn can
lead to even more meaningful mass struggles. Such is the path to victory. What line of inquiry do the
corporate powers want to obstruct? The one that asks: What makes ghettos? Why should tens of millions of
Americans be forced to live in rat infested, dilapidated, rundown tenements without
elementary conveniences or facilities? Why is this the lot of Black Americans in the first place?
If the answer is poverty, what then is the cause of poverty? Why is there such poverty in the midst of plenty? If the answer is
unemployment, low wages, high prices, rents and taxes, what then is the reason for unemployment and low wages? And again,
why is the percentage of Black Americans among the unemployed and low-paid so large? This
line of inquiry leads to the very doorstep of the real culprit. It guides one to the real enemy -- the exploiting class
-- and its accessories. For Marxists this is not a new discovery. But for the millions it is a necessary line of inquiry and an important
and necessary discovery. This line of inquiry will lead from actions on the spontaneous level to a conscious line of struggle focused
on the basic cause of the oppression. At the end of such a line of inquiry the people will find the culprit:
the corporate
system of capitalism, a system in which the few rob the many. It is this system that creates
unemployment and low wages, jacks up prices, rents and taxes. This system , this capitalist
structure , adapted from slavery the special system of oppressing the Afro- American people
and fitted it to its system of exploiting workers. The express purpose of this system is to rob the poor. The
entire corporate structure exists for the sole purpose of squeezing as much as possible from
the people and giving as little as possible back to them. It thus makes the handful of rich richer and the millions of
poor poorer. Exploitation is the economic basis of capitalism. The basic function of capitalist ideology is to justify
and to facilitate exploitation of the workers by the capitalists. The basic politics of capitalism is the politics of exploitation. It is a
politics that preserves and perpetuates this exploitative system. In short, the whole capitalist establishment is an instrument of
exploitation. But why repeat such elementary truths? Only to point out the special responsibility of Communists, of Marxists. These
truths are not known by the millions who are in struggle. This side of capitalism remains hidden to them. It is very carefully
camouflaged. All "establishment" inquiries stop at this border. It is a safe bet that the presidential commission appointed to
investigate the summer rebellions in the ghettos will not enter this arena of inquiry. T his crisis forces all Americans to re-examine
their responsibilities. That white Americans have a special responsibility there can be no doubt. How this responsibility is placed is a
very important question. Our purpose in placing it is to win white Americans to the goal of putting an end to the system of
discrimination against their Black fellow Americans and thereby create a united people's force for overall progress. By and large,
Afro-Americans are, to one degree or another, in this struggle. The challenge at this point is to win a larger section of white America.
Black-white unity is one of the keys to victory over discrimination and segregation.
Capitalism is the root cause of racism; racism masks exploitative capitalism
Young, professor of English at the University of Alabama, 6—Dr. Robert M was a professor of
English in the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Alabama. He passed away in 2010. (“Putting Materialism back into
Race Theory:
Toward a Transformative Theory of Race”
http://www.redcritique.org/WinterSpring2006/puttingmaterialismbackintoracetheory.htm)
So, then, what is so new in the new social movements? It is certainly very "old" in the way it rehabilitates liberal notions of the autonomous subject. Its
newness is a sign of the contemporary crisis-ridden conjuncture in capitalist social relations. This
crisis of capital and the ensuing
rupture in its ideological narrative provides the historical condition for articulating resistance
along the axes of race, class, gender, ecology, etc. Even though resistance may take place in
very specific domains, such as race, gender, ecological, or sexuality, among others, this does not mean that the
crisis is local. It simply indexes how capitalist exploitation brings every social sphere under its
totalizing logic. However, rather then point up the systematicity of the crisis, the theorists of
the new social movements turn to the local, as if it is unrelated to questions of globality. With
Gilroy and the new social movements, we are returned, once again, to the local and the experiential sets the limits of understanding. Gilroy asserts that
people "unable to control the social relations in which they find themselves…have shrunk the world to the size of their communities and begun to act
politically on that basis" (245). If this is true, then Gilroy, at the level of theory, mirrors this as he "shrinks" his theory to the dictates of crude
empiricism. Rather than opening the possibility of collective control over social relations, which points in an emancipatory direction, Gilroy brackets the
question of "social relation" and consequently, he limits politics to the cultural (re)negotiations of identity. If Gilroy deploys the post-colonial racialized
agent for displacing class, then Homi Bhabha's postcolonial theory detaches race from political economy by reinscribing race within the problematics of
signification. In The Location of Culture, Bhabha's last chapter, "Race', time and the revision of modernity", situates the question of race within the
"ambivalent temporality of modernity" (239). In this way, Bhabha foregrounds the "time-lag" between "event" and "enunciation" and, for Bhabha, this
produces space for postcolonial agency. Political agency revolves around deconstructing signs from totalities and thereby delaying the connection
between signifier and signified and resistance is the effect of this ambivalence. Hence, for Bhabha, "the intervention of postcolonial or black critique is
aimed at transforming the conditions of enunciation at the level of the sign" (247). This idealist reading of the social reduces politics to a struggle over
the sign rather than the relations of production. Indeed, Bhabha re-understands the political not as an ideological practice aimed at social
transformation—the project of transformative race theory. Instead, he theorizes "politics as a performativity" (15). But what is the social effect of this
understanding of politics? Toward what end might this notion point us? It seems as if the political now calls for (cosmopolitan) witnesses to the always
already permanent slippage of signification and this (formal) process of repetition and reinscription outlines a space for "other forms of enunciation"
(254). But will these "other forms of enunciation" naturally articulate resistance to the dominant political and ideological interests? For Bhabha, of
course, we "need to think beyond narratives of originary and initial subjectivities and to focus on those moments or processes that are produced in the
articulation of cultural differences" (1). However, cultural differences, in themselves, do not necessarily mean opposition. Indeed, at the moment,
cultural difference represents one of the latest zones for commodification and, in this regard, it ideologically legitimates capitalism. Bhabha
homogenizes (cultural) difference and, consequently, he covers over ideological struggles within the space of cultural difference. In short, this other
historical site is not the site for pure difference, which naturally resists the hegemonic; for it, too, is the site for political contestation. Bhabha's
formalism makes it seem as if ambivalence essentially inheres in discourse. Ambivalence results from opposed political interests that inflect discourses
and so the ambivalence registers social conflict. In Marxism and the Philosophy and Language, Vološinov offers this materialist understanding of the
sign: Class does not coincide with the sign community, i.e. with the community which is the totality of users of the same set of signs for ideological
communication. Thus various different classes will use one and the same language. As a result, differently oriented accents intersect in every
ideological sign. Sign becomes an arena of class struggle. (22) The very concept—ideology—that could delineate the political character and therefore
class interests involved in structuring the content of discourses, Bhabha excludes from his discourse. In the end, Bhabha's discourse advocates what
amounts to discursive freedom and he substitutes this for material freedom. Like Gilroy, Bhabha's discursive freedom takes place within the existing
system. In contrast to Bhabha, Marx theorizes the material presupposition of freedom. In the German Ideology, Marx argues that "people cannot be
liberated as long as they are unable to obtain food and drink, housing and clothing in adequate quality and quantity" (61). Thus for Marx "[l]iberation"
is an historical and not a mental act" (61). In suppressing the issue of need, Bhabha's text reveals his own class interests. The studied preoccupation
with "ambivalence" reflects a class privilege, and it speaks to the crisis for (postcolonial) subjects torn between national affiliation and their privileged
(and objective) class position within the international division of labor. The ambivalence is a symptom of social antagonism, but in Bhabha's hands, it
becomes a transhistorical code for erasing the trace of class. Here, then, is one of the primary effects of the postmodern knowledge practices: class is
deconstructed as a metaphysical dinosaur. In this regard, postmodernists collude with the humanists in legitimating the sanctity of the local. Both
participate in narrowing cultural intelligibility to questions of (racial) discourse or the (black) subject and, in doing so, they provide ideological immunity
for capitalism. It is now very difficult to even raise the issue of class, particularly if you raise the issue outside of the logic of supplementarity—today's
ruling intellectual logic which provides a theoretical analog to contemporary neo-liberal political structures. In one of the few recent texts to explore
the centrality of class, bell hooks' Where We Stand, we are, once again, still left with a reaffirmation of capitalism. For instance, hooks argues for
changes within capitalism: "I identify with democratic socialism, with a vision of participatory economics within capitalism that aims to challenge and
change class hierarchy" (156). Capitalism produces class hierarchy and, therefore, as long as capitalism remains, class hierarchy and antagonism will
remain. Hence, the solution requires a transformation of class society. However, hooks mystifies capitalism as a
transhistorical system and thus she can assert that the "poor may be with us always" (129). Under this view, politics becomes a matter of "bearing
witness" to the crimes of capitalism, but rather than struggle for its replacement, hooks call for strategies of "self-actualization" and redistributing
resources to the poor. She calls for the very same thing—collectivity—that capitalism cannot provide because social resources are privatized under
capitalism. Consequently, Hooks' program for "self-esteem" is an attempt to put a human face on capitalism. Whether one considers the recent work
by African-American humanists, or discourse theorists, or even left-liberal intellectuals, these various groups—despite their intellectual differences—
form a ruling coalition and one thing is clear: capitalism set the limit for political change, as there is no alternative to the rule of capital. In contrast to
much of contemporary race theory, a transformative theory of race highlights the political economy of race in the interests of an emancipatory political
project. Wahneema Lubiano once wrote that "the
idea of race and the operation of racism are the best friends
that the economic and political elite have in the United States" (vii). Race mystifies the
structure of exploitation and masks the severe inequalities within global capitalism.
I am afraid
that, at this point, many contemporary race theorists, in their systematic erasure of materialism, have become close (ideological) allies with the
economic and political elites, who deny even the existence of classes. A
transformative race theory pulls back into focus
the struggle against exploitation and sets a new social priority "in which the free development
of each is the condition for the free development of all" (Marx 31).
Black alienation is rooted in capitalism; the aff’s refusal to accept so supports
capitalism
Young, professor of English at the University of Alabama, 6—Dr. Robert M was a professor of
English in the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Alabama. He passed away in 2010. (“Putting Materialism back into
Race Theory:
Toward a Transformative Theory of Race”
http://www.redcritique.org/WinterSpring2006/puttingmaterialismbackintoracetheory.htm)
Indeed, the
discourse of the subject operates as an ideological strategy for fetishizing the black
experience and, consequently, it positions black subjectivity beyond the reach of Marxism. For
example, in The Afrocentric Idea, Asante dismisses Marxism because it is Eurocentric; but are the core concepts of Marxism, such as
class and mode of production, relevant only for European social formations? Are African and African American social
histories/relations unshaped by class structures? Asante assumes that class hierarchies do not structure African or the African
American social experiences, and this reveals the class politics of Afrocentricity: It makes class invisible. Asante’s
assumption, which erases materialism, enables Asante to offer the idealist formulation that
the “word creates reality” (Afrocentric Idea 70). The political translation of such idealism is, not surprisingly, very
conservative. Asante directs us away from critiquing capitalist institutions, in a manner similar to the
ideological protocol of the Million Man March, and calls for vigilance against symbolic oppression. As Asante
tellingly puts it, “symbol imperialism, rather than institutional racism, is the major social problem facing multicultural societies”
In the realm of African American philosophy, Howard McGary Jr. also deploys the
discourse of the (black) subject to mark the limits of Marxism. For instance, in a recent interview, McGary
(Afrocentric Idea 56).
offers this humanist rejection of Marxism: “I don’t think that the levels of alienation experienced by Black people are rooted
primarily in economic relations” (Interview 90). For
McGary, black alienation exceeds the logic of Marxist
theory and thus McGary’s idealist assertion that “the sense of alienation experienced by Black people in the U.S. is also rooted in
the whole idea of what it means to be a human being and how that has to be understood” (Interview 90). McGary confuses
causes and effects and then misreads Marxism as a descriptive modality. Marxism is not as
concerned with descriptive accounts, the effects, as it is with explanatory accounts; that is, it is
concerned with the cause of social alienation because such an explanatory account acts as a
guide for praxis.
Social alienation is a historical effect, and its explanation and such and explanation emerges from the
transpersonal space of concepts. In theorizing the specificity of black alienation, McGary reveals his contradictory ideological
coordinates. First, he argues that black alienation results from cultural “beliefs.” Then, he suggests that these cultural “norms” and
“practices” develop from slavery and Jim Crow, which are fundamentally economic relations for the historically specific exploitation
of black people. If these cultural norms endogenously emerge from the economic systems of slavery and Jim Crow, as McGary
correctly suggests, then and contrary to McGary’s expressed position,
black alienation is very much rooted in
economic relations. McGary’s desire to place black subjectivity beyond Marxism creates
contradictions in his text. McGary asserts that the economic structures of slavery and Jim Crow shape cultural norms.
Thus, in a postslavery, post-Jim Crow era, there would still be an economic structure
maintaining contemporary oppressive norms—from McGary’s logic this must be the case. McGary remains silent,
however, on the contemporary economic system structuring black alienation: capitalism. Apparently,
it is legitimate to foreground and critique the historical connection between economics and alienation but any inquiry into the
present-day connection between economics and alienation is off limits. This other economic structure— capitalism—
remains
the
unsaid in
McGary’s
discourse, and consequently
McGary
provides ideological
support for capitalism —the exploitative infrastructure that produces and maintains alienation for blacks as well as for all
working people.
Racism is a tool of capitalism that divides workers and prevents an overthrow
of the system
Reich, professor of political economy at UC Berkeley, 74 Michael is a Professor of Political Economy
at U. C. Berkeley. (“The Economics of Racism”—1974 http://tomweston.net/ReichRacism.pdf)
COMPETING EXPLANATIONS OF RACISM How is the historical persistence of racism in the United States to be explained? The most prominent analysis
of discrimination among economists was formulated in 1957 by Gary Becker in his book, The Economics of -3- Discrimination. 6 Racism, according to
Becker, is fundamentally a problem of tastes and attitudes. Whites are defined to have a "taste for discrimination" if they are willing to forfeit income
in order to be associated with other whites instead of blacks. Since white employers and employees prefer not to associate with blacks, they require a
monetary compensation for the psychic cost of such association. In Becker's principal model, white employers have a taste for discrimination;
marginal productivity analysis is invoked to show that white employers lose while white workers gain (in monetary terms) from discrimination against
blacks. Becker does not try to explain the source of white tastes for discrimination. For him, these attitudes are determined outside of the economic
system. (Racism could presumably be ended simply by changing these attitudes, perhaps by appeal to whites on moral grounds.) According to
Becker's analysis, employers would find the ending of racism to be in their economic self-interest, but white workers would not. The persistence of
racism is thus implicitly laid at the door of white workers. Becker suggests that long-run market forces will lead to the end of discrimination anyway:
less discriminatory employers, with no "psychic costs" to enter in their accounts, will be able to operate at lower costs by hiring equivalent black
workers at lower wages, thus bidding up the black wage rate and/or driving the more discriminatory employers out of business. The approach to
racism argued here is entirely different. Racism
is viewed as rooted in the economic system and not in
"exogenously determined" attitudes. Historically, the American Empire was founded on the
racist extermination of American Indians, was financed in large part by profits from slavery,
and was extended by a string of interventions, beginning with the Mexican War of the 1840s, which have been
at least partly justified by white supremacist ideology. Today, by transferring white resentment
toward blacks and away from capitalism, racism continues to serve the needs of the
capitalist system.
Although individual employers might gain by refusing to dis-criminate and hiring more blacks, thus raising the black
wage rate, it is not true that the capitalist class as a whole would benefit if racism were eliminated and labor were more efficiently allocated without
regard to skin color. We will show below that
the divisiveness of racism weakens workers' strength when
bargaining with employers ; the economic consequences of racism are not only lower
incomes for blacks but also higher incomes for the capitalist class and lower incomes for
white workers. Although capitalists may not have conspired consciously to create racism, and although capitalists may not be its principal
perpetuators, never-the-less racism docs support the continued viability of the American capitalist system.
We have, then, two alternative approaches to the analysis of racism. The first suggests that capitalists lose and white workers gain from racism. The
second predicts the opposite—capitalists gain while workers lose. The first says that racist "tastes for discrimination" are formed independently of
the economic system; the second argues that racism interacts symbiotically with capitalistic economic institutions. The very persistence of racism in
the United States lends support to the second approach. So do repeated instances of employers using blacks as strikebreakers, as in the massive steel
strike of 1919, and employerinstigated exacerbation of racial antagonisms during that strike and many others.7 However, the particular virulence of
racism among many blue- and white-collar workers and their families seems to refute our approach and support Becker.
Racism is used by capitalism to divide workers and prevent unity against
industry
Bohmer, professor at Evergreen State College, 98—Peter is a professor at the Evergreen State
College in Olympia, Washington and has a B.S., Economics and Mathematics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1965; Ph.D.,
Economics, University of Massachusetts, 1985. (“Marxist Theory of Racism and Racial Inequality”—12/20/1998
http://academic.evergreen.edu/b/bohmerp/marxracism.htm)
Marxist models of racial discrimination have been developed to rectify this shortcoming, and to simultaneously critique the
implications derived from Gary Becker and Milton Friedman’s conclusion that capitalism and racism are incompatible. These classbased models show the interests of employers as a class to pay lower wages to blacks than to whites coincide with the interests of
the individual employer. They focus on one central aspect of racism, that capitalism
uses racism to divide workers.
an individual
employer can make more profit from a racially divided working class than from a united one. In
these models, the level of wages and the average production per worker depend on workers’ bargaining
power as well as on the technology. More worker bargaining power means higher wages and lower profits, and less
bargaining power means lower wages and higher profits. This provides a microeconomic foundation,
Based on Marx’s analysis that production is a social as well as a technical process, these models show that
consistent with profit maximizing behavior, of disparate on the job treatment of equally skilled black and white workers. It also
explains why black workers will not replace white workers, even if the latter can be paid lower wages. These ideas are developed
By hiring both white workers and black workers, but
paying a lower wage to the black workers, employers as a class gain by racism and racial inequality, and
each individual employer also maximizes profits. Paying unequal wages in a firm based on race divides workers, makes
unity weaker than it would be if all workers received the same wage or if the workforce was racially homogeneous. The
most thoroughly in Michael Reich’s, Racial Inequality.
resulting disunity from racial division lowers average wages and increases profits. At a certain point, however, firms do not hire
more lower paid black workers to replace white workers because this would lead to more black worker militancy possibly raising the
overall level of wages. Alternatively, though with similar results, the disunity of workers caused by different wages paid to blacks and
whites leads to increased profits. The reason in the latter case is the employers are able to get workers to work harder and faster
and produce more than they would have otherwise. Doing careful econometric analysis, Michael Reich shows that the data on racial
inequality is consistent with and provides support for this theory. Using data primarily from the 1970 census, he compares urban
areas. He demonstrates that
greater racial inequality causes lower average earnings of white workers
and higher profit rates.
He uses the ratio of black to white earnings as a measure of racial inequality and racism. In cities
in the U.S. South, where the gaps between the wages of blacks and whites are greatest, wages of whites are lowest, and profit
highest. Reich demonstrates empirically that
not only do black workers lose from racism but so do all
workers as their incomes are reduced.
If the wages of blacks equaled whites, not only would the wages of blacks be
higher but so would the wages of whites. When synthesized with the historical analysis of racism, these models provide insight into
the reasons for the reproduction of black-white earnings inequality. They demonstrate that capitalists
divide the
working class, and that the correct strategy for the increase of racial and overall equality (between employees and employers)
is an alliance of black and other workers of color with white workers against their common exploiter, capital. There are a number of
problems however. This model downplays the role and importance of black people and black organizations in challenging racial
inequality and exploitation. Also missing is a convincing explanation of why white workers often accept or support racial inequality
and a racist ideology. Since in this framework, the incomes of white as well as black workers are lowered, claiming white workers
have ‘false-consciousness’ is not a sufficient explanation of their racism. Although this class-based approach to racism provides
insight into the reproduction of racial and overall inequality, it leads to class reductionism and excessive economic determinism.
Class reductionism considers central only movements and issues directly related to class struggle between the working and capitalist
class. Economic determinism means the economy determines the politics, culture, consciousness and struggles of a society; it
minimizes the autonomous role of culture and race. In the class-based approaches to racism (and in the internal colonialism
framework examined in the next chapter), there is little analysis of the role and situation of black and white women and how it has
differed from that of black and white men. Gender is almost completely disregarded and there is little investigation of the relation
between gender, race and class oppression. Recent developments in Marxist theory have led to a fuller analysis of racism. These
include theorizing the importance of non-class-based groupings such as gender and ethnicity. Culture, ideology, consciousness and
the State are examined as more than reflections of the economic base. They are important aspects of society that influence and are
influenced by the entire social formation.
Capitalism uses race as a means to separate workers and prevent action against
conditions
Reich, Gordon, & Edwards, professors at University of Boston, Harvard, and
Harvard, 73—Michael, David M, and Richard C. are professors at Boston University, Harvard University, and Harvard University respectively. Michael was also a
professor of economics at UC Berkeley, David M. founded the Institute for Labor Education and Research in 1975 and later the Schwartz Center for Economic Policy Analysis in
New York City, and Richard C. is a partner in Casner & Edwards’ Nonprofit Organizations Law Practice and received a J.D. from Harvard Law School. (“Dual Labor Markets: A
Theory of Labor Market
Segmentation”—5/1/1973 http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1002&context=econfacpub&seiredir=1&referer=http%3A%2F%2Fscholar.google.com%2Fscholar_url%3Fhl%3Den%26q%3Dhttp%3A%2F%2Fdigitalcommons.unl.edu%2Fcgi%2Fviewcontent.cgi%253Farticle%25
3D1002%2526context%253Deconfacpub%26sa%3DX%26scisig%3DAAGBfm0gKF9qk3cSsk5OOTx7EewP6YvaUg%26oi%3Dscholarr#search=%22http%3A%2F%2Fdigitalcommons.u
nl.edu%2Fcgi%2Fviewcontent.cgi%3Farticle%3D1002%26context%3Deconfacpub%22)
At the same time that firms were segmenting their internal labor markets, similar efforts were under way with respect to the firm's
external relations.
Employers quite consciously exploited race, ethnic, and sex antagonisms in
order to undercut unionism and break strikes. In numerous instances during the consolidation of
monopoly capitalism, employers manipulated the mechanisms of labor supply in order to
import blacks as strikebreakers, and racial hostility was stirred up to deflect class conflicts
into race conflicts. For example, during the steel strike of 1919, one of the critical points in U.S. history, some
30,000 to 40,000 blacks were imported as strikebreakers in a matter of a few weeks. Employers also often trans
formed jobs into "female jobs" in order to render those jobs less susceptible to unionization (Brecher, D. Brody, Com- mons).
Employers also consciously manipulated ethnic antagonisms to achieve segmentation. Employers often hired groups from rival
nationalities in the same plant or in different plants. During labor unrest the companies sent spies and rumor mongers to each
camp, stirring up fears, hatred, and antagonisms of other groups. The strategy was most successful when many immigrant groups
had little command of English (Brecher, Brody).
Impact – Resource Wars
Capitalism ensures resource wars in the inevitable drive for resources
Wang, The University of Arizona Mathematics professor, 10
(Qiudong, 11/10/10, Arizona Mathematics homepage, “The Trend of Global Capitalism”,
http://math.arizona.edu/~dwang/treaty3.pdf, pg. 8, accessed 7/2/13, JZ)
Capitalism, as a framework for mankind to pursue collectively a happier life on¶ earth, has come a long way and has created
marvels. However, it has not yet succeeded in escaping a shadow long projected by Malthus, that is,
the ultimately disastrous consequence of the constraint of nature resources imposed on
human activities.¶ Modern technology has based material productivity of human societies on
increased¶ consumption of certain natural resources not reproducible on earth. Imperative need¶ for
these resources, in particular the energy resources, has imposed an ever increasing tension on
relationships of all sovereign members of the international community.¶ Existing energy
resource is obviously not sufficient to sustain an equal material consumption for all, and
hostile competition stimulated by the constraint on resources¶ is likely to bring forth the dark
side of humanity. This explains why western powers¶ have behaved so reluctantly to share with under developed world the
fruit of advancement of modern technology. They would rather keep these precious resources¶ for themselves. The logic behind the
course of their actions is irrefutable if we admit¶ that self-serving is an intrinsic human nature. The real issue is that, even if western
powers are completely successful in carrying¶ out their self-serving policy towards under developed world, they are only delaying¶
the explosion of a time bomb that is intrinsically built into the system. The base¶ of economic and social activities of the modern
world has to be shifted from irreproducible onto reproducible energy source, though we do not know yet how and even¶ how long it
will take us to figure a practical solution out. Without
a clear solution,¶ resource constraint would
eventually lead to hostile competition, resulting in a general declination of modern
civilization. There is still time but the clock is ticking. On¶ the other hand, one could only imagine the world of wonders
when mankind is finally¶ liberated from the pressure of a disastrous hostile competition caused by restraint of¶ nature resources.
The drive for profit creates wars, whether from greed or scarcity grievances
Le Billon, University of British Columbia associate professor, 3
(Phillippe, 2003, Associate Professor at the University of British Columbia, and a researcher at
the Liu Institute for Global Issues, “The Political Ecology of War and Resource Exploitation”,
Studies in Policy Economy,
https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/spe/article/viewFile/12076/8950, pg. 61, accessed
7/8/13, JZ)
Building on studies of the economic functions of violence and the economic agendas of "warlords,"
economists Paul
Collier and Anke Hoeffler identified primary commodity dependence as "the most powerful
risk factor" of civil war in their search to devise which of "greed" or "grievances" was the chief motivation of rebellion.?
They first interpreted this result as evidence that civil war resulted from greed over valuable
and plentiful resources, rather than grievances over scarce resources. While Collier and Hoeffler recently revised their
argument and placed natural resources as a contextual "opportunity" for rebellion rather than a primarily motivational factor, the
"greed factor" is not the only one linking natural resources to violent forms of conflicts and
appropriation. Despite a diversity of populations, cultures, and political systems, many resource-dependent countries share
similar difficulties-induding poor economic growth, high inequalities, and political authoritarianism-all factors of grievances. In the
light of the prominence of resource dependence as a characteristic of conflict-ridden
countries, both greed and grievances need to be acknowledged; as does the influence of
resource dependence on the vulnerability of institutional arrangements and the conflictuality
of power politics.
Capitalism’s drive for natural resources ensures wars over resource allocation
Le Billon, University of British Columbia associate professor, 1
(Phillippe, 2001, Associate Professor at the University of British Columbia, and a researcher at
the Liu Institute for Global Issues, “The political ecology of war: natural resources and armed
conflicts”, pg. 562-563, http://www.cddc.vt.edu/ept/eprints/ecowar.pdf, accessed 7/9/13, JZ)
Natural resources have played a conspicuous role in the history of armed conflicts. From
competition over wild game to merchant capital and imperialist wars over precious minerals,
natural resources have motivated or financed the violent activities of many different types of
belligerents (Westing, 1986).1 With the sharp drop in foreign assistance to many governments and rebel groups resulting from
the end of the Cold War, belligerents have become more dependent upon mobilising private sources
of support to sustain their military and political activities; thereby defining a new political
economy of war (Berdal & Keen, 1997; Le Billon, 2000a). Similarly, a fall in terms of international trade in primary
commodities and structural adjustments have led to a readjustment of the strategies of accumulation of many Southern ruling elites
towards‘shadow’state politics controlling informal economies and privatised companies (Reno, 1998). Although domestic and
foreign state budgets continue to support armed conflict expenditures, other major sources of funding include criminal proceeds
from kidnappings or protection rackets, diversion of relief aid, Diaspora remittances, and revenues from trading in commodities such
as drugs, timber or minerals (Jean & Rufin, 1996).2 Arms
dumping and the support of corrupt regimes during
the Cold War, the liberalisation of international trade, as well as the redeployment of state
security personnel and networks into private ventures have frequently participated in the
growth of such parallel networks and the ‘routinisation’ of criminal practices within states
institutions, most notably in Africa and the former Soviet Union (Bayart, Ellis, & Hibou, 1999; Duffield, 1998). There is
growing concern that whereas resources were once a means of funding and waging armed
conflict for states to a political end, armed conflict is increasingly becoming the means to
individual commercial ends: gaining access to valuable resources (Keen, 1998; Berdal & Malone, 2000).
This demise of ideology and politics informs, for example, the assumption of the UN Security Council that the control and
exploitation of natural resources motivates and finances parties responsible for the continuation of conflict in the Democratic
Republic of Congo.3
Impact – Value to Life
Capitalism creates mental conditions that decrease value to life
James, Trained psychologist, 08
(Oliver, theguardian, “Selfish Capitalism is bad for our mental health”, 1/2/08,
Add to this the astonishing fact that citizens of Selfish Capitalist, English-speaking nations (which tend to be one and the same) are
twice as likely to suffer mental illness as those from mainland western Europe, which is largely Unselfish Capitalist in its political
economy. An average 23% of Americans, Britons, Australians, New Zealanders and Canadians suffered in the last 12 months, but
only 11.5% of Germans, Italians, French, Belgians, Spaniards and Dutch. The message could not be clearer. Selfish Capitalism,
much more than genes, is extremely
bad for your mental health. But why is it so toxic? Readers of this newspaper
will need little reminding that Selfish Capitalism has massively increased the wealth of the wealthy,
robbing the average earner to give to the rich. There was no "trickle-down effect" after all. The
real wage of the average English-speaking person has remained the same - or, in the case of the US,
decreased - since the 1970s. By more than halving the taxes of the richest and transferring the burden to the general
population, Margaret Thatcher reinstated the rich's capital wealth after three postwar decades in which they had steadily become
poorer. Although I risk you glazing over at these statistics, it's worth remembering that the top 1% of British earners have doubled
their share of the national income since 1982, from 6.5% to 13%, FTSE 100 chief executives now earning 133 times more than the
average wage (against 20 times in 1980); and under Brown's chancellorship the richest 0.3% nobbled over half of all liquid assets
(cash, instantly accessible income), increasing their share by 79% during the last five years. In itself, this economic inequality does
not cause mental illness. WHO studies show that some very inequitable developing nations, like Nigeria and China, also have the
lowest prevalence of mental illness. Furthermore, inequity may be much greater in the English-speaking world today, but it is far less
than it was at the end of the 19th century. While we have no way of knowing for sure, it is very possible that mental illness was
nowhere near as widespread in, for instance, the US or Britain of that time. What
does the damage is the
combination of inequality with the widespread relative materialism of Affluenza - placing a high
value on money, possessions, appearances and fame when you already have enough income
to meet your fundamental psychological needs. Survival materialism is healthy. If you need money for medicine
or to buy a house, becoming very concerned about getting them does not make you mentally ill. But Selfish Capitalism stokes
up relative materialism: unrealistic aspirations and the expectation that they can be fulfilled. It
does so to stimulate consumerism in order to increase profits and promote short-term
economic growth. Indeed, I maintain that high levels of mental illness are essential to Selfish Capitalism, because needy,
miserable people make greedy consumers and can be more easily suckered into perfectionist,
competitive workaholism. With overstimulated aspirations and expectations, the entrepreneurial fantasy society fosters
the delusion that anyone can be Alan Sugar or Bill Gates, never mind that the actual likelihood of this occurring has diminished since
the 1970s. A Briton turning 20 in 1978 was more likely than one doing so in 1990 to achieve upward mobility through education.
Nonetheless, in the Big Brother/ It Could Be You society, great swaths of the population believe they can become rich and famous,
and that it is highly desirable. This
is most damaging of all - the ideology that material affluence is the
key to fulfilment and open to anyone willing to work hard enough. If you don't succeed, there is only one person to blame never mind that it couldn't be clearer that it's the system's fault, not yours. Depressed or anxious, you work
ever harder. Or maybe you collapse and join the sickness benefit queue, leaving it to people shipped in to do the low-paid jobs
that society has taught you are too demeaning - let alone the unpaid ones, like looking after children or elderly parents, which are
beneath contempt in the Nouveau Labour liturgy. There is much tearing of hair across the media and advocacy of nose-pegging on
these pages of the "grin and bear it" variety. In fact,
there is an alternative. We desperately need - and before
long, I predict we will get - a passionate, charismatic, probably female leader who advocates the Unselfish Capitalism of our
neighbours. The pitch is simple. Not only would reduced
consumerism and greater equality make us more
ecologically sustainable, it would halve the prevalence of mental illness within a generation.
Capitalism leads to laborer objectification
AP, Works for Cyber Harvard Law, no date
(AP, the Bridge, “Economic Analysis leads to Commodification”, no date,
http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/bridge/LawEconomics/critique5.htm, 7/3/13, CF)
[T]he hegemony of profit-maximizing buying and selling stifles the individual and social
potential of human beings through its organization of production, distribution, and
consumption, and through its concomitant creation and maintenance of the person as a selfaggrandizing profit- and preference-maximizer. . . .1. Alienability and Alienation: The Problem of
Fetishism. -- For critics of the market society, commodification simultaneously expresses and
creates alienation. The word "alienation" thus harbors an ironic double meaning. Freedom of
alienation is the paramount characteristic of liberal property rights, yet Marx saw a necessary
connection between this market alienability and human alienation. In his early writings, Marx
analyzed the connection between alienation and commodity production in terms of estranged labor; later
he introduced the notion of commodity fetishism. In his treatment of estranged labor, Marx portrayed
workers' alienation from their own human self-activity as the result of producing objects that became
market commodities. By objectifying the labor of the worker, commodities create object-
bondage and alienate workers from the natural world in and with which they should
constitute themselves by creative interaction. Ultimately, laboring to produce commodities turns
the worker from a human being into a commodity, "indeed the most wretched of commodities." Marx
continued: The worker becomes an ever cheaper commodity the more commodities he creates.
With the increasing value of the world of things proceeds in direct proportion the devaluation
of the world of men. Labour produces not only commodities; it produces itself and the worker
as a commodity -- and does so in the proportion in which it produces commodities generally.
Commodification brings about an inferior form of human life. As a result of this debasement,
Marx concluded that people themselves, not just their institutions, must change in order to live
without the market. To reach the post-capitalist stage, "the alteration of men on a mass scale is
necessary." The fetishism of commodities represents a different kind of human subjection to commodities
(or a different way of looking at human subjection to commodities). By fetishism Marx meant a kind of
projection of power and action onto commodities. This projection reflects -- but disguises -- human
social interactions. Relationships between people are disguised as relationships between
commodities, which appear to be governed by abstract market forces.
Capitalism causes dehumanization-people are seen as only materials for
production
AP, Works for Cyber Harvard Law, no date
(AP, the Bridge, “Economic Analysis leads to Commodification”, no date,
http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/bridge/LawEconomics/critique5.htm, 7/3/13, CF)
I do not decide what objects to produce, rather "the market" does. Unless there is a demand for
paperweights, they will have no market value, and I cannot produce them for sale. Moreover, I do not
decide what price to sell them for, "the market" does. At market equilibrium, I cannot charge more nor
less than my opportunity costs of production without going out of business. In disequilibrium, my price
and profit are still set by "the market"; my price depends upon how many of us are supplying
paperweights in relation to how many people want to buy them and what they are willing to pay for
them. Thus, the market value of my commodity dictates my actions, or so it seems. As Marx put it,
"[producers'] own social action takes the form of the action of objects, which rule the
producers instead of being ruled by them." In an analysis that has profoundly influenced many
contemporary anticommodifiers, Georg Lukacs, developing Marx's concept of commodity fetishism, found
commodification to be "the central, structural problem of capitalist society in all its aspects." Lukacs
linked the trend to commodify the worker with Weberian "rationalization" of the capitalist
structure. The more efficient production becomes, the more fungible are the laborers. Moreover,
fungibility becomes pervasive: [T]he principle of rational mechanisation and calculability
[embraces] every aspect of life. Consumer articles no longer appear as the products of an
organic process within a community (as for example in a village community). They now appear, on
the one hand, as abstract members of a species identical by definition with its other members and,
on the other hand, as isolated objects the possession or nonpossession of which depends on rational
calculations. These falsely objectified commodities are said to be reified. According to Lukacs,
reification penetrates every level of intellectual and social life. False objectification -- false
separateness from us -- in the way we conceive of our social activities and environment
reflects and creates dehumanization and powerlessness . The rhetoric, the discourse in which we
conceive of our world, affects what we are and what our world is. For example, Lukacs thought that the
universal commodification of fully developed capitalism underlies physicalist reductionism in science and
the tendency to conceive of matter as external and real. He thought that universal commodification
also underlies both our rigid division of the world into subjects versus objects ("the metaphysical
dilemma of the relation between 'mind' and 'matter'"), and the "Kantian dilemma" that places objective
reason, purportedly the foundation of metaphysics and ethics, in the noumenal realm forever beyond our
reach. For Lukacs, thought and reality are inextricably linked.
The capitalist system commodifies the working class as just means for profit
Leys and Harriss-White, AP, 13
(Colin and Barbra, OpenDemocracy, “Commodification: The essence of our
time”, 4/2/13, http://www.opendemocracy.net/ourkingdom/colin-leysbarbara-harriss-white/commodification-essence-of-our-time, 7/3/13, CF)
Under advanced capitalism, commodification expands into all corners of social and political
life, with devastating consequences. Finding a limit to this process is more urgent than ever.
The dominant process underlying the transformation of life in all societies, since at least the
mid-nineteenth century, is the conversion of things and activities into commodities, or
commodification. In advanced capitalist countries this process is now outstripping our political
and social capacity to adjust to it. Any useful economic analysis needs to foreground this
process. Mainstream economics does not do this. Commodities & commodification Not
everything useful is a commodity. What makes anything a commodity is the possibility of
trading it for profit. Apples grown in someone’s back yard are not commodities; apples become
commodities only when they are grown for sale. Under capitalism, nothing is produced that
can’t be sold for profit, so the production of commodities is capitalism’s raison d’etre. The
Italian economist Piero Sraffa even defined capitalism as ‘the production of commodities by
means of commodities’ – meaning, by means of production that are also traded: i.e. not only
raw materials and machinery, but also labour which under capitalism is sold by workers and
bought by employers.
Slavery is justifies in capitalism, reducing people to nothing but the means for
production and devaluating them as human beings
Sakisaka, Writer for Marxist.org, 06
(Itsuko, Marxists.org, “Exploitation of labor”, 2006,
http://www.marxists.org/subject/japan/sakisaka/exploitation.htm, 7/9/13, CF)
Capitalism represents an historical era in which commodity production spans the entirety of society.
Human labor-power is commodified. As a commodity, labor-power also has value. And a wage
is received that is the price of this commodity. Because surplus-labor is exploited in the form
of commodity production, surplus-labor takes the form of surplus-value. Capitalism is highly
developed commodity production so the exploitation of surplus-labor likewise represents an
extremely complex issue. In the case of the exploitation of slave labor, by contrast, things are
exceedingly clear. Slaves, who exist as a sort of animal owned by another human being, have
no freedom . Like a dog, a slave is unable to exercise any degree of physical or mental freedom. The products of a
slave's labor belong in their entirety to the slave owner. All that is received in return is food.
A
peasant, meanwhile, is a sort of half-person. Firmly tied to the land, a peasant cannot choose what to grow or which land to grow it
on, nor is he free to choose a profession. To the extent that peasants cultivate the plot of land they are provided, they are able to
obtain food, clothing and lodging. But the fruit of their labor on the lord's fields entirely belong to this master. There is thus a clear,
temporal division between the labor the peasants perform for themselves and that performed for the feudal lord. This makes it
difficult to conceal the fact that labor is exploited. And when, as subsequently occurs, some of the products from the land the
peasants themselves cultivate must be paid as a tribute to this lord, in addition to their labor to cultivate the lord's fields, this also
clearly presents itself as exploitation because it takes an in-kind form. Even though the yearly rice tribute was referred to in
Japanese as goko-gomin (50 percent for master, 50 percent for peasant), this did not change the fact that the master's share was
also the product of the peasant's labor. Under
capitalism, however, things are different. Labor-power is
commodified and thus sold according to its value. The means of production are also purchased
and owned by the capitalist class. Capitalists come into possession of the means of production
and labor-power through the process of circulation, as well as the resulting products that likewise flow back to
them via the circulation process to meet their needs. Even if everything is bought and sold at its value,
capitalists are able to obtain the surplus-labor that forms surplus-value. What is the secret behind all of
this?
Impact - Warming
Arguments that capitalism can solve warming are incorrect and
unsubstantiated
Liodakis and Vlachou 04 (George Liodakis and Andriana Vlachou, Professor at the Technical
Institute of Crete, Associate Professor of Economics at the Athens University of Economics and Business,
Winter 2004 Science & Society, Vol. 67, No. 4 pp.465 http://www.jstor.org.proxyremote.galib.uga.edu/stable/40404112)
Here we have clear indications of an agnostic approach to the prospects for ecological and social crisis. But apart from this,
Vlachou is certainly right that capitalism has a great potential to push back (postpone) crisis, and that there is not any
immediate threat of ecological collapse. And this can be ensured either through institutional and state regulation, or through
the operation of the market and the law of value. However, Vlachou is completely wrong, and it
is greatly misleading,
to implicitly assume that this potential of capitalism is unlimited, and that ultimately
capitalism is ecologically sus- tainable. Indeed, it is the thrust of Vlachou' s analysis that the
"greening" of capitalism could ensure its ecological sustainability: "'greening of capitalism' may well be the capitalist response to ecological problems. . . . When and if natural constraints do
result in crises, the latter can help the rapid restructuring of the capitalist appropriation of nature so that 'doomsday' never
comes" (192). It is argued, even more explicitly, that "increases in prices and rents and the resulting class conflicts may in turn
help in shap- ing the 'greening' of capitalism, without it having to go through a full-fledged crisis in order to reorganize its
interchange with nature" (194). But
will eco- regulation (or internalizing externalities in the standard neoclassical approach) be sufficient in facing up to the problem of environmental degra- dation? While it is my
view and assessment that it will not, it seems that Vlachou answers this question in the affirmative. And this
appears to be the case, even without the need for state intervention and regulation, but merely through the market mechanism
and the operation of the law of value. This overoptimistic
implication, however, cannot be seriously
substantiated, ei- ther theoretically or empirically
Neoliberalism is fundamentally incapable of addressing environmental
concerns
Cooley 09 (Dennis Cooley, Associate Director of the Northern Plains Ethics Institute and Associate
Professor of Philosophy and Ethics at North Dakota State University, Journal of Business Ethics, Oct 2009,
“Understanding Social Welfare Capitalism, Private Property, and the Government’s Duty to Create a
Sustainable Environment,” http://ehis.ebscohost.com.proxyremote.galib.uga.edu/ehost/detail?sid=1de6a503-259f-437a-a449c01a962475c9%40sessionmgr104&vid=3&hid=2&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d#db=bth&A
N=44645386)
However, assuming
that perfectly competitive free markets can adequately solve real world
ethical situations is irrational. First, the cost-benefit/economic analysis underlying perfectly
competitive free markets is incapable of determining moral values and duties . One of the major
problems is the category mistake created when trying to use economics to determine the value of nature and other objects not
existing entirely within the market system, much like using meters to measure liquids. At the very least, to
view the
natural environment solely in terms of profit maximization shows a lack of ‘‘proper
humility, self-acceptance, gratitude and appreciation of the good of others’’ (Hill, 2002, p. 189).
That is, there is a defect in the evaluator’s character because he negligently, at the very least, uses artificial and incomplete
worth to make decisions affecting others. Another error is that cost/benefit economics ‘‘has not shown that economic value is
objectively superior to other, more traditional values; it has merely ignored those values’’ (Hargrove, 1996, p. 210; Sagoff, 2004,
2006). Health’s
value, among other features of a life worth living, cannot be understood
through free market cost/benefit analysis (Shaw and Barry, 2007). In addition, it is clear that
businesses will not internalize environmental costs unless outside powers ensure
compliance. Based on cost-benefit economic analysis and the notion that the natural world is a free and
unlimited good, each business pursues a selfi sh– not self-interested – goal of trying to
maximize its net profit, thereby destroying the commons (Ibid.). This economic system’s results, then, are self-inflicted
harm to individual characters caused by the myopic valuing process, and a great deal of damage to other worthy objects
including but not limited to current and future generations’ potential to achieve flourishing lives and the environment (Birch and
Cobb, 1990). Although individuals
competing against each other has its place in a properly
functioning society, markets incorporating it require more centralized guidance to achieve
long-term social goals. Believing that an ‘‘invisible hand’’ will serve the same purpose might even be irrational given
the actual actions of consumers who make decisions not in their best interests, such as overeating, smoking, not saving for
retirement, going deeply into debt for luxuries, and other destructive behavior. In
order to fulfill its promotion of
sustainability and flourishing duties, the government needs to control business and the
environment in a way proscribed by perfectly competitive free or similar markets (Sagoff,
2004). In fact, ‘‘we need to secure the link between environmental and economic policies at all levels of government and in all
sections of the economy’’ (Reilly, 1994, p. 87).8 In other words, we
are obligated to adopt a social welfare
capitalism as many developed nations have already done in which the environment plays a
central role.
Capitalism ensures unsustainable consumption and prevents a meaningful and
complete solution to global warming
Kovel 07
Joel Kovel Professor, Saybrook Institute, San Francisco, CA, 2007 The Enemy of Nature: The End of
Capitalism Or the End of the World? Pg 262, KB
As Kyoto is discredited, the possibility of a socialist alternative emerges, and, with it, the second
theme enters. The deciding matter is the question of sustainability. Capitalism is unsustainable as a
total system, not simply because it overproduces, but because the whole world it makes is
incompatible with ecological balance. As we have seen, capital generates a society of addiction, as an
overweening ego reproduces itself along the fault lines of destabilized ecosystems. As a result, an
immense degree of self-deception and denial is built into the debate on climate, which tends to
minimize the degree of damage to come, along with the degree of change necessary to build a world
that no longer spews intolerable amounts of carbon in the air. Hence the craving for the technological
fix that will enable continuing lives of reckless consumerism with the cocoon provide by capital.
Trusting blindly in its innovative powers, people defend themselves against the “really inconvenient
truth,” that capitalism led us into this nightmare and does not have the least clue as to how to free us
from it
Corporations prevent action on climate change
(Anup Shah, Writer, 5/5/12, http://www.globalissues.org/article/179/reactions-to-climate-changenegotiations-and-action)
Largely due to US resistance and the need to get them on board for any meaningful action,
various trade-offs were made to the text of the Kyoto Protocol. Critics argue that business
interests have been a driving factor, while proponents argue that private innovation is needed
and that some of these things have to be looked at because otherwise the costs to the US
economy is so great, that emission reductions would not be carried out. As well as the United
States, Japan, Australia, Canada, Russia and Norway formed part of a consensus known as the
Umbrella Group that wanted things like the flexibility mechanisms to have no limits, unlimited
use of carbon sinks, all technologies to be counted in Clean Development Mechanism projects
(not just known clean energy projects), etc. Many of these positions are similar to industry
lobby positions too. Business interests have historically played an important part and had a
large influence in the climate negotiations. (This site’s section on flexibility mechanisms has
additional information.) Particularly active during the Kyoto Protocol, the misleadingly named
US-based Global Climate Coalition formed to actively oppose measures on climate change for
fear of economic repercussions. As PR Watch (see previous link) noted, the coalition had been
the most “outspoken and confrontational industry group in the United States battling
reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.” This coalition contained many big oil, energy and
automobile companies. The coalition was effective at the time, but also extreme. As PR Watch
continues, “Prior to its disbanding in early 2002, it collaborated extensively with a network that
included industry trade associations, ‘property rights’ groups affiliated with the antienvironmental Wise Use movement, and fringe groups such as Sovereignty International, which
believes that global warming is a plot to enslave the world under a United Nations-led ‘world
government.’” As evidence of climate change mounted, major corporations had to pull out of
the Climate Change Coalition, as it was bad PR for them to be associated with the coalition, and
some accepted the evidence and began to invest in cleaner technologies. But much damage
had already been done, and the influence on the Bush Administration, for example, has
resulted in continued anti-international cooperation on this, as is discussed further below. But
some organizations may still be at it. At the beginning of 2007, the British Royal Society, and
separately, the Union of Concerned Scientists reported on ExxonMobil waging a campaign of
disinformation on global warming between 1998 and 2005, funding right wing think-tanks and
journals such as the American Enterprise Institute, the George C. Marshall Institute, and the
Competitive Enterprise Institute. And “with the help of right-wing media, such as the Wall
Street Journal, … columnists deliberately spread disinformation about climate change.” As The
Guardian reported (September 29, 2009), the largest American business federation, the US
Chamber of Commerce, suffered a rash of high-profile walkouts as multinational companies
became uncomfortable with the organzation’s hard-line opposition to measures tackling
climate change. Big names include Nike and Johnson & Johnson amongst others. This old
federation, a lobby group, also called for a public trial on both the US policy decision to
regulate CO2 emissions and the science behind climate change concerns. As science and
technology site Ars Technica argues, putting climate change on trial is a terrible idea because,
“The sort of arguments that make for good courtroom statements tend to obscure the details
of science, and the specific example proposed by the Chamber clearly indicates that they do
nothing for the public’s understanding of science.”
Corporate lobbies prevent legislation on global warming
(Sharon Beder, Professor in the School of Social Sciences, Media and Communication at the University of
Wollongong 'Casting Doubt and Undermining Action', Pacific Ecologist 1, March 200 2, pp. 42-49).
When the US withdrew from the Kyoto agreement on climate change in March 2001, the world was
shocked. Kyoto represented the only mechanism obliging developed nations to reduce their
greenhouse-gas emissions. White House spokesman Ari Fleischer told the press that: "The president
has been unequivocal … He does not support the Kyoto treaty. It is not in the United States' economic
best interest." The announcement was not surprising considering the funding Bush’s campaign
received from the fossil-fuel industry. For example, one Democratic Congressional representative
estimated that during the 2000 election campaign the coal industry contributed $US3.8 million, nearly
90 percent going to the Republicans. The oil industry is estimated by the Center for Responsive Politics
to have contributed $US14million with $10million going to Republicans. The Seattle Times noted:
"Bush began his business career in the West Texas oil fields, and he has received substantial support
from the industry since entering politics in 1994." The US withdrawal has been widely viewed as a
disaster, but how much hope does the Kyoto Protocol really offer for preventing global warming, with
or without US participation? The outcomes of the 1997 Third Session of the Conference of the Parties
to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), embodied in the text of
the Kyoto Protocol, were disappointing but not surprising given the strength of industry opposition to
an effective treaty. Although the European Union had been pushing for average reductions of 15 per
cent below 1990 levels by 2012, the average reduction finally agreed upon turned out to be little more
than 5 per cent, and three countries were, in fact, granted approval to increase their emissions,
including Australia (by 8 per cent). Targets for developing nations remained voluntary. No
enforcement measures were decided upon.
Corporate information production prevents political action on global warming
(Sharon Beder, Professor in the School of Social Sciences, Media and Communication at the University of
Wollongong 'Casting Doubt and Undermining Action', Pacific Ecologist 1, March 200 2, pp. 42-49).
SEPP is just one of the many conservative think tanks in various parts of the world that seek to
undermine the case for global warming preventative measures. Think tanks are generally
private, tax-exempt, research institutes that present themselves as providing impartial
disinterested expertise. However think tanks generally tailor their studies to suit their clients or
donors. Corporate-funded think tanks have played a key role in providing credible "experts"
who dispute scientific claims of existing or impending environmental degradation and
therefore provide enough doubts to ensure governments "lack motivation" to act. These
dissident scientists, usually not atmospheric scientists, argue there is "widespread
disagreement within the scientific community" about global warming (see below). Most
conservative think tanks have argued that global warming is not happening and that any
possible future warming will be slight and may have beneficial effects. The Heritage
Foundation is one of the largest and wealthiest think tanks in the US. It gets massive media
coverage in the US and is very influential in politics, particularly amongst the Republicans who
dominate the US Congress. In October 1998 it published a backgrounder entitled. "The Road to
Kyoto: How the Global Climate Treaty Fosters Economic Impoverishment and Endangers US
Security." It began: Chicken Little is back and the sky is falling. Or so suggests the Clinton
Administration . . . By championing the global warming treaty, the Administration seeks to
pacify a vociferous lobby which frequently has made unsubstantiated predictions of
environmental doom. In the 1999 edition of its Environmental Briefing Book for Congressional
Candidates, the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) argues that "the Kyoto Protocol is a
costly, unworkable, and inappropriate policy to suppress energy use around the world" and
that the US Senate should reject it. It argues that the "scientific case for an international
climate treaty has collapsed" and anyway, "no one should worry about a modest warming,
should it occur" as it is likely to result in beneficial impacts. One of CEI’s publications, The True
State of the Planet, was partially funded by the Olin Foundation, created by Olin Chemical. In it
Robert Balling claims that: (the) scientific evidence argues against the existence of a
greenhouse crisis, against the notion that realistic policies could achieve any meaningful
climatic impact, and against the claim that we must act now if we are to reduce the greenhouse
threat. CEI is an active member of the Cooler Heads Coalition. The Cooler Heads coalition was
founded by the corporate front group Consumer Alert and distributes a bi-weekly newsletter,
published by CEI. Its object is clear: "The Cooler Heads Coalition focuses on the consumer
impact of global warming policies that would drastically restrict energy use and raise costs for
consumers." Think tanks in other parts of the world are also seeking to cast doubt upon global
warming predictions. The Australian Institute of Public Affairs (IPA), which gets almost onethird of its budget from mining and manufacturing companies, has also produced articles and
media statements challenging the greenhouse consensus. In IPA Review, has accused
Australia’s public broadcaster, the ABC, of bias because "ABC reporters made the assumption
that global warming is real, some even making assertions to that end." He complains that ABC
reporting therefore "represents a pernicious mixture of science and environmentalism."
However the ABC has given air time to IPA Senior Fellow, Brian Tucker, previously chief of the
CSIRO division of atmospheric research. In 1996 in a talk on the ABC’s Ockham’s Razor he
stated that "unchallenged climatic disaster hyperbole has induced something akin to a panic
reaction from policy makers, both national and international." In the talk he ignored the
scientific consensus represented by the IPCC 1995 statement and argued that global warming
predictions are politically and emotionally generated:[T]here is little evidence to support the
notion of net deleterious climate change despite recent Cassandra-like trepidation in the
Australian Medical Association and exaggerations from Greenpeace. Why then has so much
alarm been generated? The answer is complicated. In my opinion, it is due partly to the use and
abuse of science to forment [sic] fear by those seeking to support ideological positions, and
partly due to the negative and fearful perspective that seems to characterise some
environmental prejudices. Tucker’s article, "The Greenhouse Panic," was reprinted in
Engineering World, a magazine aimed at engineers. The article, introduced by the magazine
editor as "a balanced assessment," argues that "alarmist prejudices of insecure people have
been boosted by those who have something to gain from widespread public concern." This
article, which would have been more easily dismissed as an IPA publication, has been quoted
by Australian engineers at conferences as if it were an authoritative source. Think tanks have
been so successful at clouding the scientific picture of greenhouse warming and providing an
excuse for corporations and the politicians they support that they have, to date, managed to
thwart effective greenhouse reduction strategies being implemented by governments in the
English-speaking world.
EXT: Alternative – Total Rejection Key
Total rejection is key to getting rid of capitalism
Flank 7 (Lenny, writer, Hegemony and Counter-Hegemony: Marxism, Capitalism, and Their Relation to Sexism, Racism,
Nationalism, and Authoritarianism)
A critical examination of the relationship between Marxism and other social justice movements, including feminism, anti-racism, gay
liberation, environmentalism, anarchism and Native activism. The
capitalist social order is like a Hydra, a manyheaded dragon. Try to cut off one head, and the others will kill you. The only way to kill the
beast is to cut off all its heads at once. The social revolution must grow to encompass not
merely the economic means of production, but the entire mode of social life, including its
familial, sexual, racial, national, gender and authority roles. The tactics of the traditional
Leninists are entirely unsuited for that task. Only a wider-ranging social movement can hope
to defeat capitalist hegemony.
The only lasting solution is to get rid of capitalism altogether
League for the revolutionary party 12 (http://lrp-cofi.org/statements/mayday2012.html)
As with the Republicans, the heart of the Democratic Party, along with its money and power,
belongs to wealthy capitalists. Capitalism by its nature must try to divide and conquer the
working class, in order to maximize profits at the workers’ expense. Under the conditions of deep economic crisis of the past
few years, the drives of the system to scapegoat immigrants, people of color, youth and “greedy union workers” for the problems
of unemployment, inadequate health care and education, and poverty caused by the profit-making system itself, go into high
gear. Anti-immigrant chauvinism,
racism and immiseration of the working class are features of
capitalism at this time, not of any one given capitalist party or politician. Thus revolutionary socialists oppose
voting for candidates of any capitalist party and champion instead an alternative strategy, based on the power of
the working class to fight for its own interests. The working class can unite to beat back specific capitalist attacks. People of color,
especially youth, will be key to developing a rising fight back. And revolutionary socialists will fight in every struggle to build as
strong a movement as possible. We also believe that the
only lasting solution is to get rid of capitalism
altogether. Socialist revolution will put the working class in power and replace the current system based on production for
private profit with a new society based on production to satisfy human needs.
We must completely reject capitalism in our daily lives
Herod 4 (James, University of Massachusetts Boston, http://site.www.umb.edu/faculty/salzman_g/Strate/GetFre/06.htm)
Thus capitalist structures (corporations, governments, banks, schools, etc.) are not seized so much as simply abandoned.
Capitalist relations are not fought so much as they are simply rejected. We stop participating
in activities that support (finance, condone) the capitalist world and start participating in activities
that build a new world while simultaneously undermining the old. We create a new pattern of social
relations alongside capitalist relations and then we continually build and strengthen our new pattern while doing every thing we
can to weaken capitalist relations. In this way our new democratic, non-hierarchical, non-commodified relations can eventually
overwhelm the capitalist relations and force them out of existence. This is how it has to be done. This is a plausible, realistic
strategy. To
think that we could create a whole new world of decent social arrangements
overnight, in the midst of a crisis, during a so-called revolution, or during the collapse of
capitalism, is foolhardy. Our new social world must grow within the old, and in opposition to
it, until it is strong enough to dismantle and abolish capitalist relations. Such a revolution will never
happen automatically, blindly, determinably, because of the inexorable, materialist laws of history. It will happen, and only
happen, because we want it to, and because we know what we’re doing and know how we want to live, and know what obstacles
have to be overcome before we can live that way, and know how to distinguish between our social patterns and theirs. But we
must not think that the capitalist world can simply be ignored, in a live and let live attitude, while we try to build new lives
elsewhere. (There is no elsewhere.) There is at least one thing, wage-slavery, that we can’t simply stop participating in (but even
here there are ways we can chip away at it). Capitalism must
be explicitly refused and replaced by
something else. This constitutes War, but it is not a war in the traditional sense of armies and
tanks, but a war fought on a daily basis, on the level of everyday life, by millions of people. It is a war nevertheless
because the accumulators of capital will use coercion, brutality, and murder, as they have always done in the past, to try to block
any rejection of the system. They have always had to force compliance; they will not hesitate to continue doing so. Nevertheless,
there are many concrete ways that individuals, groups, and neighborhoods can gut capitalism, which I will enumerate shortly.
EXT: Alternative – Solvency
The act of rejection a small break that makes room for the creation of more
resistance
Holloway 05 (John, 8-16, Ph.D Political Science-University of Edinburgh , “Can We Change The
World Without Taking Power?”, http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/5616)
On the question of fissures. We often feel helpless because capitalism weighs so heavily on
us. But when we say No we start off with an appreciation of our own strength. When we
rebel we are in fact tearing a little hole in capitalism. It is very contradictory. By rebelling we are
already saying no to the command of capital. We are creating temporary spaces. Within
that crack, that fissure, it is important that we fight for other social relations that don't point
towards the state, but that they point towards the sort of society we want to create. At the core of these fissures is the drive to
self-determination. And then it is a question of working out what does this mean, and how to be organised for selfdetermination. It means being against and beyond the society that exists. Of expanding the fissures, how to push these fissures
forward structurally. The people who say we should take control of the state are also talking about cracks. There is no choice
but to start with interstices. The question is how we think of them, because the state is not the whole world. There are 200
states. If you seize control of one, it is still only a crack in capitalism. It is a question of how we think about those cracks, those
fissures. And if we start off from ourselves, why on earth should we adopt capitalist, bourgeois forms for developing our
struggle? Why should we accept the template of the concept of the state?
As an intellectual your rejection of capitalism has emancipatory resultsrelentless criticism allows capitalism to be challenged.
Kovel 2 Professor of Social Studies at Bard
(Joel, The Enemy of Nature, p224)
Relentless criticism can delegitimate the system and release people into struggle. And as
struggle develops, victories that are no more than incremental by their own terms- stopping a
meeting stopping the IMF, the hopes stirred forth by a campaign such as Ralph Nader’s in 2000 – can have a symbolic
effect far greater than their external result, and constitute points of rupture with capital. This
rupture is not a set of facts added to our knowledge of the world, but a change in our relation to the world. Its
effects are dynamic, not incremental, and like all genuine insights it changes the balance of forces and can propagate
very swiftly. Thus the release from inertia can trigger a rapid cascade of changes, so that it
could be said that the forces pressing towards radical change need not be linear and
incremental, but can be exponential in character. In this way, conscientious and radical
criticism of the given, even in advance of having blueprints for an alternative, can be a
material force, because it can seize the mind of the masses of people. There is no greater
responsibility for intellectuals
Framework AT: Competitive Policy Option
Demanding that we offer a “competitive policy option” entrenches capitalism
and ensures serial policy failure—the problem isn’t that our policies are wrong,
it’s that the whole system is wrong.
Wolff 8 — Rick Wolff, Professor of Economics at University of Massachusetts at Amherst, 2008
(“Policies to "Avoid" Economic Crises,” MR Zine—a publication of The Monthly Review,
November 6th, Available Online at http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/wolff061108.html,
Accessed 11-19-2008)
The whole idea of policy is bizarre. The "right policy" represents an absurd claim that this or
that law or regulation can somehow undo the many different factors that cumulatively
produced this crisis. Policies are "magic potions" offered to populations urgently demanding
solutions to real problems. Whether cynically advocated for ulterior motives or actually
believed by the politicians, promoters, and professors themselves, policy is the secular cousin
of religion.
These days, the conservative policy amounts, as usual, to "let the private economy solve the
problems" and "minimize state intervention because it only makes matters worse."
Conservatives protect the freedoms of private enterprise, market transactions, and the wealthy
from state regulations and controls and from taxes. The liberals' policy, also as usual, wants the
state to limit corporate behavior, control and shape market transactions, and tilt the tax system
more toward benefiting middle and lower income groups.
Both policies can no more overcome this economic crisis than they overcame past crises.
Historically, both conservative and liberal policies fail at least as often as they succeed. Which
outcome happens depends on all the factors shaping them and not on the policy a
government pursues. Yet, both sides endlessly claim otherwise in desperate efforts at selfjustification. Each side trots out its basic philosophy – dressed up as "a policy to achieve
solutions." Conservatives and liberals keep debating. Today's crisis simply provides an urgent
sort of context for the old debate to continue. Each side hopes to win converts by suggesting
that its approach will "solve the economic crisis" while the other's approach will make it
worse. Thus the liberals displaced the conservatives in the depths of the Great Depression,
the reverse happened in the recession of the 1970s, and the liberals may now regain
dominance. In no instance were adopted policies successful in solving the crises in any
enduring way. The unevenness and instability of capitalism as a system soon brought another
crisis crashing down on our economy and society.
The basic conservative message holds that the current economic crisis is NOT connected to the underlying economic system. The
crisis does NOT emerge from the structure of the corporate system of production. It is NOT connected to the fact that corporate
boards of directors, responsible to the minority that owns most of their shares, make all the key economic decisions while the
enterprise's employees and the vast majority of the citizenry have to live with the consequences. The very undemocratic nature of
the capitalist system of production is NOT related to crisis in the conservative view. The basic liberal message likewise disconnects
today's crisis from the capitalist production system. Rather, each
side insists that all crises would have been
and would now be "avoidable" if only the right policy were in place.
Conservatives and liberals share more than a careful avoidance of connecting the crisis to the
underlying capitalist system. They are also complicit in blocking those who do argue for that
connection from making their case in politics, the media, or the schools. While conservative
and liberal policies do little to solve crises, the debate between them has largely succeeded in
excluding anti-capitalist analyses of economic crises from public discussion. Perhaps that
exclusion – rather than solving crises – is the function of those endlessly rehashed policy
debates between liberals and conservatives.
Framework - Role of the Ballot
The role of the ballot is to choose between competing ideas—there is an
alternative to capitalism.
Lebowitz 5 — Michael A. Lebowitz, Emeritus Professor of Economics at Simon Fraser
University (Canada), 2005 (“The Knowledge of a Better World,” Monthly Review: An
Independent Socialist Magazine, Volume 57, Issue 3, July-August, Available Online to Subscribing
Institutions via Academic Search Elite, p. 67)
The most immediate obstacle, though, is the belief in TINA, i.e., that there is no alternative. Without
the vision of a better world, every crisis of capitalism (such as the one upon us) can bring in the end
only a painful restructuring—with the pain felt by those already exploited and excluded. The concept of an
alternative, of a society based upon solidarity, is an essential weapon in defense of humanity.
We need to recognize the possibility of a world in which the products of the social brain and
the social hand are common property and the basis for our self-development—the possibility in
Marx's words of "a society of free individuality, based on the universal development of individuals and on their subordination of
their communal, social productivity as their social wealth" (Grundrisse [Penguin, 1973], 158). For this reason, the
ideas is essential.
battle of
Framework - Epistemology
The affirmative’s knowledge is not value-neutral, its production is contingent
on a specific separation of labor that privileges a small scientific and military
elite, and its employment actively sustains capital
Dickens and Ormrod, 7 - *Peter, Affiliated Lecturer in the Faculty of Social and Political
Sciences at the University of Cambridge and Visiting Professor of Sociology, University of Essex
and **James, Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Brighton
(Cosmic Society: Towards a sociology of the universe, pg 31-32)
It should be noted that, contrary to Lerner’s (1991) argument, Alfred SohnRethel (1975) and
Frankel (2003) have argued that this more scientific mode of relating to the universe merely
intensified rather than alleviated the alienation of the masses from the universe. Sohn-Rethel’s argument is
that ‘abstract’, one might say ‘objective’, knowledge first arose as part of the exchange
relationship in what he calls ‘societies of appropriation’ or capitalist societies based on a high
division of labour. The person producing a commodity is, as Marx described, alienated from the exchange process, in which
s/he comes to see his/her product in terms of an abstract exchange value, which operates independently of the needs and uses
which the seller or buyer has in mind. This purely
abstract system of thought represented in the form of
money (‘a crude approximation of the underlying principle’) leads to abstract, scientific, thought. Postone (1996)
has argued similarly that ‘abstraction’ in general is central to capitalist societies. The development of capital in two distinct epochs
has led to corresponding developments in epistemology, according to Sohn-Rethel. First, the introduction of coinage in Ancient
Greece led to Greek philosophy and mathematics. Second, the development of modern capitalism led to the sixteenth- and
seventeenth-century scientific revolutions. He goes on to argue, and this forms a major focus of his and Lerner’s thesis, that the
abstract form of scientific knowledge was instrumental in legitimizing the division of mental
and manual labour in modern capitalism. The argument is that the existence of this abstract system
justifies the existence of an elite of scientists capable of studying the system untainted by the
practical knowledge of the worker. Davidson (1985) is also extremely critical of the development of objective scientific
approaches to the universe that distance knowledge from people’s everyday experience of the universe. The latter, Davidson argues,
remains Earth-centred (as in Tycho Brahe’s model). The result of de-centring Earth through science, for Davidson, is the creation of
‘a cold mechanical world’ (ibid.: 4). There are important differences between Sohn-Rethel’s account and Lerner’s. For Lerner,
Galileo, like the empiricists Copernicus and Brahe before him, represents a break from the truly abstract philosophy of Plato. It is a
break alleviating a lot of the problems of the division of labour by relying on artisan and serf knowledge available to all. However,
Sohn-Rethel sees Galileo as representing a distinct break from his predecessors in instituting a new form of abstracted knowledge
that severely heightens the mental/manual division of labour. He points to parallels between Galileo’s law of inertial motion and the
abstraction of the commodity exchange. Lerner does not draw out a full criticism of the relationship between capital and cosmology
that replaced it. Contrary to what Lerner implies during most of the book, colonial
capitalism based initially on practical
satellites, and possibly future capitalist exploitation of space
resources) has not been an age of equality or celebration of the knowledge of the manual
worker. This epoch has had its own cosmic elite of not only scientists but also engineers, and
the military and the governments and corporations that control them. The scientific
cosmological elite of today is still maintained by others’ labour. They are given ‘the freedom to abandon
knowledge of navigation (now
the constraints of the “ordinary” world’ (Ferguson 1990: 1).
Debate is the critical site of contestation against capitalism
Carroll 10 – *founding director of the Social Justice Studies Program at the University of
Victoria
(William, “Crisis, movements, counter-hegemony: in search of the new,” Interface 2:2, 168-198, dml)
Mediatization and the struggle to democratize communication Many
of the issues at stake in the politics
surrounding the form and content of communications media comprise a special instance of the
struggle to reclaim the commons. The world of the early 21st century is densely networked by virtue
of an unprecedented apparatus of communications, which has opened new possibilities both
for bourgeois hegemony and for oppositional politics. Media now comprise a vast field of cultural struggle. In a
media-saturated world, capitalist organization of communication creates a multifaceted democratic
deficit, evident for instance in the failure of mainstream media to create a democratic public sphere,
the centralization of power in media corporations, inequality in media access, homogenization of media content, the undermining of
communities through commodification, and the corporate enclosure of knowledge. ‘Media activism’ can be read as a critical
response that takes different forms depending on location in the media field. Media
democrats struggle to limit
corporate power and commercial logic, to democratize media workplaces and labour processes, to develop
alternative media, and to foster more literate and critical readers of media texts. When we look at media activism ‘on the ground’
we find many of the rudiments of counter-hegemonic politics. Activists see
the struggle to democratize
communication as a multi-frontal war of position that needs to be waged in conjunction with
other movements. Communicative democracy comprises a social vision in which the voices of
citizens and communities carry into a vibrant and diverse public sphere. In pursuing this social vision on
several fronts including those of state, corporate media and lifeworld, media democrats build a new nexus among movements, a
place where strategies might converge across issue areas and movement identities (Hackett and Carroll, 2006; Downing 2001 ). As a
political emergent, media
activism underlines the importance to counterhegemony of reclaiming or
creating the means and forms of communication necessary for subaltern groups to find their
voices and to organize, both locally and translocally. The formation of organic intellectuals is
substantially caught up in this struggle to break the dominant class’s monopoly within the
intellectual field (Thomas 2009: 418-19). Here, the new includes a mediatized politics of everyday life, as in proliferation of
alternative media (often via the internet; Atton 2009) and the diffusion of culture jamming and other practices
of media literacy, yet also a politics, focused upon state and capital, that presses for limits upon
corporate power and for an opening of access to the means of communication (Hackett and Carroll
2006). The politics of media democratization is necessarily multi-frontal and intersectional. All progressive-democratic
movements have an stake in these struggles; the extent to which movements take up
democratic communication as a general interest is a measure their catharsis from fractured
subalternities (with their characteristic foci upon single issues and narrow constituencies) to an ethicopolitical collective will.
The question of autonomy Autonomy from old-left parties and unions, and from overweening regulatory states, was cited by NSM
theorists of the 1970s and 1980s as a criterial attribute of the emergent movements of late modernity. In Jean Cohen’s (1985)
classic, and rather Americanized treatment, these
movements were viewed as practitioners of a ‘selflimiting’ identity politics that rejected large-scale projects. This stylization was never
unproblematic as an empirical account, and several decades later, in the wake of neoliberalism’s global triumph and
in the midst of its global crisis, the appeal of self-limiting politics is embarrassingly limited. Yet autonomy remains a lasting legacy of
the so-called NSMs. Autonomy informs aspects of contemporary counter-hegemonic politics at the level of everyday life, as shown
in Gwyn Williams’s (2008) ethnography of alterglobalization activism in the Larzac plateau of southern France. Famous since their
dismantling of a McDonald’s restaurant in 1999 and for the slogan, ‘the world is not a commodity,’ these
activists resist the
hegemony of global market society ‘by cultivating themselves as “autonomous” political
subjects and organizing a movement considered to be an “autonomous” counter-power’ (G.
William 2008: 63). This has meant not only maintaining independence from political parties and
functioning in a ‘bottom-up’ or ‘horizontal’ manner but cultivating in themselves and others
an autonomy that partly frees them from neoliberal ideology and the power of consumer society. Here,
prefiguration is grounded in a moral imperative to ‘become aware’ and to act ‘coherently’ (2008:72) by living the ideals to which one
aspires.5 Becoming aware is both an ongoing aspect of autonomous self-development and a movement-building praxis instantiated
in a range of pedagogical activities – forums, information evenings and media actions – designed to provoke public debate and to
persuade people join the cause (G. Williams 2008:72-3). Although
activists can never be fully autonomous
from the forms of power to which they are subject, the struggle for autonomy is a crucial
element in challenging hegemony and in bringing into existence what Gramsci (1971: 327) called a ‘new
conception of the world … which manifests itself in action.’ 6 As a sensibility that holds both visionary and strategic
implications, autonomy has roots not only in NSM theory, but in historical materialism. Harry Cleaver, who introduced the notion of
autonomist Marxism into English-language academia in the 1970s (Cleaver 2001; Wright 2008:113), predicated it on an agencycentred analysis of the working class, defining autonomy
as the ability of workers to define their own
interests and to struggle for them – to go beyond mere reaction to exploitation, or to self defined
‘leadership’ and
to take the offensive in ways that shape the class struggle and define the future
key question is how autonomy and other emergent features of activism might
figure in a counter-hegemonic historical bloc. Mark Purcell, drawing on Laclau and Mouffe (1985), suggests that
(Cleaver 1993). The
relations between elements of such a formation be conceptualized in terms of equivalence, ‘a concept that evokes relations of
simultaneous interdependence and autonomy, obligation and freedom, unity and multiplicity, sameness and difference’ (2009: 301).
The movements and interests that comprise the bloc do not dissolve completely into it, but
they move together and lean into one another.
AT: Permutation
Perm’s co-opted—causes extinction—the alt alone is key to revolutionary
agency
Parr ’13
(Adrian Parr, Adrian philosopher and cultural critic. A specialist on Deleuze, ‘The Wrath of Capital’, 2013, p. 2-5) BSH
The fable provides an intriguing perspective on freedom and autonomy. The golem has no freedom: it is the rabbi who brings it to
life and sentences it to death. Yet by returning the creature to earth, the rabbi holds the golem accountable for the destruction it
wrought despite not being free. This is the basic premise of this book. We are not free, yet we are autonomous.
We are constrained by the historical circumstances into which we are born, along with the institutions and structures that contain
us. Nonetheless, each
and every one of us also participates in and thereby confirms the legitimacy of those
selfsame institutions and structures that dominate us, along with the violence they sustain.3 In this
way, we are both the rabbi creator and the creature creation. Insofar as we are socially constituted, we are constrained by
the historical and institutional forces that construct us. As political agents, we realize our autonomy
as we interrupt and contest the historical and institutional conditions that regulate and organize
the frames of reference through which we think and act. This structure of rupture and continuity is the modern
narrative par excellence. Fredric Jameson neatly summarizes the narrative condition of modernity as the dialectic between the
modality of rupture that inaugurates a new period and the definition of that new period in turn by continuity.4 The
ironical
outcome, as I describe it in the pages that follow, is that despite the narrative category driving change in the
modern world, everything continues to stay the same-perhaps because what this narrative
produces is a virulent strain of amnesia. Every change or historical rupture contains within it the
dialectical narrative structure of modernity such that the New and the period it launches into existence are mere ritual.
What persists is the condition of violence embedded in neoliberal capitalism as it robs each and
every one of us (other species and ecosystems included) of a future. The narrative of modernity and the
optimistic feeling of newness it generates are merely a distraction. Distractions such as decarbonizing the free-market
economy, buying carbon offsets, handing out contraceptives to poor women in developing countries, drinking tap water in place of
bottled water, changing personal eating habits, installing green roofs on city hall, and expressing moral outrage at British Petroleum
(BP) for the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, although well meaning, are merely symptomatic of the uselessness of free-market
"solutions" to environmental change. Indeed, such widespread distraction leads to denial. With the proclamation of the twenty- first
century to be the era of climate change, the Trojan horse of neoliberal restructuring entered the political arena of climate change
talks and policy, and a more virulent strain of capital accumulation began. For this reason, delegates from the African nations, with
the support of the Group of 77 (developing countries), walked out of the 2009 United Nations (UN) climate talks in Copenhagen,
accusing rich countries of dragging their heels on reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and destroying the mechanism through
which this reduction can be achieved-the Ky oto Protocol. In the absence of an internationally birfding agreement on emissions
reductions, all individual actions taken to reduce emissions-a flat global carbon tax, recycling, hybrid cars, carbon offsets, a few solar
panels here and there, and so on-are mere theatrics. In this book, I argue
that underpinning the massive
environmental changes happening around the world, of which climate change is an important factor, is an
unchanging socioeconomic condition (neoliberal capitalism), and the magnitude of this situation
is that of a political crisis. So, at the risk of extending my literary license too far, it is fair to say that the human race is
currently in the middle of an earth-shattering historical moment. Glaciers in the Himalayas, Andes, Rockies,
and Alps are receding. The social impact of environmental change is now acute, with the International
Organization for Migration predicting there will be approximately two hundred million environmental refugees by 2050, with
estimates expecting as many as up to one billion.5 We are poised between needing to radically transform how we live and becoming
extinct. Modern (postindustrial) society
inaugurated what geologists refer to as the ''Anthropocene
age;' when human activities began to drive environmental change, replacing the Holocene, which for the
previous ten thousand years was the era when the earth regulated the environment. 6 Since then people have been pumping GHGs
into the atmosphere at a faster rate than the earth can reabsorb them. If we remain on our current course of global GHG emissions,
the earth's average climate will rise 3°C by the end of the twenty-first century (with a 2 to 4.5° probable range of uncertainty) . The
warmer the world gets, the less effectively the earth's biological systems can absorb carbon. The more the earth's climate heats up,
the more carbon dioxide (C02) plants and soils will release; this feedback loop will further increase climate heating. When carbon
feedback is factored into the climate equation, climate models predict that the rise in average climate temperature will be 6°C by
2100 (with a 4 to 8°C probable range of uncertainty) .7 For this reason, even if emissions were reduced from now on by
approximately 3 percent annually, there is only a fifty-fifty chance that we can stay within the 2°C benchmark set by the UN
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 2007. However, given that in 2010 the world's annual growth rate of
atmospheric carbon was the largest in a decade, bringing the world's C02 concentrations to 389.6 parts per million (ppm) and
pushing concentrations to 39 percent higher than what they were in 1750 at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution
(approximately 278 ppm), and that there is no sign of growth slowing, then even the fifty-fifty window of opportunity not to exceed
2°C warming is quickly closing. If we continue at the current rate of GHG emissions growth, we will be on course for a devastating
scenario.8 We need to change course now.9 Climate change poses several environmental problems, many of which now have a clear
focus. The scientific problem: How can the high amounts of C02 in the atmosphere causing the earth's climate to change be lowered
to 350 ppm? The economic problem: How can the economy be decarbonized while addressing global economic disparities? The
social problem: How can human societies change their climate-altering behaviors and adapt to changes in climate?10 The cultural
problem: How can commodity culture be reigned in? The problem policymakers face: What regulations can be introduced to inhibit
environmental degradation, promote GHG reductions, and assist the people, species, and ecosystems most vulnerable to
environmental change? The political problem is less clear, however, perhaps because of its philosophical implications. Political
philosophy examines how these questions are dealt with and the assumptions upon which they are premised. It studies the myriad
ways in which individuals, corporations, the world's leaders, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and communities respond to
climate change and the larger issue of environmental change characteristic of the Anthropocene age. More
important,
political philosophy considers how these responses reinforce social and economic structures of
power. In light of this consideration, how do we make the dramatic and necessary changes needed to
adapt equitably to environmental change without the economically powerful claiming
ownership over the collective impetus and goals that this historical juncture presents? By drawing
attention to the political problem of equality in the context of environmental change, I need to stress that I am not a market Luddite;
rather, I am
critical of the neoliberal paradigm of economic activity that advances deregulation,
competition, individualism, and privatization, all the while rolling back on social services and
producing widespread inequities and uneven patterns of development and social prosperity. I am
also not intending to make negotiable the "non-negotiable planetary preconditions that humanity needs to respect in order to avoid
the risk of deleterious or even catastrophic environmental change at continental to global scales:'11 Indeed, my
argument is
that by focusing too much on free-market solutions to the detriment of the world's most
vulnerable (the poor, other species, ecosystems, and future generations), we make these preconditions
negotiable: the free market is left to negotiate our future for us.
Turn the Perm - Alternatives to complete rejection will only result in human
extinction. Operating under the capitalist mindset will only further society
toward its end.
Clark and Clausen ’08 [Brett Clark teaches sociology at North Carolina State University in Raleigh. Rebecca Clausen
teaches sociology at Fort Lewis College in Durango, Colorado. “The Oceanic Crisis: Capitalism and the Degradation of Marine
Ecosystem.” The Monthly Review. 2008, Volume 60, Issue 03 (July-August). Date Accessed: June 27, 14. O’B]
It is wise to recognize, as Paul Burkett has stated, that “short of human extinction, there is no sense in
which capitalism can be relied upon to permanently ‘break down’ under the weight of its depletion
and degradation of natural wealth.”44 Capital is driven by the competition for the
accumulation of wealth, and short-term profits provide the immediate pulse of capitalism. It
cannot operate under conditions that require reinvestment in the reproduction of nature, which may entail time scales of a hundred or more years.
Such requirements stand opposed to the immediate interests of profit. ¶ The
qualitative relation between humans and
nature is subsumed under the drive to accumulate capital on an ever-larger scale. Marx lamented that
to capital, “Time is everything, man is nothing; he is at the most, time’s carcase. Quality no longer matters. Quantity alone decides everything.”45
Productive relations are concerned with production time, labor costs, and the circulation of capital—not the diminishing conditions of existence. Capital
subjects natural cycles and processes (via controlled feeding and the use of growth hormones) to its economic cycle. The
maintenance of
natural conditions is not a concern. The bounty of nature is taken for granted and
appropriated as a free gift.
Perm fails – acting in a system where profit is the only goal makes getting
outside of capitalism impossible.
Fred Magdoff, professor emeritus of plant and soil science at the University of Vermont, 2011,
What Every Environmentalist Needs to Know about Capitalism: A Citizen's Guide to Capitalism
and the Environment. New York: Monthly Review, 2011.
But there is one box from which it is impossible to escape without confronting it
directly: the capitalist economic system. Many, if not most, influential environmental
thinkers in the world’s rich countries still shy away from such a direct confrontation.
Even the increasing numbers of green thinkers who criticize capitalism and its market
failures, frequently set in the end for what they regard as practical solutions directed
at creating a tightly controlled humane, green, and non-corporate capitalism, instead
of actually getting outside the box of capitalism. Some call for reinventing “the purpose
and design of business,” or using tax policy to better direct investment and consumption to
green ends, or for trade policies that might promote the goods of more Sustainable
economies.5 Others suggest eliminating the myriad government subsithe s to businesses and
taking into account social and ecological consequences of production (“extemali ties”) so as to
give rise to “honest prices” that reflect the real costs including those to the environment« The
contradictions and complexities of actually implementing a new way to price
Commodities, in a system in which the profit is the only goal, and power rests in the
hands of people who have no interest in doing this, makes all of this an
insurmountable task. As David Harvey has said: “If capitalism is forced to internalize” all
of the social and environmental costs it generates “it will go out of business. This is
the simple truth.’*7
Any reason they further capitalist goals is a reason the perm would fail.
We have an ethical obligation to reject every instance of capitalism
Jenson 7
Robert Jenson, Professor at the School of Journalism at the University of Texas, Austin, 4/30/07, “AntiCapitalism in 5 Minutes,” http://www.counterpunch.org/2007/04/30/anti-capitalism-in-five-minutes/, KB
One of the common responses I hear when I critique capitalism is, "Well, that may all be true,
but we have to be realistic and do what’s possible." By that logic, to be realistic is to accept a
system that is inhuman, anti-democratic, and unsustainable. To be realistic we are told we
must capitulate to a system that steals our souls, enslaves us to concentrated power, and will
someday destroy the planet. But rejecting and resisting a predatory corporate capitalism is not
crazy. It is an eminently sane position. Holding onto our humanity is not crazy. Defending
democracy is not crazy. And struggling for a sustainable future is not crazy. What is truly crazy
is falling for the con that an inhuman, anti-democratic, and unsustainable system — one that
leaves half the world’s people in abject poverty — is all that there is, all that there ever can be,
all that there ever will be. If that were true, then soon there will be nothing left, for anyone. I
do not believe it is realistic to accept such a fate. If that’s being realistic, I’ll take crazy any day
of the week, every Sunday of the month.
AT: Capitalism Inevitable
The argument that we cannot overcome capitalism saps the critical energy from
revolution – the system is only strong because we think it is
Zizek 95
(Slavoj, Professor of Sociology at the Institute for Sociology, Ljubljana University Ideology Between Fiction and Fantasy, Cardozo Law
Review) BSH
The problematic of "multiculturalism" that imposes itself today is therefore the form of
appearance of its opposite, of the massive presence of Capitalism as universal world system: it
bears witness to the unprecedented homogenization of today's world. It is effectively as if, since
the horizon of social imagination no longer allows us to entertain the idea of an eventual demise
of Capitalism - since, as we might put it, everybody seems to accept that Capitalism is here to
stay - the critical energy found a substitute outlet in fighting for cultural differences which leave
the basic homogeneity of the capitalist world-system intact. So we are fighting our PC battles for
the right of ethnic minorities, of gays and lesbians, of different "life-styles," etc., while
Capitalism pursues its triumphant march - and today's critical theory, in the guise of "cultural
studies," is doing the ultimate service to the unrestrained development of Capitalism by actively
contributing in the ideological effort to render its massive presence invisible: in a typical
postmodern "cultural critique," the very mention of Capitalism as world system tends to give
rise to the accusation of "essentialism," "fundamentalism," etc.
Dozens of cultures show that capitalism isn’t inherent to the human condition –
studies prove its a socially adopted system which can be abandoned
Kohn 86
(Alfie, M.A. from U Chicago, “No Contest: A Case Against Competition,” New Age Journal Sept/Oct, p 18-20) BSH
As with a range of other unsavory behaviors, we are fond of casually attributing competition to something called "human nature."
Since this account is so popular, you might expect that there is considerable evidence to support it. In fact, it is difficult to find a
single serious defense of the claim--let alone any hard data to back it up. It is
not difficult at all, however, to come up with
reasons to doubt that competition is inevitable. We in the United States often assume that our desperate quest to
triumph over others is universal. But half a century ago Margaret Mead and her colleagues found that competition was virtually
unknown to the Zuni and Iroquois in North America and to the Bathonga of South Africa. Since then, cross-cultural
observers have confirmed that our society is the exception rather than the rule. From the Inuit of Canada to the Tangu of New
Guinea, from kihbutzniks in lsrael to[and] farmers in Mexico, cooperation is prized and competition generally
avoided. Working with seven to nine-year olds, psychologists Spencer Kagan and Millard Madsen found that Mexican children
quickly figured out how to cooperate on an experimental game, while those from the United States could
not. In fact, 78 percent of the Anglo-American children took another child’s toy away “for apparently no other reason than to
prevent the other child from having it.” Mexican children did so only half as often. Such findings strongly suggest that
competition is a matter of social training and culture rather than a built-in feature of our nature. Further
evidence comes from classroom experiments in which children have been successfully taught to cooperate. Gerald
Sagotsky and his colleagues at Adelphi University, for example, trained 118 pairs of first- through third grade students to work
together instead of competing at a variety of tasks. Seven
weeks later a new experimenter introduced a new game to these
children and found that the lesson had stuck with them. Other researchers have shown that children taught to play
cooperative games will continue to do so on their own time. And children and adults alike express a strong preference for the
cooperative approach once they see firsthand what it is like to learn or work or play in an environment that doesn't require winners
and losers.
AT: Utopia
Our alternative is not a utopian vision of perfection – it is rather a rejection of
the existing social framework that supports the catastrophic totality of capital
Mészáros, 12
(István Mészáros is a Hungarian Marxist philosopher, and Professor Emeritus at the University of Sussex. “Structural Crisis Needs
Structural Change” http://monthlyreview.org/2012/03/01/structural-crisis-needs-structural-change) Henge
When stressing the need for a radical structural change it must be made clear right from the
beginning that this is not a call for an unrealizable utopia. On the contrary, the primary defining
characteristic of modern utopian theories was precisely the projection that their intended
improvement in the conditions of the workers’ lives could be achieved well within the existing
structural framework of the criticized societies. Thus Robert Owen of New Lanark, for instance, who had an
ultimately untenable business partnership with the utilitarian liberal philosopher Jeremy Bentham, attempted the general
realization of his enlightened social and educational reforms in that spirit. He was asking for the
impossible. As we also know, the high-sounding “utilitarian” moral principle of “the greatest good for
the greatest number” came to nothing since its Benthamite advocacy. The problem for us is that
without a proper assessment of the nature of the economic and social crisis of our time—which
by now cannot be denied by the defenders of the capitalist order even if they reject the need for
a major change—the likelihood of success in this respect is negligible. The demise of the “Welfare State”
even in the mere handful of the privileged countries where it has been once instituted offers a sobering lesson on this score. Let me
start by quoting a recent article by the editors of the authoritative daily newspaper of the international bourgeoisie, The Financial
Times. Talking about the dangerous financial crisis—acknowledged now by the editors themselves to be dangerous—they end their
article with these words: “Both sides [the U.S. Democrats and the Republicans] are to blame for a vacuum of leadership and
responsible deliberation. It is a serious failure of governance and more dangerous than Washington believes.”1 This is all that we get
as editorial wisdom about the substantive issue of “sovereign indebtedness” and mounting budget deficits. What makes the
Financial Times editorial even more vacuous than the “vacuum of leadership” deplored by the journal is the sonorous subtitle of this
article: “Washington must stop posturing and start governing.” As if editorials like this could amount to more than posturing in the
name of “governing”! For the
grave issue at stake is the catastrophic indebtedness of the “powerhouse” of global capitalism, the United States of America, where the government’s debt alone
(without adding corporate and private individual indebtedness) is counted already in well above
14 trillion dollars—flashed up in large illuminated numbers on the façade of a New York public building indicating the
irresistible trend of rising debt. The point I wish to stress is that the crisis we have to face is a profound
and deepening structural crisis which needs the adoption of far-reaching structural remedies in
order to achieve a sustainable solution. It must also be stressed that the structural crisis of our time did
not originate in 2007, with the “bursting of the US housing bubble,” but at least four decades earlier. I spoke
about it in such terms way back in 1967, well before the May 1968 explosion in France,2 and I wrote in 1971, in the Preface to the
Third Edition of Marx’s Theory of Alienation, that the
unfolding events and developments “dramatically
underlined the intensification of the global structural crisis of capital.”
Utopianism isn’t a blueprint for ordering the future, but a tool for disrupting the present
Newman 10
(Saul, Australian political theorist and central post-anarchist thinker. Newman coined the term ‘post-anarchism’ “The Politics of
Postanarchism” pp. 67-68) BSH
However, it may
be more productive to think about utopia in a slightly different way. Rather than
utopia being seen as a blueprint for a future post-revolutionary society, as a set of processes and
organisational measures to be implemented as part of a revolutionary programme, utopia might be seen as a
(non)place of alterity – in other words, as a moment of exteriority which, like the Other in Levinasian
ethics, punctures and displaces the existing sovereign order. The place of utopia – which is also a
non- place, a future that is yet to be created, and no doubt never will be created in exactly the
way it is envisaged – is something that allows us to distance ourselves from the existing order, to
see its limits; to understand that it can be transcended, that there are alternative and vastly better ways of
living one’s life. As Abensour argues, utopia should be seen as a way of inciting desire – the desire for something
else, for something other than what we currently have: ‘Is it not proper to utopia to propose a new way of proceeding to a
displacement of what is and what seems to go without saying in the crushing name of “reality”?’48 We
are crushed under
the weight of the current order, which tells us that this is our reality, that what we have now is
all there is and all there ever will be. Utopia provides an escape from this stifling reality by
imagining an alternative to it; it opens up different possibilities, new ‘lines of flight’. In this way,
reality is shaken up and destabilised. Therefore, the potency of utopia lies not in providing a way
of ordering society after the revolution, but in disordering society as it exists today, in
providing a point of rupture in existing social relations, introducing into them an element of radical
heterogeneity. The point about utopia, then, is not that it is a specific place that we get to, but rather a
non- place that unsettles the consistency of all places. This idea of dreaming what is different
should not be dismissed as an apolitical fantasy; on the contrary, the desire for a different
reality, for different and unrealised ways of life, is something that draws attention to the limits and
inadequacies of current institutions, and thus provides a point of radical critical reflection on
them. As Abensour shows, the utopian drive – what he calls ‘persistent utopia’ – intersects with the desire to think democracy
differently, to realise democracy beyond the state, which is precisely the project of anarchism: The
two in fact have proximate emancipatory projects: on the side of democracy, the establishment of a collective power, a political
community whose nature is permanent struggle against the domination of the powerful; on the side of utopia, the choice of
association against hierarchically structured societies based on domination.49 Central to
utopia, then, is a critique of
domination: a politics of non- domination; not in the sense of providing a precise recipe for
building a society in which domination is absent, but in the sense of allowing us to think outside
domination, to think the outside of domination.
AT: Transition Wars
These movements are different – crumbling economies in the global north have
created material solidarity between the first and third world – creates an
effective and peaceful mindset shift
Harvey 11
(Ryan, writer, an organizer with the Civilian-Soldier Alliance, “Globalization” Is Coming Home:
Protests Spread as Financial Institutions Target Global North”, Thursday 27 October 2011,
http://www.truth-out.org/world-finally-fighting-infectionneoliberalism/1320164620?q=globalization-coming-home-protests-spread-financialinstitutions-target-global-north/1319721791)
Shortly before the once-prized economy of Argentina collapsed at the
end of 2001, a “European Summer” saw
massive protests across Europe against “neoliberalism”, the corporate economic system behind what is
commonly called “globalization.” Emphasizing the privatization of public services and resources and the
removal of environmental and human rights regulations deemed “barriers to trade”, neoliberal globalization was
widely recognized as the key factor exacerbating the gulf between rich and poor on a global scale.
These protests were the largest and most brutal events that this movement experienced in the Global North; with In
Gothenburg, three protesters would be shot by the police, and in Genoa, 21 year-old Carlo Giuliani would be shot twice in the
face and then run over by a police truck, killing him instantly. The
echoes of these events can still be heard
throughout Europe, especially among those who experienced the traumatic police repression or served jail time for their
role in the events. A few weeks ago, I saw a beautiful stencil memorial to Carlo in a hallway of one of Austria’s last political
squats – just one reminder that the political memory of these uprisings is very much part of the fabric of the European
autonomous left. But
there’s a much louder echo being heard in Europe right now, the echo of
corporate-globalization itself. And as in the last decade, a rage that has built up over many years is
beginning to emerge in the form of a mass, loosely coordinated social movement. In Europe, young and
old alike have been facing the dissolution of what had long been considered staples of western European countries;
England’s health care system is on the privatization block; the right to squat abandoned
houses is being stripped in England and The Netherlands; the International Monetary Fund has
tightened its grip on Greece, Ireland, and Portugal with increasing austerity measures, and tuition rates
for students across the continent are rising dramatically. Alongside these economic conditions,
increasingly militarized restrictions to immigration into what has been dubbed “Fortress Europe” stand as
a drastic reminder that money and products, but not people, travel freely into and out of neoliberal
economies. What is happening is that “globalization” is coming home to the countries that helped
create it. The rich economies of the global north, which long relied on the exploitation of southern peoples
and economies, are coming under the same restrictions they once imposed on the rest of the world.
Though many poor people in these countries have long suffered from domestic exploitation, the present wave of
budgets cuts threatens to expose both the poor and middle-classes to harsher realities,
unifying them in a social movement that is now attempting to maintain this often-fragile
alliance. What we are seeing now is the emergence of a similar political discussion to the days after Seattle, only this time
we have turned inward in the Global North: we are now not just talking about solidarity with
the Global South, rather we are addressing issues both global and local, as we are feeling the
harsh effects of a global economy designed for a minority of the world’s wealthiest people.
AT: Cap Good – Generic
Even if they win that cap is good for some, 5/6ths of humanity can’t benefit
from it
DeSoto 0
(Hernando, president of the institute for liberty and democracy, “The Mystery of Capital: why capitalism triumphs in
the West and fails everywhere else” Pg. 5-8 JF)
In this book I intend to demonstrate that the
major stumbling block that keeps the rest of the world
from benefitting from capitalism is its inability to produce capital. Capital is the force that raises the
productivity of labor and creates the wealth of nations. It is the lifeblood of the capitalist system, the foundation of progress, and the one
thing that the poor countries of the world cannot seem to produce for themselves, no matter how eagerly their people engage in all the
other activities that characterize a capitalist economy. I will also show, with the help of facts and figures that my research team and I have
collected, block by block and farm by farm in Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America, that most of the poor already possess the
Even in the poorest countries, the poor save. The value
of savings among the poor is, in fact, immense—forty times all the foreign aid received
throughout the world since 1945. In Egypt, for instance, the wealth that the poor have
accumulated is worth fifty-five times as much as the sum of all direct foreign
investment ever recorded there, including the Suez Canal and the Aswan Dam. In Haiti, the poorest
nation in Latin America, the total assets of the poor are more than one hundred fifty
times greater than all foreign investment received since Haiti’s independence from
France in 1804. If the United States were to hike its foreign-aid budget to the level recommended by the United
assets they need to make a success of capitalism.
Nations—0.7 percent of national income—it would take the richest country on earth more than 150 years to transfer the
they hold these resources in defective
forms: houses built on whose ownership rights are not adequately recorded,
unincorporated business with undefined liability, industries located where financiers
and investors cannot see them. Because the rights to these possessions are not
adequately documented, these assets cannot readily be turned into capital, cannot be
traded outside of narrow local circles where people know and trust each other, cannot be used as collateral
for a loan, and cannot be used as a share against an investment. In the West, by contrast, every parcel of
land, every building, every piece of equipment, or store of inventories is represented in a
property document that is the visible sign of a vast hidden process that connects all
these assets to the rest of the economy. Thanks to this representational process, assets
can lead an invisible, parallel life alongside their material existence. They can be used as
world’s poor resources equal to those they already possess. But
collateral for credit. The single most important source of funds for new businesses in the United States is a mortgage on
the entrepreneur’s house. These assets can also provide a link to the owner’s credit history, an accountable address for the
collection of debt and taxes, the basis for the creation of reliable and universal public utilities, and a foundation for the
By this
process the West injects life into assets and makes them generate capital. Third world
and former communist nations do not have this representational process. As a result,
most of them are undercapitalized, in the same way that a firm is undercapitalized
when it issues fewer securities than its income and assets would justify. The enterprises of
creation of securities (like mortgage-backed bonds) that can then be rediscounted and sod in secondary markets.
the poor are very much like corporations that cannot issue shares or bonds to obtain new investment and finance.
Without representations, their assets are dead capital. The poor inhabitants of these nations—
five-sixths of humanity—do have things, but they lack the process to represent their
property and create capital. They have houses but not titles; crops but not deeds;
business but not statutes of incorporation. It is the unavailability of these essential
representations that explains why people who have adapted every other Western
invention, from the paper clip to the nuclear reactor, have not been able to produce sufficient
capital to make their domestic capitalism work. This is the mystery of capital. Solving it requires an
understanding of why Westerners, by representing assets with titles, are able to see and draw out capital from them. One of the greatest
challenges to the human mind is to comprehend and to gain access to those things we know exist but cannot see. Not everything that is real
and useful is tangible and visible. Time, for example, is real, but it can only be efficiently managed when it is represented by a clock or a
calendar. Throughout history, human beings have invented
representational systems—writing, musical notation, double-entry bookkeeping—to grasp with the mind what human hands could never
touch. In the same way, the great practitioners of capitalism, from the creators of integrated title systems and corporate stock to Michael
Milken, were able to reveal and extract capital where others saw only junk by devising new ways to represent the invisible potential that is
The absence of this process in the poorer regions of the
world—where two-thirds of humanity lives—is not the consequence of some Western
monopolistic conspiracy. It is rather that Westerners take the mechanism so
completely for granted that they have lost all awareness of its existence. Although it is huge,
nobody sees it, including the Americans, Europeans, and Japanese who owe all their wealth to their ability to use it. It is
an implicit legal infrastructure hidden deep within their property systems—of which ownership
locked up in the assets we accumulate.
is but the tip of the iceberg. The rest of the iceberg is an intricate man-made process that can transform assets and labor into capital. This
process was not created from a blue-print and is not described in a glossy brochure. Its origins are obscure and its significance buried in the
economic subconscious of Western capitalist nations.
Capitalism causes incalculable deaths—nothing can outweigh
Herod 7 (James, Columbia U graduate and political activist, “Getting Free” Pg. 22-23 JF)
We must never forget that we are at war, however, and that we have been for five hundred years. We are involved in
class warfare. This defines our situation historically and sets limits to what we can do. It would be nice to think of
peace, for example, but this is out of the question. It is excluded as an option by historical conditions.
Peace can be achieved only by destroying capitalism. The casualties from this war, on
our side, long ago reached astronomical sums. It is estimated that thirty million people
perished during the first century of the capitalist invasion of the Americas, including
millions of Africans who were worked to death as slaves. Thousands of peasants died in the great
revolts in France and Germany in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. During the enclosures movement in
England and the first wave of industrialization, hundreds of thousands of people died needlessly. African slaves died
by the millions (an estimated fifteen million) during the Atlantic crossing. Hundreds of poor people were
hanged in London in the early nineteenth century to enforce the new property laws.
During the Paris uprising of 1871, thirty thousand communards were slaughtered. Twenty million were lost in
Joseph Stalin’s gulag, and millions more perished during the 1930s when the Soviet state expropriated the land and
forced the collectivization of agriculture an event historically comparable to the enclosures in England (and thus the
Bolsheviks destroyed one of the greatest peasant revolutions of all time). Thousands
of militants were
murdered by the German police during the near revolution in Germany and Austria in 1919. Thousands of
workers and peasants were killed during the Spanish Civil War. Adolf Hitler killed ten million people in
concentration camps (including six million Jews in the gas chambers two hundred thousand labor
leaders, activists, and citizens have been murdered in Guatemala since the coup engineered by
the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in 1954. Thousands were lost in the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. Half a million
communists were massacred in Indonesia in 1975. Millions of Vietnamese were killed
by French and U.S. capitalists during decades of colonialism and war. And how many were killed
during British capital’s subjugation of India, and during capitalist Europe’s colonization of Asia and Africa? A major
weapon of capitalists has always been to simply murder those who are threatening
their rule. Thousands were killed by the contras and death squads in Nicaragua and El Salvador. Thousands were
). An estimate
d
murdered in Chile by Augusto Pinochet during his counterrevolution, after the assassination of Salvador Allende. Speaking
of assassinations, there is a long list: Patrice Lumumba, Rosa Luxemburg, Antonio Gramsci (died in prison), Ricardo Flores
Magon (died in prison), Che Guevara, Gustav Landauer, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr., Fred Hampton, George Jackson,
the Haymarket anarchists, Amilcar Cabral, Steve Biko, Karl Liebnicht, Nat Turner, and thousands more. Thousands are being
murdered every year now in Colombia. Thousands
die every year in the workplace in the United
States alone. Eighty thousand die needlessly in hospitals annually in the United States due to malpractice and
negligence. Fifty thousand die each year in automobile accidents in the United States, deaths directly due to intentional
capitalist decisions to scuttle mass transit in favor of an economy based on oil, roads, and cars (and unsafe cars to boot).
Thousands have died in mines since capitalism began. Millions of people are dying right
now, every year, from famines directly attributable to capitalists and from diseases
easily prevented but for capitalists. Nearly all poverty-related deaths are because of
capitalists. We cannot begin to estimate the stunted, wasted, and shortened lives
caused by capitalists, not to mention the millions who have died fighting their stupid
little world wars and equally stupid colonial wars. (This enumeration is very far from complete.)
Capitalists (generically speaking) are not merely thieves; they are murderers. Their theft and
murder is on a scale never seen before in history a scale so vast it boggles the mind.
Capitalists make Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Genghis Khan, and Attila the Hun
look like boy scouts. This is a terrible enemy we face.
The AFF is concerned with solving fleeting, conjunctural crises, which are
inevitably recurring features of the fundamental structural crisis of capital.
Error replication is inevitable, and our impacts outweigh
Meszaros 2006 (Istvan, Monthly Review, September, “The Structural Crisis of Politics”)
2. The Nature of Capital’s Structural Crisis
In this respect it
is necessary to clarify the relevant differences between types or modalities of
crisis. It is not a matter of indifference whether a crisis in the social sphere can be considered a periodic/con-junctural
crisis, or something much more fundamental than that. For, obviously, the way of dealing with a fundamental crisis cannot
be con-ceptualized in terms of the the categories of periodic or conjunctural crises. To anticipate a main point of this
lecture, as far as politics is con-cerned the crucial difference between the two sharply contrasting types of crises in question
is that the periodic
or conjunctural crises unfold and are more or less successfully resolved
within a given framework of politics, whereas the fundamental crisis affects that
framework itself in its entirety. In other words, in relation to a given socioeconomic and
political system we are talking about the vital difference between the more or less
frequent crises in politics, as against the crisis of the estab-lished modality of politics
itself, with qualitatively different require-ments for its possible solution. It is the latter that we
are concerned with today. In general terms, this distinction is not simply a question of the apparent
severity of the contrasting types of crises. For a periodic or conjunctural crisis can be
dramatically severe—as the “Great World Economic Crisis of 1929–1933” happened to be—yet
capable of a solution within the parameters of the given system. Misinterpreting the severity of a
given conjunctural crisis as if it was a fundamental systemic crisis, as Stalin and his advisers did in the midst of the “Great
World Economic Crisis of 1929–1933,” is bound to lead to mistaken and indeed volun-taristic strategies, like declaring social
democracy to be the “main enemy” in the early 1930s, which could only strengthen, as in fact it trag-ically did strengthen,
Hitler’s forces. And in
the same way, but in the opposite sense, the “non-explosive” character
of a prolonged structural crisis, in contrast to the “thunderstorms” (Marx) through which
periodic conjunctural crises can discharge and resolve themselves, may also lead to
fundamentally misconceived strategies, as a result of the misin-terpretation of the
absence of “thunderstorms” as if their absence was the overwhelming evidence for the
indefinite stability of “organized capitalism” and of the “integration of the working class.” This kind of
misinterpretation, to be sure heavily promoted by the ruling ideological interests under the
pretenses of “scientific objectivity,” tends to rein-force the position of those who
represent the self-justifying acceptance of the reformist accommodationist approaches
in institutionalized—for-merly genuinely oppositional—working–class parties and trade unions (now,
however, “Her Majesty’s Official Opposition,” as the saying goes). But even among the deeply committed
critics of the capital system, the same misconception regarding the indefinitely crisisfree perspective of the established order can result in the adoption of a self-paralyzing
defensive posture, as we witnessed in the socialist movement in the last few decades. It cannot be stressed
enough, the crisis of politics in our time is not intelligible without being referred to the
broad overall social framework of which politics is an integral part. This means that in order
to clarify the nature of the persistent and deepening crisis of politics all over the world today we
must focus
attention on the crisis of the capital system itself. For the crisis of capital we are
18
experiencing—at least since the very beginning of the 1970s—is an all-embracing structural crisis. Let
us see, summed up as briefly as possible, the defining characteristics of the structural crisis we are concerned with. The
historical novelty of today’s crisis is manifest under four main aspects: ♦ (1) its character is universal, rather than restricted
to one particular sphere (e.g., financial, or commercial, or affecting this or that particu-lar branch of production, or
applying to this rather than that type of labour, with its specific range of skills and degrees of productivity, etc.); ♦ (2) its
scope is truly global (in the most threateningly literal sense of the term), rather than confined to a particular set of
countries (as all major crises have been in the past); ♦ (3) its time scale is extended, continuous—if you like: permanent—
rather than limited and cyclic, as all former crises of capital happened to be. ♦ (4) its mode of unfolding might be called
creeping—in contrast to the more spectacular and dramatic eruptions and collapses of the past— while adding the proviso
that even the most vehement or violent con-vulsions cannot be excluded as far as the future is concerned: i.e, when the
complex machinery now actively engaged in “crisis-management” and in the more or less temporary “displacement” of the
growing con-tradictions runs out of steam.... [Here] it is necessary to make some general points about the criteria of a
structural crisis, as well as about the forms in which its solution may be envisaged. To put it in the simplest and most
general terms, a structural crisis affects the totality of a social complex, in all its relations with its con-stituent parts or subcomplexes, as well as with other complexes to which it is linked. By contrast, a non-structural crisis affects only some parts
of the complex in question, and thus no matter how severe it might be with regard to the affected parts, it cannot endanger
the continued survival of the overall structure. Accordingly, the displacement of contradictions is feasible only while the
crisis is partial, relative and internally manageable by the system, requiring no more than shifts—even if major ones—
within the relatively autonomous system itself. By the same token, a structural crisis calls into question the very existence
of the overall complex concerned, postulat-ing its transcendence and replacement by some alternative complex. The same
contrast may be expressed in terms of the limits any particular social complex happens to have in its immediacy, at any
given time, as compared to those beyond which it cannot conceivably go. Thus, a structural crisis is not concerned with the
19
Thus, in a fairly obvious sense nothing could
be more serious than the structural crisis of capital’s mode of social metabolic
reproduction which defines the ultimate limits of the established order. But even though
profoundly serious in its all-important general parameters, on the face of it the structural crisis may not
appear to be of such a decid-ing importance when compared to the dramatic
vicissitudes of a major conjunctural crisis. For the “thunderstorms” through which the
con-junctural crises discharge themselves are rather paradoxical in the sense that in
their mode of unfolding they not only discharge (and impose) but also resolve themselves, to
the degree to which that is feasible under the circumstances. This they can do precisely because of their
partial char-acter which does not call into question the ultimate limits of the established global structure. At the same time, however, and for the same reason, they can
only “resolve” the underlying deep-seated structural problems—which necessarily
assert themselves again and again in the form of the specific conjunctural crises—in a
strictly partial and tempo-rally also most limited way. Until, that is, the next
conjunctural crisis appears on society’s horizon. By contrast, in view of the inescapably complex and
immediate limits but with the ultimate limits of a global structure....
prolonged nature of the structural crisis, unfolding in historical time in an epochal and not episodic/instantaneous sense, it
is the cumulative interrelationship of the whole that decides the issue, even under the false appearance of “normality.” This
is because in the structural crisis everything is at stake, involving the all-embracing ultimate limits of the given order of
which there cannot possibly be a “symbolic/paradigmatic” particular instance. Without
understanding the
overall systemic connections and implications of the particular events and
developments we lose sight of the really significant changes and of the corresponding
levers of poten-tial strategic intervention positively to affect them, in the interest of the
necessary systemic transformation. Our social responsibility therefore calls for an
uncompromising critical awareness of the emerging cumulative interrelationship,
instead of looking for comforting reassurances in the world of illusory normality until
the house collapses over our head.
A2: Cede the Political
“We should” is a tried and failed strategy – the government pursues empire and
destruction on purpose, and we must re-orient our political strategy to account
for this fact
Herod 2001 (James, “A Stake, Not a Mistake: On Not Seeing the Enemy”, October,
http://www.jamesherod.info/index.php?sec=paper&id=9 Accessed 6/27/10)
So what has been the response of the 'progressive community' to the bombing of Afghanistan? As usual, they just
don't get it. They just can't seem to grasp the simple fact that the government does this stuff on purpose.
Endlessly, progressives talk as if the government is just making a mistake, does not see the real
consequences of its actions, or is acting irrationally, and they hope to correct the government's course
by pointing out the errors of its ways. Progressives assume that their goals -- peace, justice, well-being -- are also the
government's goals. So when they look at what the government is doing, they get alarmed and puzzled, because it is obvious that
the government's actions are not achieving these goals. So they cry out: "Hey, this policy doesn't lead to peace!" or "Hey, this policy
doesn't achieve justice (or democracy, or development)!" By pointing this out, they hope to educate the government, to help it to
see its mistakes, to convince it that its policies are not having the desired results.[2]
How can they not see that the
US
government acts
deliberately, and that it knows what it is doing? How can they not see that the
government's goals are not peace and justice, but empire and profit. It wants these wars, this
repression. These policies are not mistakes; they are not irrational; they are not based on a failure of moral insight (since
morality is not even a factor in their considerations); they are not aberrations; they are not based on a failure to analyze the
situation correctly; they are not based on ignorance. This repression, these bombings, wars, massacres, assassinations, and covert
actions are the coldly calculated, rational, consistent, intelligent, and informed actions of a ruling class
determined at all costs to keep its power and wealth and preserve its way of life (capitalism). It has demonstrated
great historical presence, persistence, and continuity in pursuing this objective. This ruling class knows that it is
committing atrocities, knows that it is destroying democracy, hope, welfare, peace, and justice, knows that it is murdering,
massacring, slaughtering, poisoning, torturing, lying, stealing, and it doesn't care. Yet most progressives seem to believe that if only
they point out often enough and loud enough that the ruling class is murdering people, that it will wake up, take notice, apologize,
and stop doing it.
Here is a typical expression of this naiveté (written by an author, Brian Willson, who was in the process of
introducing a list of US interventions abroad!): "Many of us are continually disturbed and grief stricken because it seems that our
U.S. government does not yet understand: (a) the historical social, cultural, and economic issues that underlay most of the political
and ecological problems of the world; (b) the need to comply with, as legally agreed to, rather than continually defy, international
law and international institutions established for addressing conflict; and (c) that military solutions, including production, sale, and
use of the latest in technological weapons, are simply ill-equipped and wrong-headed for solving fundamental social and economic
problems." [3] He is wrong on all three counts. (a) The US government has an intimate, detailed knowledge of the social, cultural,
and economic characteristics of every country it intervenes in. It is especially familiar with the ethnic, linguistic, political, and
religious divisions within the country. It is not interested in how these issues "underlay most of the political and ecological problems
of the world", since it is not interested in those problems, certainly not in solving them, since it is the main creator of those
problems. Rather, it uses its expert knowledge to manipulate events within the country in order to advance its own goals, profit and
empire. (b) The US government understands perfectly that it expressly needs not to comply with international law in order to
maintain its ability to act unilaterally, unfettered by any constraints, to advance its imperial aims. The claim that the US defies
international law because of a misunderstanding is absurd. (c) Who says that the US government is trying to solve "fundamental
social and economic problems"? These are not its aims at all. The objectives that it does pursue, consciously and relentlessly, namely
profit and empire, are in fact the causes of these very "social and economic problems". Furthermore, for its true aims, military
solutions, far from being "ill-equipped and wrong-headed", work exceptionally well. Military might sustains the empire. Arming
every little client regime of the international ruling class with 'the latest in technological weapons" is necessary, and quite effective,
in maintaining the repressive apparatus needed to defend empire, in addition to raking in lots of profit for the arms manufacturers.
But evidently Mr. Willson "does not yet understand" any of these things.
Let's take another example. Russell Mokhiber and
Robert Weissman, otherwise very sensible writers, complain that "bombing a desperately poor country under the yoke of a
repressive regime is a wrongheaded response [to the "unspeakable acts of violence" committed on Sept. 11]. "The U.S. bombing of
Afghanistan should cease immediately," they say. They discuss three reasons: "1. The policy of bombing increases the risk of further
terrorism against the United States. 2. The bombing is intensifying a humanitarian nightmare in Afghanistan. 3. There are better
ways to seek justice." All three statements are true of course, but irrelevant, because seeking justice, avoiding humanitarian
nightmares, and reducing the risk of terrorism do not enter into the calculations of US policy makers. Quite the contrary, US policy
makers create injustice, humanitarian nightmares, and terrorism, throughout the world, in pursuit of the imperial objective of
making profit, and this has been thoroughly documented in thousands of scholarly studies. So for Mokhiber and Weissman to talk in
this way, and phrase
the problem in this way, exposes their failure to really comprehend the enemy
we face, which in turn prevents them from looking for effective strategies to defeat that enemy, like so many
other opponents of the "war". Hence all the moralizing, the bulk of which is definitely directed at the rulers, not at the ruled. That is,
it is not an attempt to win over the ruled, but an attempt to win over the rulers. [4] It's what I call the
"we should" crowd --
all those people who hope to have a voice in the formation of policy, people whose stances are basically that of
consultants to the ruling class. "We" should do this, "we" shouldn't do that, as if they had anything at all to say about what our rulers
do. This is the normal stance among the bootlicking intelligentsia of course. But what is it doing among progressives and radicals?
their stance is seen to be not exactly that of consultants, but that of citizens making demands upon
their government, what makes them think that the government ever listens? I think this attitude -Even if
the "we should" attitude -- is rooted in part at least in the fact that most progressives still believe in nations and governments. They
believe that this is "our" country, and that this is "our" government, or at least should be. So Kevin Danaher says that "we should get
control of the government." They identify themselves as Americans, or Germans, or Mexicans, or Swedes. So they are constantly
advising and making demands that 'their' government should do this and that. If they would reject nationalism altogether, and
states and governments, they could begin to see another way. A variation of the 'this is a mistake' theme has appeared in
commentaries on the present "war", on Afghanistan. Progressives argue that the US is "falling into a trap". They
argue that Osama bin Laden had hoped to provoke the US into doing just what it is doing, attacking Afghanistan. In their view, the
US government is being stupid, acting blindly, responding irrationally, and showing incompetence. That is, it is "making a
mistake". It never seems to occur to these analysts that the government may actually be awake, even alert, or
that it jumped at the opportunity offered it by the attacks of September Eleven to do what it had wanted to do anyway - seize Afghanistan, build a big new base in Uzbekistan, declare unending war on the enemies of Empire
everywhere, and initiate draconian repression against internal dissent in order to achieve "domestic tranquility". I saw yet another
variation on the theme just recently. John Tirman writes about "Unintended Consequences".[5] He thinks that "No matter how
cautious generals and political leaders are ... unseen and unintended [results] occur, at times as a bitter riptide which overwhelms
the original rationales for engaging in armed combat. This unpredictable cycle of action and reaction has thwarted U.S. policy in
southwest Asia for 50 years." It's the usual mistake: Tirman imputes policies to the US government which it does not have. US
policy has not been thwarted, it has been highly successful. The US has succeeded in keeping control
of Middle Eastern oil for the past half century. This is what it wanted to do, and this is what it did. Tirman however
reviews the history of US intervention in the Middle East, beginning with the overthrow of Mossedegh in Iran in 1953, and sees it as
one long blunder, nothing but bumbling incompetence, complicated further by 'unintended consequences' which thwart the goals of
American foreign policy. He seems to think that the US was (or "should be") trying to reduce US dependence on Middle Eastern oil,
fighting Islamic fundamentalism, reducing human suffering, assisting in economic development, promoting democracy, and so on -anything and everything except what it is actually doing, keeping control of Middle Eastern oil, and using any means necessary to do
so. Tirman is aware of course that this (oil) is the true aim of US policy, because he quotes directly from US officials who state this
objective explicitly, but somehow this doesn't sink in. Instead, he finally asks in exasperation: "What will be next in this series of
haunting mistakes?"
2AC
Perm Solvency
Perm do the plan and the not mutually exclusive parts of the alt – it’s an ethical
alt to excessive capitalism
Martin ’10 [Robert Martin, RVI English Representative – RVI is Renaissance Vanguard
International, an organization founded on Communitarian and Distributist principles,
“Centrifuge Capitalism” – Amerika – Jun 21st, 2010 –
http://www.amerika.org/politics/centrifuge-capitalism/]//lz
Centralization and capitalism are necessary for any intelligent civilization, yet in excess drains the
base population of any sustenance whatsoever, leaving them unemployed, homeless and starving at worst. The
answer to this event is not a swing on the pendulum all the way onto total equality fisted
socialism out on a plate for everyone who isn’t rich, that would be devastating for
organization, but is a more natural ecosystem type of financing of a near-barter economics
with different values and currencies for localized entities and more buoyant monetary for
inter-localities – only monetizing where absolutely necessary. Without the higher economics that goes
beyond small barter communities, there could be no space programs, or planetary defences providing the technology or the
organization necessary to survive extinction events or fund a military etc, it’s critical for the structure of the superorganism – yet too
much and some individuals inside of it become so padded from outside reality that they completely ignore the world around them.
Centralization is pseudo gravity of the political variant, it sucks everything down into a point, and through this it creates a civilization,
a planet of its own amidst a world of other civilizations all coalescing out of species of life at a specific evolutionary capacity.
Global modern day capitalism, in its most destructive phase, is made out of a ‘substance’ that
cannot overcome itself to produce wealth through its centralization, as far as it has gone now.
But it is possible, if many ‘planets’ ‘stars’ or everything that makes up a wealthy locality all evolve to revolve around a central core,
then this will produce a kind of ‘active centralization’ where the dead and cold rock of debt is stripped apart of its structure and is
made into pure wealth, pure value and then jetted out of the core of civilization, thereby producing wealth on a higher niche via
fusing the negative debt with the unseen gravity of its social environment. Evolution is at a somewhat constant rate and afflicts
every gene and meme in existence at varying energies, if we don’t adapt to our environment then we will be at the mercy of the
ourselves alone, likewise if we don’t adapt ourselves we will be at the mercy of our environment alone. Although good for some, for
the future it is severely disabling and cannot allow for space exploration. Capitalism,
like every theory, is memes,
be improved by alternating the frequencies and wavelengths of its usage, it can
be evolved to be more collective, to refertilize the environment so that individuals can once
again contribute back into the centralization instead of a ‘once in a civilization opportunity’
where we have one big boom and the rest is dumped in the toilet for the peasants to feast. Like
therefore it can
these active galaxies, absorb that which gets too centralized and jet it out as high energy wealth across the void of space, this jet
then crushes the inert clouds, or communities, around it into fusing stars of their own. Modern capitalism needs a black hole at its
centre, therefore the individuals at the core of its centrifuge will be spaghettified and will have their organizations and corporations
torn apart into sub atomic values that then are then fused into exotic wealth able to drive civilization into space and into creating
new homes on distant planets for our species. The
centralization, combined with its spin, acts as a funnel to
the higher castes of society that are then able to create beyond themselves enough that we
can produce strong civilizations, culture, technology and mechanization. So remember you shit eating
socialists, don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater or your people will not have an intelligent future at all, regressing into your
economic swamps is not a viable solution
Cede the Political
Alternative cedes the political
Wilson 2K [Author of many books including ‘The Myth of Political Correctness’ – 2000 (John K.
Wilson, “How the Left can Win Arguments and Influence People” p. 7- 10]
Socialism is dead. Kaput. Stick a fork in Lenin's corpse. Take the Fidel posters off the wall. Welcome to the twenty-first century.
Wake up and smell the capitalism. I have no particular hostility to socialism. But nothing can kill a good idea
in America so quickly as sticking the "socialist" label on it. The reality in America is that socialism is about
as successful as Marxist footwear (and have you ever seen a sickle and hammer on anybody's shoes?). Allow your
position to be defined as socialist even if it isn't (remember Clinton's capitalist health care
plan?), and the idea is doomed. Instead of fighting to repair the tattered remnants of socialism
as a marketing slogan, the left needs to address the core issues of social justice. You can form
the word socialist from the letters in social justice, but it sounds better if you don't. At least 90
percent of America opposes socialism, and 90 percent of America thinks "social justice" might
be a good idea. Why alienate so many people with a word? Even the true believers hawking copies of the Revolutionary
Socialist Worker must realize by now that the word socialist doesn't have a lot of drawing power. In the movie Bulworth, Warren
Beatty declares: "Let me hear that dirty word: socialism!" Socialism isn't really a dirty word, however; if it were, socialism might have
a little underground appeal as a forbidden topic. Instead,
socialism is a forgotten word, part of an archaic
vocabulary and a dead language that is no longer spoken in America. Even Michael Harrington, the founder
of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), didn't use the word socialism in his influential book on poverty, The Other America.
The best reason for the left to abandon socialism is not PR but honesty. Most of the self-described "socialists" remaining in America
don't qualify as real socialists in any technical sense. If you look at the DSA (whose prominent members include Harvard professor
Cornel West and former Time columnist Barbara Ehrenreich), most of the policies they urge-a living wage, universal health care,
environmental protection, reduced spending on the Pentagon, and an end to corporate welfare-have nothing to do with socialism in
the specific sense of government ownership of the means of production. Rather, the DSA program is really nothing more than what
a liberal political party ought to push for, if we had one in America. Europeans, to whom the hysteria over socialism must seem
rather strange, would never consider abandoning socialism as a legitimate political ideology. But in America, socialism simply isn't
taken seriously by the mainstream. Therefore, if socialists want to be taken seriously, they need to pursue socialist goals using
nonsocialist rhetoric. Whenever someone
tries to attack an idea as "socialist" (or, better yet,
"communist"), there's an easy answer: Some people think everything done by a government,
from Social Security to Medicare to public schools to public libraries, is socialism. The rest of us
just think it's a good idea. (Whenever possible, throw public libraries into an argument, whether it's about good
government programs or NEA funding. Nobody with any sense is opposed to public libraries. They are by far the most
popular government institutions.) If an argument turns into a debate over socialism, simply
define socialism as the total government ownership of all factories and natural resources-which, since we don't have it and no one is really arguing for this to happen, makes socialism a
rather pointless debate. Of course, socialists will always argue among themselves about
socialism and continue their internal debates. But when it comes to influencing public policy,
abstract discussions about socialism are worse than useless, for they alienate the progressive
potential of the American people. It's only by pursuing specific progressive policies on
nonsocialist terms that socialists have any hope in the long term of convincing the public that
socialism isn't (or shouldn't be) a long-dead ideology.
Cap Good – War
Capitalism leads to interdependence which greatly reduces the risk of war – five
reasons
Yee 99 (Tan Tan, Journal of the Singapore Armed Forces, Jan-Mar,
http://www.mindef.gov.sg/safti/pointer/back/journals/1999/Vol25_1/7.htm)JFS
Like the Democratic Peace Proposition, the
notion that increased interdependence reduces the
probability of war among nations is not new. For one, economists have long demonstrated that
economic interdependence benefits both parties through the process of international trade.
The underlying rationale is worth explaining. In a simple model of a two-state-two-product international economy,
even if a particular state is more efficient at producing both goods, it would still make more economic sense for each
state to specialise in producing one of the goods and thereafter obtain the other through barter exchange. This is
because the issue is one of relative rather than absolute efficiency; the more efficient state should optimise its limited
resources to focus entirely on producing the goods where it has a relatively greater efficiency. From
an
economic viewpoint, therefore, international trade represents one of the rare occasions in
international affairs that present a win-win situation to both parties.15 Traditionally, theories on the
effect of interdependence between states on the risk of war can be divided into two main camps. On the one extreme,
liberals argue that economic
interdependence lowers the likelihood of war by increasing
the value of trading over the alternative of aggression; in other words, states would
rather trade than fight.16 To put it simply, trade is mutually beneficial, while war is at best a zero-sum game.
At the same time, the increasing lethality of modern weapons has greatly increased the costs and risks of war, thus
making the trading option seem even more rational. Four
other subsidiary propositions supporting the
liberal view are worth mentioning here.17 Firstly, the increased economic activity that
accompanies higher trade levels tends to promote domestic prosperity, and in doing so
lessens the internal problems that push leaders to war. Secondly, trade may alter the
domestic structure of a particular state, giving more influence to groups with a
vested interest in the continuation of peaceful trade. Thirdly, a higher level of
interdependence inevitably leads to increased interaction between governments
and peoples. This enhances understanding and an appreciation of each other's views and perspectives,
reducing the misunderstandings and miscalculations that sometimes lead to war. The final
argument asserts that trade has the spillover effect of enhancing political ties between
trading partners, thus improving the prospects for long-term co-operation. Going by the liberal
arguments, there is cause for optimism as long as a high level of interdependence can be
maintained among all states. Rosecrance sums up the view rather neatly that high interdependence
fosters peace by making trading more profitable than invading.18 Some liberals explain the
continuing occurrence of war as a result of the misconception of political leaders caught up in the outmoded belief that
war still pays.19 Yet others saw it as the misguided attempts by political leaders to gamble for an outright victory in
war, in which case the benefits would be even greater. The contention is that inspite of the pacifist tendencies that
interdependence brings about, it may sometimes not be enough to prevent war from happening.
Empirically proven to solve war
Griswold 5 (Daniel, director of Center for Trade Policy Studies@CATO, December 28,
http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=5344)
As one little-noticed headline on an Associated Press story recently reported, "War declining worldwide, studies say."
According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, the
number of armed conflicts
around the world has been in decline for the past half-century. In just the past 15 years,
ongoing conflicts have dropped from 33 to 18, with all of them now civil conflicts within countries. As 2005
draws to an end, no two nations in the world are at war with each other. The death toll from war has also
been falling. According to the AP story, "The number killed in battle has fallen to its lowest
point in the post-World War II period, dipping below 20,000 a year by one measure. Peacemaking
missions, meanwhile, are growing in number." Those estimates are down sharply from annual tolls ranging
from 40,000 to 100,000 in the 1990s, and from a peak of 700,000 in 1951 during the Korean War. Many causes lie
behind the good news -- the end of the Cold War and the spread of democracy, among them -- but expanding trade
and globalization appear to be playing a major role. Far from stoking a "World on Fire," as one
misguided American author has argued, growing commercial ties between nations have had a
dampening effect on armed conflict and war, for three main reasons. First, trade and
globalization have reinforced the trend toward democracy, and democracies don't pick fights
with each other. Freedom to trade nurtures democracy by expanding the middle class in globalizing countries and
equipping people with tools of communication such as cell phones, satellite TV, and the Internet. With trade comes
more travel, more contact with people in other countries, and more exposure to new ideas. Thanks in part to
globalization, almost two thirds of the world's countries today are democracies -- a record high. Second, as
national economies become more integrated with each other, those nations have
more to lose should war break out. War in a globalized world not only means human
casualties and bigger government, but also ruptured trade and investment ties that impose lasting
damage on the economy. In short, globalization has dramatically raised the economic
cost of war. Third, globalization allows nations to acquire wealth through production
and trade rather than conquest of territory and resources. Increasingly, wealth is
measured in terms of intellectual property, financial assets, and human capital. Those
are assets that cannot be seized by armies. If people need resources outside their national borders, say oil
or timber or farm products, they can acquire them peacefully by trading away what they can produce best at home.
Trade from Capitalism solves wars
Mark Harrison, Research fellow at the Hoover Institution and Professor of Economics at the
University of Warwick, October 19, 2011, Capitalism at War http://ssrn.com/abstract=1992623
Martin, Mayer, and Thoenig (2008) show how globalization has helped to manage war risks. Using data from 1970 to 2000, they show
that trade
has a double effect on the propensity for war. Consider any pair of countries. The more
a country traded with its pair, they show, the more likely were the two to remain at
peace. But as trade increased with third countries, the less likely was peace to persist. Bilateral trade reduced the
frequency of bilateral war; multilateral trade increased it.¶ At the root of the historical process was
falling trade costs (Jacks, Meissner, and Novy 2008). Suppose the leaders of a country have some reason to fight their neighbour.
Under high trade costs, the adversary is the only trading partner. There is no
substitute for the food and fuel previously imported, so war leads to autarky. The
peacetime supply chain is broken; the home prices of food and fuel must rise. The
duration of autarky is uncertain, since it depends on how quickly the war can be concluded, which is a matter of chance. As a result,
the risk of persistent trade disruption and economic losses is high. When trade costs are
low, in contrast, the home country can lay off its war risks in the rest of the world; for
example, it can easily substitute away from the neighbour for the source of its imports.
The broken supply chain can be replaced with others. Thus, low trade costs enable
the home country to fight its neighbour while continuing to trade with the rest of
the world.
Cap doesn’t cause war
Mark Harrison, Research fellow at the Hoover Institution and Professor of Economics at the
University of Warwick, October 19, 2011, Capitalism at War http://ssrn.com/abstract=1992623
Ricardo (1817) used the word “capitalist” to distinguish the owners of capital from the owners of land and labour. But
the mere existence of capitalists falls short of implying “capitalism,” an entire economic and social system with private
capital ownership at its foundation. In fact, the identity of capitalism was created by its critics, Proudhon (1861) and
Marx (1867). Marx, before anyone else, argued that capitalism’s defining features allow us logically to infer distinct and
general attributes of capitalism (such as alienation) and propensities (such as the declining rate of profit). To
inquire in this sense into whether “capitalism” as such has a propensity for anything, let alone something as
emotive as war, is to enter a debate on conceptual territory chosen by the enemies
of capitalism. Second, the histories of capitalism and warfare are certainly intertwined, but not uniquely. War is
as old as history; capitalism is not. All societies that have given rise to organized
government have engaged in warfare (Tilly 1975). The slave and serf societies and city
states of the ancient, classical, and medieval eras made war freely. Turning to
modern times, the socialist states of the twentieth century were born in wartime,
prepared for war, and did not shrink from the use of military power to achieve their
goals. Thinking comparatively, it will not be easy to identify any causal connection between
capitalism and war. At most, we will look for some adaptation or propensity for war under capitalism, relative
to other systems. Third, if there is a story here, who are the actors? Capitalism is an economic structure;
war is a political act. War can hardly be explained by structure alone, for there is no
war without agency, calculation, and decision. Given this, our search must be for aspects of
capitalism that may have created incentives and propensities for the political actors to choose war with greater
frequency, and made them more willing to impose the increasing costs of war on society, than under alternative
conditions, real or counterfactual.
Cap Good - Democracy
Cap promotes democracy and peace
Mark Harrison, Research fellow at the Hoover Institution and Professor of Economics at the
University of Warwick, October 19, 2011, Capitalism at War http://ssrn.com/abstract=1992623
What do capitalist institutions contribute to the empirical patterns in the data? Erik Gartzke (2007) has re-examined
the hypothesis of the “democratic peace” based on the possibility that,
since capitalism and democracy
are highly correlated across countries and time, both democracy and peace might be
products of the same underlying cause, the spread of capitalist institutions. It is a
problem that our historical datasets have measured the spread of capitalist property rights and economic freedoms
over shorter time spans or on fewer dimensions than political variables. For the period from 1950 to 1992, Gartzke
uses a measure of external financial and trade liberalization as most likely to signal
robust markets and a laissez faire policy. Countries that share this attribute of
capitalism above a certain level, he finds, do not fight each other, so there is capitalist
peace as well as democratic peace. Second, economic liberalization (of the less liberalized of the
pair of countries) is a more powerful predictor of bilateral peace than democratization,
controlling for the level of economic development and measures of political affinity.
Democracy prevents wars, even in a world of realism
Erik Gartzke associate professor of political science at UC San Diego, and Alex Weisiger, Ph.D.
in Political Science and assistant professor at the University of Pennsylvania, 15 January 2010,
http://www-polisci.tamu.edu/upload_images/132/PICC/Gartzke_Jan2010.pdf
That democracies do not fight each other, or that they fight only rarely, is now one
of the most widely accepted empirical findings in political science. 2 Initial studies that found
what later came to be known as the democratic peace (Babst 1964; Small and Singer 1976) encountered skepticism, as
the discovery was incompatible with the realist precept that second image politics was largely irrelevant to
challenges to the democratic peace, both qualitative (Layne 1994) and
quantitative (Spiro 1994; Farber and Gowa 1997; Gowa 1999), often originated from the realist camp.
Over time, however, more extensive and careful quantitative research, most notably a series of studies by Russett,
international a airs. Early
Oneal, and co-authors (Maoz and Russett 1992, 1993; Oneal, et al. 1996, 2003; Oneal and Ray 1997; Oneal and Russett
1997, 1999a, 1999b, 1999c; Russett 1993; Russett and Oneal 2001), have
addressed many
methodological concerns with prior studies, creating a consensus within the field that the
empirical relationship between joint democracy and peace is genuine. 3 An intense but
increasingly one-sided debate has occurred between those who treat democratic peace as a dyadic observation (Maoz
and Abdoladi 1989; Bremer 1992; Morgan and Campbell 1991; Maoz and Russett 1993; Oneal and Russett 1997;
Russett and Oneal 2001) and those who argue that democracies are generally more peaceful (Benoit
1996; Ray 1995; Rummel 1996; Rousseau et al. 1996). This debate has clear normative implications, even as its results
sharpen theoretical insight: an explanation for the monadic relationship is typically unable to account for a dyadic
observation, and vice versa. For example, Kant's assertion that citizens in a republic are naturally loath to spill their
own blood (Kant 1972[1795]), implies a monadic, not a dyadic phenomenon.
Democratic capitalism leads to peace
Bruce Russett, Dean Acheson Professor of International Relations and Director of United
Nations Studies at Yale University, 1995, Grasping the Democratic Peace: Principles for a Post-
Cold War World, Princeton University Press,
http://www.polisci.ufl.edu/usfpinstitute/2010/documents/readings/Russett,%20Grasping,%20c
hap.%201.pdf
Democratic capitalism leads to peace. As evidence, Schumpeter claims that throughout the
capitalist world an op- position has arisen to "war, expansion, cabinet diplomacy";
that contemporary capitalism is associated with peace par- ties; and that the industrial
worker of capitalism is "vigorously anti-imperialist." In addition, he points out that the capital- ist world has
developed means of prevent- ing war, such as the Hague Court and that the least feudal, most
capitalist society— the United States—has demonstrated the least imperialistic tendencies
(Schumpeter 1955, pp. 95-96). An example of the lack of imperialistic tendencies in the U.S., Schumpeter thought, was
our leaving over half of Mexico unconquered in the war of 1846-48. Schumpeter's explanation for liberal pacifism is
quite simple: Only
war profi- teers and military aristocrats gain from wars. No
democracy would pursue a minority interest and tolerate the high costs of
imperialism. When free trade prevails, "no class" gains from forcible expansion because
foreign raw materials and food stuffs are as accessible to each nation as though they
were in its own territory. Where the cultural backward- ness of a region makes normal economic intercourse dependent on colonization it does not matter, assuming free trade, which of the "civilized" nations undertakes
the task of coloni- zation. (Schumpeter, 1955, pp. 75-76)
Democracies prevent wars – they empirically don’t fight each other
Bruce Russett, Dean Acheson Professor of International Relations and Director of United
Nations Studies at Yale University, 1995, Grasping the Democratic Peace: Principles for a PostCold War World, Princeton University Press,
http://www.polisci.ufl.edu/usfpinstitute/2010/documents/readings/Russett,%20Grasping,%20c
hap.%201.pdf
The end of ideological hostility matters doubly because it represents a surrender to the force of Western values of
economic and especially polit- ical freedom.To the degree that countries once ruled by autocratic sys-tems become
democratic, a striking fact about the world comes to bear on any discussion of the future of international relations: in
the modern in-ternational system, democracies have almost never fought each other.
This statement represents a complex phenomenon: (a) Democracies rarely fight each other (an
empirical statement) because (b) they have other means of resolving conflicts
between them and therefore do not need to fight each other (a prudential statement),
and (c) they perceive that democracies should not fight each other (a normative
statement about principles of right behavior), which reinforces the empirical state- ment. By this
reasoning, the more democracies there are in the world, the fewer potential
adversaries we and other democracies will have the wider the zone of peace. This book
will document, explain, and speculate about the implications of the phenomenon of democratic peace.
Even with disputes, democracy prevents it from going over the brink
Bruce Russett, Dean Acheson Professor of International Relations and Director of United
Nations Studies at Yale University, 1995, Grasping the Democratic Peace: Principles for a PostCold War World, Princeton University Press,
http://www.polisci.ufl.edu/usfpinstitute/2010/documents/readings/Russett,%20Grasping,%20c
hap.%201.pdf
The strong norm that democracies should not fight each other seems to have developed only toward the end of the
nineteenth century. That
time period provides a number of examples in which stable
democracies en-gaged in serious diplomatic disputes that took them to brink of war,
without ever actually going over the edge. In this restraint of action be-tween
democracies, and in the subsequent evaluations of the crises by the peoples and
elites involved, we can discern some important differences : has long between the
expectations and norms operating among democracies and practices to those that
became operative when a democracy entered into an adversar- spoke of ial
relationship with an authoritarian state.
Cap Good – Environment
The environment is getting better because of capitalism
Goldberg 2K (Jonah, Editor-at-Large – National Review, “Witness Earth Day”, The National
Review, 4-24,
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=NGM0YjAzNGYyMzg0NjhkZDVmNzE0ZWI2NjIyZDE4N2Q=)
First, the environment is getting better. The air is cleaner, the water too. Species extinctions
are declining and we haven't lost any really cute animals in a very long time. There are more
trees in the US than there were in the 1920s. Vital resources are all getting cheaper. Food is
abundant — despite the fact that people like Paul Ehrlich predicted that most surviving
Americans would be eating human-foot stew by now. Capitalism is the fastest route to a clean
environment. Remember: Rich people pass child-labor laws, Clean Air Acts, Clean Water Acts,
Endangered Species Acts — because they can afford to. It is a fact that a person faced with the
choice of not killing a rhino versus feeding his family will almost always choose feeding his
family. Liberals believe that laws can trump necessity. This is very rarely the case. That's why
America passed anti-child labor laws only after we got prosperous enough to be able to afford
to send our kids to school rather than work.
Transition from property rights will destroy ecological diversity
Bailey 01 (Ronald, Science Correspondent – Reason, “Rage Against the Machine”, Reason
Magazine, 33(3), July,
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1568/is_3_33/ai_76447014/pg_11)
Yet if the global commons is expanded as the neo-Luddites hope, much more of the earth will
look like the blasted, barren landscape of the Sahel. The Sahel is the onceproductive savanna
region south of the Sahara that has been devastated by overgrazing herds of the indigenous
peoples who hold its pasturages in common. As troubling, trying to manage a commons via
political means requires centralized authority administering increasingly detailed regulations,
with a cadre of bureaucrats to monitor and enforce them. True decentralization is possible only
by abolishing the commons, enclosing it, and assigning property rights to people. This
harnesses the incentives of private property, which encourages people to protect and preserve
their property. This has been done in the case of fisheries in New Zealand and Iceland. And
private temperate forests are expanding in developed countries. Even the half-hearted sulfur
dioxide emissions market in the United States has achieved remarkable reductions in air
pollution. Between 1995 and 1999, for instance, emissions have fallen some 22 percent below
federally set targets-and at a cost more than 40 percent below the initial projections.
Rejecting capitalism causes massive ecological disasters
Butters 07 (Roger B., Ph.D., President – Nebraska Council on Economic Education, Assistant
Professor of Economics – University of Nebraska at Lincoln, “Teaching the Benefits of
Capitalism”, http://www.hillsdale.edu/images/userImages/afolsom/Page_6281/Butters.pdf)
Property rights create the incentive needed to conserve scarce resources. Why is the air
outside polluted and the air in your car clean? The answer is property rights. You don’t own the
air outside your car so you gladly pollute it whereas the air inside your car, over which you have
a property right, is jealously maintained with air‐conditioning, filters and air fresheners. How
can we solve the pollution problem? Simple, establish a property right and require that all
exhaust fumes be vented inside the vehicle that creates them. Suddenly the incentive to use
better fuels, drive a more efficient vehicle and reduce emissions would result in booming
innovation in pollution abatement; all in response to a property right. Clearly this example
pushes into the absurd, but it illustrate the point none‐the‐less. For a more practical
comparison consider why private bathrooms are clean, and public ones are not. Better yet, why
are Maine Lobsters plentiful and orange roughy aren’t? – Property rights. Why are cows
thriving and tigers vanishing? Property rights. For cows people have a direct incentive to
preserve, protect and improve. For tigers the only incentive is to use the resource before
someone else does. Why are elephants and other endangered species on the rebound in some
African countries? Property rights. By letting villages own the animals they have an incentive to
preserve, protect and improve, and as a result the animals are thriving. Rather than calling
poachers when a rhinoceros decimates your corn field, you care for the animal, make sure it
has several young and then auction the right to shoot it to a wealthy game hunter. The animals
are preserved, the population is maintained, the village receives increased wealth and a private
individual has a unique experience. By defining the property right we have gone from
extinction and poverty to trade and wealth and at the end of the day there are more, not fewer
rhinoceroses. The tragedy of the commons is one of the most valuable and pervasive examples
of what happens when property rights are poorly defined and unenforced. What is the benefit
of capitalism? It provides us with property rights that create the incentives to preserve, protect
and improve. It is not surprising that the greatest ecological disasters have all occurred in
societies without strong social institutions that protect property.
Capitalism helps the environment – generates the necessary capital and
empowers individuals to push for environmental protections
Kublicki 94 (Nicolas, LLM in Environmental Law – George Washington Law School, “The
Greening of Free Trade: NAFTA, Mexican Environmental Law, and Debt Exchanges for Mexican
Environmental Infrastructure Development”, Columbia Journal of Environmental Law, 19 Colum.
J. Envtl. L. 59, Lexis)
n82. The economic model that pits economic growth against environmental protection is
socialist in nature. Contrary to popular belief among radical environmentalists, communist
countries and those socialist countries that regard growth as in opposition to environmental
protection pollute much more than their capitalist counterparts. The reasons for this are
twofold. First, commmunist ideology is based on the mistaken belief that Man is supreme and
that Man can do with nature whatever he wishes, without negative consequence. See generally
Evgene Konstantinovich Fedorov, Man and Nature (1972) (discussing the communist view of
the relationship of man and the environment). See also Alston Chase, The Monster That Will
Drink the Danube, Traveler, Mar. 1992, at 118 (example of Gabcikovo dam project initiated by
Joseph Stalin in Czechoslovakia and Hungary that will cause the desertification of thousands of
square acres). Pursuant to communist philosophy, because Man is supreme, he does not need
to plan ahead for later generations, since he will be able to remedy the situation in the future.
Second, the all-powerful government owns all of the means of industrial and agricultural
production in communist countries and, to a lesser extent, in socialist countries as well. Such
ownership is inherently inefficient because it fails to motivate an efficient use of capital.
Therefore, the government has no incentive to burden itself with environmental regulations.
Furthermore if the government wished to do so, it could not afford to, as its non-competitive
economy does not generate sufficient capital. In contrast, the application of capitalist
democratic free market theory generates both the capital needed to pay for environmental
protection and the political freedom for the people to force government to promulgate
environmental regulations for the common good.
Cap Good – A2: Root Cause
The ‘root cause’ approach is blind and false
Martin 90 Brian Martin, Department of Science and Technology Studies, University of
Wollongong, Australia, Uprooting War, 1990 edition
http://www.uow.edu.au/arts/sts/bmartin/pubs/90uw/uw13.html
The discussion so far concerns capitalist firms within a particular state. The wider question is, what
role does
the world capitalist system play in the war system? When examining particular wars, the
immediate role of profit and accumulation are often minimal. Examples are World War Two, the
Indochinese War and the many Middle East wars. Even in many colonial empires, immediate economic
advantages for the capitalist class have played a minor role compared to issues of
expansion and maintenance of state power. The role of capitalism mainly entered through its structuring of
economic relations which are supervised separately and jointly by capitalist states. The main military service of the
state to capitalists in the international system is to oppose movements which threaten the viability of capitalist
economic relations. This includes state socialism and all movements for self-management. At the same time, the way
this state intervention operates, namely through separate and potentially competing state apparatuses, can conflict
with the security of capitalism. Wars and military expenditures can hurt national economies, as in the case of US
government expenditures for fighting in Vietnam. Only some struggles against capitalism have potential for challenging
the war system. Efforts to oppose capital by mobilising the power of the state do little in this direction. In particular,
promotion of state socialism (the destruction of capitalism within a state mode, with the maintenance of bureaucratic
control and military power) does little to address the problem of war. The
trouble here is that much of
the socialist left sees capitalism as the sole source of evil in the world. This approach
is blind to the roots of social problems that do not primarily grow out of class
domination, including racism, sexism, environmental degradation and war. Because of
this blindness, even the struggle against capitalism is weakened, since attention is not paid to systems of power such as
patriarchy and bureaucracy which are mobilised to support capitalism as well as other interests.
Cap Good – Sustainable
Cap sustainable now, solutions can be offered pollution, financial instability,
health problems and inequality
Rogoff 11
Kenneth Rogoff, Professor of Economics at Harcard, 12/2/2011, “Is Modern Capitalism Sustainable?,”
http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/is-modern-capitalism-sustainable-, KB
In principle, none of capitalism’s problems is insurmountable, and economists have offered a
variety of market-based solutions. A high global price for carbon would induce firms and
individuals to internalize the cost of their polluting activities. Tax systems can be designed to
provide a greater measure of redistribution of income without necessarily involving crippling
distortions, by minimizing non-transparent tax expenditures and keeping marginal rates low.
Effective pricing of health care, including the pricing of waiting times, could encourage a better
balance between equality and efficiency. Financial systems could be better regulated, with
stricter attention to excessive accumulations of debt.
CommentsWill capitalism be a victim of its own success in producing massive wealth? For now,
as fashionable as the topic of capitalism’s demise might be, the possibility seems remote.
Nevertheless, as pollution, financial instability, health problems, and inequality continue to
grow, and as political systems remain paralyzed, capitalism’s future might not seem so secure
in a few decades as it seems now.
Capitalism helps the economy, democratic governing, education, and life.
Empirically proven in multiple countries.
Leeson 10
(Peter Leeson, BB&T Professor for the Study of Capitalism at the Mercatus Center. "Two Cheers for
Capitalism?" http://www.springerlink.com/content/tu16g275r66162r6/ 3/30/10)
According to a popular view that I call “two cheers for capitalism,” capitalism’s effect on development is ambiguous
and mixed. This paper empirically investigates that view. I find that it’s wrong. Citizens in countries that
became more capitalist over the last quarter century became wealthier, healthier, more
educated, and politically freer. Citizens in countries that became significantly less capitalist over
this period endured stagnating income, shortening life spans, smaller gains in education, and
increasingly oppressive political regimes. The data unequivocally evidence capitalism’s
superiority for development. Full-force cheerleading for capitalism is well deserved and three
cheers are in order instead of two. Keywords Capitalism Socialism . Development . Peter Berger In 1974 Peter
Berger published his important book, Pyramids of Sacrifice. That book examines what Berger calls “political ethics and
social change.” In particular, it considers the “ethical dilemmas of development.” As Berger (1986: 12) described the
project 12 years later, Pyramids of Sacrifice was “largely shaped by my experience in and my reflections about Latin
America . . . In this book I tried very hard to be evenhanded as between capitalist and socialist models of development,
arguing that both should be assessed in terms of a number of moral criteria I proposed . . . I have had no reason to
change these moral criteria since then, but precisely their application to the empirical evidence led me step by
step to my present position, which is that capitalism is the morally safer bet .” Berger’s position in
Pyramids of Sacrifice was that capitalism has some benefits and shortcomings. The same is true of socialism. Between
the two modes of politicaleconomic organization, there’s no obvious choice. To satisfactorily deal with development,
thinkers on both sides of the capitalism/socialism debate must abandon their “dogmatic” adherence to extremes and
forge a practical third way. Although Berger later abandoned this position and came to the “pro-capitalism side,” the
view he expressed in Pyramids of Sacrifice is important to consider because it approximates a view that many people
hold today. According to this view, although markets can be important contributors to development, they can also
undermine it. Evidence for capitalism’s effect on development is ambiguous and mixed. Thus we should be cautious
and modest advocates of markets. According to those who hold this position, social scientists who do not water down,
qualify, and temper their praise and advocacy of capitalism as an engine of development are “ideologues,”
“dogmatists,” and “free-market fundamentalists.” They let wishful thinking contaminate their scientific views and
privilege faith over the hard empirical evidence, which neither supports an “extreme” position in favor or capitalism for
development, nor permits categorical claims for capitalism’s superiority. I call this popular view “two cheers for
capitalism.” Berger’s (1986) later book, The Capitalist Revolution, urges social scientists of all stripes not to be
“dogmatic,” to generate falsifiable propositions and, most important for my analysis, to examine the evidence in light
of those propositions. In the spirit of Berger’s request, this paper evaluates the two cheers for capitalism view
empirically. I selected the evidence I examine for this purpose on the basis of the two moral criteria that Berger says we
should look at when considering development in his Pyramids of Sacrifice. The first criterion, which he calls the
“calculus of pain,” refers to the avoidance of human suffering. Berger’s second criterion, which he calls the “calculus of
meaning,” refers to respect for the values of individuals in the developing world. I also empirically evaluate a common
variation on the two cheers for capitalism view. This view suggests that even if capitalism is good for
development, “excessive” or “uncontrolled” capitalism isn’t. Beyond some point, more capitalism is
counterproductive. Laissez faire isn’t conducive to development because maximal capitalism is past the optimum . A
well-regulated marked economy with healthy doses of intervention to restrain its excesses is
conducive to maximal development. Only a dogmatic free-market ideologue would argue
otherwise. Although it has a different purpose in mind, my approach is similar to Andrei Shleifer’s (2009) in his
recent paper, “The Age of Milton Friedman.” Shleifer was interested in documenting how the world’s embrace of freemarket policies over the last 25 years has affected global development. I’m interested in documenting how
countries that became more capitalist over this period fared compared to countries that
became less capitalist in terms of their development. My finding is straightforward : the two cheers
for capitalism view is wrong. Although many relationships in the social sciences are unclear,
capitalism’s relationship to development isn’t one of them. Unless one is ashamed of
unprecedented increases in income, rising life expectancy, greater education, and more
political freedom, there’s no reason to be a milquetoast defender of capitalism . That is what
sprawling free markets have meant for countries that became more capitalist over the last
quarter century. There’s no evidence that countries that eschewed the global trend toward
freer markets and embraced substantially greater state control performed better on any of
these indicators. On the contrary, they performed demonstrably worse. I also find that the two
cheers for capitalism variant that desires markets, but “within reason,” is wrong. There’s no evidence for a Lorenz
curvetype relationship between capitalism and development. Development is monotonically increasing in
capitalism. Maximal capitalism begets maximal development. It doesn’t make one “dogmatic” to
acknowledge these facts. It makes one dogmatic to refuse to acknowledge them. They are facts. There are precious
few overwhelmingly clear relationships in the social sciences. We should embrace this one rather than running away
from it. The data clearly support capitalism’s superiority for development and merit its
unqualified defense by social scientists who believe that wealth is better than poverty, life is
better than death, and liberty is better than oppression. Full-force cheerleading for capitalism
is well deserved and three cheers are in order instead of two . Data and Empirical Approach This paper
doesn’t explore the theoretical underpinnings of the empirical relationships it documents. Its purpose is purely
empirical. Those underpinnings have been discussed by political economists going back centuries. The interested
reader should consult Adam Smith’s (1776) Wealth of Nations, F.A. Hayek’s (1920) “Use of Knowledge in Society,” and
Ludwig von Mises’ (1949) Human Action. The lazy reader may consult Peter Leeson’s (2008) summary of these
arguments and their connections in “Escaping Poverty: Foreign Aid, Private Property, and Economic Development.” I
was at a conference a few years ago in which, following a spirited discussion about the merits of capitalism for
development, one of the participants, fearing the praise for capitalism was growing unduly strong on one side of the
room, noted that “The jury is still out on how capitalism has affected development globally. Capitalism has
brought some benefits for certain countries; but we can’t make blanket statements about capitalism’s
‘goodness’ for development. We simply don’t have the evidence we need to make a judgment on this question. What
little evidence we do have is less than clear.” She made this comment to her colleagues’ approving nods. I’ve
subsequently heard others make similar claims. This is classic “two cheers for capitalism” thinking. Contrary to this
participants’ claim, the jury isn’t still out on how capitalism has affected development globally. We have plenty of
evidence. And it overwhelmingly points in one direction: the growth of capitalism has made the
world better off. The relationships I look at below aren’t the only ones one might want to consider. Certainly others
could be examined. I encourage the reader to do so if she’s curious. In a moment I’ll present the evidence on the
growth of capitalism and then on income. Income is highly and positively correlated with nearly every
positive development indicator one can think of (for example, access to a clean water source), and highly
and negatively correlated with nearly every negative development indicator one can think of (for
example, infant mortality). There are exceptions. But this strong tendency militates against depicting many of these
relationships. Once the relationship between capitalism and income is established, for most purposes, it becomes
redundant to examine the relationship between capitalism and improved access to a clean water source, infant
mortality, and so on. If the reader wishes to verify this for herself, she’s encouraged to plot the data and see. I consider
the trajectory of capitalism and four “core” development indicators in countries that have embraced and rejected
capitalism over the past quarter century. These categories are average income, life expectancy, years of schooling, and
democracy. I selected these indicators for 228 Soc (2010) 47:227–233 two reasons. First, they are “big” and basic ones
that capture the main categories of development that most people are concerned with: wealth, health, education, and
political freedom. Second, these categories comport with those I imagine Berger had in mind when he identified the
development criteria he laid out in Pyramids of Sacrifice. These were, recall, the avoidance of human suffering (hence,
the wealth and health indicators) and respect for the self-determination of the indigenous population (hence the
education and democracy indicators). My indicators are imperfect proxies of these categories. Arguably, all of them are
relevant to both categories. If the reader has other categories in mind that she believes would better capture what
Berger had in mind and would better evaluate the number of cheers that capitalism deserves, she’s encouraged to
collect the relevant data, depict the relationship, and report the results to us. My data are drawn from several
sources. The first is the Fraser Institute’s Economic Freedom of the World Project (2008), which
provides data on the extent of capitalism across countries and over time. Fraser measures countries’
economic freedom every 5 years and assigns points to countries on the basis of five equally weighted categories
related to government’s size and activeness in the economy. Together these categories create a composite measure of
capitalism, or “economic freedom,” that ranges from zero (completely unfree) to ten (completely free). The five
categories this index includes are: 1) Size of government, which considers the share of government’s expenditures,
level of taxes, and the degree of state ownership in an economy. 2) Legal structure and security of property rights,
which measures the quality and effectiveness of a country’s legal system, such as how independent its judiciary is, the
impartiality of courts, military interference with the legal system, and how well government protects private property
rights. 3) Access to sound money, which measures the extent of inflation, and freedom to own foreign currency
domestically and abroad. 4) Freedom to trade internationally, which measures the extent of tariff and non-tariff trade
barriers, international capital market controls, exchange rate regulation or other regulation on the ability to trade
internationally. And 5) Credit, labor, and business regulation, which covers government control of credit markets,
minimum wages, price controls, time to start a new business, the number of licenses, permits and other bureaucratic
approvals involved with starting and operating a business, and restrictions on hiring and firing workers. I get data for
my development indicators from Shleifer (2009), who collects his information from several
standard sources. His data on countries’ GDP per capita and life expectancies are from the
World Bank’s World Development Indicators (2006). His data on education and democracy are from the
Barro-Lee (2000) dataset and the Polity IV Database (2000) respectively. A Funny Thing Called Evidence Over
the past quarter century there’s been a clear trend in the world’s political-economic
organization: the globe has moved toward more capitalism and less reliance on government
management of the economy. The growth of capitalism globally is remarkable in both its
consistency and magnitude. Figure 1 depicts this growth by plotting the average level of economic freedom in
the world over the last 25 years at 5-year intervals. Contrary to the “two cheers for capitalism” view, flourishing
capitalism has unequivocally led to flourishing development . Figure 2a illustrates the movement of
income over the same period. It depicts average GDP per capita PPP (in constant 2000 international $) at 5-year
intervals in countries that became more capitalist over the last quarter century. To determine which countries became
more capitalist over this period, I simply subtracted countries’ economic freedom scores in 2005 from their scores in
1980. When scores weren’t available for 1980, I used the next closest year to calculate their change. The resulting
subsample includes all countries that had a positive economic freedom change. The data are clear:
countries that became more capitalist became much wealthier. The average country that
became more capitalist over the last 25 years saw its GDP per capita (PPP) rise from about $7600 to
nearly $11,800—a 43% increase. If rapidly rising wealth deserves cheering, so does capitalism . What
about longevity? All the money in the world doesn’t mean anything if you’re not alive to spend it on things that
improve your life. Figure 2b charts the movement of average life expectancy at birth in countries that became more 5.4
5.6 5.8 6 6.2 6.4 6.6 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 Economic Freedom in the World Fig. 1 The growth of capitalism
globally Soc (2010) 47:227–233 229 capitalist over the last quarter century at 5-year intervals. Growing capitalism
is clearly associated with growing life expectancy. In the average country that became more
capitalist over the last 25 years, the average citizen gained nearly half a decade in life
expectancy. If longer life for the average person deserves cheering, so does capitalism. Man doesn’t live by bread
alone. Education not only allows him to live the “life of the mind,” but also to build his human capital. Both of these
things give individuals more power to shape their identity and their destiny—to live life as they see fit. How has the
spread of capitalism world-wide affected education? Figure 2c illustrates this relationship by plotting average years of
schooling in the total population (citizens age 25 and over) in countries that became more capitalist for the years 1980
through 1995 at 5-year intervals. (Data were unavailable for the years 2000 and 2005). In the average country
that became more capitalist, the average number of years of schooling in the population rose
from 4.7 to just over 6. If more education for the average citizen deserves cheering, so does
capitalism. Economic freedom and the economic benefits it brings are one thing. But what about political freedom?
How has democracy fared in countries that have become more capitalist over the last quarter century? Consider Fig.
2d, which illustrates the growth of democracy in countries that became more capitalist over the last 20 years at 5-year
intervals between 1980 and 2000. (Data were unavailable for 2005). The discerning reader will have now detected a
pattern: the growth of capitalism has unequivocally led to improved development in countries that became more
capitalist. Political freedom is no exception. Countries that became more capitalist over the last 20 years
became dramatically more democratic. On a 0–10 scale, where 10 represents “total democracy” or “complete
political freedom,” the average country that became more capitalist rose from a democracy level of
3.8 to 6.4—a 68% increase. If growing political freedom and democracy deserves cheering, so does
capitalism. There are no ambiguities about what capitalism has meant for development. If, like
most people, you consider large increases in wealth, health, education, and freedom a good
thing, capitalism deserves three loud cheers.