Neoliberalism K- GJHP
Hi! This is the neoliberalism kritik put out by the Michigan 7 Week
Junior Lab GJHP. This argument is very strategic and is basically a
very specialized capitalism kritik. The link is usually predicated on
the methodology and discourse of the 1AC. It’s not necessarily the
plan that is neoliberal, but the motivations of the plan. There are
answers to everything, but make sure you keep updating this file if
you want to run it successfully! Affirmative answers include links,
impacts, alternatives, perms, framework, turns, etc.
-GJHP
1NC’s
1NC-Generic Surveillance
The affirmatives technical/legalistic solution to surveillance ignores the backdrop
of global capitalism
Morozov, Phd Candidate @Harvard, 13
(Evgeny, The Snowden saga heralds a radical shift in capitalism , Financial Times, 12-27)
Following his revelations this year about Washington's spying excesses, Edward Snowden now faces
a growing wave of
surveillance fatigue among the public - and the reason is that the National Security Agency contractor turned
whistleblower has revealed too many uncomfortable truths about how today's world works. Technical infrastructure and
geopolitical power; rampant consumerism and ubiquitous surveillance; the lofty rhetoric of
"internet freedom" and the sober reality of the ever-increasing internet control - all these are
interconnected in ways most of us would rather not acknowledge or think about.
Instead, we have focused on just one element in this long chain - state spying - but have
mostly ignored all others. But the spying debate has quickly turned narrow and unbearably
technical; issues such as the soundness of US foreign policy, the ambivalent future of
digital capitalism, the relocation of power from Washington and Brussels to Silicon Valley
have not received due attention. But it is not just the NSA that is broken: the way we do - and
pay for - our communicating today is broken as well. And it is broken for political and economic
reasons, not just legal and technological ones: too many governments, strapped for cash and low on
infrastructural imagination, have surrendered their communications networks to technology companies a tad too soon. Mr
Snowden created an opening for a much-needed global debate that could have highlighted many of
these issues. Alas, it has never arrived. The revelations of the US's surveillance addiction were met with a
rather lacklustre, one-dimensional response. Much of this overheated rhetoric - tinged with antiAmericanism and channelled into unproductive forms of reform - has been useless. Many foreign leaders still cling to
the fantasy that, if only the US would promise them a no-spy agreement, or at least stop monitoring their
gadgets, the perversions revealed by Mr Snowden would disappear. Here the politicians are making the same
mistake as Mr Snowden himself, who, in his rare but thoughtful public remarks, attributes those misdeeds to the
over-reach of the intelligence agencies. Ironically, even he might not be fully aware of what he has uncovered. These
are not isolated instances of power abuse that can be corrected by updating laws,
introducing tighter checks on spying, building more privacy tools, or making state demands to tech companies more
transparent. Of course, all those things must be done: they are the low-hanging policy fruit that we know how to reach and harvest.
At the very least, such measures can create the impression that something is being done. But what good are these steps to
counter the much more disturbing trend whereby our personal information - rather than money becomes the chief way in which we pay for services - and soon, perhaps, everyday objects - that we use? No
laws and tools will protect citizens who, inspired by the empowerment fairy tales of Silicon Valley,
are rushing to become data entrepreneurs, always on the lookout for new, quicker, more
profitable ways to monetise their own data - be it information about their shopping or copies of their genome. These
citizens want tools for disclosing their data, not guarding it. Now that every piece of data, no matter how trivial, is also an asset in
disguise, they just need to find the right buyer. Or the buyer might find them, offering to create a convenient service paid for by their
data - which seems to be Google's model with Gmail, its email service. What eludes Mr Snowden - along with most of his detractors
and supporters - is that we might be living through a transformation in how capitalism
works, with personal data emerging as an alternative payment regime. The benefits to
consumers are already obvious; the potential costs to citizens are not. As markets in personal information
proliferate, so do the externalities - with democracy the main victim. This ongoing transition
from money to data is unlikely to weaken the clout of the NSA; on the contrary, it might
create more and stronger intermediaries that can indulge its data obsession. So to
remain relevant and have some political teeth, the surveillance debate must be linked to
debates about capitalism - or risk obscurity in the highly legalistic ghetto of the
privacy debate. Other overlooked dimensions are as crucial. Should we not be more critical of the rationale, advanced by the
NSA and other agencies, that they need this data to engage in pre-emptive problem-solving? We should not allow the
falling costs of pre-emption to crowd out more systemic attempts to pinpoint the origins of the
problems that we are trying to solve. Just because US intelligence agencies hope to one day rank
all Yemeni kids based on their propensity to blow up aircraft does not obviate the need to
address the sources of their discontent - one of which might be the excessive use of drones to
target their fathers. Unfortunately, these issues are not on today's agenda, in part because many
of us have bought into the simplistic narrative - convenient to both Washington and Silicon Valley - that
we just need more laws, more tools, more transparency. What Mr Snowden has revealed is the
new tension at the very foundations of modern-day capitalism and democratic life. A bit more
imagination is needed to resolve it.
Alternatives to neoliberalism are a prior question to symptom focused political
reforms-key to avoid extinction from environmental collapse
Farbod, Prof Poli Sci, 15
( Faramarz Farbod , PhD Candidate @ Rutgers, Prof @ Moravian College, Monthly Review, http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2015/farbod020615.html, 6-2)
capitalism is the 800-pound gorilla. The twin ecological and economic crises, militarism,
the rise of the surveillance state, and a dysfunctional political system can all be traced to
its normal operations. We need a transformative politics from below that can
challenge the fundamentals of capitalism instead of today's politics that is content
to treat its symptoms . The problems we face are linked to each other and to the way a capitalist
society operates. We must make an effort to understand its real character. The fundamental question
of our time is whether we can go beyond a system that is ravaging the Earth and secure a
future with dignity for life and respect for the planet. What has capitalism done to us lately? The best science
tells us that this is a do-or-die moment. We are now in the midst of the 6th mass extinction in the
planetary history with 150 to 200 species going extinct every day, a pace 1,000 times greater than the 'natural'
extinction rate.1 The Earth has been warming rapidly since the 1970s with the 10 warmest years on record all occurring since 1998.2
Global
The planet has already warmed by 0.85 degree Celsius since the industrial revolution 150 years ago. An increase of 2° Celsius is the limit of what the planet can take before major
catastrophic consequences. Limiting global warming to 2°C requires reducing global emissions by 6% per year. However, global carbon emissions from fossil fuels increased by
Capitalism has also led to explosive social inequalities. The global economic
landscape is littered with rising concentration of wealth, debt, distress, and immiseration caused
by the austerity-pushing elites. Take the US. The richest 20 persons have as much wealth as the bottom
150 million.4 Since 1973, the hourly wages of workers have lagged behind worker productivity rates by more than 800%.5 It now takes the average family 47 years to
about 1.5 times between 1990 and 2008.3
make what a hedge fund manager makes in one hour.6 Just about a quarter of children under the age of 5 live in poverty.7 A majority of public school students are low-income.8
85% of workers feel stress on the job.9 Soon the only thing left of the American Dream will be a culture of hustling to survive. Take the global society. The world's billionaires
control $7 trillion, a sum 77 times the debt owed by Greece to the European banks.10 The richest 80 possess more than the combined wealth of the bottom 50% of the global
By 2016 the richest 1% will own a greater share of the global wealth than the
rest of us combined.12 The top 200 global corporations wield twice the economic power of the bottom 80% of the global population.13 Instead of a
global society capitalism is creating a global apartheid. What's the nature of the beast? Firstly, the "egotistical
calculation" of commerce wins the day every time. Capital seeks maximum profitability as a matter of
first priority. Evermore "accumulation of capital" is the system's bill of health; it is slowdowns or reversals that usher in crises and set off panic. Cancer-like
hunger for endless growth is in the system's DNA and is what has set it on a tragic collision
course with Nature, a finite category. Secondly, capitalism treats human labor as a cost. It therefore opposes labor capturing a
fair share of the total economic value that it creates. Since labor stands for the majority and capital for a tiny minority, it
follows that classism and class warfare are built into its DNA, which explains why the
"middle class" is shrinking and its gains are never secure. Thirdly, private interests determine massive investments
and make key decisions at the point of production guided by maximization of profits . That's why in the US the
population (3.5 billion people).11
truck freight replaced the railroad freight, chemicals were used extensively in agriculture, public transport was gutted in favor of private cars, and big cars replaced small ones.
What should political action aim for today? The political class has no good ideas about
how to address the crises . One may even wonder whether it has a serious understanding
of the system, or at least of ways to ameliorate its consequences. The range of solutions offered
tends to be of a technical, legislative, or regulatory nature, promising at best temporary
management of the deepening crises. The trajectory of the system, at any rate, precludes a return to its post-WWII regulatory phase. It's
left to us as a society to think about what the real character of the system is, where we are going,
and how we are going to deal with the trajectory of the system -- and act accordingly. The critical task ahead is
to build a transformative politics capable of steering the system away from its
destructive path . Given the system's DNA, such a politics from below must include efforts to challenge
the system's fundamentals, namely, its private mode of decision-making about investments and about what and how
to produce. Furthermore, it behooves us to heed the late environmentalist Barry Commoner's insistence on the efficacy of a strategy of prevention over a failed one of control or
capture of pollutants. At a lecture in 1991, Commoner remarked: "Environmental pollution is an incurable disease; it can only be prevented"; and he proceeded to refer to "a
without democratic control of
wealth and social governance of the means of production, we will all be condemned to the labor of Sisyphus.
Only we won't have to suffer for all eternity, as the degradation of life-enhancing
natural and social systems will soon reach a point of no return.
law," namely: "if you don't put a pollutant in the environment it won't be there." What is nearly certain now is that
Interrogating discursive constructions of neoliberalism is important for policy
making
Hay and Rosamund, PhDs, 2002 (Colin and Ben, Journal of European Public Policy Volume 9, Issue 2, 2002 p. 3-5)
The implicit supposition which seems to underlie much of the sceptical or second-wave literature seeking to expose the ‘myth’ or ‘delusion’ of
globalisation, is that a rigorous empirical exercise in demystification will be sufficient to reverse the tide of ill-informed public policy made in the name
of globalisation. Sadly, this has not proved to be the case. For however
convinced we might be by the empirical
armoury mustered against the hyperglobalisation thesis by the sceptics, their rigorous empiricism leads
them to fail adequately to consider the way in which globalisation comes to inform public
policy-making. It is here, we suggest, that the discourse of globalisation — and the discursive construction of the
imperatives it is seen to conjure along with attendant fatalism about the possibilities for meaningful political agency — must enter the
analysis. For, as the most cursory reflection on the issue of structure and agency reveals, it is the ideas actors hold about the
context in which they find themselves rather than the context itself which informs the way in which they
behave (Hay 1999a, forthcoming a). This is no less true of policy makers and governments. Whether the
globalisation thesis is ‘true’ or not may matter far less than whether it is deemed to be true
(or, quite possibly, just useful) by those employing it. Consequently, if the aim of the sceptics is to discredit the political
appeal to dubious economic imperatives associated with globalisation, then they might well benefit
from asking themselves why and under what conditions politicians and public officials invoke external
economic constraints in the first place. It is to this task that we direct our attentions in this paper. Yet at the outset a certain word of
caution is perhaps required. For, even if we accept the potential causal role that ideas about globalisation might play in the structuration of political and
economic outcomes, we may be in danger of narrowing the discursive field of our attentions at the outset. The ideas policy makers use to legitimate
and/or to rationalise their behaviour should not simply be seen as more or less accurate reflections of the context they perceive (based on more or less
complete information). Nor should discourses be understood as necessarily and exclusively ‘strategic’ (i.e. as relating to situations in which an actor’s
employment of a discourse correlates directly to particular material interests). Discourse
matters in at least two respects. The way in
behave is not merely a reflection of the degree of accuracy and completeness of the information they
possess; it is also a reflection of their normative orientation towards their environment and potential future scenarios. Thus the
which actors
constraints and/or opportunities which globalisation is held to imply might be understood (or misunderstood) in very similar ways in different
(national) contexts. Yet such understanding are likely to provoke divergent responses from political actors with different normative orientations and
diverse institutional contexts. Put simply, though
actors may share a common understanding of the process of
globalisation, they may respond very differently to its perceived challenges and threats depending on
whether one regards the future it promises in a positive or negative light – witness the still ongoing debate
within the governing SPD in Germany between supporters of Schröder and Lafontaine (see Lafontaine 1998; Lafontaine and Müller 1998; Schröder
1998; and for a commentary Jeffery and Handl 1999), or that in France between Bourdieu, Forrester and anti-globalisation groups like ATTAC on the
one hand and social liberals within the Parti Socialiste on the other (see Bourdieu 1998; Boudieu and Wacquant 1999; Forrester 1999; and for a
commentary Bouvet and Michel 1999; Meunier 2000). Within the European Commission, there is evidence to suggest that common understandings of
globalisation can be quite consistent with distinct conceptions of the capacity to exercise meaningful agency as actors take up quite different ‘subject
It is important, then, at the outset that we consider the
potential causal role of ideas about globalisation in the structuration of political and economic
outcomes.3 Our central argument is, we think, likely to prove controversial. It is simply stated, though its implications are more complex.
Essentially, we suggest, policy makers acting on the basis of assumptions consistent with the
hyperglobalisation thesis may well serve, in so doing, to bring about outcomes consistent with that
thesis, irrespective of its veracity and, indeed, irrespective of its perceived veracity. This provocative suggestion with, if
warranted, important implications, clearly requires some justification (see also Hay 1999b; Rosamond 1999, 2000b, 2000c). Globalisation
has become a key referent of contemporary political discourse and, increasingly, a lens through which policymakers view the context in which they find themselves. If we can assume that political actors have no
positions’ in relation to globalisation (Rosamond, 1999; 2000b).
more privileged vantage point from which to understand their environment than anyone else and — as most commentators would surely concede —
that one
of the principal discourses through which that environment now comes to be understood
is that of globalisation, then the content of such ideas is likely to affect significantly political
dynamics.
1NC Short
Decreases in government surveillance fuel neoliberal institutions
Završnik PhD 12
(Ales chapter 3 page 14 Transformations of Surveillance: From National Security to Private Security Industry
http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-4614-3517-4_3)
Private security industry encompasses four segments, according to de Waard (1999): (1) private security companies which perform ‘‘activities on a professional basis for third
parties’’, also known as ‘‘contract-security’’; (2) private in-house security services ‘‘performing functions for their own company’’ and also known as ‘‘in-house security’’; (3)
private central alarm monitoring stations that perform functions for third persons on a professional basis; and (4) private security transport companies offering services for
After the collapse of socialism, surveillance regimes
became much more dispersed. The privatisation of public property, development of information technology and adoption of neoliberal ideology spread surveillance to other domains. It became embedded in the consumer
domain, architecture and urbanism, transport systems, schools and kindergartens where parents could become full-time surveillants of their offspring (and their
guardians) through video surveillance. The shift toward ‘‘commercialized security’’ was mainly generated by
privatisation of ‘‘public property’’ and the state’s withdrawal from providing the same
extent of social and economic safety. In general terms, policing always involves a body of largely uniformed representatives of the
transporting limited quantities of cash and other valuables for third persons.
state—who may exercise powers on behalf of the state which are unavailable to others. However, there are many forms of policing besides the police, such as private security
actors, citizens’ self-protective organisations, hybrid private–public institutions (e.g. the Internet Watch Foundation which monitors internet abuses in the UK), governmental
commercial
policing’’ is a complete novelty in CEE countries, where it has developed in a very short period of
time since the beginning of the 1990s with the transformation of the social and political system
non-police organisations (e.g. customs and postal services) or even infrastructure providers (e.g. Internet service providers) (Wall 2007). But ‘‘
(Sotlar and Meško 2009; Kešetovic´ 2010, p. 63). Such rapid change took place in sharp contrast to western countries where developments in commercial (and public)
Corporate hegemony and violence from the state align, reifying zones
of social oppression that justify war and violence. The elite use fear
and delusion in order to usurp resistance and protect their power.
Giroux PhD, 12 (Henry A. Giroux, Professor in the English and Cultural Studies department of McMaster University, “The
Occupy Movement and the Politics of Educated Hope”, TruthOut, published May 18, 2012, EDJ)
American society has lost its claim on democracy. One indication
of such a loss is that
the crises produced on a daily basis by crony capitalism operate within a discourse of denial.
Rather than address the ever proliferating crises produced by market fundamentalism as an
opportunity to understand how the United States has arrived at such a point in order to change direction, the dominating
classes now use such crises as an excuse for normalizing a growing punishing and
warfare state, while consolidating the power of finance capital and the mega-rich. Uncritically
situated in an appeal to common sense, the merging of corporate and political power is now
constructed on a discourse of refusal - a denial of historical conditions, existing inequalities and
massive human suffering - used to bury alive the conditions of its own making. The notion that
neoliberal capitalism has less interest in free markets than an enormous stake in the dominance
of public life by corporations no longer warrants recognition and debate in mainstream
apparatuses of power. Hence, the issue of what happens to democracy and politics when corporations
dominate almost all aspects of American society is no longer viewed as a central question to be addressed
in public life.(1) As society is increasingly organized around shared fears, escalating insecurities and
a post 9/11 politics of terror; the mutually reinforcing dynamics of a market-based
fundamentalism and a government that appears immune to any checks on its power render
democratic politics both bankrupt and inoperable. The hatred of government on the part of Republican extremists
has resulted not only in attacks on public services, the cutting of worker benefits, the outsourcing of government services, a hypernationalism and the evisceration of public goods such as schools and health care, but also in an abdication of the responsibility to
govern. The language of the market with its incessant appeal to self-regulation and the virtues of a radical individualization of
responsibility now offer the primary dysfunctional and poisonous index of what possibilities the future may hold, while jingoistic
nationalism and racism hail its apocalyptic underbelly. The notion that democracy requires modes of economic
and social equality as the basis for supportive social bonds, democratic communities and
compassionate communal relations disappears along with the claims traditionally made in the
name of the social justice, human rights and democratic values. Entrepreneurial values such as
competitiveness, self-interest, deregulation, privatization and decentralization now produce
self-interested actors who have no interest in promoting the public good or governing in the
public interest.(2) Under these circumstances, the 1 percent and the financial, cultural and
educational institutions they control declare war on government, immigrants,
poor youth, women, and other institutions and groups considered disposable. Crony
capitalism produces great wealth for the few and massive human suffering for the many around the globe. At the same time, it
produces what João Biehl calls "zones of social abandonment," which "accelerate the death of the unwanted" through a form of
economic Darwinism "that authorizes the lives of some while disallowing the lives of others."(3) As market relations become
synonymous with a market society, democracy becomes both the repressed scandal of neoliberalism and
its ultimate fear.(4) In such a society, cynicism becomes the ideology of choice as public life collapses into the ever-encroaching
domain of the private, and social ills and human suffering become more difficult to identify, understand and engage with critically.
The result, as Jean Comaroff points out, is, "In our contemporary world, post 9/11, crisis and exception has become routine and war,
deprivation and death intensify despite ever denser networks of humanitarian aid and ever more rights legislation."(5) In addition,
as corporate power and finance capital gain ascendancy over society, the
depoliticization of politics and the increasing transformation of the social state
into the punishing state has resulted in the emergence of a new form of
authoritarianism in which the fusion of corporate power and state violence
increasingly permeates all aspects of everyday life.(6) Such violence with its ever
expanding machinery of death and surveillance creates an ever-intensifying cycle, rendering
citizens' political activism dangerous and even criminal as is obvious in the current assaults
being waged by the government against youthful protesters on college campuses, in the streets,
and in other spaces now colonized by capital and its machinery of enforcement.(7)
The historical and critical reflection of neoliberalism is necessary to
restore radical democracy. We must question and expose neoliberal
rhetoric in the 1AC and move towards collective movements against
corporate hegemony.
Harvey PhD, 2007 (David Harvey, Distinguished Professor of Anthropology and Geography PhD in Geography.
Researches Marxism and Capitalism. “Neoliberalism as Creative Destruction”, The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political
and Social Science published March 2007, vol. 610 no. 1 pages 42-43, Yung Jung)
Analysis also points up exploitable contradictions within the neoliberal agenda. The gap
between rhetoric (for the benefit of all) and realization (for the benefit of a small ruling class)
increases over space and time, and social movements have done much to focus on that gap. The
idea that the market is about fair competition is increasingly negated by the facts of
extraordinary monopoly, centralization, and internationalization on the part of corporate and
financial powers. The startling increase in class and regional inequalities both within states (such as China, Russia, India,
Mexico, and in Southern Africa) as well as internationally poses a serious political problem that can no longer be swept under the
rug as something transitional on the way to a perfected neoliberal world. The neoliberal emphasis upon individual rights and the
increasingly authoritarian use of state power to sustain the system become a flashpoint of contentiousness. The more
neoliberalism is recognized as a failed if not disingenuous and utopian project masking the
restoration of class power, the more it lays the basis for a resurgence of mass movements voicing
egalitarian political demands, seeking economic justice, fair trade, and greater economic
security and democratization. But it is the profoundly antidemocratic nature of neoliberalism that should surely be the
main focus of political struggle. Institutions with enormous leverage, like the Federal Reserve, are outside any democratic control.
Internationally, the lack of elementary accountability let alone democratic control over institutions such as the IMF, the WTO, and
the World Bank, to say nothing of the great private power of financial institutions, makes a mockery of any credible concern about
democratization. To bring back demands for democratic governance and for economic, political, and
cultural equality and justice is not to suggest some return to a golden past since the meanings in
each instance have to be reinvented to deal with contemporary conditions and potentialities . The
meaning of democracy in ancient Athens has little to do with the meanings we must invest it with today in circumstances as diverse
as Sao Paulo, Johannesburg, Shanghai, Manila, San Francisco, Leeds, Stockholm, and Lagos. But right across the globe, from China,
Brazil, Argentina, Taiwan, and Korea to South Africa, Iran, India, and Egypt, and beyond the struggling nations of Eastern Europe
into the heartlands of contemporary capitalism, groups and social movements are rallying to reforms
expressive of democratic values. That is a key point of many of the struggles now emerging. The
more clearly oppositional movements recognize that their central objective must be to confront
the class power that has been so effectively restored under neoliberalization, the more they will
be likely to cohere. Tearing aside the neoliberal mask and exposing its seductive rhetoric, used so
aptly to justify and legitimate the restoration of that power, has a significant role to play in
contemporary struggles. It took neoliberals many years to set up and accomplish their march through the institutions of
contemporary capitalism. We can expect no less of a struggle when pushing in the opposite direction.
1NC Long
Decreases in government surveillance fuel neoliberal institutions
Završnik PhD 12
(Ales chapter 3 page 14 Transformations of Surveillance: From National Security to Private Security Industry
http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-4614-3517-4_3)
Private security industry encompasses four segments, according to de Waard (1999): (1) private security companies which perform ‘‘activities on a
professional basis for third parties’’, also known as ‘‘contract-security’’; (2) private in-house security services ‘‘performing functions for their own
company’’ and also known as ‘‘in-house security’’; (3) private central alarm monitoring stations that perform functions for third persons on a
professional basis; and (4) private security transport companies offering services for transporting limited quantities of cash and other valuables for
third persons. After the collapse of socialism, surveillance regimes became much more dispersed. The privatisation of public property,
development of information technology and adoption of neo-liberal ideology spread surveillance to other domains. It became embedded in
the consumer domain, architecture and urbanism, transport systems, schools and kindergartens where parents could become full-time surveillants
of their offspring (and their guardians) through video surveillance. The shift toward ‘‘commercialized security’’ was mainly generated by
privatisation of ‘‘public property’’ and the state’s withdrawal from providing the same extent of social and economic
safety. In general terms, policing always involves a body of largely uniformed representatives of the state—who may exercise powers on behalf of the
state which are unavailable to others. However, there are many forms of policing besides the police, such as private security actors, citizens’ selfprotective organisations, hybrid private–public institutions (e.g. the Internet Watch Foundation which monitors internet abuses in the UK),
governmental non-police organisations (e.g. customs and postal services) or even infrastructure providers (e.g. Internet service providers) (Wall 2007).
But ‘‘commercial policing’’ is a complete novelty in CEE countries, where it has developed in a very short period of time since the
beginning of the 1990s with the transformation of the social and political system (Sotlar and Meško 2009; Kešetovic´ 2010, p. 63). Such
rapid change took place in sharp contrast to western countries where developments in commercial (and public)
Corporate hegemony and violence from the state align, reifying zones
of social oppression that justify war and violence. The elite use fear
and delusion in order to usurp resistance and protect their power.
Giroux PhD, 12
(Henry A. Giroux, Professor in the English and Cultural Studies department of McMaster University, “The Occupy Movement and
the Politics of Educated Hope”, TruthOut, published May 18, 2012, EDJ)
American society has lost its claim on democracy. One indication of such a loss is that
the crises produced on a daily basis by crony capitalism operate within a discourse of denial.
Rather than address the ever proliferating crises produced by market fundamentalism as an
opportunity to understand how the United States has arrived at such a point in order to change direction, the dominating
classes now use such crises as an excuse for normalizing a growing punishing and
warfare state, while consolidating the power of finance capital and the mega-rich. Uncritically
situated in an appeal to common sense, the merging of corporate and political power is now
constructed on a discourse of refusal - a denial of historical conditions, existing inequalities and
massive human suffering - used to bury alive the conditions of its own making. The notion that
neoliberal capitalism has less interest in free markets than an enormous stake in the dominance
of public life by corporations no longer warrants recognition and debate in mainstream
apparatuses of power. Hence, the issue of what happens to democracy and politics when corporations
dominate almost all aspects of American society is no longer viewed as a central question to be addressed
in public life.(1) As society is increasingly organized around shared fears, escalating insecurities and
a post 9/11 politics of terror; the mutually reinforcing dynamics of a market-based
fundamentalism and a government that appears immune to any checks on its power render
democratic politics both bankrupt and inoperable. The hatred of government on the part of Republican extremists
has resulted not only in attacks on public services, the cutting of worker benefits, the outsourcing of government services, a hypernationalism and the evisceration of public goods such as schools and health care, but also in an abdication of the responsibility to
govern. The language of the market with its incessant appeal to self-regulation and the virtues of a radical individualization of
responsibility now offer the primary dysfunctional and poisonous index of what possibilities the future may hold, while jingoistic
nationalism and racism hail its apocalyptic underbelly. The notion that democracy requires modes of economic
and social equality as the basis for supportive social bonds, democratic communities and
compassionate communal relations disappears along with the claims traditionally made in the
name of the social justice, human rights and democratic values. Entrepreneurial values such as
competitiveness, self-interest, deregulation, privatization and decentralization now produce
self-interested actors who have no interest in promoting the public good or governing in the
public interest.(2) Under these circumstances, the 1 percent and the financial, cultural and
educational institutions they control declare war on government, immigrants,
poor youth, women, and other institutions and groups considered disposable. Crony
capitalism produces great wealth for the few and massive human suffering for the many around the globe. At the same time, it
produces what João Biehl calls "zones of social abandonment," which "accelerate the death of the unwanted" through a form of
economic Darwinism "that authorizes the lives of some while disallowing the lives of others."(3) As market relations become
synonymous with a market society, democracy becomes both the repressed scandal of neoliberalism and
its ultimate fear.(4) In such a society, cynicism becomes the ideology of choice as public life collapses into the ever-encroaching
domain of the private, and social ills and human suffering become more difficult to identify, understand and engage with critically.
The result, as Jean Comaroff points out, is, "In our contemporary world, post 9/11, crisis and exception has become routine and war,
deprivation and death intensify despite ever denser networks of humanitarian aid and ever more rights legislation."(5) In addition,
as corporate power and finance capital gain ascendancy over society, the
depoliticization of politics and the increasing transformation of the social state
into the punishing state has resulted in the emergence of a new form of
authoritarianism in which the fusion of corporate power and state violence
increasingly permeates all aspects of everyday life.(6) Such violence with its ever
expanding machinery of death and surveillance creates an ever-intensifying cycle, rendering
citizens' political activism dangerous and even criminal as is obvious in the current assaults
being waged by the government against youthful protesters on college campuses, in the streets,
and in other spaces now colonized by capital and its machinery of enforcement.(7)
Neoliberalism perpetuates structural violence against marginalized
groups—to remain silent is to be complicit in the abuse
Springer ‘12
(Simon, assistant Professor in the Department of Geography at the University of Victoria. “Neoliberalising violence: of the
exceptional and the exemplary in coalescing moments”, Royal Geographical Society, Wiley Online) //RGDM
But what is not spoken in Klein's account, nor is it foregrounded in most treatments of neoliberalism in the literature, is that
neoliberalism has gone beyond the ‘boorish’ phase of our relationship. It has become so entrenched and
comfortable in its place at the head of the table that neoliberalism has now turned abusive (Bumiller 2008).
Abuse is a form of violence that involves the mistreatment of another (an ‘Other’), leading to
physical or emotional injury. It is utilised to exclusively benefit the interests of the abuser, and is not
at all about serving the interests of victims. Put differently, abuse is related to exercising dominance, which is a
course of action that explicitly jettisons any sort of biopolitical logic concerned with cultivating life.
This is precisely how neoliberalism operates in a disciplinary capacity, employing a variety of regulatory,
surveillance and policing mechanisms to ensure neoliberal reforms are instituted and ‘locked in’, in spite of what the populace might
desire (Gill 1995). Our silence on this unfolding violent matrimony is what allows this abuser to
become more and more sure in the application of its domination, and increasingly brazen in the
execution of what has become and overtly ‘necropolitical’ agenda (Mbembe 2003). To continue to
embrace the maligned doctrine of neoliberalism and the malevolence it unleashes is to stay the course
of battery, exploitation and assault, and to abandon those most embattled by its exclusions, and
most scarred by its exceptional violence (i.e. the poor, people of colour, the unemployed,
women, the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community, ethnic minorities, the young and
old, disabled peoples, the homeless etc.) to the full fury of its wrath. Thankfully geographers have been
vocal in their calls for the indictment of neoliberal ideas (England and Ward 2007; Peck 2010; Smith et al. 2008), but we are
not yet at a point where we can declare a distinct qualitative break from the past. Even though the
legitimacy of neoliberalism has come under intensifying scrutiny since the onset of the most recent financial crisis in late 2008,
and neoliberalism may be ‘dead’ inasmuch as it has run out of politically viable ideas (Smith
2008), it nonetheless remains ‘animated by technocratic forms of muscle memory, deep instincts of
self-preservation, and spasmodic bursts of social violence’ (Peck et al. 2010, 105). The continuing implications and
exclusions of neoliberalism should call us to action, it should provoke us to intervene and
invigorate our collective strength with a desire to make right such terrible wrongs. But beyond this
imperative for compassion, a politics of affinity that never takes for granted our shared humanity, lies the danger of complacency,
the shadow of indifference and the menace of detachment among those of us who have not yet been subjected to our homes being
forcibly taken by armed bandits known as police, to our children's curiosity languishing because a basic education is an expense we
cannot shoulder, or to our spouses dying in our arms having been denied adequate health care.3 What those of us still on the
winning side of neoliberalism do not account for or anticipate – and let there be no mistake that this is a system that most assuredly
creates winners and losers – is that in this abandonment of ‘Others’, we produce a relation of inclusive-exclusion. It is the
ascendency of such neoliberal abuse that aligns it with sovereign power, a configuration that
allows us to conceptualise neoliberalism as a strategy that facilitates the very structure of ‘the
ban’ in the particular sense outlined by Agamben (1998 2005). An understanding of the functioning of this relation of the ban is
imperative to undoing the abusive moment we currently find ourselves in, precisely because it forces us to recognize that
everyone (including myself and other academic geographers) is implicated in the perpetuation of
neoliberalised violence.
The historical and critical reflection of neoliberalism is necessary to
restore radical democracy. We must question and expose neoliberal
rhetoric in the 1AC and move towards collective movements against
corporate hegemony.
Harvey PhD, 2007 (David Harvey, Distinguished Professor of Anthropology and Geography PhD in Geography.
Researches Marxism and Capitalism. “Neoliberalism as Creative Destruction”, The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political
and Social Science published March 2007, vol. 610 no. 1 pages 42-43, Yung Jung)
Analysis also points up exploitable contradictions within the neoliberal agenda. The gap
between rhetoric (for the benefit of all) and realization (for the benefit of a small ruling class)
increases over space and time, and social movements have done much to focus on that gap. The
idea that the market is about fair competition is increasingly negated by the facts of
extraordinary monopoly, centralization, and internationalization on the part of corporate and
financial powers. The startling increase in class and regional inequalities both within states (such as China, Russia, India,
Mexico, and in Southern Africa) as well as internationally poses a serious political problem that can no longer be swept under the
rug as something transitional on the way to a perfected neoliberal world. The neoliberal emphasis upon individual rights and the
increasingly authoritarian use of state power to sustain the system become a flashpoint of contentiousness. The more
neoliberalism is recognized as a failed if not disingenuous and utopian project masking the
restoration of class power, the more it lays the basis for a resurgence of mass movements voicing
egalitarian political demands, seeking economic justice, fair trade, and greater economic
security and democratization. But it is the profoundly antidemocratic nature of neoliberalism that should surely be the
main focus of political struggle. Institutions with enormous leverage, like the Federal Reserve, are outside any democratic control.
Internationally, the lack of elementary accountability let alone democratic control over institutions such as the IMF, the WTO, and
the World Bank, to say nothing of the great private power of financial institutions, makes a mockery of any credible concern about
democratization. To bring back demands for democratic governance and for economic, political, and
cultural equality and justice is not to suggest some return to a golden past since the meanings in
each instance have to be reinvented to deal with contemporary conditions and potentialities . The
meaning of democracy in ancient Athens has little to do with the meanings we must invest it with today in circumstances as diverse
as Sao Paulo, Johannesburg, Shanghai, Manila, San Francisco, Leeds, Stockholm, and Lagos. But right across the globe, from China,
Brazil, Argentina, Taiwan, and Korea to South Africa, Iran, India, and Egypt, and beyond the struggling nations of Eastern Europe
into the heartlands of contemporary capitalism, groups and social movements are rallying to reforms
expressive of democratic values. That is a key point of many of the struggles now emerging. The
more clearly oppositional movements recognize that their central objective must be to confront
the class power that has been so effectively restored under neoliberalization, the more they will
be likely to cohere. Tearing aside the neoliberal mask and exposing its seductive rhetoric, used so
aptly to justify and legitimate the restoration of that power, has a significant role to play in
contemporary struggles. It took neoliberals many years to set up and accomplish their march through the institutions of
contemporary capitalism. We can expect no less of a struggle when pushing in the opposite direction.
Critiquing neoliberal discourse in the 1AC in academia is key. Only by
ridding the educational sphere of corporatization can we contest the
regime.
Giroux, PhD, 2005
(Henry A., College Literature, Volume 32, No. 1, p. 1-3)
Just as the world has seen a more virulent and brutal form of market capitalism, generally
referred to as neoliberalism, develop over the last thirty years, it has also seen "a new wave of
political activism [which] has coalesced around the simple idea that capitalism has gone too far "
(Harding 2001, para.28). Wedded to the belief that the market should be the organizing principle for all political, social, and economic decisions,
neoliberalism wages an incessant attack on democracy, public goods, and non-commodified
values. Under neoliberalism everything either is for sale or is plundered for profit. Public lands are looted by logging companies and corporate
ranch ers; politicians willingly hand the public's airwaves over to powerful broad casters and large corporate interests without a dime going into the
public trust; Halliburton gives war profiteering a new meaning as it is granted corporate contracts without any competitive bidding and then bills the
U.S. government for millions; the environment is polluted and despoiled in the name of profit-making just as the government passes legislation to
make it easier for corporations to do so; public services are gutted in order to lower the taxes of major corporations; schools more closely resemble
either malls or jails, and teachers, forced to get revenue for their school by adopting market values, increasingly function as circus barkers hawking
As markets
are touted as the driving force of everyday life, big government is disparaged as either
incompetent or threatening to individual freedom, suggesting that power should reside in
markets and corporations rather than in governments (except for their support for corporate
interests and national security) and citizens. Citizenship has increasingly become a function of consumerism and politics has
everything from hamburgers to pizza parties? That is, when they are not reduced to prepping students to take standardized tests.
been restructured as "corporations have been increasingly freed from social control through deregulation, privatization, and other neoliberal measures"
(Tabb 2003, 153). Corporations
more and more design not only the economic sphere but also shape
legislation and policy affecting all levels of government, and with limited opposition. As
corporate power lays siege to the political process, the benefits flow to the rich and the powerful.
Included in such benefits are reform policies that shift the burden of taxes from the rich to the middle class, the working poor, and state governments as
can be seen in the shift from taxes on wealth (capital gains, dividends, and estate taxes) to a tax on work, principally in the form of a regressive payroll
tax (Collins, Hartman, Kraut, and Mota 2004). During the 2002-2004 fiscal years, tax cuts delivered $197.3 billion in tax breaks to the wealthiest 1% of
Americans (i.e., house This content downloaded from 35.2.242.178 on Sun, 28 Jun 2015 20:14:00 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Henry A . Giroux 3 holds making more than $337,000 a year) while state governments increased taxes to fill a $200 billion budget deficit (Gonsalves
2004). Equally alarming, a recent Congressional study revealed that 63% of all corporations in 2000 paid no taxes while "[s]ix in ten corporations
reported no tax liabili ty for the five years from 1996 through 2000, even though corporate prof its were growing at record-breaking levels during that
period" (Woodard 2004, para. 11). Fortunately,
the corporate capitalist fairytale of neoliberalism has been
challenged all over the globe by students, labor organizers, intellectuals, community activists,
and a host of individuals and groups unwilling to allow democracy to be bought and sold by
multinational corporations, corporate swindlers, international political institutions, and those
government politicians who willingly align themselves with multinational, corporate interests
and rapacious profits. From Seattle to Genoa, people engaged in popular resistance are collectively taking
up the challenge of neoliberalism and reviving both the meaning of resistance and the sites
where it takes place. Political culture is now global and resistance is amorphous, connecting
students with workers, schoolteachers with parents, and intellectuals with artists . Groups protesting the
attack on farmers in India whose land is being destroyed by the government in order to build dams now find themselves in alliance with young people
resisting sweatshop labor in New York City. Environmental activists are joining up with key sections of organized labor as well as groups protesting
The collapse of the neoliberal showcase, Argentina, along with numerous corporate
bankruptcies and scandals (notably including Enron), reveals the cracks in neoliberal hegemony
and domination. In addition, the multiple forms of resistance against neoliberal capitalism are
not limited by a version of identity politics focused exclusively on particularized rights and
interests. On the contrary, identity politics is affirmed within a broader crisis of political culture and democracy that connects the militarization of
public life with the collapse of the welfare state and the attack on civil liberties. Central to these new movements is the notion
that neoliberalism has to be understood within a larger crisis of vision, meaning, education, and
political agency. Democracy in this view is not limited to the struggle over economic resources
and power; indeed, it also includes the creation of public spheres where individuals can be
educated as political agents equipped with the skills, capacities, and knowledge they need to
perform as autonomous political agents. I want to expand the reaches of this debate by arguing that any struggle
against neoliberalism must address the discourse of political agency, civic education, and
Third World debt.
cultural politics as part of a broader struggle over the relationship between democratization This content downloaded from 35.2.242.178 on Sun, 28
Jun 2015 20:14:00 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 4 CollegLei terat3u2r.e1 [ Wint2e0r0 5] (the ongoing struggle for a substantive
and inclusive democracy) and the global public sphere. We live at a time when the conflation of private interests, empire building, and evangelical
fundamentalism brings into question the very nature, if not the existence, of the democratic process. Under the reign of neoliberalism, capital and
wealth have been largely distributed upwards, while civic virtue has been undermined by a slavish celebration of the free market as the model for
organizing all facets of everyday life (Henwood 2003).
2NC/1NR Overview
A decreasing of established surveillance policies fuels neoliberalismthe Zavrsnik card describes how a decrease in governmental
surveillance only moves it away to the private sector, further boosting
the power the neoliberal economy has over governmental actions and
our lives. The government and the private sector are intricately
connected, and the guise of removing power from the NSA only moves
it to private companies who gather information and further combine
the corporations and state. 1NC Giroux points to how this hegemony
created by a combination of state and corporate power destroys
democracy, creates a more authoritarian state and destroy political
action to help the bottom rungs of society. Because the marginalized
don’t have a profit value attached to them, they are completely
devalued and this justifies atrocious acts like genocide of the
disposable. This outweighs on magnitude, as the 1AC impacts all stem
from the idea that anything without a monetary value has no value,
such as clean energy or human rights. It’s systemic as well, and only
the alternative can start the process of de-neoliberalization- it’s try or
die for the alt.
2NC FW
1. Counter-interpretation: kritiking discourse comes before
hypothetical policymaking.
a. We need to investigate the core principles of the aff before
we can evaluate their policy options.
2. Interrogation of the plan’s methodology is a necessary
prerequisite to policymaking. Without questioning the motives
of a plan, policymakers fail to make advantageous decisions.
a. Neoliberalism was the underlying motivation of the war in
Iraq. If policymakers had questioned its ethicality, the
United States would not have gotten involved.
b. Economic analysis is a prerequisite to policy
considerations
Hay 07
(Hay, Colin. "The Normalizing Role of Rationalist Assumptions in the Institutional Embedding of Neoliberalism."
Economy and Society 33.4 (2004): 500-27. Web.)
The discursive starting-point here is that economic markets form the backbone
of the governmental reform programme. Their meaning and importance
cannot be questioned. Nor can it be denied that, equally, they are the basis for
any consideration of what policy is or should be. An economic-market
discourse is, thus, not very surprisingly (we are not trying to expose any hidden
agenda), the governing discourse for the entire governmental reform
programme. This new way of thinking about what reform is – no longer a
direct intervention in, for example, social politics, but in its marketized surroundings
– has been most deeply investigated by research following Foucault that focuses on
neoliberal governmentality. Mitchell Dean (2010) calls it ‘a form of government
through the economy’ (p. 145), and Nikolas Rose (1999) states that all
‘aspects of social behaviour are now reconceptualized along economic
lines’ (p. 141). Central to this discourse, as the cited summary shows, is the
idea of the market as having the ability of creating nothing less than a
society in the form of a harmonic totality. This idea is taken for granted,
without any discussion of problems or conflicts at any point in the
programme, and therefore becomes a kind of black box that never has to
be opened. It thus appears that there is only one way to go, along a pathway that
appears to be inevitable (cf. Davies et al., 2005).
3. Turn- the neoliberalist discourse used by the aff destroys civic
discourse and manipulates free speech.
Giroux, PhD, 13
(Henry A., “Neoliberalism, Corporate Culture, and the Promise of Higher Education”, Henry Giroux is a famous American
culture critic. He is one of the founding theorists of critical pedagogy in the US, Carnegie-Mellon Doctorate. Henry A. Giroux
currently holds the Global TV Network Chair Professorship at McMaster University in the English and Cultural Studies
Department and a Distinguished Visiting Professorship at Ryerson University. Harvard Educational Review: December 2002,
Vol. 72, No. 4, pp. 461-462. cc. 6/24/15 // yZ)
As the forces of neoliberalism and corporate culture gain ascendancy in the United States, there is
an increasing call for people either to surrender or narrow their capacities for engaged
politics in exchange for market-based values, relationships, and identities. Market forces have
radically altered the language we use in both representing and evaluating human behavior
and action. One consequence is that civic discourse has given way to the language of
commercialism, privatization, and deregulation. In addition, individual and social agency are defined largely
through market-driven notions of individualism, competition, and consumption. Celebrities such as Martha Stewart, Jane
Pratt, George Foreman, and Michael Jordan now market themselves as brand names. The widely read business magazine Fast
Company devoted an entire issue to the theme “The Brand Called You.”3 No longer defined as a form of self-development,
individuality is reduced to the endless pursuit of mass-mediated interests, pleasures, and commercially produced lifestyles.
One egregious example of self-marketing can be observed in two recent high school
graduates’ successful attempt to secure corporate sponsorship to pay for their college tuition and
expenses. Just before graduating from high school in June 2001, Chris Barrett and Luke McCabe created a website,
ChrisandLuke.com, offering themselves up as “walking billboards for companies” willing to both sponsor them and pay for
their college tuition, room, and board. Claiming that they “would put corporate logos on their clothes ,
wear a company’s sunglasses, use their golf clubs, eat their pizza, drink their soda, listen to their music or drive their cars,”
these two young men appeared impervious to the implications of defining themselves
exclusively through those market values in which buying and selling appears to be the
primary marker of one’s relationship to the larger social order.4 Eventually, First USA, a subsidiary of
Bank One Corporation and a leader in issuing Visa credit cards to students, agreed to sponsor Chris and Luke, thus providing
them with the dubious distinction of becoming the first fully corporate sponsored university students. Once the deal was sealed,
Chris and Luke were featured in most of the major media, including USA Today, the New York Times, and Teen Newsweek.
Hailed in the press as a heartwarming story about individual ingenuity, business acumen, and resourcefulness, there was
little criticism of the individual and social implications of what it meant for these young
people to both define their identities as commodities and present themselves simply as
objects to be advertised and consumed. And, of course, nothing was said about spiraling tuition
costs coupled with evaporating financial aid that increasingly puts higher education out of
reach for working-class and middle-class youth. In a media saturated society, it appears perfectly legitimate to
assume that young people can define themselves almost exclusively through the aesthetic pleasures of consumerism and the
dictates of commercialism rather than through a notion of publicness based on ethical norms and democratic values.5 In short,
it appears that a story in which students give up their voices to promote a corporate ideology
is viewed in the public media less as a threat to democratic norms and civic courage than as
an ode to the triumphant wisdom of market ingenuity. Equally disturbing is the assumption
on the part of the two students that their identities as corporate logos is neither at odds with
their role as university students nor incompatible with the role the university should play as
a site of critical thinking, democratic leadership, and public engagement. Undaunted by blurring the
line between their role as corporate pitchmen and their role as students, or for that matter about the encroachment of
advertising into higher education, Chris and Luke defended their position by claiming, “We want to be role models for other
kids to show that you don’t have to wake up every day and be like everybody else.”6 After Chris and Luke’s story ran in the New
York Times, a related incident gained widespread public attention, perhaps inspired by Chris and Luke’s inventive
entrepeneurialism. A young couple in Mount Kisco, New York, attempted to auction off on Ebay and Yahoo the naming rights
of their soon to-be-born child to the highest corporate bidder. These are more than oddball stories. As William Powers, a writer
for the Atlantic Monthly, observes, these public narratives represent “dark fables about what we are becoming as a culture.”7
One wonders where this type of madness is going to end. But one thing is clear: As society is
defined through the culture and values of neoliberalism, the relationship between a critical
education, public morality, and civic responsibility as conditions for creating thoughtful and
engaged citizens are sacrificed all too willingly to the interest of financial capital and the
logic of profit-making.
4. And, the government of the United States is just a
corporatocracy that serves as a medium for the wealthy elite. Big
businesses use the institution as a means of legitimacy as well as
legal justification for their unethical practices.
a. The USFG is an extension of the corporations, thus
reforms would still benefit the class of neoliberals.
Levine, PhD, 11
(Bruce, “The Myth of U.S. Democracy and the Reality of U.S. Corporatocracy”, The
Huffington Post, 3/11/2011, P.G.)
Polls show that on the major issues of our time -- the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, Wall Street bailouts and health insurance
-- the opinion of We the People has been ignored on a national level for quite some time.
While the
corporate media repeats the myth that the United States of America is a
democracy, Americans, especially Wisonsiners and Ohioans, know that this is a joke. On March 3, 2011, a
Rasmussen Reports poll declared that "Most Wisconsin voters oppose efforts to weaken collective bargaining rights for
union workers." This of course didn't stop Wisconsin
Governor Walker and the Wisconsin legislature from passing
most collective bargaining rights of public
a bill that -- to the delight of America's ruling class -- trashed
employee unions. Similarly in Ohio, legislation to limit collective bargaining rights for public workers is on the verge
of being signed into law by Governor Kasich, despite the fact that Public Policy Polling on March 15, 2011 reported that 54
percent of Ohio voters would repeal the law, while 31 percent would keep it. It is a myth that the United States of America
was ever a democracy (most of the famous founder elite such as John Adams equated democracy with mob rule and
wanted no part of it). The United States of America was actually created as a republic, in which
Americans were supposed to have power through representatives who were supposed to
actually represent the American people. The truth today, however, is that the United States is
neither a democracy nor a republic. Americans are ruled by a corporatocracy: a
partnership of "too-big-to-fail" corporations, the extremely wealthy elite, and corporatecollaborator government officials. The reality is that Americans, for quite some time, have
opposed the U.S. government's wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, but We the People have
zero impact on policy. On March 10-13, 2011, an ABC News/Washington Post poll asked, "All in all, considering
the costs to the United States versus the benefits to the United States, do you think the war in Afghanistan has been worth
fighting, or not?"; 64 percent said "not worth fighting" and 31 percent said "worth fighting." A February 11, 2011, CBS poll
reported Americans' response to the question, "Do you think the U.S. is doing the right thing by fighting the war in
Afghanistan now, or should the U.S. not be involved in Afghanistan now?"; only 37 percent of Americans said the U.S. "is
doing the right thing" and 54 percent said we "should not be involved." When a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll
on December 17-19, 2010, posed the question, "Do you favor or oppose the U.S. war in Afghanistan?" only 35 percent of
Americans favored the war while 63 percent opposed it. For several years, the majority of Americans have also opposed
the Iraq war, typified by a 2010 CBS poll which reported that 6 out of 10 Americans view the Iraq war as "a mistake." The
opposition by the majority of Americans to current U.S. wars has remained steady for several years. However, if you
watched only the corporate media's coverage of the 2010 election between Democratic and Republican corporate-picked
candidates, you might not even know that America was involved in two wars -- two wars that are not only opposed by the
majority of Americans but which are also bankrupting America. How about the 2008 Wall Street bailout?
Even when Americans believed the lie that it was only a $700 billion bailout, they
opposed it; but their opinion was irrelevant. In September 2008, despite the corporate media's attempts
to terrify Americans into believing that an economic doomsday would occur without the bailout, Americans still opposed
it. A Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll in September 2008, asked, "Do you think the government should use taxpayers'
dollars to rescue ailing private financial firms whose collapse could have adverse effects on the economy and market, or is
it not the government's responsibility to bail out private companies with taxpayers' dollars?"; only 31 percent of Americans
said we should "use taxpayers" dollars while 55 percent said it is "not government's responsibility." Also in September
2008, both a CBSNews/New York Times poll and a USA Today/Gallup poll showed Americans opposed the bailout. This
disapproval of the bailout was before most Americans discovered that the Federal
Reserve had loaned far more money to "too-big-to-fail" corporations than Americans had
been originally led to believe (The Wall Street Journal reported on December 1, 2010, "The US central
bank on Wednesday disclosed details of some $3.3 trillion in loans made to financial
firms, companies and foreign central banks during the crisis.") What about health insurance?
Despite the fact that several 2009 polls showed that Americans actually favored a "single-payer" or "Medicare-for-all"
health insurance plan, it was not even on the table in the Democrat-Republican 2009-2010 debate over health insurance
reform legislation. And polls during this debate showed that an even larger majority of Americans favored the government
providing a "public option" to compete with private health insurance plans, but the public option was quickly pushed off
the table in the Democratic-Republican debate. A July 2009 Kaiser Health Tracking poll asked, "Do you favor or oppose
having a national health plan in which all Americans would get their insurance through an expanded, universal form of
Medicare-for-all?" In this Kaiser poll, 58 percent of Americans favored a Medicare-for-all universal plan, and only 38
percent opposed it -- and a whopping 77 percent favored "expanding Medicare to cover people between the ages of 55 and
64 who do not have health insurance." A February 2009 CBS News/New York Times poll reported that 59 percent of
Americans say the government should provide national health insurance. And a December 2009 Reuters poll reported
that, "Just under 60 percent of those surveyed said they would like a public option as part of any final healthcare reform
legislation." In the U.S. corporatocracy, as in most modern tyrannies, there are elections,
but the reality is that giant corporations and the wealthy elite rule in a way to satisfy
their own self-interest. In elections in a corporatocracy, as is the case in elections in all tyrannies, it's in the
interest of the ruling class to maintain the appearance that the people have a say, so more than one candidate is offered
up. In the U.S. corporatocracy, it's in the interest of corporations and the wealthy elite
that the winning candidate is beholden to them, so they financially support both
Democrats and Republicans. It's in the interest of corporations and the wealthy elite that there are only two
viable parties--this cuts down on bribery costs. And it's in the interest of these two parties that they are the only parties
with a chance of winning. In the U.S. corporatocracy, corporations and the wealthy elite directly and indirectly finance
candidates, who are then indebted to them. It's common for these indebted government officials to
appoint to key decision-making roles those friendly to corporations, including executives from
these corporations. And it's routine for high-level government officials to be rewarded with high-paying industry positions
when they exit government. It's common and routine for former government officials to be given high-paying lobbying
jobs so as to use their relationships with current government officials to ensure that corporate interests will be taken care
of. The integration between giant corporations and the U.S. government has gone beyond
revolving doors of employment (exemplified by George W. Bush's last Treasury secretary, Henry Paulson, who
had previously been CEO of Goldman Sachs; and Barack Obama's first chief economic adviser, Lawrence Summers who in
2008 received $5.2 million from hedge fund D. E. Shaw). Nowadays, the door need not even revolve in
the U.S. corporatocracy; for example, when President Obama earlier in 2011 appointed General Electric CEO
Jeffrey Immelt as a key economic advisor, Immelt kept his job as CEO of General Electric. The United States is not ruled
by a single deranged dictator but by an impersonal corporatocracy. Thus, there is no one tyrant that Americans can first
hate and then finally overthrow so as to end senseless wars and economic injustices. Revolutions against Qaddafi-type
tyrants require enormous physical courage. In the U.S. corporatocracy, the first step in recovering
democracy is the psychological courage to face the humiliation that we Americans have
neither a democracy nor a republic but are in fact ruled by a partnership of "too-big-tofail" corporations, the extremely wealthy elite, and corporate-collaborator government
officials.
5. Prefer our framework because:
a. If the aff can’t defend their methodology they deserve to
lose this debate round.
i. If we prove to you that their discourse is neoliberal,
then you vote neg.
b. And, our framework is fair for both sides of the debate. If
you vote neg then you advocate plans with a more robust
epistemology.
c. Epistemology opens the door for greater education in the
realm of the debate space.
d. Better education is not just a pre-fiat impact, it can develop
into better policymaking.
2NC Blocks
A2 Neolib Justifications
Discourse Good
Interrogating discursive constructions of neoliberalism is important
for policy making
Hay and Rosamund, PhDs, 2002 (Colin and Ben, Journal of European Public Policy Volume 9, Issue 2, 2002 p. 3-5)
The implicit supposition which seems to underlie much of the sceptical or second-wave literature seeking to expose the ‘myth’ or ‘delusion’ of
globalisation, is that a rigorous empirical exercise in demystification will be sufficient to reverse the tide of ill-informed public policy made in the
name of globalisation. Sadly, this has not proved to be the case. For however
convinced we might be by the empirical
armoury mustered against the hyperglobalisation thesis by the sceptics, their rigorous empiricism
leads them to fail adequately to consider the way in which globalisation comes to
inform public policy-making. It is here, we suggest, that the discourse of globalisation — and the
discursive construction of the imperatives it is seen to conjure along with attendant fatalism about the possibilities for meaningful political agency
— must
enter the analysis. For, as the most cursory reflection on the issue of structure and agency reveals, it is the ideas
actors hold about the context in which they find themselves rather than the context itself which informs
the way in which they behave (Hay 1999a, forthcoming a). This is no less true of policy makers and
governments. Whether the globalisation thesis is ‘true’ or not may matter far less than
whether it is deemed to be true (or, quite possibly, just useful) by those employing it. Consequently, if
the aim of the sceptics is to discredit the political appeal to dubious economic imperatives
associated with globalisation, then they might well benefit from asking themselves why and under what
conditions politicians and public officials invoke external economic constraints in the first place. It is to this task
that we direct our attentions in this paper. Yet at the outset a certain word of caution is perhaps required. For, even if we accept the potential
causal role that ideas about globalisation might play in the structuration of political and economic outcomes, we may be in danger of narrowing
the discursive field of our attentions at the outset. The ideas policy makers use to legitimate and/or to rationalise their behaviour should not
simply be seen as more or less accurate reflections of the context they perceive (based on more or less complete information). Nor should
discourses be understood as necessarily and exclusively ‘strategic’ (i.e. as relating to situations in which an actor’s employment of a discourse
correlates directly to particular material interests). Discourse
matters in at least two respects. The way in which actors
behave is not merely a reflection of the degree of accuracy and completeness of the information they possess;
it is also a reflection of their normative orientation towards their environment and potential future scenarios. Thus the
constraints and/or opportunities which globalisation is held to imply might be understood (or misunderstood) in very similar ways in different
(national) contexts. Yet such understanding are likely to provoke divergent responses from political actors with different normative orientations
and diverse institutional contexts. Put simply, though
actors may share a common understanding of the process of
globalisation, they may respond very differently to its perceived challenges and threats depending
on whether one regards the future it promises in a positive or negative light – witness the still ongoing
debate within the governing SPD in Germany between supporters of Schröder and Lafontaine (see Lafontaine 1998; Lafontaine and Müller 1998;
Schröder 1998; and for a commentary Jeffery and Handl 1999), or that in France between Bourdieu, Forrester and anti-globalisation groups like
ATTAC on the one hand and social liberals within the Parti Socialiste on the other (see Bourdieu 1998; Boudieu and Wacquant 1999; Forrester
1999; and for a commentary Bouvet and Michel 1999; Meunier 2000). Within the European Commission, there is evidence to suggest that
common understandings of globalisation can be quite consistent with distinct conceptions of the capacity to exercise meaningful agency as actors
It is important, then, at the outset that
we consider the potential causal role of ideas about globalisation in the structuration of
political and economic outcomes.3 Our central argument is, we think, likely to prove controversial. It is simply stated, though
its implications are more complex. Essentially, we suggest, policy makers acting on the basis of assumptions
consistent with the hyperglobalisation thesis may well serve, in so doing, to bring about outcomes
consistent with that thesis, irrespective of its veracity and, indeed, irrespective of its perceived veracity. This
take up quite different ‘subject positions’ in relation to globalisation (Rosamond, 1999; 2000b).
provocative suggestion with, if warranted, important implications, clearly requires some justification (see also Hay 1999b; Rosamond 1999,
2000b, 2000c). Globalisation
has become a key referent of contemporary political discourse and, increasingly, a lens
through which policy-makers view the context in which they find themselves. If
we can assume that political actors have no more privileged vantage point from which to understand their environment than anyone else and —
as most commentators would surely concede — that one
of the principal discourses through which that
environment now comes to be understood is that of globalisation, then the content of such
ideas is likely to affect significantly political dynamics.
Deconstructing neoliberal discourse key role of intellectual
Springer, Dept of Geography Univ of Otago, 2012
(Simon, Critical Discourse Studies Vol. 9, No. 2, May 2012, 133–147 , p.143-4 )
While there are inevitable tensions between the four views of neoliberalism that are not entirely commensurable, their content is not diametrically
opposed, and indeed a considered understanding of how power similarly operates in both a Gramscian sense of hegemony and a Foucauldian sense of
governmentality points toward a dialectical relationship. Understanding neoliberalism as discourse allows for a much more integral approach
to social relations than speech performances alone. This is
a discourse that encompasses material forms in state
formation through policy and program, and via the subjectivation of individuals on the ground, even if this
articulation still takes place through discursive performatives . By formulating discourse in this fashion,
we need not revert to a presupposed ‘real-world’ referent to recognize a materiality that is both
constituted by and constitutive of discourse. Instead, materiality and discourse become integral, where
one cannot exist without the other. It is precisely this understanding of discourse that points to a similitude between
poststructuralism and Marxian political economy approaches and their shared concern for power relations. I do not want to conclude that I have
worked out all these tensions, my ambition has been much more humble. I have simply sought to open an avenue for dialogue between scholars on
either side of the political economy/ poststructuralist divide. The
importance of bridging this gap is commensurate
with ‘the role of the intellectual . . . [in] shaking up habits, ways of acting and thinking, of
dispelling commonplace beliefs, of taking a new measure of rules and institutions . . . and
participating in the formation of a political will’ (Foucault, quoted in Goldstein, 1991, pp. 11–12). Such reflexivity
necessarily involves opening ourselves to the possibility of finding common ground between the
epistemic and ontological understandings of political economy and poststructuralism so that
together they may assist in disestablishing neoliberalism’s rationalities, deconstructing its
strategies, disassembling its technologies, and ultimately destroying its techniques . In changing
our minds then, so too might we change the world.
A2 Benevolent capitalism
Neoliberalism and social justice are conceptually exclusive; even
philanthrocaptialists admit it cant completely solve
Faber, prof Sociology @ Northeastern University, 03
Faber, D.R. and McCarthy, D. (2003), ‘Neo-Liberalism, Globalisation and the Struggle for
Ecological Democ- racy: Linking Sustainability and Environmental Justice’, in J. Agyeman, R.
Bullard, and B. Evans (eds), Just Sustainabilities: Development in an Unequal World (London:
Earthscan), pp. 38–63
The two overriding assmuptions of conscience capitalism, that traditional methods of
social and environmental activism have not worked, and that the market is a
superior means of enacting these changes, are also deeply question- able.
Movements for civil rights and universal sufferage do not owe their success to
support from the business sector. On the contrary, campaigns for labour rights
were conducted often in opposition to business. In terms of the suit- ability of
business methods in social and environmental causes, there are, as Edwards
(2010) points out, ‘no standard metrics for caring, solidarity, com- passion,
tolerance, and mutual support’ (78–9). While VCME demonstrates an attempt to
bridge this gap, what is lost in the drive to express complex social rea- lities in more
simple quantitative terms? For example, VCME does not seem to account for the sense of
self-worth and community spirit derived from taking part in social or environmental campaigns,
in its rush to display quantitative dem- onstrations of its efficacy in reaching end goals.
However, conscience capitalists do not see in their methods the entire solution to all
social and environmental problems. Bishop and Green (2008: 279 – 80) point to Bill
Gates’s emphasis on the need to form partnerships with governments, NGOs, and mass
movements to affect change – see also Prahalad (2010: 5) – as evidence of the understanding
within this movement that its members do not have all the answers. However inclusive
these partnerships may be, they are still premised upon market principles such
that the relations between the entrepre- neurs and both the beneficiaries of their
assistance and partner organisations are understood within a business paradigm.
As Frances (2008) states, ‘[t]he role of the social entrepreneur is not to give up on
government but to press it to align its social goals with the market so we can all
work together’ (96). However, while there can be a form of pluralism, it tends to be
pluralism within neoliberal confines. Rather than aligning the market with
conscience, conscience is being placed within a market framework.
Cooption of social programs is inevitable
Farell, Prof Media @Bournemouth University, 14
Nathan Farrell (2015) ‘Conscience Capitalism’ and the Neoliberalisation of the Non-Profit
Sector, New Political Economy, 20:2, 254-272,
Conscience capitalism represents individuals of conscience in opposition to
centralised governments, markets as inherently virtuous but restricted in this
capacity by government regulation. My argument here is that the contribution that
conscience capitalists have made to post-financial crash economic discourse, while
appearing as a challenge to neoliberalism, is in many respects a means of
advancing it. While elements of the for-profit sector have been criticised by activists for the social and environmental costs of their pursuit of profit (for a prominent example, see Klein 2000), conscience capitalism interpellates activists into a
neoliberal discourse of using capitalism to solve social and environmental
problems (including those seemingly created by capitalism). This presents the relational
dimension of conscience in terms of market relations, and the market as the key
venue for enacting conscience. Conscience capitalism, from this perspective, does
not represent a challenge to neoliberalism but instead is a way to reinvigorate the
project in the aftermath of the financial crisis and facilitate its continuation by
promoting the free market and its facilitation by the state while undermining
alternatives. Although this is by no means a fait accompli or a consistent trend across the foror non-profit sectors, it merits further study.
A2 Capitalism resilient
The military and capitalism are closely linked, and both are fragile
Whyte, PhD, 08 (Professor David Whyte has a BA with Honors and a PhD. He is currently a reader in Sociology at the
University of Liverpool. “Market Patriotism and the ‘War on Terror’”, Social Justice (journal), Vol. 34, No. 3/4, 2007-2008,
http://www.jstor.org/stable/29768467)
The Neoliberal Neocon¶ Current U.S. imperialist strategy illustrates an explicit shift away from a universalist position. Wallerstein
(2004) identifies a break in strategy between the Nixon-Clinton years (soft-multilateralism) and the George W. Bush administration
(unilateralism). Very crudely, this can be characterized as a shift away from a universalist position in the sense that it involves a
narrowing of U.S. national interest. This may be partly due to the rise to prominence of a group in the Bush administration known as
the neocons. The complexities of the shifts in U.S. foreign policy, however, are not simply reducible to the peccadilloes of the ruling
elite. The politics of the “Imperium” are defined by the contradictory position of the U.S. economy in relation to the global economy
(Panitch and Gindin, 2005; Petras and Veltmeyer, 2005; Fouskas and Gokay, 2005). The U.S. maintains a dominant
position militarily and economically and is indeed the world’s only superpower. Because of the level of
interpenetration across economies, U.S. capital (and capital in the other major economic blocs) has become increasingly
interdependent with, as well as compelled to collaborate with, the major blocs. Although its military strength is
unrivalled, U.S. global economic predominance is beginning to be challenged. Those unstable
features of the global political economy account for a coercive turn in U.S.-led neoliberalism, in
which U.S. reliance upon military aggression to achieve foreign policy goals is intensifying
(Harvey, 2003).1¶ U.S. economic stability at home therefore depends largely upon its military and
economic success abroad. Foreign policy, conducted under the guise of a war on terror , has a
distinctly Rhodesian aspect insofar as it also aims to ameliorate economic instability and the prospects of
social conflict at home. The sources of potential social unrest in the U.S. economy are clear. Neoliberal industrial
restructuring at home has created new social tensions that stem largely from the new
insecurities in labor markets (the ratcheting down of working conditions, erosion of rights and benefits, and embedding of
long-term unemployment) (Peck, 1996). The dollar’s strength in the global economy is currently keeping at bay an
economic crisis that would likely create conditions that threaten hegemony. Meanwhile, the U.S.
military-industrial complex can potentially undermine political stability. As Hossein-Zadeh (2006) notes,
the huge levels of public resources now being colonized by arms manufacturing and other
military corporations are being drawn directly from social security budgets. Thus, although it
may be necessary to stave off an impending economic crisis, U.S. militarism also creates the
conditions of social unrest at home.¶
A2 Conscience capitalism
It doesn’t matter if you access those net benefits, cap is what caused
them in the first place, they are bound to reoccur
Faber, prof Sociology @ Northeastern University, 03 Faber, D.R. and McCarthy, D. (2003),
‘Neo-Liberalism, Globalisation and the Struggle for Ecological Democracy: Linking Sustainability and Environmental Justice’, in J. Agyeman, R. Bullard, and
B. Evans (eds), Just Sustainabilities: Development in an Unequal World (London:
Earthscan), pp. 38–63
Affairs argues that business should not be involved in philanthropic work. Equally, the nonprofit sector of the UK is still dominated by traditional charity organisations and NGOs that
behave less like social enterprises. That said, there is an engagement between the for- and nonprofit sectors as for-profit organis- ations are seen to be ever more atuned to social and
environmental concerns and non-profits seek alternative and sustainable sources of revenue in
an economi- cally difficult environment. Such shifts are evidenced by the emphasis placed by the
UK government on the concept of ‘The Big Society’ and the ascendence of forms of conscience
capitalism, such as social enterprises, within public discourse (Hoffman 2008). A justiable
response to some of the criticisms levelled at conscience capitalism would be: so what? Indeed,
the efforts of many of those cited above are to be com- mended. Industry that pollutes less and
conducts its business in a more equitable fashion is preferrable to industry that treats the
environment as infinite resource and dumping ground. If social enterprises are able to provide
medical care or stimulate poverty reduction is there any reasonable, or even excusable, case to
dis- parage their efforts? As a response, while conscience capitalism may have some notable
benefits, I want to place this movement within a broader context that hig- lights some the costs
of the approach and some of the ways in which it furthers neoliberalism, particularly within the
non-profit sector. To understand how conscience capitalism advances neoliberalism,
it is necess- ary to turn to the distinction made by Peck and Tickell (2002)
regarding neoliber- alism’s ability to operate not only within institutions and
places, but also the spaces in between them (387) by not only reordering individual
organisations but also the terrain within which they function. In terms of the
neoliberalisation of the terrain in which non-profit organisations operate, it undermines
traditional charity and state-centred initiatives to alleviate social and
environmental pro- blems. This is dependent on underplaying the role of the
market in creating these problems. As Cammack (2002) notes, in the process of
remaking the devel- oping world, during the 1990s, into a suitable environment in
which neoliberalism can proliferate, one goal of the project was to depict these
changes ‘as the author- less outcome of unexplained supernatural forces’ (131).
The success of this ensured that when conscience capitalists turned their attention
to social and environmental problems, they found a situation where they could
claim state- led provision for the poor/environment had completely failed and that
‘political pressures and economic realities’ had forced ‘many governments to
retrench. Big government is out, and market-based capitalism is in’ (Crutchfield and McLeod
Grant 2008: 3). This is not attributed to any particular group so the retrenching of government
just happened due to failures inherent in government and charity initiatives, rather than being
mandated as a precondition of a develop- ing nation receiving an IMF loan, for example. The
assumption that governments cannot alleviate these problems whereas markets can becomes
part of the common sense that allows this type of neoliberalism to become hegemonic. As such
Shell Foundation’s Kurt Hoffman could claim, in a letter to The Guardian, that
individ- uals like him have ‘been motivated precisely because governments and
charities have failed for decades to deliver, particularly in the developing world’
(Hoffman 2008). The entry of conscience capitalism into the arena helps to facilitate
a competi- tive market between non-profit organisations for the type of financial
resources offered by the likes of the Gates Foundation. This market favours
campaigns that can represent problems and express solutions in a manner
relatable to the market. Correspondingly, it selects against those that cannot. This
therefore encourages a form of neoliberalisation within organisations as existing
non-profits have an incentive to align their structure or methods with neoliberal
ideologies. Moreover, it could clear the path for the non-profit sector to become dominated by
the interests of a few key players, such as the Gates Foundation. In this environ- ment,
organisations that are antagonistic to the interests of capitalism may find themselves selected
against in this market. The scope for a few wealthy individ- uals to direct the activities of the
non-profit sector has serious consequences for the democratic governance of the sector.
Additonally, being neither formal charities nor public companies, many social enterprises are
not legally obliged to maintain the standards of transparency and accountability that are
required else- where in the for- and non-profit sectors (Dadush 2010).
A2 Curtailing racial profiling solves
The creation of Islamophobia is part of the ideological justification
for wars and imperialist expansion--- it goes beyond surveillance
Rana PhD Social Anthropology, 2007 (Junaid Rana, studies in Asian
American studies, PhD in Social Anthropology, “The Story of Islamophobia”,
Souls Volume: 9 Issue: 2, published June 06, 2007, pages 148-159, Yung Jung)
On the other side of the Atlantic were the other heathens to the Muslims and Jews that would support the belief in the dominance of
Catholic Spain.16 The triangle that emerged in these points of contact was between the heathen Indian, the Christian, and the infidel
Muslim. As recent scholarship on the encounter between the Old World and the New has shown, Native Americans were made sense
of through stereotypes of Muslims. Contact with the Spanish led to a configuration of Indians-as-Muslims; and, the opposite took
place in the British imagination—thinking of Islam and Muslims through the Spanish ethnologies of American Indians in the
configuration of Muslims-as-Indians.17 Throughout the sixteenth century into the seventeenth and eighteenth, ideas of racial
difference were encapsulated through religious difference, and in the case of Native Americans and Muslims,
sexual difference. In this configuration Muslims and Native Americans were classified as racially
other—that is barbaric, depraved, immoral, and sexually deviant. The stereotype of the Muslim,
as represented in literary and theological documents, imagined the ‘‘Turk’’ as ‘‘cruel, tyrannical,
deviant, and deceiving,’’ and the ‘‘Moor’’ as ‘‘sexually overdriven and emotionally uncontrollable,
vengeful, and religiously superstitious.’’18 This creation of the figure of the Muslim as the
Christian other was part of the ideological justification of holy war and imperial expansion.
A2 Curtailment solves
The affirmatives attempt to just curtail surveillance is doomed, it
ignores the root cause of brainwashing to accepting authority and
reifies neoliberalism
Giroux, philosopher and prof. English and Cultural studies @McMaster University, 14
(Giroux, Henry A. "Totalitarian Paranoia in the Post-Orwellian Surveillance State." Philosophers
for Change. Philosophersforchange.org, 17 Feb. 2014. Web. 24 June 2015.)
Dissent is crucial to any viable notion of democracy and provides a
powerful counterforce to the dystopian imagination that has descended like
a plague on American society; but dissent is not enough. In a time of
surging authoritarianism, it is crucial for everyone to find the courage to
translate critique into the building of popular movements dedicated to
making education central to any viable notion of politics. This is a politics
that does the difficult work of assembling critical formative cultures by
developing alternative media, educational organizations, cultural
apparatuses, infrastructures and new sites through which to address the
range of injustices plaguing the United States and the forces that reproduce
them. The rise of cultures of surveillance along with the defunding of public
and higher education, the attack on the welfare state and the militarization
of everyday life can be addressed in ways that not only allow people to see
how such issues are interrelated to casino capitalism and the racial-security
state but also what it might mean to make such issues meaningful to make
them critical and transformative. As Charlie Derber has written, “How to express
possibilities and convey them authentically and persuasively seems crucially important”
if any viable notion of resistance is to take place. Nothing will change unless the
left and progressives take seriously the subjective underpinnings of
oppression in the United States. The power of the imagination, dissent, and
the willingness to hold power accountable constitute a major threat to
authoritarian regimes. Snowden’s disclosures made clear that the
authoritarian state is deeply fearful of those intellectuals, critics,
journalists and others who dare to question authority, expose the crimes of
corrupt politicians and question the carcinogenic nature of a corporate
state that has hijacked democracy: This is most evident in the insults and patriotic
gore heaped on Manning and Snowden. How else to explain, in light of Snowden’s initial
disclosures about the NSA, the concern on the part of government and intelligence
agencies that his “disclosures have renewed a longstanding concern: that young Internet
aficionados whose skills the agencies need for counterterrorism and cyber defense
sometimes bring an anti-authority spirit that does not fit the security bureaucracy.”[81]
Joel F. Brenner, a former inspector general of the NSA made it very clear that
the real challenge Snowden revealed was to make sure that a generation of
young people were not taught to think critically or question authority. As
Brenner put it, young people who were brought into the national security
apparatus were not only selling their brains but also their consciences. In
other words, they have to “adjust to the culture” by endorsing a regime of
one that just happened to be engaging in a range of illegalities that
threatened the foundations of democracy.[82] What is clear is that the corporate-
security state provides an honorable place for intellectuals who are willing to live in a
culture of conformity. In this case as Arthur Koestler said some years ago, conformity
becomes “a form of betrayal which can be carried out with a clear conscience.”[83] At
the same time, it imposes its wrath on those who reject subordinating their consciences
to the dictates of authoritarian rule.
A2 Decline Inevitable
Claims of the decline of Neoliberalism are false because they assume
that neoliberalism is a static monolithic entity
Springer 14, American politics. He has taught at Yale, Northwestern, and the New School
for Social Research and he has written on racial and economic inequality. He is a founding
member of the U.S. Labor Party and a frequent contributor to The Progressive and The Nation.
Since the onset of the financial crisis in late 2008, the intellectual left has had much to
say about the future of neoliberalism, with some calling for an indictment of Wall Street (Klein
2008), while others suggest that the time is ripe for a re-reading of our economic landscapes to
appreci- ate that it is only owing to non-commodified practices that people have actually been
able to cope in these difficult times (White and Williams 2012). A general “end of
neoliberalism” discourse has picked up steam (Stiglitz 2008), as many G20 countries
now openly discuss the idea of a return to Keynesian-styled arrangements,
stressing increased government oversight. Indeed, the bulk of the debate has
centered on how the practices and ideologies of free-market capitalism, or
“neoliberalism,” have been discredited, and the need for restraining market forces
through regu- latory reform and state intervention (see Altvater 2009; Davidson 2009;
Skidelsky 2010; Taylor 2011; Wallerstein 2008). However, such accounts are problematic
insofar as they are concerned with long-run geoeconomic and geopolitical
dynamics, thus presuming that it is a singular inher- ited regulatory system that is
supposedly in crisis and will precipitate systemic collapse (Brenner et al. 2010).
In other words, they treat neoliberalism as a monolithic entity, and fail to
recognize its particularities as a political project, its hybridities as an institutional
matrix, and its mutations as an ideological construct (Springer 2010a). The idea that
neoliberalism itself is “in crisis” presupposes an understanding of neoliberalism in the sense of a
noun. That is, the designation of “ism” leads us to a dead end inasmuch as it
represents a theoretical abstraction that is disconnected from actual experience.
Neoliberalism is a pure, paradigmatic, and static construct of universal,
monolithic, and exogenous processes that transforms places from somewhere
“outside,” resulting always and everywhere in the same homogenous and singular
outcome as the sequencing is predefined. Such a conceptualization of neoliberalism
might indeed be vulnerable to a scenario of systemic failure and crisis (Kotz 2008).
Neoliberalization alters this slightly by recognizing contextual specificities and neoliberalism’s
necessary articulations with existing geopolitical, socioeconomic, and juridico-institutional
frameworks that results in hybridization and plurality of forms (Springer 2010a; Ward and
England 2007; Willis et al. 2008). Yet the implication, based on its retained status as a
noun, is that perhaps eventually the unperfected process will be completed,
which still problematically alludes to a blueprint to which individual
neoliberalizations will eventually evolve. Indeed, it is this juxtaposition between
paradigm and particularities that has led to a questioning of whether
neoliberalism even exists at all (see Barnett 2005; Castree 2005; Springer 2008 for
a critique). However, if we are to approach neoliberalism/neoliberalization
through highlighting practices and procedures as they unfold in everyday contexts,
where they can be pointed to, named, chal- lenged, examined from different
angles, and be shown to contain inconsistencies (Le Heron 2009), new spaces are
opened that encourage a different interpretation of crises. In this sense,
neoliberalism is to be read as a verb, and understood in a processual, unfolding,
and action ori- ented sense, even if and when our language and writing has not
caught up with our thinking and we retain its “ism” and “ization” usages.
Neoliberalizing practices are thus understood as neces- sarily and always
overdetermined, contingent, polymorphic, open to intervention, reconstituted,
continually negotiated, impure, subject to counter-tendencies, and in a perpetual
process of becoming. In utilizing this dynamic conception of neoliberalism-as-a-verb over
static notions of neoliberalism-as-a-noun we arrive at the conclusion that while particular
social spaces, regula- tory networks, sectoral fields, local formations, and so forth will frequently
be hampered by cri- ses, this does not necessarily imply that they will resonate throughout an
entire aggregation of neoliberalism. In other words, because “neoliberalism” indeed does not
exist as a coherent and fixed edifice, as an equilibrial complex, or as a finite end-state, it is
consequently unlikely to fail in a totalizing moment of collapse (Peck et al. 2010). time, it
imposes its wrath on those who reject subordinating their consciences to the dictates of
authoritarian rule.
A2 Envirocapitalism
Environmental sustainability only focuses on economic benefits
Wanner Doctor 2014 (Dr. Thomas Wanner, Doctor of Philosophy, “The New
‘Passive Revolution’ of the Green Economy and Growth Discourse: Maintaining
the ‘Sustainable Development’ of Neoliberal Capitalism” New Political Economy
2015 Vol. 20 No. 1 published, 31 January 2014, pages. 26-28, Yung Jung)
Green economy and green growth are the new ‘common vision’ and ‘pathway’ to achieve sustainable development (World Bank
2012: 24). Green growth is conceived as ‘not a replacement for sustainable development, but rather should be considered a subset of
it’ (OECD 2011: 11). Green growth or ‘improving the eco logical quality of economic growth’ (UNESCAP 2008: 10) is not a new idea
and, as in the 1980s when the concept of sustainable development emerged, is driven by the increasing urgent necessity to deal with
environmental scarcity and degradation which is seen to threaten economic growth and development. According to the OECD (2011:
17), ‘the impacts of economic activity on environmental systems are creating imbalances which are putting economic growth and
development at risk’. From this perspective, it should be noted that environmental risk management is not about the risks to the
environment but rather the risks to accumulation, entailing the management of risks to economic growth. As stated in a report by
the UK Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, managing environmental risks is about ‘managing the risks to growth
from adverse environmental events’ (Everett et al. 2010: 12). Here we see the manner in which the green economy/growth discourse
is produced, which occupies one distinct side of a divide between those that see growth as reconcilable with environmental pursuits
and those that are sceptical of this. This divide is nothing new, having been central to debates regarding the validity and importance
of the concept of sustainable development ever since its emergence in the 1980s. Sustainable development emerged as
a passive revolution to maintain capitalist hegemony and economic growth in the light of
environmentalist critiques about disastrous social and environmental consequences of
industrial modern capitalism and calls for ‘limits to growth’. In this way, by diverting the counter-hegemonic
challenge of environmentalism, the sustainable development discourse has been part of the sustainable development of capitalism.
The Brundtland Report (WCED 1987) widely popularised the concept of sustainable development and firmly established it on the
international political agenda. The report emphasised the synergy between economic growth and the environment and the
inseparability and complementarity of development and environmental issues. It stressed the need to revive growth while changing
the quality of economic growth as the two top ‘strategic imperatives’ for achieving sustainable development (WCED 1987: 54–76).
With this intervention, the earlier debates about the limits to growth and the conflict between environmental sustainability and the
sustainability of growth were seemingly reconciled and/or defused. In no uncertain terms, the report shifted the framing of
environmental issues from a situation whereby the environment was threatened and degraded by economic development to one
where the economy and economic growth were threatened by the very environmental issues growth had created. We have in the past
been concerned with the impacts of economic growth upon the environment. We are now forced to concern ourselves with the
impacts of ecological stress – degradation of soils, water regimes, atmosphere, and forests – upon our economic prospects. (WCED
1987: 5) In the 25 years since the report, the increased impact of ecological stress on the ‘economic prospects’ of countries has
grown, subsequently leading to a rapid rise in attention being paid to green growth and green economy.9 It is apparent that
green growth is a ‘new economic paradigm’ in the sense that the goal is to supersede fossil-fueldriven ‘business-as-usual’ economic growth because of its ecological unsustainability. Greening
the economy and growth is about improving the environmental sustainability10 of current
unsustainable economic growth patterns. But green economy/growth must be seen as yet
another mechanism to maintain the ‘techno-economic hegemony’ and ‘hegemony of ecoeconomic “win–win” thinking’ that, first and foremost, attempts to legitimise the global
capitalist economic order (Blu ¨hdorn and Welsh 2007: 186, 187). Within this attempt, the centrality of economic growth
for consumer capitalism remains beyond reproach and limits to growth are obfuscated in the discourse of green economy/growth.
The green economy/growth discourse, in short, can be seen as an extension of the dominant
sustainable development discourse and a new form of ‘passive revolution’ to save capitalist
hegemony and its attendant interests. Yet at the same time, the discourse of green economy/growth is a step further
than the discourse of sustainable development which was based, as indicated above, on the complementarity between economic and
ecological sustainability and included trade-offs between both (WCED 1987). Green economy/growth discourse
entails the prospect of complete decoupling of economic growth from natural resource use and
environmental deterioration (UNEP 2011a: xi). The ‘passive revolution’ of the dominant sustainable
development discourse is complete in that the protection of the neoliberal free market
economies and economic growth, now in form of ‘green growth’, is ensured because there are no
longer any trade-offs between the environment and economic growth. In fact, ‘decoupled’ green
growth has no environmental impacts, stimulates environmental protection, helps to create
‘green jobs’ and alleviate poverty. Trade-offs are reframed in the green economy/growth
discourse as ‘apparent trade-offs between strengthening the market economy and pursuing
green growth’ (OECD 2011: 130) that are within the economy and restructuring processes towards green economy but not in
relation to the environment. UNEP’s (2011a) major report on green economy attempts to dispel the myths that (i) there is a trade-off
between economic growth and environmental sustain ability and (ii) establishing greener forms of economic growth and
development is largely the prerogative of developed countries (16). However, the debunking of these myths is in itself a myth,
grounded in the belief that technological innovation, adequate pricing of ‘natural capital’ and a combination of market-based and
policy instruments can achieve single-handedly economic and ecological sustainability and in the process eradicate global poverty
and national and international inequalities. The following sections discuss (i) the economy-focused approach of green
economy/green growth and (ii) the myths of green growth, or, in other words, the conflicts and contradictions that are hidden and
masked in the ‘passive revolution’ of this new discourse about green economy/growth.
Green capitalism leads to commodification of nature
Wanner Doctor 2014 (Dr. Thomas Wanner, Doctor of Philosophy, “The New ‘Passive
Revolution’ of the Green Economy and Growth Discourse: Maintaining the ‘Sustainable
Development’ of Neoliberal Capitalism” New Political Economy 2015 Vol. 20 No. 1
published, 31 January 2014, pages. 26-28, Yung Jung)
More radical alternatives to human–nature relations and for creating a sustainable green society
are subsumed and normalised through the ‘passive revolution’ of green economy and green
growth. Green economy is the promise of a green capitalism without questioning the underlying
dynamics and power relations and causes of unsustainability of this system. The structural
causes of global poverty, global economic inequality and global ecological unsustainability are
not addressed (Khor 2011). On the contrary, the green economy/growth discourse further
intensifies the privatisation and marketisation of the fictitious commodity of ‘nature’, and
perpetuates the myth of limitless growth. As the UNESCO (2011) report states, green economy
might be a good first step for mitigating environmental impacts of economic growth but for a
green society issues of social and international justice need to be addressed. The shift to green or
sustainable societies requires more radical transformative changes which the discourse of green
economy/growth is designed to prevent.
A2 Link turns
Surveillance destroys capitalism, restricts market innovation
Watson, April 30, 2015 Paul Joseph Watson is the editor at large
of Infowars.com and Prison Planet.com., (Paul, “NSA Whistle Blower: Mass
Surveillance Threatens Free Market Capitalism”, http://www.infowars.com/nsawhistleblower-mass-surveillance-threatens-free-market-capitalism/
During the interview, Binney emphasized one of the most important but often overlooked
consequences of mass snooping – that the mere fear of potentially being under
surveillance alters the behavior of the population, restricting expression and free
market innovation. “Just the effect that people are being surveilled inhibits their ability or
feeling that they have the opportunity to do new and creative and innovative things, so that
kind of reduces their risk taking, which in turn means you get less and less
creativity and innovation and more and more stagnation of civilization,” said Binney.
“That’s what happened in the Soviet Union, that’s what happened in East Germany and the
Communist bloc – they stagnated because people were being so surveilled….it made people
afraid to take a risk – that’s really the point of capitalism and that’s why it’s been so
successful because it was advocating people taking risks,” added Binney, noting that if people were
not active participants in society then a totalitarian form of government would inevitably arise.
“What you think is totally irrelavant,” warned Binney, pointing out that the government will decide what
constitutes suspicious activity when it comes to placing a person under blanket surveillance. Binney, who
was raided by the FBI at gunpoint in response to blowing the whistle, dropped a bombshell in 2012 when
he revealed that the NSA was storing all electronic communications and analyzing them in real time.
During a sworn declaration to the United States District Court for the Northern District of California,
Binney said that the federal agency, “has the capability to do individualized searches, similar to Google,
for particular electronic communications in real time through such criteria as target addresses, locations,
countries and phone numbers, as well as watch-listed names, keywords, and phrases in email.” In the
Infowars interview, Binney also revealed how he and Thomas Drake had crafted a program that would
have stopped the 9/11 attacks, but that it was killed by the NSA because it wasn’t deemed expensive
enough and was subsequently replaced with a more lucrative but ineffective program. “They had a whole
host of contractors that wanted to feed on all that money, and if you took the program we did and
deployed it, it would already solve the problem,” said Binney. “You can’t go to Congress asking for money
for a problem you’ve already solved so they had to kill the solution to say we have a problem so they could
justify getting the money – and that’s exactly what they did,” added Binney.
They don’t access the link turn, domestic surveillance is natural and
inevitable
Price ’14
(Price, D. H. (2014). The new surveillance normal: NSA and corporate surveillance in the age of global capitalism. Monthly Review,
66(3), 43-53) //RGDM
We need a theory of surveillance that incorporates the political economy of the U.S. national
security state and the corporate interests which it serves and protects. Such analysis needs an economic
foundation and a view that looks beyond cultural categories separating commerce and state security systems designed to protect
capital. The metadata, valuable private corporate data, and fruits of industrial espionage gathered under PRISM and other NSA
programs all produce information of such a high value that it seems likely some of it will be used in a context of global capital. It
matters little what legal restrictions are in place; in a global, high-tech, capitalist economy such
information is invariably commodified. It is likely to be used to: facilitate industrial or corporate sabotage operations
of the sort inflicted by the Stuxnet worm; steal either corporate secrets for NSA use, or foreign corporate secrets for U.S. corporate
use; make investments by intelligence agencies financing their own operations; or secure personal financial gain by individuals
working in the intelligence sector. The rise of new invasive technologies coincides with the decline of
ideological resistance to surveillance and the compilation of metadata. The speed of Americans' adoption
of ideologies embracing previously unthinkable levels of corporate and state surveillance suggests a continued public acceptance of a
new surveillance normal will continue to develop with little resistance. In a world where the CIA can hack the computers of Senator
Feinstein-a leader of the one of the three branches of government-with impunity or lack of public outcry, it is difficult to anticipate a
deceleration in the pace at which NSA and CIA expand their surveillance reach. To live a well-adjusted life in contemporary U.S.
society requires the development of rapid memory adjustments and shifting acceptance of corporate and state intrusions into what
were once protective spheres of private life. Like all things in our society, we can expect these intrusions will themselves be
increasingly stratified, as electronic privacy, or illegibility, will increasingly become a commodity available only to elites. Today,
expensive technologies like GeeksPhone's Blackphone with enhanced PGP encryption, or Boeing's self-destructing Black Phone,
afford special levels of privacy for those who can pay. While the United States' current state of surveillance
acceptance offers little immediate hope of a social movement limiting corporate or government
spying, there are enough historical instances of post-crises limits being imposed on government
surveillance to offer some hope.
Surveillance is beneficial to the progression of society and does not
aid capitalism
Lyon, PhD. in social science and history, David, et. al, 1996, “Computers, Surveillance, and
Privacy” p. 11, Published by the University of Minnesota Press
Because surveillance is a central component of the modern state and the institutions of
industrial capitalism, it is incorrect to think of it as a twentieth-century phenomenon made
possible solely by the new information technology and the computerization of the so-called
postindustrial society. To view surveillance in this light is to subscribe to technological
determinism and to elevate technology above its place; it is to argue that control by means of
information is associated with the decline of industrialism and the emergence of postindustrialism. After all, Giddens reminds us, Babbage's 1843 work on the fore-runner to the current
computer occurred during the zenith of industri-alism, long before postindustrialism became
fashionable. This is not to say that patterns of control in advanced industrial societies have not
been greatly enhanced by the introduction of new and more powerful computer-based
surveillance techniques. But surveillance is only one feature of capitalism, and not the most
important one. What distin-guishes capitalism from previous modes of production is the separation of the "economic" from the "political." This dual feature of the capitalist state leads to a
corresponding separation in the agencies and functions of social control: the business enterprise
takes on the task of coordinating surveillance based on technical control, whereas the state
asserts its control through monopolizing the means of violence.
A2 Neolib good
Neoliberalism is a shell game- corruption guts purported benefits,
inequality undermines market benefits
Monbiot, PhD (Honorary), 14
(George, http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/aug/05/neoliberalism-mental-health-rich-poverty-economy)
To be at peace with a troubled world: this is not a reasonable aim. It can be achieved only through a disavowal of
what surrounds you. To be at peace with yourself within a troubled world: that, by contrast, is an honourable aspiration. This
column is for those who feel at odds with life. It calls on you not to be ashamed. I was prompted to write it by a remarkable book, just
published in English, by a Belgian professor of psychoanalysis, Paul Verhaeghe. What About Me? The Struggle for Identity in a
Market-Based Society is one of those books that, by making connections between apparently distinct
phenomena, permits sudden new insights into what is happening to us and why. We are social animals,
Verhaeghe argues, and our identities are shaped by the norms and values we absorb from other people .
Every society defines and shapes its own normality – and its own abnormality – according to dominant narratives, and seeks either
to make people comply or to exclude them if they don’t. Today the dominant narrative is that of market
fundamentalism, widely known in Europe as neoliberalism. The story it tells is that the market can
resolve almost all social, economic and political problems. The less the state regulates and taxes us, the better
off we will be. Public services should be privatised, public spending should be cut, and business should be freed from social control.
In countries such as the UK and the US, this story has shaped our norms and values for around 35 years: since Thatcher and Reagan
came to power. It is rapidly colonising the rest of the world. Verhaeghe points out that neoliberalism draws on the
ancient Greek idea that our ethics are innate (and governed by a state of nature it calls the market) and on the Christian idea that
humankind is inherently selfish and acquisitive. Rather than seeking to suppress these characteristics, neoliberalism celebrates
them: it claims
that unrestricted competition, driven by self-interest, leads to innovation and
economic growth, enhancing the welfare of all. At the heart of this story is the notion of merit. Untrammelled
competition rewards people who have talent, work hard, and innovate. It breaks down hierarchies and creates a world of opportunity
and mobility. The reality is rather different. Even at the beginning of the process, when markets are first deregulated, we
do not start with equal opportunities. Some people are a long way down the track before the starting gun is fired.
This is how the Russian oligarchs managed to acquire such wealth when the Soviet Union broke
up. They weren’t, on the whole, the most talented, hardworking or innovative people, but those with the fewest scruples, the most
thugs, and the best contacts – often in the KGB. Even when outcomes are based on talent and hard work, they don’t stay that way for
long. Once the first generation of liberated entrepreneurs has made its money, the initial
meritocracy is replaced by a new elite, which insulates its children from competition by
inheritance and the best education money can buy. Where market fundamentalism has been
most fiercely applied – in countries like the US and UK – social mobility has greatly declined. If
neoliberalism was anything other than a self-serving con, whose gurus and
thinktanks were financed from the beginning by some of the world’s richest people
(the US multimillionaires Coors, Olin, Scaife, Pew and others), its apostles would have demanded, as a
precondition for a society based on merit, that no one should start life with the unfair advantage
of inherited wealth or economically determined education. But they never believed in their
own doctrine. Enterprise, as a result, quickly gave way to rent. All this is ignored, and success or failure
in the market economy are ascribed solely to the efforts of the individual. The rich are the new
righteous; the poor are the new deviants, who have failed both economically and morally and are
now classified as social parasites. The market was meant to emancipate us, offering autonomy
and freedom. Instead it has delivered atomisation and loneliness. The workplace has been overwhelmed by a
mad, Kafkaesque infrastructure of assessments, monitoring, measuring, surveillance and audits, centrally directed and rigidly
planned, whose purpose is to reward the winners and punish the losers. It destroys autonomy, enterprise,
innovation and loyalty, and breeds frustration, envy and fear. Through a magnificent paradox,
it has led to the revival of a grand old Soviet tradition known in Russian as tufta. It means falsification of
statistics to meet the diktats of unaccountable power. The same forces afflict those who can’t find
work. They must now contend, alongside the other humiliations of unemployment, with a whole new level of snooping and
monitoring. All this, Verhaeghe points out, is fundamental to the neoliberal model, which everywhere
insists on comparison, evaluation and quantification. We find ourselves technically free but powerless.
Whether in work or out of work, we must live by the same rules or perish. All the major political parties promote them, so we have
no political power either. In the name of autonomy and freedom we have ended up controlled by a grinding, faceless bureaucracy.
These shifts have been accompanied, Verhaeghe writes, by a spectacular rise in certain psychiatric
conditions: self-harm, eating disorders, depression and personality disorders. Of the personality
disorders, the most common are performance anxiety and social phobia: both of which reflect a fear of other people, who are
perceived as both evaluators and competitors – the only roles for society that market fundamentalism admits. Depression and
loneliness plague us. The infantilising diktats of the workplace destroy our self-respect. Those who end up at
the bottom of the pile are assailed by guilt and shame. The self-attribution fallacy cuts both ways: just
as we congratulate
ourselves for our success, we blame ourselves for our failure, even if we have little to do with it.
So, if you don’t fit in, if you feel at odds with the world, if your identity is troubled and frayed, if you feel lost and ashamed – it could
be because you have retained the human values you were supposed to have discarded. You are a deviant. Be proud.
We don't have to reject the market in toto -their ev relies on a false
dichotomy, its verbal sleight of hand designed to justify neoliberal
excess
Crouch, Professor of governance and public management at the business school of
Warwick University, 6-12-12
Colin, http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/jun/27/alternative-neoliberalism-still-understands-markets
Many fear that neoliberalism will never be defeated. They may be right if their fears are that
the
interests sustaining the neoliberal system are too powerful. When they claim neoliberalism will
prevail because there are no viable alternatives, however, they are quite wrong. The ideas are out
there; they are widely understood and coherent; there are even good examples of them in
action. We know that when markets are extended they generate what is known as "negative externalities" –
damage caused by market behaviour that does not enter into the cost calculations of those producing it. The most obvious and
biggest examples concern pollution. Left to itself, the market only rarely gives a firm incentives to reduce
any damage it causes to the general environment. But there
are many other less obvious examples of such
caused to workers' lives by unregulated labour markets, or the general undermining
of values and common decency produced by the single-minded concentration on profit
maximisation. Particularly important are externalities where the public damage
done undermines the sustainability of business activity itself. The most important
example of that today is the exaggerated and highly disruptive effect produced on the economy by the
movement of vast funds of speculative finance. More generally, the unwillingness to accept taxation,
regulation and collective action that marketisation brings in its train reduces a society's ability to
generate the high-quality human and physical infrastructure that an economy
needs, but which is only with difficulty achieved through the market itself. Proposals for resolving these problems
can be brought together under the coherent umbrella of tackling market externalities. This has a
defensive component, in the protection of interests damaged by markets, and a proactive one, in
taking measures to ensure a sustainability that the market cannot provide unaided. Such a
strategy is not hostile to markets. It accepts the benefits marketisation has brought but works
alongside it to offset its negative effects. Also, merely identifying a negative externality is not enough to
demand putting an end to its causes; sometimes it has to be accepted as a trade-off for the gains from marketisation. The
alternative strategy has to assess this balance the whole time. Where either the weight of public
opinion or an understanding of what capitalism needs for its own sustainability cry out for
remedies, it marshals state and other forms of collective action to achieve them. There is no mystery
about what these measures need to be. We know how to reduce the degree of leveraging in financial
markets, how to tax the volume of transactions in those markets, how to protect banks' main
holdings from speculative activity. Some of these things were being practised successfully before
the wave of banking deregulation. We know that it is not true that tax havens and other loopholes make it impossible to
externalities, such as the anxiety
monitor international financial transactions, because when the world's authorities wanted to check the flow of finances funding
terrorism they were able to move effectively. The means are not lacking, only the will. It is true that a more regulated
global capitalism would deliver fewer dramatic results than the Anglo-American model produced in
the years up to 2008. But we now know that that model produced both a universal
dependence on investment banking and periodic crises. Collective resources then have
to be mobilised to rescue the bankers, at the cost of the private and public resources of the rest
of the population. The social pact with unregulated finance capitalism is a Faustian
one, and its price is the soul of the welfare state. It is better to accept a more modest but
sustainable growth path, as Germany seemed to be doing during the years when the Anglo-Americans ridiculed them
for their pedestrian banking habits. We know that generous
public spending and social policy can be used to
improve the skills of the labour force and to maximise quality employment more effectively than
do workfare strategies. The choice confronting us is not between supply side policies using the
coercion of workfare and demand-side policies that talk of consumption alone and risk chronic
debt. There are supply side policies that stress improvement and quality; these need to be
sought out and developed. The evidence is there in the achievements of the social investment welfare states of northern
Europe. We know from the same countries that low levels of inequality, high levels of redistributive taxation
and of public provision are associated with high levels of innovation and other indicators of
economic success. This is not abstract dreaming: the record is there to see. The recipe of
the social investment welfare state may not seem to provide such an elegant master paradigm as
neoliberalism. But if we look behind actually existing neoliberalism's superficial slogans about
pure markets we find a distinct lack of internal coherence. Does sustaining market
competition mean ensuring that all markets have multiple providers, or allowing the outcome of
competition to lead to the dominance of oligopolies? Neoliberalism gives us no unanimous
answer. Are state-funded bank rescue plans compatible with the market economy? Why do neoliberal political movements usually
need to make coalitions with very unliberal nationalistic, xenophobic or religious movements in order to win popular majorities? Is
extensive political lobbying by corporations an expression of economic liberty, or an offence against the separation of state and
economy that is central to neoclassical political economy? The externality-confronting social investment welfare
state certainly faces dilemmas over when more is to be gained from accepting an externality
than from eliminating it; and politics will usually determine the outcome. But neoliberalism has
no general advantage over it in coherence and elegance. The only superiority of neoliberalism
lies in the power of the interests that sustain it.
A2 Neolib Inevitable
Overwhelming research disputes their inevitability claims—there’s no
social or genetic basis for neoliberal ethics—subscribing to that logic
naturalizes social Darwinism—independent reason to vote neg
Krishna, pol sci prof, 9—Professor of Political Science at U Hawaii, PhD. in political science (Sankaran, © 2009,
Globalization & Postcolonialism: Hegemony and Resistance in the Twenty-first Century, RBatra)
p. 158-160
Polanyi pointed out that historical
and anthropological research does not bear out Smith’s idea that
humans had a natural tendency to barter, truck, and trade. In fact, the weight of such research indicated
that most societies were more concerned with reciprocity, redistribution, and prevention of an
excessive concentration of wealth. Trade, exchange, and business were subordinate activities
that did not preoccupy premodern societies and were seen as at best a means to an end, rather
than ends in themselves. The ideas of the importance of the trading spirit of man, the commodification of
everything, and the emergence of the self-centered, utility-maximizing homo
economicus were not merely attributes of modern societies; they were self-fulfilling prophecies in
that if we began to interact with others on these premises, our very actions would create the world that was ostensibly our referent.5¶ It was, however,
based on this essentialization of the core characteristic of individuals in all times and at all
places as a homo economicus that the idea of the self-regulating market as the ideal and rational
social order gained its sway. Polanyi observed that there were some aspects that were simply not susceptible to commodification,
notably nature (land) and labor (humans): ¶ [L]abor, [and] land are obviously not commodities; the postulate that anything that is bought and sold
must have been produced for sale is emphatically untrue in regard to them. In other words, according to the empirical definition of a commodity they
are not commodities. Labor
is only another name for a human activity which goes with life itself, which
in its turn is not produced for sale but for entirely different reasons, nor can that activity be detached from the
rest of life, be stored or mobilized; land is only another name for nature, which is not produced by man. . . . The commodity description
of labor [and] land . . . is entirely fictitious. Nevertheless, it is with the help of this fiction that
the actual markets for labor [and] land are organized; they are being actually bought and sold on the market; their
demand and supply are real magnitudes; and any measures or policies that would inhibit the formation of such markets would ipso facto endanger the
self-regulation of the system. . . . To
allow the market mechanism to be the sole director of the fate of human
beings and their natural environment . . . would result in the demolition of society. For the
alleged commodity “labor power” cannot be shoved about, used indiscriminately, or even left
unused, without affecting the human individual who happens to be the bearer of this particular
commodity. In disposing of a man’s labor power the system would, incidentally, dispose of the
physical, psychological, and moral entity “man” attached to that tag. Robbed of the protective
covering of cultural institutions, human beings would perish from the effects of social exposure;
they would die as victims of acute social dislocation through vice, perversion, crime and
starvation. Nature would be reduced to its elements, neighborhoods and landscapes defiled,
rivers polluted, military safety jeopardized, the power to produce food and raw materials
destroyed.6 ¶ Polanyi saw the politics of Britain and other Western societies from the nineteenth century onward as oscillating
between a conservative market-mandated morality and a more ethical position that saw the
economy (the production of material goods for the satisfaction of needs) as merely a small part of a larger set of
concerns that should animate a society. He was objecting to the use of the market metaphor to
ethically justify and promote a form of social Darwinism within countries as well as in the realm
of interstate relations. To the enthusiasts of an unbridled free market, just as inefficient firms
and producers fall by the wayside under competitive capitalism, so too must inefficient humans
(races) and societies (poorer nations) pay the price for their lack of ability or competitiveness. Such
an ethic, Polanyi argued, went against the grain of history and was unique to the modern epoch. He made a
powerful case for the intervention of politics to ensure that capitalist growth based on private enterprise and the market did not destroy those who were
weaker and less able. As was indicated in Chapter 1, the
ascendancy of such commodification of human relations
and the sanctity of the market were critical in what Mike Davis described as the holocausts of the
Victorian era, resulting in between 30 and 60 million deaths in the third world.7¶ Polanyi’s critique is
philosophically crucial as it reminds us that far from being the reservoir of the ethical, a market society derives
its ethics from an impoverished logic of the economy, which is then used to depoliticize society.
Postcolonialism, in its narration of the history of capitalist development as inextricably
intertwined with colonialism, racism, and genocide, in its critique of modernization theory and
the myth of laissez-faire, and in its contemporary engagement with neoliberal globalization has
anchored itself precisely against this reduction of the ethicopolitical realm to that of the
economy. And it has done this by consistently historicizing the claims of neoliberal globalization
and showing them to be empirically untrue and historically false. In making this argument, postcolonial
study, especially in its emphasis on capitalism as a worldwide process that simultaneously produces development and underdevelopment, growth
and poverty, affluence and misery, has consistently refuted the tendency of neoliberal theories of
modernization to confine our focus to the level of competitive nation-states. It is to this critique of the
method of neoliberalism that we now turn.
We are in the twilight of neoliberalism-belief that "there is no alternative" is elite
propoganda-the system is vulnerable
Dolack, MA, 14
(Pete, 12-14 http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/12/12/are-we-ready-for-the-twilight-of-neoliberalism/)
Not since the Great Depression have so many people in the global North called into
question
capitalism, yet among most of the advanced capitalist countries there is little organized
pushback. Worse, parties of the Right appear to be gaining ground as voters who in the past backed the
traditional parties of the center-left increasingly stay home, disgusted at their “me, too” approach to economics. A
decaying order increasingly reliant on repression that delivers immiseration to ever more people
ought to be under more pressure. It can’t be said there are no serious challenges — social
movements such as Spain’s Indignados and political coalitions contending for power such as Greece’s
Syriza, for example — and the dramatic instant popularity of the Occupy movement demonstrated
widespread discontent. Still, the limitations of Occupy led to its demise and nothing yet has arisen in its place. Is
there a weakness in our movements that is preventing them from organizing that discontent and channeling it into
productive forces capable of challenging prevailing social orders? Any answer to the puzzle of why Left movements have gained so
little traction comprises multiple parts. Certainly the enormous institutional advantages that industrialists and
financiers possess through their ability to exert decisive influence over governments, their domination of the mass
media, the disposal of police and military forces at their service, and ability to infuse their preferred ideologies
through a web of institutions can’t be discounted. Nonetheless, that does not relieve ourselves of the
necessity to think about how we attempt to organize. Activist knowledge has been
“frozen” in specific forms, and today’s movements must be willing to break with
past patterns and to build different styles of organization, argue Laurence Cox and Alf Gunvald
Nilsen in their study of social movements, We Make Our Own History: Marxism and Social Movements in the Twilight of
Neoliberalism. In writing this book, the authors, both of whom have long histories in activist work, set out to “reclaim” activist
knowledge for today’s movements and problems.cox-t02839 The authors quite reasonably argue that the failure of
neoliberalism is “evident” and that we are now living in the “twilight” of the neoliberal era. That
neoliberalism is reaching its end does not necessarily mean that capitalism is
reaching its end; merely capitalism’s latest phase. “There is no alternative” retains a
powerful punch even as conditions continue to deteriorate around the world. Moreover, activists are at a
disadvantage when operating within rules designed to maintain the status quo. Theory
does not derive from an armchair Theory, Professors Cox and Nilsen write, derives from the activist work
of making sense of, and changing, social experience. Theory helps grasp ideas in opposition
to dominant discourses, helping us go beyond our immediate situation or experience. A “unity of
theory and action, and not simply practice,” is a necessity. But theory is not a concept imposed from high above
nor the province of a handful of philosophers. They write: “The producers of theory are — potentially —
everyone who reflects on their experiences so as to develop new and improved ways of handling
problematic aspects of that experience. Theory, in this perspective, is knowledge that is consciously
developed out of experience, and has been worked through using experience as a touchstone, that has become
explicit and articulate, and which as been brought to a level where it can be generalised.” [page 8]
The everyday experience of creating new forms of organization during struggles itself provide bases for a better world. “At their best
and within wider movements for social change, the council, the assembly, the occupied factory, the social centre, the self-organised
neighbourhood, or the liberated zone can simultaneously prefigure a different way of living together, represent an effective means of
organising here and now, and embody a critique of key social relationships and institutions.” [page 11] Building from
abstract concepts in its early pages, We Make Our Own History steadily builds concrete scaffolding. A key concept
of this scaffolding, introduced to emphasize the understanding that the current organization of the world is
a product of human construction that can be disassembled and replaced through
human agency, is that of “movements from above.” We are used to seeing grassroots activity as movements — movements
from “below.” We Make Our Own History defines “movements from above” as the collective agency of dominant groups to reproduce
or extend their power and hegemonic positions. Movements from above draw upon a multitude of positions to cement their
hegemony, among them their directing role in enterprises, superior access to state power, ability to extract “consent” from
significant sections of the subaltern and ability to apply repression to those who refuse to consent. Movements from above are
“forever moving.” the authors write, and are able to use a variety of tactics in their responses to movements from below: military
force, police force, the law, and school and workplace sanctions. When necessary, concessions will be made, but only to some groups
and in forms that reinforce clientalism and patriarchal relations while blocking self-activity and organization. Seeing the efforts of
elites as “movements from above” enables an understanding of our ability to change conditions, through the combined efforts of
movements from below. The building blocks of a movement Movements from below must become
strong enough to counter the hegemony of capitalist elites with a “counter-hegemony.” Professors
Cox and Nilsen propose three “levels” of movements from below in distinguishing their ability to force structural change. Local,
defensive struggles (the basic building block) can coalesce into much more effective offensives when they connect with other
movements from below on the basis of common grounds to forge extra-regional or international coalitions that critique dominant
ideas and projects. Such coalitions, however, tend to remain field-specific and don’t necessarily relate to the social totality that
shapes the issue being struggled against. If activists begin to examine larger structural issues, the authors write,
they may go beyond field-specific campaigns to become a “social movement
project” that targets the social totality. Thus, “[S]uch a social movement project stands out from other forms
of collective agency from below by virtue of its capacity to identify its own actors socially; name its central opponent; and recognizing
that the social totality is the product and object of such struggles. In other words, there is a return ‘up’ the sequence from opposing
everyday routines to opposing the structures that generate them, and finally to directly confronting the movements from above
which have constructed the whole.” [page 83] From this comes the question of: What is the nature of what we are fighting? To assist
in answering that question, the authors divide the history of capitalism into three eras: “Disembedded” market-centered liberal
capitalism that lasted into the early 20th century. This era was marked by the violent incorporation of the colonized world into the
world-system of capitalism, and concessions made to emergent middle classes split them from the subaltern, linking them to the
aristocracy and bourgeoisie. “Re-embedded” state-centered organized capitalism from the end of World War II to the 1970s. This
period arose out of the breakdown of the previous era and in response to mass uprisings carrying the potential to sweep away
capitalism. Some measure of development was allowed for the global South through import-substitution industrialism; workers of
the global North received increasing wages and concessions in exchange for de-politicizing their demands. “Disembedded”
neoliberal capitalism since the 1980s, a project to “disembed” capital from institutional regulations. The turn to
neoliberalism is grounded in changed conditions, in particular the profit squeeze that set in during the 1970s,
and is organized globally through alliances with capitalists in all regions of the world and links
among trans-national capital. Capitalists’ attempt to restore previous profit levels centers on breaking the power of labor
and a strategy of “accumulation through dispossession” — the conversion of common property into private capital. The victory
of neoliberalism is “pyrrhic,” the authors write, because the accumulation strategies that
restored power for capitalists are the root of the present crisis. Thus, we are in the
twilight of neoliberalism. That elites can offer nothing new is a sign of their
brittleness, but the simultaneous weakness of movements from below has led to an
unusually long period of stalemate. Learning from one another, not blindly following How then will this
logjam be broken? As no movement, organization or leader has a monopoly of ideas, Professors Cox and Nilsen envision a
“movement of movements”: The coming together of independent movements without the
intention of submitting to the leadership of any single party or of privileging narrow
definitions of working class interests. This necessitates not only learning from one another to increase the
body of knowledge that can be drawn upon but also learning from the past. It also stresses the full
incorporation of struggles against racism, sexism and all other forms of
oppression. Winning, the authors write, means defeating the state, breaking up at least some power
relations and instituting new ones, but doing so through the masses, not a vanguard. Success, then, is
the collective achievement of people going beyond what they previously believed possible. “These
situations share a potential for human self-development to flourish beyond the normal limits set by exploitation, oppression,
ignorance and isolation, creating institutions driven by human need rather than by profit and power. … These ‘everyday utopias’ do
not need to be installed from above by decree; what they do need is a breaking of power relations within communities, workplaces,
state institutions and globally, which stand in their way.” [pages 186-7] Building the “counter-hegemony” that can check and then
supplant the hegemony of capitalists is far from an easy task. Those who benefit from the current world order
spare no exertion in attempting to convince us that no other world is possible.
Realizing that such assertions are nothing more than self-serving ideology helps to
give ourselves the necessary consciousness to liberate ourselves: “[I]f we do not
see not see neoliberalism as a complex, contested, fragile and ultimately
impermanent achievement of elite agency we are taking the intentions of its
makers as given fact — and in essence conceding permanent defeat.” [page 142] Professors
Cox and Nilsen set themselves the audacious goal of reclaiming activist knowledge through filling a void in studies of social
movements. They have succeed: We Make Our Own History is recommended reading for activists serious about bringing into being a
better world.
Neoliberalism is undergird by flawed assumptions—persuasive force
of inevitability is a sham
Hay, 4 PHD POLSIS, University of Birmingham, Edgbaston, Birmingham (Colin,
Economy and Society Volume 33 Number 4 November
2004: 500-527 p. 519-21)
If New Labour’s neoliberal
macroeconomics has been rationalized (and thereby normalized) through rational
expectations assumptions, then a similar role in the rationalization of its supply-side microeconomics has been performed by the stylized
open economy macroeconomic assumptions of the business school globalization literature (see Table 2). As has been widely noted, much of the
distinctiveness of New Labour’s political economy rests on the sustained and systematic appeal to globalization as an external economic constraint.
Here, again,
economic imperatives claim precedence over political discretion as, it is argued, heightened
capital mobility serves to tilt the balance of power from immobile government and comparatively immobile
labour to fluid capital. In such an inauspicious context for economic policy autonomy, the state (as fiscal authority) must adapt and
accommodate itself to the perceived interest of capital (for labour market flexibility, a ‘competitive’ taxation environment and so forth) if it is not to
precipitate a haemorrhaging of invested funds. The
judgement of mobile assets (whether of invested or still liquid funds) is
assumed to be both harsh and immediate, selecting for fiscal responsibility, prudence, a rules-bounded economic policy (as
guarantor of credibility and competence) and both flexible labour markets and low levels of corporate and personal taxation. The appeal to
globalization thus conjures a logic of economic necessity and, indeed, compulsion, driving a nonnegotiable agenda for welfare retrenchment and labour-market reform / while further shoring
up its open economy macroeconomics. Once again, the justification for policy is presented not in its
own terms, but as a necessary accommodation to the ‘harsh realities’ of new economic times in a
(superficially) dispassionate, almost technocratic manner. Appeal is again made to processes beyond the
control of political actors which must simply be accommodated / and hence to a dull logic of
economic compulsion which is non-negotiable. The policy implications of such an account
are painfully clear . As globalization serves to establish competitive selection mechanisms within the international economy, there is
little choice but to cast all regulatory impediments to the efficient operation of the market on the
bonfire of welfare institutions, regulatory controls and labour-market rigidities. Plausible, familiar and compelling though such a
logic may well appear, it is important to isolate the parsimonious rationalist assumptions on which
it is predicated. For it is these, rather than any inexorable process of globalization, which ultimately
summon the necessity of an accommodation with neoliberal (supply-side) microeconomics. They are
principally five-fold, and each can be challenged on both theoretical and empirical grounds (the empirical critique is elaborated in Hay (2005)) / see
Table 3. Table 3 Core assumptions of the ‘hyperglobalization’ thesis 1. That capital invests where it can secure the greatest net return on that investment
and is possessed of perfect information of the means by which to do so; 2. That markets for goods and services are fully integrated globally and that,
consequently, national economies must prove themselves internationally competitive if economic growth is to be sustained; 3. That capital enjoys
perfect mobility and the cost of ‘exit’ (disinvestment) is zero; 4. That capital will invariably secure the greatest return on its investment by minimizing
its labour costs in flexible labour markets and by relocating its productive activities to economies with the lowest rates of corporate taxation; and,
consequently 5. That the welfare state (and the taxation receipts out of which it is funded) represent nothing other than lost capital to mobile asset
holders and have no positive externalities for the competitiveness and productivity of the national economy. Each of these premises
is at
best dubious, at worst demonstrably false. Such assumptions, it should perhaps be noted, are not justified in neoclassical
economics in terms of their accuracy, but because they are convenient and make possible abstract quasimathematical modelling. Space prevents a detailed consideration. Suffice it for now to note that, among those not wedded to the algebraic
modelling of a stylized open economy, there is no support for any of these assumptions, nor is there
evidence for the predictions these assumptions support . Consider each assumption in turn. While it may
seem entirely appropriate to attribute to capital the sole motive of seeking the greatest return on its investment, the political and
economic history of capital provides little or no support for the notion that capital is blessed
either with complete information or even with a relatively clear and consistent conception of what
its own best interest is. Moreover, as the political economy of the advanced capitalist democracies demonstrates well, capital has a
history of resisting social and economic reforms which it has later come both to rely upon and actively
to defend (see, for instance, Swenson 2000). The second assumption is, again, a convenient fiction, used in neoclassical
macroeconomics to make possible the modelling of an open economy. Few if any economists would
defend the claim that markets for goods or services are fully integrated or clear instantly. If the first two assumptions are
problematic, then the third is demonstrably false, at least with respect to certain types of capital. For, while
portfolio capital may
indeed exhibit almost perfect mobility in a digital economy, the same is simply not the case for capital
invested in infrastructure, machinery and personnel. Once attracted to a particular locality, foreign direct investors
acquire a range of non-recuperable or ‘sunk’ costs / such as their investment in physical infrastructure, plant and machinery. Consequently, their exit
options become seriously depleted. No less problematic are assumptions four and five / that capital can compete in a more intensely competitive
environment only on the basis of productivity gains secured through tax reductions and cost-shedding and that the welfare state is, for business, merely
a drain on profits. This is to extrapolate
wildly and inappropriately from labour-intensive sectors of the
international economy in which competitiveness is conventionally enhanced in this way to the
global economy more generally. It fails to appreciate that foreign direct investors in capital-intensive sectors of the international
economy are attracted to locations like the Northern European economies neither for the flexibility of their labour markets nor for the cheapness of the
wage and non-wage labour costs that they impose, but for the access they provide to a highly skilled, reliable and innovative labour force (Cooke and
Noble 1998). High wages and high non-wage labour costs (in the form of payroll taxes) would seem to be a price many multinational corporations
regard as worth paying for a dynamic and highly skilled workforce. As the above paragraphs suggest once again,
stylized rationalist and
open economy assumptions deliver a spurious necessity to economic policy choices . Overly
parsimonious rationalist assumptions have played a crucial role in consolidating,
normalizing and, above all, depoliticizing a neoliberal economic paradigm which
is disingenuously presented as a simple and necessary accommodation to global
economic realities.
A2 Short termism
Serial policy failure—short-termism forces policymakers to distort
reality
Bilgin 4 Pinar BILGIN IR @ Bilikent AND Adam David MORTON Senior Lecturer and Fellow
of the Centre for the Study of Social and Global Justice IR @ Nottingham ‘4 (“From ‘Rogue’ to
‘Failed’ States? The Fallacy of Short-termism” Politics 24 (3) p. Wiley Interscience)
Calls for alternative approaches to the phenomenon of state failure are often met with the criticism that
such alternatives could only work in the long term whereas 'something' needs to be done here
and now. Whilst recognising the need for immediate action, it is the role of the political scientist to
point to the fallacy of 'short-termism' in the conduct of current policy. Short-termism is
defined by Ken Booth (1999, p. 4) as 'approaching security issues within the time frame of the next election, not the next generation'.
Viewed as such, short-termism is the enemy of true strategic thinking. The latter requires
policymakers to rethink their long-term goals and take small steps towards achieving them. It
also requires heeding against taking steps that might eventually become self-defeating. The
United States has presently fought three wars against two of its Cold War allies in the post-Cold War era,
namely, the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein and the Taliban in Afghanistan. Both were supported in an attempt to preserve the
delicate balance between the United States and the Soviet Union. The Cold War policy of supporting client regimes has eventually
backfired in that US policymakers now have to face the instability they have caused. Hence the need for a comprehensive
understanding of state failure and the role Western states have played in failing them through varied forms of intervention. Although
some commentators may judge that the road to the existing situation is paved with good intentions, a truly strategic approach to the
problem of international terrorism requires a more sensitive consideration of the medium-to-long-term implications of state
building in different parts of the world whilst also addressing the root causes of the problem of state 'failure'. Developing this line of
argument further, reflection on different socially relevant meanings of 'state failure' in relation to different time increments shaping
policymaking might convey alternative considerations. In line with John Ruggie (1998, pp. 167–170), divergent issues might then
come to the fore when viewed through the different lenses of particular time increments. Firstly, viewed through the lenses
of an incremental time frame, more immediate concerns to policymakers usually become
apparent when linked to precocious assumptions about terrorist networks , banditry and the
breakdown of social order within failed states. Hence relevant players and events are readily identified (al-Qa'eda),
their attributes assessed (axis of evil, 'strong'/'weak' states) and judgements made about their long-term significance (war on
terrorism). The key analytical problem for policymaking in this narrow and blinkered
domain is the one of choice given the constraints of time and energy devoted to a
particular decision. These factors lead policymakers to bring conceptual baggage to bear on
an issue that simplifies but also distorts information. Taking a second temporal form, that of a
conjunctural time frame, policy responses are subject to more fundamental epistemological concerns.
Factors assumed to be constant within an incremental time frame are more variable and it is
more difficult to produce an intended effect on ongoing processes than it is on actors and discrete
events. For instance, how long should the 'war on terror' be waged for? Areas of policy in this realm can therefore
begin to become more concerned with the underlying forces that shape current trajectories. Shifting
attention to a third temporal form draws attention to still different dimensions. Within an epochal time frame an
agenda still in the making appears that requires a shift in decision-making, away from a
conventional problem-solving mode 'wherein doing nothing is favoured on burden-of-proof grounds', towards a riskaverting mode, characterised by prudent contingency measures. To conclude, in relation to 'failed states', the latter time
frame entails reflecting on the very structural conditions shaping the problems of 'failure' raised
throughout the present discussion, which will demand lasting and delicate attention from practitioners
across the academy and policymaking communities alike.
A2 Our Scholarship Good
Discount affirmative knowledge claims—they are products of a flawed
positivist epistemology
Smith 97 Steve, professor at Aberystwyth, becoming Head of the Department of International Politics at the University of
Wales BSc in Politics and International Studies in 1973, an MSc degree in International Studies in 1974 and a PhD degree in
International Relations in 1978, all from the University of Southampton. Power and truth: a reply to William Wallace Review of
International Studies (19), 23
My central claim is that Wallace
has a very restricted notion of politics, such that it seems obvious to him just who are those
political arena is public and it refers to the formal
political process, specifically involving the academic in ‘speaking truth to power’. I think that there are two fundamental
problems with this view of politics. First, it is very narrow indeed, referring to the activities of elected
politicians and policy-makers. It ignores the massive area of political activity that is not focused on
the electoral and policy-making processes, and the host of ‘political’ activities that do not accord with the formal processes of
politics. His is a very official and formal definition of politics, one that would omit a vast array of political
activities. For Wallace, ‘political’ means having to do with the formal policy process, thereby restricting
discussion of politics to a very small subset of what I would define as political. Therefore, Wallace would see
detachment where I see engagement; hiding behind the walls of the monastery where I see deep enquiry into the possibilities of
the political; and scholasticism where I see intellectual endeavour. Second, and for me more importantly, his view of politics is narrow because it
confines itself to policy debates dealing with areas of disagreement between competing party
positions. The trouble with this view is of course that it ignores the shared beliefs of any era, and so does not
enquire into those things that are not problematic for policy-makers. By focusing on the policy
debate, we restrict ourselves to the issues of the day, to the tip of the political iceberg. What
politics seems to me to be crucially about is how and why some issues are made intelligible as
political problems and how others are hidden below the surface (being defined as ‘economic’ or
‘cultural’ or ‘private’). In my own work I have become much more interested in this aspect of politics in the last few years. I spent a lot
of time dealing with policy questions and can attest to the ‘buzz’ that this gave me both professionally
who ‘have to struggle with the dilemmas of power’. For him the
and personally. But I became increasingly aware that the realm of the political that I was dealing with was in fact a very small part of what I would now
see as political. I therefore spent many years
working on epistemology, and in fact consider that my most
political work. I am sure that William Wallace will regard this comment as proof of his central claim that I have become scholastic rather than
scholarly, but I mean it absolutely. My current work enquires into how it is that we can make claims to knowledge, how it is that we ‘know’
things about the international political world. My main claim is that International Relations relies
overwhelmingly on one answer to this question, namely, an empiricist epistemology allied to a
positivistic methodology. This gives the academic analyst the great benefit of having a foundation for claims about what the world is like.
It makes policy advice more saleable, especially when positivism’s commitment to naturalism means that the world can be
presented as having certain furniture rather than other furniture. The problem is that in my view this is a flawed version of how we
know things; indeed it is in fact a very political view of knowledge, born of the Enlightenment with an
explicit political purpose. So much follows politically from being able to present the world in this way; crucially the
normative assumptions of this move are hidden in a false and seductive mask of objectivity and
by the very difference between statements of fact and statements of value that is implied in the call to ‘speak
truth to power’. For these reasons, I think that the political is a far wider arena than does Wallace. This means that I think I am being very political
when I lecture or write on epistemology. Maybe
that does not seem political to those who define politics as the
public arena of policy debate; but I believe that my work helps uncover the regimes of truth
within which that more restricted definition of politics operates. In short, I think that Wallace’s view of
politics ignores its most political aspect, namely, the production of discourses of truth which are the
very processes that create the space for the narrower version of politics within which he works.
My work enquires into how the current ‘politics’ get defined and what (political) interests benefit from that disarming division between the political and
the non-political. In essence, how
we know things determines what we see, and the public realm of politics
is itself the result of a prior series of (political) epistemological moves which result in the
political being seen as either natural or a matter of common sense. (508-9)
Neolib is used as political cover by politicians—the discourse is
instrumental, the case doesn't exist as something you can evaluate
outside their project of modernity
Hay and Rosamund, PhDs, 2002 (Colin and Ben,
Journal of European Public Policy Volume 9, Issue 2, 2002 p.6-8)
The question of intentionality is here a key issue and a consistent theme of the paper .
It is important, at the outset, that we
differentiate between the internalisation of a discourse of globalisation as an accurate
representation of the relevant ‘material’ constraints and the more intentional, reflexive and strategic choice of
such a discourse as a convenient justification for policies pursued for altogether different
reasons. In the first scenario ideas about globalisation might be held to be constitutive (in part) of the perceived interests of political actors; in
the latter, they are more of an instrument device deployed in the promotion of a set of extant
preferences and (perceived) interests.6 There is plenty of evidence, as we shall see, of actors deploying
particular rhetorics of globalisation in the attempt to justify often unpalatable social and
economic reform. Whether this should be interpreted as evidence for an unreflexive internalisation of a discourse of external economic
constraint or as an exercise in responsibility-displacement is an interesting methodological conundrum to which we return presently. Returing to the
example of tax competition, if we envisage a (purely hypothetical) scenario in which the hyperglobalisation thesis were accurate, the free mobility of
capital would indeed serve to establish tax competition between fiscal authorities seeking to hold onto existing investment whilst enticing mobile
foreign direct investors to relocate. The price of any attempt to buck the trend is immediate capital flight with
consequent effects on budget revenue. In such a scenario any rational administration aware (or assuming itself to be aware) of the mobility of capital
will cut corporate taxes with the effect that no exit will be observed (scenario 1 in Figure 2). Any administration foolish enough to discount or test the
mobility of capital by retaining high levels of corporate taxation will be rudely awakened from its state of blissful ignorance by a rapid exodus of capital
(scenario 2). In a world of perfect factor mobility, then, the learning curve is likely to prove very steep indeed.
Yet this is to assume an
entirely unreflexive and non-instrumental attitude towards the discourse of globalisation. It is
important that we also consider a modification of scenario 1 in which the administration in question does not regard globalisation as a significant
external constraint but perceives strategic advantage from presenting it in such terms. The outcome would, of course, be the same — corporate tax cuts
(pursued for whatever ends), no observed exit and a seeming confirmation of the hyperglobalisation thesis. Assume instead that we inhabit a world in
which the mobility of capital is much exaggerated and in which capital has a clear vested interest in threatening exit even where that threat is scarcely
credible, and the scenario unfolds rather differently. Here, fiscal authorities lulled into accepting the hyperglobalisation thesis by the (ultimately
hollow) exit threats of capital, or disingenuously presenting globalisation as a convenient external economic constraint, will cut rates of corporate tax,
(falsely) attributing the lack of capital flight to their competitive taxation regime (scenario 3). Yet, were they to resist this logic by calling capital’s bluff
they might retain substantial taxation receipts without fear of capital flight (scenario 4). The crucial point is that if
we observe reductions
in net corporate taxation over time with minimal evidence of capital flight we are incapable, on
the empirical evidence alone, of adjudicating between scenario 1 in which the effects of the globalisation thesis are indeed true
and scenario 3 in which the globalisation thesis is a hegemonic delusion. We are also incapable of differentiating between
the ingenuous and the disingenuous appeal to globalisation as an non-negotiable external economic constraint. This
is but one example. What it, and others like it, suggest is that the discourse of globalisation may play a crucial
independent role in the generation of the effects invariably attributed to globalisation and
invariably held to indicate its logic of inevitability (Hay and Watson 1998; Hay, Watson and Wincott 1999).7 In a context in
which direct corporate tax rates have fallen over time — and in which that process has been linked publicly to the constraints imposed by globalisation
(Blair and Schröder 1999: 167; Schwanhold and Pfender 1998; 21-2; cf. Lafontaine 1998: 5) — this is a not insignificant point.8 This in turn
suggests the importance of differentiating clearly between: (i) the effects of globalisation itself; (ii)
the effects of having internalised popular constructions of globalisation; and , indeed, (iii) the
strategic and disingenuous appeal to globalisation as a convenient justification for
unpalatable reforms. All too frequently the second is mistaken for the first; the third discounted altogether. And it is easy to see why.
For the effects of having internalised or deployed strategically assumptions about globalisation may, in time, become almost as entrenched as if they
were produced by an inexorable globalising logic. The effects of tax competition are, after all, no less real if informed by assumptions about the mobility
of capital which are demonstrably false. Moreover, once established, the momentum of a process such as tax competition may be difficult to halt.
Does it matter, then, whether the effects frequently attributed to globalisation are direct products
of the demonstrable ‘material reality’ of globalisation or of more or less accurate constructions of
globalisation’s assumed imperatives or of an entirely duplicitous appeal to globalisation’s
convenient exigencies? Whilst in one sense it may not (the immediate outcome, after all, is the same), in another the difference is
extremely significant. In one account we identify an inexorable and fatalistic unfolding economic ‘logic of no
alternative’ operating beyond the control or purview of political actors whom we might hold
accountable for its consequences. In the other two we have an open-ended, contingent and —
crucially — political dynamic to which potentially accountable agents might be linked (see also Hay 2000).
Differentiating between the effects of globalisation on the one hand and the effects of dominant
discourses of globalisation and the use made of such discourses on the other is, then, an integral aspect of restoring
notions of political responsibility and accountability to contemporary political and economic
dynamics. It is a prime motivation for much of what follows.
Alt Solvency
A2 Alt is too radical
Their “faith” in economic dogma/science is a tactic designed to shut
down questioning
Massey, MA 3 Honorary Doctorates, 99
(Doreen, Emeritus Professor Geography @open Negotiating Disciplinary Boundaries, Current Sociology 47:4 p. 5-12)
One of the reasons that disciplines such as sociology are not more questioning - and more challenging -
about the form which economic globalization is currently taking is that we leave it to economists. It’s their
field. What appears to have happened is that while recent years have witnessed a healthy critique of
economism, there has also been a much less healthy shift away from looking at the
economy at all. The result is, in fact, an unnoticed economism: for ‘the economy’ is still present
in our studies, but present as a taken-for-granted context, the pregiven to our subsequent analysis.
This seems to me to be extremely dangerous. In part this is so because, as argued in the previous section, we
thereby miss an opportunity to deploy our skills in fields of enquiry around some of the most
important changes going on in today’s world. But it is also dangerous because of the currently
dominant nature of the discipline of economics itself. My second proposition, therefore, is that
there is an urgent need to activate, and to change, our relationship with the discipline of economics. I
am absolutely not advocating that we in the more social end of the social sciences try to emulate economics (which, if anything, is the
nature of the relationship today). Rather I am arguing quite the opposite: that we should do something about economics and its own
current state. More precisely, we have to do something about neoclassical Anglo-Saxon economics. First,
let us be clear, and let us make clear, that ‘economics’, as a discipline,
is a discourse like any other. No more
than any other discourse does it have unmediated access to the truth of the world. It amazes me
how often we (sociologists and assorted other non-economist social scientists) tend simply to ‘believe’ economics
texts. Were it any other kind of ‘text’ we would have the confidence to analyse it, pick apart its
assumptions, excavate the archaeology of its conceptual terminology and analyse the interests
which it serves. Yet we so rarely do so. We contribute to a presumed pre-eminence of economics
by so taking it on trust. Rather, I want to argue, we should be actively engaged in deconstructing it.2 This is
especially the case because of the particular condition of the discipline of economics at the moment.
In particular this arises out of economics’ self-conceit of being ‘more scientific’ than other
disciplines within the social field and out of the way in which the economics discipline itself conceives of its own object of study.
Some time during 1998, Bill Clinton (and he is by no means alone: Tony Blair is of much the same persuasion) delivered
himself of the opinion that we can no more resist the current forces of economic globalization than we can
resist the force of gravity.3 On the one hand, and mischievously, one might point out that this is a man who spends a good deal
of his life flying about in aeroplanes, thus in this and other ways quite effectively resisting the force of gravity. On the other hand,
and more seriously, this is also a
man who has spent much of his recent career precisely trying to protect
and promote this ‘law of nature’ which is neoliberal globalization (his promotion of GATT, his support
for the World Trade Organization, his efforts to speed up the signing and implementation of NAFTA). As far as I am aware, the law
of gravity
itself does not require politicians either to argue for it or to implement it. The evident
absurdities and contradictions in this position are, however, obscured through the
legitimizing force of a large body of the economics discipline itself. For if some politicians
believe the economy (by which they mean the market and the capitalist economy) is like a force of nature, some
economists think it is like a machine. Perhaps alone among the sciences (and here I would include many natural sciences
as well as social) neoclassical economics relies for its claims to scientific status on its likeness to 19thcentury
Newtonian mechanics. It is this which it takes as the basis of its claims to scientificity. Yet surely we now know
that this is a false claim. We know that much of physics is itself no longer like that. Yet the claim is still
made, and very widely accepted. It is a claim which I believe we, in other parts of the social sciences, with other
approaches to and understandings of (and debates about) the nature of knowledge should actively be challenging. This
challenge could be particularly important because there are in fact within the discipline of
economics many economists raising precisely some of these questions. Maybe one of the
renegotiations of interdisciplinary borders within the social sciences could take place through more active and mutually enlightening
discussions with them. (8-9)
Their depiction of the alternative as "radical change" is a tactic to
discredit alternative economics, it creates a false dichotomy that
forestalls the immediate, possible change that would humanize the
global economy
Nelson, PhD, 13
(Julie A., Professor of Economics at the University of Massachusetts in Boston, a Senior Research Fellow at the Global Development and Environment Institute , Really radical
economics , 11-11, https://www.opendemocracy.net/transformation/julie-nelson/really-radical-economics)
pursuit of economic self-interest is glorified. Consumerism promotes the most unsatisfactory of
poverty and ecological destruction are creating unconscionable suffering; and large concentrations of
corporate power overshadow traditional modes of governing for the public good. Radical change is clearly and urgently necessary.
But what does that mean? “Radical” comes from the Latin word for “root,” so radical change
should be change that goes to the very heart of the problem. The positive, institution-building side of the new
economy approach is helpful and can be inspiring. But the negative, “dismantle the capitalist machine” view expressed in a number
of new economy writings is, I believe, both misleading and harmful to the overall prospects of the
movement. The image of the "old economy" they point to is a relic of outdated economic
ideologies. Academic economics has long bamboozled intellectuals and activists - from
across the political spectrum - into adopting narrow ways of thinking about business and commerce.
It's true that we live in an age when the
goals;
Mainstream economic theory claims that in economic life, people are driven by self-interest. Firms have no choice but to maximize profits. Individuals maximize satisfaction
from consumption. Markets are invariably distant and impersonal. And people act as rational, individual agents when exchanging goods, labor power, and money.
Building on this image of the machine-like economy, neoliberal thinkers treat the ideal of the
competitive market as the summum bonum (or supreme good). Taking inspiration from a few selective passages from Adam Smith, they
argue that the “invisible hand” of the free market causes individual selfishness to serve the social good. Since social welfare programs or government regulations would hamper
The best alternative to such theories is sometimes taken to be “radical
economics,” as envisioned by Karl Marx and his followers. Marxist economists envision a revolutionary displacement of
the capitalist system by an alternative economy of solidarity. Yet Marx also drew his inspiration from Adam Smith. Marxist economists portray capitalist economies as
this mechanism, it is said that they must be avoided.
populated by firms that are driven to extract the last possible dollar of profit. People are duped by the marketers of consumer products, and workers are alienated from their
humanity by their role in the economic machine. The foundations of community are seen as corrupted by inhuman exchange relations and by the invidious, society-destroying
So now the capitalist economy is the summum malum (or supreme evil) instead. Note, however,
both neoliberals and these Marxist critics believe that market economies are essentially
machines - entities that are fundamentally separated from society and human emotions, and from ethics
and interdependence. To the extent that they adopt the "dismantle the capitalist machine" version of radical thinking, new economy writers
create "us versus them" divisions. The new economy camp is portrayed as populated by warmhearted and mindful people who are trying to create a socially and ecologically sustainable society.
The old economy camp is portrayed as populated by heartless villains who sit at the controls of the
juggernaut of global capitalism, directing an economy populated by duped and mindless
workers and consumers. Any talk of corporate ethics or business sustainability initiatives is likely to be immediately rejected as mere green-washing or ineffective
reformism. Not until the system is dismantled, it is said, can real change be expected. What's wrong with this picture? One of my Zen teachers likes to
interpret the traditional “three poisons” of Buddhism (“greed, anger, and ignorance”) as “greed, anger, and certainty.” New economy writers like Korten and
Alperowitz seem certain about the mechanisms that drive the old economy, but perhaps those beliefs
deserve fresh examination? Take, for example, the belief that firms must maximize profit. One might think
that economists discovered this belief by studying businesses, but in fact they invented it. It’s
a convenient assumption because it turns the analysis of firms’ behavior into a
simple calculus problem, and that satisfies economists’ desire for physics-like
regularities. But profit maximization isn’t actually legally mandated. Nor is it an inevitable result of competition. If anything, life here is
imitating fiction, since business leaders and investors increasingly appear to believe that maximizing profits (for which read greed) is not only permissible but
required. That's the problem with the mechanistic image of the old economy: it denies the moral
agency of people working inside it, and demands that its structures be dismantled in
favor of a new, more social and human alternative. But the economy is already social and
human. People may not like the current results, but human beings with complex motivations are already acting interdependently with one another. For example,
markets and corporations don't run coolly and objectively. Instead, they are rife with human
emotions such as care, desire and revenge. They rely on the creation of beliefs about the future, run on human ties of trust, and are
built on social norms and legal institutions. If we put aside the distorting lenses provided by dominant
economic theories, it's obvious that businesses can pursue a variety of goals alongside
returning a profit to their shareholders. These goals can be socially helpful (like innovative, high-quality products, jobs,
power of money.
that
or socially harmful (such as making extra profits at the expense of labor and the environment, or promoting
Do love, care, mindfulness and spirituality have a role in the economy? When economic
life is imagined to be directed by the “laws of the market,” it is set apart from the influence of
these values and practices. The old mechanistic thinking essentially gives current corporations an
ethical free pass by providing them with the excuse that "the system made me do it." This
cleft disappears, however, when the real, human nature of the economy is recognized, allowing
us to align ourselves with positive change wherever it is happening. We don’t need to wait
around for companies to reincorporate as B Corporations in order to make them work in the public interest - their current charters will do just fine. But
we can and must expect much better of them, and let them know it. Citizen boycotts, shareholder resolutions,
and other public campaigns are time-honored ways of calling powers to account. When we
undertake such strategies for change, we may find that there are many people inside these companies who also
want to work for a better world. This is deep change. Economies have been
imagined in macho terms of machines, control, and the aggressive pursuit of
growth for so long that it can be difficult to think otherwise. Emotions, care, and
interdependence have been imagined as only belonging to a more feminine sphere, so pointing
out their relevance for commerce risks provoking accusations of naiveté. But dropping
the image of capitalism and for-profit corporations as inhuman in their essence does not mean
taking a Pollyanna-ish position toward either of these things. Instead, a more unified view of economics and
society recognizes that commercial life is an arena of human interaction much like any other.
environmental protection and non-discrimination),
excessive executive compensation).
Interactions within markets or corporations may manifest love or hate, and create abuse or care - much like interactions within other organizations. In fact, visions of smallscale, “love-driven” new economy institutions remind me uncomfortably of similar idealizations of families or religious organizations. While these are often assumed to be
benevolent simply by virtue of being caring-oriented or spiritually-oriented, the realities of domestic violence, sexual abuse and financial mismanagement should remind us that
At its root the economy is a living, complex organism. Rather than
envisioning economic transformation as akin to overturning an unresponsive
juggernaut, it may be more productive to see it in terms of tending to a fragile
body. Avoiding drawing "us" versus "them" battle lines, and acting on the transformational
potential that exists within the economy as it is right now, opens up new arenas for constructive
action. Now that would be radical.
this is not always the case.
A2 Pragmatism
Demand for concrete alternatives is a disciplinary tactic designed to
insulate assumptions- like neolib inevitable- from criticism
Zwick, PhD, 13
(Detlev, Associate Professor of Marketing The myth of metaphysical enclosure: A second response to Adam Arvidsson http://www.ephemerajournal.org/contribution/mythmetaphysical-enclosure-second-response-adam-arvidsson)
As I wrote in my earlier response, I see many problems with this theory of informational communism outside markets and hierarchies, not least being that the most convincing
examples presented by Arvidsson of such an informal mode of production rely for their continuous existence and viability on markets and hierarchies. But again, the main point
Arvidsson’s theory of the productive consumer public is inconsistent and in the final
misguided and naïve[1]. The main point I was trying to make in my initial response was that despite all his anti-capitalist
language, Arvidsson is in actuality presenting a conservative vision of social change that takes
for granted the continuation of neoliberal capitalism, albeit a version of neoliberal capitalism that over time
somehow learns to accommodate and tolerate other forms of economic production and political subjectivities. In short, a neoliberalism with a human
face (which is good enough for Arvidsson to move ‘beyond neoliberalism’, as if just saying it will make it so). And it turns out that Arvidsson, in his reply, admitted that much.
here is not that I believe
analysis
Along similar lines, Arvidsson repeatedly states his disappointment about my refusal to recognize that notions like peer-to-peer production, high-tech gift economies and the like
have the power to mobilize the energies of the subjects that are most likely to become the pioneers of a new political vision – today’s version of the skilled workers that have
taken the lead in most modern political movements. Even though the social theory that they produce might be shallow and imperfect… we cannot simply dismiss these versions
as mere ideologies to be replaced by our theoretically more refined ideologies. I can assure you that I have no difficulty recognizing the real existence of the self-branding,
entrepreneurial competitor who, via skilled knowledge work, hopes to change the world. There are plenty of them in my classroom. And I am not concerned about the depth and
What I am concerned about are the processes that
constitute these students as neoliberal subjectivities in the first place and
subsequently limit their desire for a better world – a desire that, of course, we should
encourage and not dismiss a priori –to variations on neoliberal capitalism (variously called social
entrepreneurism, corporate social responsibility, conscious capitalism and so on). Thus, my pointwas not at all to moralize about the effects of communicative
capitalism but to decry two things: first, that Arvidsson elevates this neoliberal subject to be the legitimate
historical subject of radical transformation, and second, that Arvidsson seems to believe that the
radical transformation ushered in by this subject is one we should desire. It is one thing to
acknowledge the current hegemony of neoliberal governmentality. I have no problem with that. That neoliberalism is a
radical social force is plain for all to see. It is something different entirely, however, to suggest, as Arvidsson appears to, that the
competitive, self-branding and entrepreneurial subject is the only possible subject we can
imagine today – that this subject should be allowed to create the future world. Here, we
have to become normative and demand alternatives. Now that we know that Arvidsson and I in fact agree on the
perfection of the social theories driving their visions for the future.
ideological position espoused by his theory of a productive consumer publics and the accompanying notion of the reputation economy, what about his two charges against me
mentioned above? The first accusation was that my criticism of his desire to develop a theory of the social within neoliberal capitalism rather than against it was naïve and
Arvidsson seems to believe that the task of a social scientist today is to be realistic, meaning to
take as immutably real the fact of capitalism. There are a couple of points I would like to make about this intellectual position.
First, it is interesting to see in Arvidsson’s excitement for the new digital public that for him everything seems possible with the
Internet: the use of common resources, the formation of new public spaces and entirely new civil societies, collective forms of production across vast and complex
outdated.
networks of communication, truly democratic decision-making, individual empowerment, brand-building without a marketer in control, even the end of private property! And
yet one thing seems impossible: the end ofneoliberal capitalism. When it comes to that, we need to be
‘realistic’. Second, how naïve is my critique of capitalism really? To be sure, it certainly is not so naïve as to
conjure up as our way forward the idea of 20th century communism. This idea of communism, in its state
socialist form, has been soundly discredited and should be abandoned. But should we therefore give up
our aspirations for a world where all social relations are not structured by capital and through
commodities? Besides, there is something truly peculiar going on these days. As Indian social
philosopher Saroj Giri (#18799">2010) points out, media today are full of anti-capitalist rants almost to a point where one
could be forgiven for thinking that capitalism is the devil on its last legs. Stories about corrupt
bankers, polluting companies, abusive labor conditions in Chinese factories and the diamond mines of Africa, corporate bribery of government officials
in India and Nigeria and so on abound even in well-known bastions of capitalist propaganda such as the Wall
Street Journal and the Financial Times. Capitalism’s greatest cheerleaders, the Harvard Business Review and its publishing arm HBSP,
have also been busy churning out articles and books by business scholars and consultants replete with
surprisingly frank scolding of the stewards of global capitalism for being greedy and selfish, and of
companies for being polluting, unfair, short-sighted, cheating and scheming and, most importantly, for putting the capitalist system at risk of imminent collapse (see e.g. Barton,
with my critique of contemporary capitalism,I
find myself firmly placed at the centre of contemporary business discourse, not at its
margins, as Arvidsson seems to believe. If there is one position today that should be characterized
2011; Bower et al., 2011; Haque, 2011). The important point I would like to make at this juncture is that
as naïve and utopian, it is the one that posits that the same system that brought us
to the point we are at today (rapidly rising inequality and economic apartheid,
rampant de-politization, environmental catastrophe and so on) can somehow fix
with its left hand what its right hand destroyed. On what basis, other than utopian faith,
can one make such a claim? Obviously, Arvidsson is not the only one suggesting that capitalism can be fixed in spite of itself. It is
a popular position among people across a wide political spectrum, from right-wing libertarians to several so-called leftist groups and their hopes for saving what
remains of the social-democratic welfare state. What all of these supporters of capitalism – including Arvidsson – fail to
explain to the rest of us is how a system designed to grow, create many more losers
than winners, exploit natural resources and pollute the environment will suddenly
and miraculously contain itself and create collectively shared resources, many
more winners than losers and environmental health. Let’s remember that Arvidsson started his rejoinder with a bit of
Hegel, but when it comes to assessing the potential of capitalism as a totality, Hegel conveniently no longer features. But hasn’t Žižek in particular
made the point that if we are to really understand capitalism with Hegel we cannot
separate the positive from its negations. The negative – Foxconn, ongoing civil war
in the Congo, rising unemployment and recurring economic crises and so on –
cannot be understood as aberrations of the totality of capitalism but as its
constitutive parts. Therefore, anyone proposing to fix capitalism from within needs to answer the
question of what kind of negativity he or she is willing to accept as part of the new and improved
capitalism (how much pollution is OK, how much unemployment is OK, how much war is OK, etc.). I think it is not
only justified, but today more important than ever, to ask, who here between the two of us is
the radical utopian?
We should refuse the demand for pragmatic alternatives- radical break in thinking
is precondition to change
Zwick , PhD, 13
(Detlev, Associate Professor of Marketing The myth of metaphysical enclosure: A second response to Adam Arvidsson http://www.ephemerajournal.org/contribution/mythmetaphysical-enclosure-second-response-adam-arvidsson)
criticizing is all well and good but, unless it is combined with a
solution, such criticism is not constructive. A reactionary response to criticism that aims
at foreclosing critical discourse, such a demand for constructiveness and practical
solutions, should be rejected unconditionally. First, on moral grounds, why should it be
acceptable for someone who posits as a ‘solution’ a utopian fantasy (hence no solution at all) to
demand from his or her detractors a solution? Second, we should reject the notion that criticism
should always be constructive on theoretical grounds. Constructivist criticism is a kind of criticism
that accepts the coordinates of the real within which the criticized object resides. If
criticism rejects the assumptions on which the critiqued rests, or put differently, if criticism rejects as unacceptable
the entire symbolic universe that make possible the criticized object, then it cannot be called
constructive. Often, then, constructive criticism becomes meaningless criticism. For example, how
would one provide constructive criticism of Hitler’sideological and political project?Such a task
would make little sense because it would cast a priori Hitler’s Third Reich as a reasonable entity
(see Horkheimer, 2004). Similarly, when Arvidsson calls for us to start behaving like reasonable and
constructive people, what he means is that we should accept the coordinates of his
argument – for example, that neoliberal capitalism has to be accepted as a reality and by doing so we
can move beyond it – as a reasonable entity. Trying to change these coordinates becomes unreasonable and
unconstructive. Here again we should remember Žižek’s advice to the Wall Street occupiers not to speak to all
those agents of reason, those pragmatists, from Clinton to Obama to Goldman Sachs. At such moments of resistance
and defiance, silence becomes the most radical act against pragmatic politics, the kind of politics
that wants to resolve the problem step by step in a realistic way, rather than addressing it at
its roots (see Žižek, 2008). Because what would Arvidsson’s response be to anything outside the existing coordinates he sees structuring the domain of social and
economic relations? Perhaps, then, this is not the time to articulate solutions when we are still
struggling to ask the right questions. This sentiment is expressed perfectly by a joke Žižek told at Occupy Wall Street[2], In an
old joke from the defunct German Democratic Republic, a German worker gets a job in Siberia; aware of how all mail
The second charge against my initial response was that all that
will be read by censors, he tells his friends: ‘Let’s establish a code: if a letter you will get from me
is written in ordinary blue ink, it is true; if it is written in red ink, it is false’.After a month, his friends
get the first letter written in blue ink: ‘Everything is wonderful here: stores are full, food is
abundant, apartments are large and properly heated, movie theatres show films from the West, there are many beautiful girls ready for an affair – the only
thing unavailable is red ink’. The point of the joke is that without the red ink, we lack the very
language to articulate our reality.Paraphrasing Žižek, what this lack of red ink means is that all the
main terms we use to designate the present situation – ‘productive consumer publics’, ‘informal economy and freedom’, ‘common
resources’, etc. – are false terms, mystifying our perception of the situation instead of
allowing us to think it. Before we offer solutions, we need the red ink.
A2 Need a concrete plan
Demand for clear predictions and short term results is a joke from an
economist perspective
Rosenburg and Curtain, PhDs, 13
(Alex Rosenberg is the R. Taylor Cole Professor of Philosophy and chair of the philosophy department at Duke University. He is the author of “Economics — Mathematical
Politics or Science of Diminishing Returns,” most recently, “The Atheist’s Guide to Reality.” Tyler Curtain is a philosopher of science and an associate professor of English and
comparative literature the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He was recently named the 2013 recipient of the Robert Frost Distinguished Chair of Literature at the
Bread Loaf School of English, Middlebury College, Vt. http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/08/24/what-is-economics-good-for/ 8-24)
Recent debates over who is most qualified to serve as the next chairman of the Federal Reserve have focused on more than just the candidates’ theory-driven economic expertise.
Given the nature of economies, and our ability to understand
the Fed’s next leader will be more a matter of craft and wisdom than of science. When we
put a satellite in orbit around Mars, we have the scientific knowledge that guarantees accuracy and precision in the prediction of its orbit. Achieving a comparable level
of certainty about the outcomes of an economy is far dicier. The fact that the discipline of
economics hasn’t helped us improve our predictive abilities suggests it is still far
from being a science, and may never be. Still, the misperceptions persist. A student who graduates with a degree in economics
They have touched on matters of personality and character as well. This is as it should be.
them, the task of
leaves college with a bachelor of science, but possesses nothing so firm as the student of the real world processes of chemistry or even agriculture. Before the 1970s, the
war, which is too important to be left to the
generals, economics was too important to be left to the Nobel-winning members of the University of Chicago
faculty. Over time, the question of why economics has not (yet) qualified as a science has become an obsession among theorists, including philosophers of science like us. It’s
easy to understand why economics might be mistaken for science. It uses quantitative expression in mathematics
and the succinct statement of its theories in axioms and derived “theorems,” so economics looks a lot like the models of science we are familiar with from physics. Its
approach to economic outcomes — determined from the choices of a large number of “atomic” individuals — recalls the way atomic
theory explains chemical reactions. Economics employs partial differential equations like those in a Black-Scholes account of derivatives markets,
equations that look remarkably like ones familiar from physics. The trouble with economics is that it lacks the most
important of science’s characteristics — a record of improvement in predictive range
and accuracy. This is what makes economics a subject of special interest among philosophers of science. None of our models of science
really fit economics at all. The irony is that for a long time economists announced a semiofficial
allegiance to Karl Popper’s demand for falsifiability as the litmus test for science, and adopted Milton
Friedman’s thesis that the only thing that mattered in science was predictive power. Mr. Friedman was reacting to a criticism
discussion of how to make economics a science was left mostly to economists. But like
made by Marxist economists and historical economists that mathematical economics was useless because it made so many idealized assumptions about economic processes:
perfect rationality, infinite divisibility of commodities, constant returns to scale, complete information, no price setting. Mr. Friedman argued that false assumptions didn’t
matter any more in economics than they did in physics. Like the “ideal gas,” “frictionless plane” and “center of gravity” in physics, idealizations in economics are both harmless
and necessary. They are indispensable calculating devices and approximations that enable the economist to make predictions about markets, industries and economies the way
economics has never been able to show
the record of improvement in predictive successes that physical science has shown through its
use of harmless idealizations. In fact, when it comes to economic theory’s track record, there isn’t
much predictive success to speak of at all. Moreover, many economists don’t seem troubled
when they make predictions that go wrong. Readers of Paul Krugman and other like-minded commentators are familiar with their repeated
complaints about the refusal of economists to revise their theories in the face of recalcitrant facts. Philosophers of science are puzzled by the same question. What is
economics up to if it isn’t interested enough in predictive success to adjust its theories the way a
science does when its predictions go wrong? Unlike the physical world, the domain of economics includes a
wide range of social “constructions” — institutions like markets and objects like currency and stock
shares — that even when idealized don’t behave uniformly. They are made up of unrecognized but artificial
conventions that people persistently change and even destroy in ways that no social
scientist can really anticipate. We can exploit gravity, but we can’t change it or destroy it.
No one can say the same for the socially constructed causes and effects of our choices that
economics deals with. Another factor economics has never been able to tame is science itself. These are the drivers of economic
growth, the “creative destruction” of capitalism. But no one can predict the direction of scientific discovery and its technological
application. That was Popper’s key insight. Philosophers and historians of science like Thomas S. Kuhn have helped us see why scientific paradigm shifts
seem to come almost out of nowhere. As the rate of acceleration of innovation increases, the
prospects of an economic theory that tames the economy’s most powerful forces must
diminish — and with it, any hope of improvements in prediction declines as well. SO if
predictive power is not in the cards for economics, what is it good for? Social and political philosophers have helped us answer this question, and so understand what
economics is really all about. Since Hobbes, philosophers have been concerned about the design and management of institutions that will protect us from
they enable physicists to predict eclipses and tides, or prevent bridge collapses and power failures. But
“the knave” within us all, those parts of our selves tempted to opportunism, free riding and generally avoiding the costs of civil life while securing its benefits. Hobbes and, later,
Hume — along with modern philosophers like John Rawls and Robert Nozick — recognized that an economic approach had much to contribute to the design and creative
management of such institutions. Fixing bad economic and political institutions (concentrations of power, collusions and monopolies), improving good ones (like the Fed’s
open-market operations), designing new ones (like electromagnetic bandwidth auctions), in the private and public sectors, are all attainable tasks of economic theory. Which
At this point it is
a craft, to be executed with wisdom, not algorithms, in the design and management of
institutions. What made Ben S. Bernanke, the current chairman, successful was his willingness to use methods — like “quantitative easing,” buying bonds to lower
long-term interest rates — that demanded a feeling for the economy, one that mere rational-expectations macroeconomics would have denied him. For the
foreseeable future economic theory should be understood more on the model of music theory
than Newtonian theory. The Fed chairman must, like a first violinist tuning the orchestra, have the rare ear to fine-tune complexity (probably a
Keynesian ability to fine-tune at that). Like musicians’, economists’ expertise is still a matter of craft. They must avoid the hubris of
thinking their theory is perfectly suited to the task, while employing it wisely enough to produce
some harmony amid the cacophony.
brings us back to the Fed. An effective chair of the central bank will be one who understands that economics is not yet a science and may never be.
Policy incentives reward failed predictions of doom and gloom- don't
force us to outweigh a high risk of "case"
Engelhardt , MA Harvard, 15
(Tom, http://commondreams.org/views/2015/03/10/want-succeed-establishment-policy-circles-just-be-aggressively-andconsistently, 3-15)
In our era in Washington, whole careers have been built on grotesque mistakes. In fact, when
it
comes to our various conflicts, God save you if you’re right; no one will ever want to hear from
you again. If you’re wrong, however... well, take the invasion of Iraq. Given the Islamic State, that creature of the
American occupation, can anyone seriously believe that the invasion that blew a hole in the
heart of the Middle East doesn’t qualify as one of the genuine disasters of our time, if not of any time?
In the mad occupation that followed, Saddam Hussein’s well-trained army and officer corps were ushered into the chaos of postinvasion unemployment and, of course, insurgency. Meanwhile, at a cost of $25 billion, a whole new military was trained that, years
later, summarily collapsed when faced with insurgents led by some of those formerly out-of-work officers. But the crew who
pushed it all on Washington has never stopped yakking (or being listened to). They’ve been called back
at every anniversary of the invasion to offer their wisdom in the New York Times and elsewhere,
while those who counseled against such an invasion have been nowhere in sight. Some of the
planners of the invasion and occupation are now advisers to Jeb Bush as he heads into the 2016 election
campaign, while the policy wonks who went off to war with the generals (taking regular VIP tours of
America’s battle zones) couldn’t be better thought of in Washington today. Take Michael
O’Hanlon of the Brookings Institution. When it comes to American war, you can count on one
thing: he’s a ray of sunshine on any gloomy day. It hardly matters what year you’re talking about
-- 2003, 2007, 2009, 2013, Iraq or Afghanistan -- and “our odds of success” are invariably “rather good” (if the
U.S. military just pursues the path O’Hanlon advocates). Things always seem to be trending in the right
direction; there’s invariably “progress,” always carefully qualified; Washington’s troops remain forever steadfast;
chances are good that... you fill it in: the invasion will be successful, the occupation a smash, the surge a triumph of an
unconventional sort, the latest Afghan election a positive step forward in a tough world. And here’s the amazing
thing:
year after year, op-ed after op-ed, he never seems to end up on the right side of
anything, which seems to work like a charm in Washington. In recent years, he’s made himself
into an op-ed tag team with his former Princeton classmate David Petraeus. He began plugging General Petraeus as a “superb
commander” back when and, despite the former CIA director’s recent misdemeanor plea deal for “providing his highly classified
journals to a mistress,” he’s still touting him as a “national hero.” (“To my mind, what he did in Iraq was probably the greatest
complex accomplishment by any American general since Washington in the Revolutionary War.”) Since 2013, on op-ed pages
nationwide, he and Petraeus have been promoting the idea that these aren’t the years of America’s decline, but of its rise to greater
glory as the leader of a new North American Century (a line that Republicans are passionately running with for campaign 2016). If
this came from anyone else, perhaps it would be a debatable position, but not with the O’Hanlon guarantee attached to it. Let’s just
say it: if he thinks America is ascending, there’s only one possibility: it’s going down. So many
words and what are the odds that none of them would work out? Still, you might think that
O’Hanlon is small potatoes in our large world. If so, think again. As Andrew Bacevich, author most
recently of Breach of Trust: How Americans Failed Their Soldiers and Their Country, makes clear in “Rationalizing Lunacy,”
O’Hanlon is part of a roiling mass of “policy intellectuals” who have given this
country a distinctly hard time.
Fixation with "policy relevance" and short termism produces policy
disasters
Bacevich , PhD Princeton, 15
(Andrew J.,
http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175965/tomgram%3A_andrew_bacevich%2C_how_to_create_a_national_insecurity_state/#
more 3-8)
Policy intellectuals -- eggheads presuming to instruct the mere mortals who actually run for
office -- are a blight on the republic. Like some invasive species, they infest present-day
Washington, where their presence strangles common sense and has brought to the verge of
extinction the simple ability to perceive reality. A benign appearance -- well-dressed types
testifying before Congress, pontificating in print and on TV, or even filling key positions in the executive branch -- belies a
malign impact. They are like Asian carp let loose in the Great Lakes. It all began innocently enough. Back in 1933, with
the country in the throes of the Great Depression, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt first imported a handful of
eager academics to join the ranks of his New Deal. An unprecedented economic crisis required some fresh thinking,
FDR believed. Whether the contributions of this “Brains Trust” made a positive impact or served to retard economic recovery (or
ended up being a wash) remains a subject for debate even today. At the very least, however, the arrival of Adolph Berle,
Raymond Moley, Rexford Tugwell, and others elevated
Washington’s bourbon-and-cigars social scene. As
bona fide members of the intelligentsia, they possessed a sort of cachet. Then came World War II,
followed in short order by the onset of the Cold War. These events brought to Washington a second wave of
deep thinkers, their agenda now focused on “national security.” This eminently elastic
concept -- more properly, “national insecurity” -- encompassed just about anything related to preparing for,
fighting, or surviving wars, including economics, technology, weapons design, decision-making, the structure of the armed forces,
and other matters said to be of vital importance to the nation’s survival. National insecurity became, and remains today,
the policy world’s equivalent of the gift that just keeps on giving. People who specialized in
thinking about national insecurity came to be known as “defense intellectuals.” Pioneers in this endeavor back in the 1950s were as
likely to collect their paychecks from think tanks like the prototypical RAND Corporation as from more traditional academic
institutions. Their ranks included creepy figures like Herman Kahn, who took pride in “thinking about the unthinkable,” and Albert
Wohlstetter, who tutored Washington in the complexities of maintaining “the delicate balance of terror.” In this wonky
world, the coin of the realm has been and remains “policy relevance.” This means
devising products that convey a sense of novelty, while serving chiefly to perpetuate the
ongoing enterprise. The ultimate example of a policy-relevant insight is Dr. Strangelove’s
discovery of a “mineshaft gap” -- successor to the “bomber gap” and the “missile gap” that, in the 1950s, had found
America allegedly lagging behind the Soviets in weaponry and desperately needing to catch up. Now, with a thermonuclear
exchange about to destroy the planet, the United States is once more falling behind , Strangelove
claims, this time in digging underground shelters enabling some small proportion of the population to survive. In a single, brilliant
stroke, Strangelove posits a new raison d'être for the entire national insecurity apparatus, thereby
ensuring that the game will continue more or less forever. A sequel to Stanley Kubrick’s movie would have
shown General “Buck” Turgidson and the other brass huddled in the War Room, developing plans to close the mineshaft gap as if
nothing untoward had occurred. The Rise of the National Insecurity State Yet only in the 1960s, right around the time that Dr.
Strangelove first appeared in movie theaters, did policy
intellectuals really come into their own. The press
now referred to them as “action intellectuals,” suggesting energy and impatience. Action intellectuals
were thinkers, but also doers, members of a “large and growing body of men who choose to leave
their quiet and secure niches on the university campus and involve themselves instead in the
perplexing problems that face the nation,” as LIFE Magazine put it in 1967. Among the most
perplexing of those problems was what to do about Vietnam, just the sort of challenge an action
intellectual could sink his teeth into. Over the previous century-and-a-half, the United States had gone to war for many
reasons, including greed, fear, panic, righteous anger, and legitimate self-defense. On various occasions, each of these, alone or in
combination, had prompted Americans to fight. Vietnam marked the first time that the United States went to
war, at least in considerable part, in response to a bunch of really dumb ideas floated by
ostensibly smart people occupying positions of influence. More surprising still, action
intellectuals persisted in waging that war well past the point where it had become self-evident,
even to members of Congress, that the cause was a misbegotten one doomed to end in failure. In his fine
new book American Reckoning: The Vietnam War and Our National Identity, Christian Appy, a historian who teaches at the
University of Massachusetts, reminds us of just how dumb those ideas were. As Exhibit A, Professor Appy presents McGeorge
Bundy, national security adviser first for President John F. Kennedy and then for Lyndon Johnson. Bundy was a product of Groton
and Yale, who famously became the youngest-ever dean of Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences, having gained tenure there
without even bothering to get a graduate degree. For Exhibit B, there is Walt Whitman Rostow, Bundy’s successor as national
security adviser. Rostow was another Yalie, earning his undergraduate degree there along with a PhD. While taking a break of sorts,
he spent two years at Oxford as a Rhodes scholar. As a professor of economic history at MIT, Rostow captured JFK’s attention with
his modestly subtitled 1960 book The Stages of Economic Growth: A Non-Communist Manifesto, which offered a grand theory of
development with ostensibly universal applicability. Kennedy brought Rostow to Washington to test his theories of “modernization”
in places like Southeast Asia. Finally, as Exhibit C, Appy briefly discusses Professor Samuel P. Huntington’s contributions to the
Vietnam War. Huntington also attended Yale, before earning his PhD at Harvard and then returning to teach there, becoming one of
the most renowned political scientists of the post-World War II era. What the three shared in common, apart from a suspect
education acquired in New Haven, was an unwavering commitment to the reigning verities of the Cold War. Foremost among those
verities was this: that a monolith called Communism, controlled by a small group of fanatic ideologues
hidden behind the walls of the Kremlin,
posed an existential threat not simply to America and its allies, but to the very
only hope of avoiding such a cataclysmic
outcome was for the United States to vigorously resist the Communist threat wherever it reared its ugly head. Buy
those twin propositions and you accept the imperative of the U.S. preventing the Democratic Republic of
idea of freedom itself. The claim came with this essential corollary: the
Vietnam, a.k.a. North Vietnam, from absorbing the Republic of Vietnam, a.k.a. South Vietnam, into a single unified country; in other
words, that South Vietnam was a cause worth fighting and dying for. Bundy, Rostow, and Huntington not
only bought that argument hook, line, and sinker, but then exerted themselves mightily to persuade others in Washington to buy it
as well. Yet even as he was urging the “Americanization” of the Vietnam War in 1965, Bundy already entertained doubts about
whether it was winnable. But not to worry: even if the effort ended in failure, he counseled President Johnson, “the
policy will be worth it.” How so? “At a minimum,” Bundy wrote, “it will damp down the charge that
we did not do all that we could have done, and this charge will be important in many countries, including our own.”
If the United States ultimately lost South Vietnam, at least Americans would have died trying to prevent
that result -- and through some perverted logic this, in the estimation of Harvard’s youngest-ever dean, was a
redeeming prospect. The essential point, Bundy believed, was to prevent others from seeing the United States as a
“paper tiger.” To avoid a fight, even a losing one, was to forfeit credibility. “Not to have it thought that when we commit ourselves we
really mean no major risk” -- that was the problem to be avoided at all cost. Rostow outdid even Bundy in hawkishness. Apart from
his relentless advocacy of coercive bombing to influence North Vietnamese policymakers, Rostow was a chief architect of something
called the Strategic Hamlet Program. The idea was to jumpstart the Rostovian process of modernization by forcibly relocating
Vietnamese peasants from their ancestral villages into armed camps where the Saigon government would provide security,
education, medical care, and agricultural assistance. By winning hearts-and-minds in this manner, the defeat of the communist
insurgency was sure to follow, with the people of South Vietnam vaulted into the “age of high mass consumption,” where Rostow
believed all humankind was destined to end up. That was the theory. Reality differed somewhat. Actual Strategic Hamlets were
indistinguishable from concentration camps. The government in Saigon proved too weak, too incompetent, and too corrupt to hold
up its end of the bargain. Rather than winning hearts-and-minds, the program induced alienation, even as it essentially destabilized
peasant society. One result: an increasingly rootless rural population flooded into South Vietnam’s cities where there was little work
apart from servicing the needs of the ever-growing U.S. military population -- hardly the sort of activity conducive to self-sustaining
development. Yet even when the Vietnam War ended in complete and utter defeat, Rostow still claimed vindication for his theory.
“We and the Southeast Asians,” he wrote, had used the war years “so well that there wasn’t the panic [when Saigon fell] that there
would have been if we had failed to intervene.” Indeed, regionally Rostow spied plenty of good news, all of it attributable to the
American war. ”Since 1975 there has been a general expansion of trade by the other countries of that region with Japan and the
West. In Thailand we have seen the rise of a new class of entrepreneurs. Malaysia and Singapore have become countries of diverse
manufactured exports. We can see the emergence of a much thicker layer of technocrats in Indonesia.” So there you have it. If you
want to know what 58,000 Americans (not to mention vastly larger numbers of Vietnamese)
died for, it was to encourage entrepreneurship, exports, and the emergence of technocrats
elsewhere in Southeast Asia. Appy describes Professor Huntington as another action
intellectual with an unfailing facility for seeing the upside of catastrophe. In
Huntington’s view, the internal displacement of South Vietnamese caused by the excessive use of American firepower, along with the
failure of Rostow’s Strategic Hamlets, was actually good news. It promised, he insisted, to give the Americans an edge over the
insurgents. The key to final victory, Huntington wrote, was “forced-draft urbanization and modernization which rapidly brings the
country in question out of the phase in which a rural revolutionary movement can hope to generate sufficient strength to come to
power.” By emptying out the countryside, the U.S. could win the war in the cities. “The urban slum, which seems so horrible to
middle-class Americans, often becomes for the poor peasant a gateway to a new and better way of life.” The language may be a tad
antiseptic, but the point is clear enough: the challenges of city life in a state of utter immiseration would miraculously transform
those same peasants into go-getters more interested in making a buck than in signing up for social revolution. Revisited
decades later, claims once made with a straight face by the likes of Bundy, Rostow, and Huntington -- action
intellectuals of the very first rank -- seem beyond preposterous. They insult our
intelligence, leaving us to wonder how such judgments or the people who promoted them were
ever taken seriously. How was it that during Vietnam bad ideas exerted such a perverse influence? Why were those ideas
so impervious to challenge? Why, in short, was it so difficult for Americans to recognize bullshit for what it was? Creating a TwentyFirst-Century Slow-Motion Vietnam These questions are by no means of mere historical interest. They are
no less relevant when applied to the handiwork of the twenty-first-century version of
policy intellectuals, specializing in national insecurity, whose bullshit underpins policies
hardly more coherent than those used to justify and prosecute the Vietnam War . The
present-day successors to Bundy, Rostow, and Huntington subscribe to their own reigning verities. Chief among them is this:
that a phenomenon called terrorism or Islamic radicalism, inspired by a small group of fanatic ideologues hidden away in
various quarters of the Greater Middle East, poses an existential threat not simply to America and its allies, but -- yes, it’s
still with us -- to the very idea of freedom itself. That assertion comes with an essential corollary dusted off and imported from the
Cold War: the only hope of avoiding this cataclysmic outcome is for the United States to vigorously
resist the terrorist/Islamist threat wherever it rears its ugly head. At least since September 11, 2001, and
arguably for at least two decades prior to that date, U.S. policymakers have taken these propositions for
granted. They have done so at least in part because few of the policy intellectuals specializing in
national insecurity have bothered to question them. Indeed, those specialists insulate
the state from having to address such questions. Think of them as intellectuals
devoted to averting genuine intellectual activity. More or less like Herman Kahn and Albert Wohlstetter
(or Dr. Strangelove), their function is to perpetuate the ongoing enterprise. The fact that the enterprise itself has
become utterly amorphous may actually facilitate such efforts. Once widely known as the Global War on Terror, or GWOT, it has
been transformed into the War with No Name. A little bit like the famous Supreme Court opinion on pornography: we can’t define it,
we just know it when we see it, with ISIS the latest manifestation to capture Washington’s attention. All that we can say for sure
about this nameless undertaking is that it continues with no end in sight. It has become a sort of slow-motion
Vietnam, stimulating remarkably little honest reflection regarding its course thus far or
prospects for the future. If there is an actual Brains Trust at work in Washington, it operates on
autopilot. Today, the second- and third-generation bastard offspring of RAND that clutter northwest
Washington -- the Center for this, the Institute for that -- spin their wheels debating latter day equivalents of
Strategic Hamlets, with nary a thought given to more fundamental concerns. What prompts
these observations is Ashton Carter’s return to the Pentagon as President Obama’s fourth secretary of defense. Carter himself is an
action intellectual in the Bundy, Rostow, Huntington mold, having made a career of rotating between positions at Harvard and in
“the Building.” He, too, is a Yalie and a Rhodes scholar, with a PhD. from Oxford. “Ash” -- in Washington, a first-name-only
identifier (“Henry,” “Zbig,” “Hillary”) signifies that you have truly arrived -- is the author of books and articles galore, including one
op-ed co-written with former Secretary of Defense William Perry back in 2006 calling for preventive war against North Korea.
Military action “undoubtedly carries risk,” he bravely acknowledged at the time. “But the risk of continuing inaction in the face of
North Korea's race to threaten this country would be greater” -- just the sort of logic periodically trotted out by the likes of Herman
Kahn and Albert Wohlstetter. As Carter has taken the Pentagon’s reins, he also has taken pains to convey the impression of being a
big thinker. As one Wall Street Journal headline enthused, “Ash Carter Seeks Fresh Eyes on Global
Threats.” That multiple global threats exist and that America’s defense secretary has
a mandate to address each of them are, of course, givens. His predecessor Chuck Hagel (no Yale
degree) was a bit of a plodder. By way of contrast, Carter has made clear his intention to shake things up. So on
his second day in office, for example, he dined with Kenneth Pollack, Michael O’Hanlon, and Robert
Kagan, ranking national insecurity intellectuals and old Washington hands one and all. Besides all
being employees of the Brookings Institution, the three share the distinction of having supported the Iraq
War back in 2003 and calling for redoubling efforts against ISIS today. For assurances that the
fundamental orientation of U.S. policy is sound -- we just need to try harder -- who better to
consult than Pollack, O’Hanlon, and Kagan (any Kagan)? Was Carter hoping to gain some fresh insight from his dinner companions?
Or was he letting Washington’s clubby network of fellows, senior fellows, and distinguished fellows know that, on his watch, the
prevailing verities of national insecurity would remain sacrosanct? You decide. Soon thereafter, Carter’s first trip overseas provided
another opportunity to signal his intentions. In Kuwait, he convened a war council of senior military and civilian officials to take
stock of the campaign against ISIS. In a daring departure from standard practice, the new defense secretary prohibited PowerPoint
briefings. One participant described the ensuing event as “a five-hour-long college seminar” -- candid and freewheeling. “This is
reversing the paradigm,” one awed senior Pentagon official remarked. Carter was said to be challenging his
subordinates to “look at this problem differently.” Of course, Carter might have said, “Let’s look at
a different problem.” That, however, was far too radical to contemplate -- the equivalent of
suggesting back in the 1960s that assumptions landing the United States in Vietnam should be
reexamined. In any event -- and to no one’s surprise -- the different look did not produce a different
conclusion. Instead of reversing the paradigm, Carter affirmed it: the existing U.S. approach to
dealing with ISIS is sound, he announced. It only needs a bit of tweaking -- just the result to give the
Pollacks, O’Hanlons, and Kagans something to write about as they keep up the chatter that
substitutes for serious debate. Do we really need that chatter? Does it enhance the quality
of U.S. policy? If policy/defense/action intellectuals fell silent would America be less secure?
Let me propose an experiment. Put them on furlough. Not permanently -- just until the last of the winter snow
finally melts in New England. Send them back to Yale for reeducation. Let’s see if we are able to make do without
them even for a month or two. In the meantime, invite Iraq and Afghanistan War vets to
consider how best to deal with ISIS. Turn the op-ed pages of major newspapers over to high
school social studies teachers. Book English majors from the Big Ten on the Sunday talk shows. Who knows what tidbits
of wisdom might turn up?
Demand for clear predictions and short term results is a joke from an
economist perspective
Rosenburg and Curtain, PhDs, 13
(Alex Rosenberg is the R. Taylor Cole Professor of Philosophy and chair of the philosophy department at Duke University. He is the author of “Economics — Mathematical
Politics or Science of Diminishing Returns,” most recently, “The Atheist’s Guide to Reality.” Tyler Curtain is a philosopher of science and an associate professor of English and
comparative literature the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He was recently named the 2013 recipient of the Robert Frost Distinguished Chair of Literature at the
Bread Loaf School of English, Middlebury College, Vt. http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/08/24/what-is-economics-good-for/ 8-24)
Recent debates over who is most qualified to serve as the next chairman of the Federal Reserve have focused on more than just the candidates’ theory-driven economic expertise.
Given the nature of economies, and our ability to understand
the Fed’s next leader will be more a matter of craft and wisdom than of science. When we
put a satellite in orbit around Mars, we have the scientific knowledge that guarantees accuracy and precision in the prediction of its orbit. Achieving a comparable level
of certainty about the outcomes of an economy is far dicier. The fact that the discipline of
economics hasn’t helped us improve our predictive abilities suggests it is still far
from being a science, and may never be. Still, the misperceptions persist. A student who graduates with a degree in economics
They have touched on matters of personality and character as well. This is as it should be.
them, the task of
leaves college with a bachelor of science, but possesses nothing so firm as the student of the real world processes of chemistry or even agriculture. Before the 1970s, the
war, which is too important to be left to the
generals, economics was too important to be left to the Nobel-winning members of the University of Chicago
faculty. Over time, the question of why economics has not (yet) qualified as a science has become an obsession among theorists, including philosophers of science like us. It’s
easy to understand why economics might be mistaken for science. It uses quantitative expression in mathematics
and the succinct statement of its theories in axioms and derived “theorems,” so economics looks a lot like the models of science we are familiar with from physics. Its
approach to economic outcomes — determined from the choices of a large number of “atomic” individuals — recalls the way atomic
theory explains chemical reactions. Economics employs partial differential equations like those in a Black-Scholes account of derivatives markets,
equations that look remarkably like ones familiar from physics. The trouble with economics is that it lacks the most
important of science’s characteristics — a record of improvement in predictive range
and accuracy. This is what makes economics a subject of special interest among philosophers of science. None of our models of science
really fit economics at all. The irony is that for a long time economists announced a semiofficial
allegiance to Karl Popper’s demand for falsifiability as the litmus test for science, and adopted Milton
Friedman’s thesis that the only thing that mattered in science was predictive power. Mr. Friedman was reacting to a criticism
discussion of how to make economics a science was left mostly to economists. But like
made by Marxist economists and historical economists that mathematical economics was useless because it made so many idealized assumptions about economic processes:
perfect rationality, infinite divisibility of commodities, constant returns to scale, complete information, no price setting. Mr. Friedman argued that false assumptions didn’t
matter any more in economics than they did in physics. Like the “ideal gas,” “frictionless plane” and “center of gravity” in physics, idealizations in economics are both harmless
and necessary. They are indispensable calculating devices and approximations that enable the economist to make predictions about markets, industries and economies the way
economics has never been able to show
the record of improvement in predictive successes that physical science has shown through its
use of harmless idealizations. In fact, when it comes to economic theory’s track record, there isn’t
much predictive success to speak of at all. Moreover, many economists don’t seem troubled
when they make predictions that go wrong. Readers of Paul Krugman and other like-minded commentators are familiar with their repeated
complaints about the refusal of economists to revise their theories in the face of recalcitrant facts. Philosophers of science are puzzled by the same question. What is
economics up to if it isn’t interested enough in predictive success to adjust its theories the way a
science does when its predictions go wrong? Unlike the physical world, the domain of economics includes a
wide range of social “constructions” — institutions like markets and objects like currency and stock
shares — that even when idealized don’t behave uniformly. They are made up of unrecognized but artificial
conventions that people persistently change and even destroy in ways that no social
scientist can really anticipate. We can exploit gravity, but we can’t change it or destroy it.
No one can say the same for the socially constructed causes and effects of our choices that
economics deals with. Another factor economics has never been able to tame is science itself. These are the drivers of economic
growth, the “creative destruction” of capitalism. But no one can predict the direction of scientific discovery and its technological
application. That was Popper’s key insight. Philosophers and historians of science like Thomas S. Kuhn have helped us see why scientific paradigm shifts
seem to come almost out of nowhere. As the rate of acceleration of innovation increases, the
they enable physicists to predict eclipses and tides, or prevent bridge collapses and power failures. But
prospects of an economic theory that tames the economy’s most powerful forces must
diminish — and with it, any hope of improvements in prediction declines as well. SO if
predictive power is not in the cards for economics, what is it good for? Social and political philosophers have helped us answer this question, and so understand what
economics is really all about. Since Hobbes, philosophers have been concerned about the design and management of institutions that will protect us from
“the knave” within us all, those parts of our selves tempted to opportunism, free riding and generally avoiding the costs of civil life while securing its benefits. Hobbes and, later,
Hume — along with modern philosophers like John Rawls and Robert Nozick — recognized that an economic approach had much to contribute to the design and creative
management of such institutions. Fixing bad economic and political institutions (concentrations of power, collusions and monopolies), improving good ones (like the Fed’s
open-market operations), designing new ones (like electromagnetic bandwidth auctions), in the private and public sectors, are all attainable tasks of economic theory. Which
At this point it is
a craft, to be executed with wisdom, not algorithms, in the design and management of
institutions. What made Ben S. Bernanke, the current chairman, successful was his willingness to use methods — like “quantitative easing,” buying bonds to lower
long-term interest rates — that demanded a feeling for the economy, one that mere rational-expectations macroeconomics would have denied him. For the
foreseeable future economic theory should be understood more on the model of music theory
than Newtonian theory. The Fed chairman must, like a first violinist tuning the orchestra, have the rare ear to fine-tune complexity (probably a
Keynesian ability to fine-tune at that). Like musicians’, economists’ expertise is still a matter of craft. They must avoid the hubris of
thinking their theory is perfectly suited to the task, while employing it wisely enough to produce
some harmony amid the cacophony.
brings us back to the Fed. An effective chair of the central bank will be one who understands that economics is not yet a science and may never be.
Policy incentives reward failed predictions of doom and gloom- don't
force us to outweigh a high risk of "case"
Engelhardt , MA Harvard, 15
(Tom, http://commondreams.org/views/2015/03/10/want-succeed-establishment-policy-circles-just-be-aggressively-andconsistently, 3-15)
In our era in Washington, whole careers have been built on grotesque mistakes. In fact, when
it
comes to our various conflicts, God save you if you’re right; no one will ever want to hear from
you again. If you’re wrong, however... well, take the invasion of Iraq. Given the Islamic State, that creature of the
American occupation, can anyone seriously believe that the invasion that blew a hole in the
heart of the Middle East doesn’t qualify as one of the genuine disasters of our time, if not of any time?
In the mad occupation that followed, Saddam Hussein’s well-trained army and officer corps were ushered into the chaos of postinvasion unemployment and, of course, insurgency. Meanwhile, at a cost of $25 billion, a whole new military was trained that, years
later, summarily collapsed when faced with insurgents led by some of those formerly out-of-work officers. But the crew who
pushed it all on Washington has never stopped yakking (or being listened to). They’ve been called back
at every anniversary of the invasion to offer their wisdom in the New York Times and elsewhere,
while those who counseled against such an invasion have been nowhere in sight. Some of the
planners of the invasion and occupation are now advisers to Jeb Bush as he heads into the 2016 election
campaign, while the policy wonks who went off to war with the generals (taking regular VIP tours of
America’s battle zones) couldn’t be better thought of in Washington today. Take Michael
O’Hanlon of the Brookings Institution. When it comes to American war, you can count on one
thing: he’s a ray of sunshine on any gloomy day. It hardly matters what year you’re talking about
-- 2003, 2007, 2009, 2013, Iraq or Afghanistan -- and “our odds of success” are invariably “rather good” (if the
U.S. military just pursues the path O’Hanlon advocates). Things always seem to be trending in the right
direction; there’s invariably “progress,” always carefully qualified; Washington’s troops remain forever steadfast;
chances are good that... you fill it in: the invasion will be successful, the occupation a smash, the surge a triumph of an
unconventional sort, the latest Afghan election a positive step forward in a tough world. And here’s the amazing
thing:
year after year, op-ed after op-ed, he never seems to end up on the right side of
anything, which seems to work like a charm in Washington. In recent years, he’s made himself
into an op-ed tag team with his former Princeton classmate David Petraeus. He began plugging General Petraeus as a “superb
commander” back when and, despite the former CIA director’s recent misdemeanor plea deal for “providing his highly classified
journals to a mistress,” he’s still touting him as a “national hero.” (“To my mind, what he did in Iraq was probably the greatest
complex accomplishment by any American general since Washington in the Revolutionary War.”) Since 2013, on op-ed pages
nationwide, he and Petraeus have been promoting the idea that these aren’t the years of America’s decline, but of its rise to greater
glory as the leader of a new North American Century (a line that Republicans are passionately running with for campaign 2016). If
this came from anyone else, perhaps it would be a debatable position, but not with the O’Hanlon guarantee attached to it. Let’s just
say it: if he thinks America is ascending, there’s only one possibility: it’s going down. So many
words and what are the odds that none of them would work out? Still, you might think that
O’Hanlon is small potatoes in our large world. If so, think again. As Andrew Bacevich, author most
recently of Breach of Trust: How Americans Failed Their Soldiers and Their Country, makes
clear in “Rationalizing Lunacy,”
O’Hanlon is part of a roiling mass of “policy intellectuals” who have given this
country a distinctly hard time.
Fixation with "policy relevance" and short termism produces policy
disasters
Bacevich , PhD Princeton, 15
(Andrew J.,
http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175965/tomgram%3A_andrew_bacevich%2C_how_to_create_a_national_insecurity_state/#
more 3-8)
Policy intellectuals -- eggheads presuming to instruct the mere mortals who actually run for
office -- are a blight on the republic. Like some invasive species, they infest present-day
Washington, where their presence strangles common sense and has brought to the verge of
extinction the simple ability to perceive reality. A benign appearance -- well-dressed types
testifying before Congress, pontificating in print and on TV, or even filling key positions in the executive branch -- belies a
malign impact. They are like Asian carp let loose in the Great Lakes. It all began innocently enough. Back in 1933, with
the country in the throes of the Great Depression, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt first imported a handful of
eager academics to join the ranks of his New Deal. An unprecedented economic crisis required some fresh thinking,
FDR believed. Whether the contributions of this “Brains Trust” made a positive impact or served to retard economic recovery (or
ended up being a wash) remains a subject for debate even today. At the very least, however, the arrival of Adolph Berle,
Raymond Moley, Rexford Tugwell, and others elevated
Washington’s bourbon-and-cigars social scene. As
bona fide members of the intelligentsia, they possessed a sort of cachet. Then came World War II,
followed in short order by the onset of the Cold War. These events brought to Washington a second wave of
deep thinkers, their agenda now focused on “national security.” This eminently elastic
concept -- more properly, “national insecurity” -- encompassed just about anything related to preparing for,
fighting, or surviving wars, including economics, technology, weapons design, decision-making, the structure of the armed forces,
and other matters said to be of vital importance to the nation’s survival. National insecurity became, and remains today,
the policy world’s equivalent of the gift that just keeps on giving. People who specialized in
thinking about national insecurity came to be known as “defense intellectuals.” Pioneers in this endeavor back in the 1950s were as
likely to collect their paychecks from think tanks like the prototypical RAND Corporation as from more traditional academic
institutions. Their ranks included creepy figures like Herman Kahn, who took pride in “thinking about the unthinkable,” and Albert
Wohlstetter, who tutored Washington in the complexities of maintaining “the delicate balance of terror.” In this wonky
world, the coin of the realm has been and remains “policy relevance.” This means
devising products that convey a sense of novelty, while serving chiefly to perpetuate the
ongoing enterprise. The ultimate example of a policy-relevant insight is Dr. Strangelove’s
discovery of a “mineshaft gap” -- successor to the “bomber gap” and the “missile gap” that, in the 1950s, had found
America allegedly lagging behind the Soviets in weaponry and desperately needing to catch up. Now, with a thermonuclear
exchange about to destroy the planet, the United States is once more falling behind , Strangelove
claims, this time in digging underground shelters enabling some small proportion of the population to survive. In a single, brilliant
stroke, Strangelove posits a new raison d'être for the entire national insecurity apparatus, thereby
ensuring that the game will continue more or less forever. A sequel to Stanley Kubrick’s movie would have
shown General “Buck” Turgidson and the other brass huddled in the War Room, developing plans to close the mineshaft gap as if
nothing untoward had occurred. The Rise of the National Insecurity State Yet only in the 1960s, right around the time that Dr.
Strangelove first appeared in movie theaters, did policy
intellectuals really come into their own. The press
now referred to them as “action intellectuals,” suggesting energy and impatience. Action intellectuals
were thinkers, but also doers, members of a “large and growing body of men who choose to leave
their quiet and secure niches on the university campus and involve themselves instead in the
perplexing problems that face the nation,” as LIFE Magazine put it in 1967. Among the most
perplexing of those problems was what to do about Vietnam, just the sort of challenge an action
intellectual could sink his teeth into. Over the previous century-and-a-half, the United States had gone to war for many
reasons, including greed, fear, panic, righteous anger, and legitimate self-defense. On various occasions, each of these, alone or in
combination, had prompted Americans to fight. Vietnam marked the first time that the United States went to
war, at least in considerable part, in response to a bunch of really dumb ideas floated by
ostensibly smart people occupying positions of influence. More surprising still, action
intellectuals persisted in waging that war well past the point where it had become self-evident,
even to members of Congress, that the cause was a misbegotten one doomed to end in failure. In his fine
new book American Reckoning: The Vietnam War and Our National Identity, Christian Appy, a historian who teaches at the
University of Massachusetts, reminds us of just how dumb those ideas were. As Exhibit A, Professor Appy presents McGeorge
Bundy, national security adviser first for President John F. Kennedy and then for Lyndon Johnson. Bundy was a product of Groton
and Yale, who famously became the youngest-ever dean of Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences, having gained tenure there
without even bothering to get a graduate degree. For Exhibit B, there is Walt Whitman Rostow, Bundy’s successor as national
security adviser. Rostow was another Yalie, earning his undergraduate degree there along with a PhD. While taking a break of sorts,
he spent two years at Oxford as a Rhodes scholar. As a professor of economic history at MIT, Rostow captured JFK’s attention with
his modestly subtitled 1960 book The Stages of Economic Growth: A Non-Communist Manifesto, which offered a grand theory of
development with ostensibly universal applicability. Kennedy brought Rostow to Washington to test his theories of “modernization”
in places like Southeast Asia. Finally, as Exhibit C, Appy briefly discusses Professor Samuel P. Huntington’s contributions to the
Vietnam War. Huntington also attended Yale, before earning his PhD at Harvard and then returning to teach there, becoming one of
the most renowned political scientists of the post-World War II era. What the three shared in common, apart from a suspect
education acquired in New Haven, was an unwavering commitment to the reigning verities of the Cold War. Foremost among those
verities was this: that a monolith called Communism, controlled by a small group of fanatic ideologues
hidden behind the walls of the Kremlin,
posed an existential threat not simply to America and its allies, but to the very
only hope of avoiding such a cataclysmic
outcome was for the United States to vigorously resist the Communist threat wherever it reared its ugly head. Buy
those twin propositions and you accept the imperative of the U.S. preventing the Democratic Republic of
idea of freedom itself. The claim came with this essential corollary: the
Vietnam, a.k.a. North Vietnam, from absorbing the Republic of Vietnam, a.k.a. South Vietnam, into a single unified country; in other
words, that South Vietnam was a cause worth fighting and dying for. Bundy, Rostow, and Huntington not
only bought that argument hook, line, and sinker, but then exerted themselves mightily to persuade others in Washington to buy it
as well. Yet even as he was urging the “Americanization” of the Vietnam War in 1965, Bundy already entertained doubts about
whether it was winnable. But not to worry: even if the effort ended in failure, he counseled President Johnson, “the
policy will be worth it.” How so? “At a minimum,” Bundy wrote, “it will damp down the charge that
we did not do all that we could have done, and this charge will be important in many countries, including our own.”
If the United States ultimately lost South Vietnam, at least Americans would have died trying to prevent
that result -- and through some perverted logic this, in the estimation of Harvard’s youngest-ever dean, was a
redeeming prospect. The essential point, Bundy believed, was to prevent others from seeing the United States as a
“paper tiger.” To avoid a fight, even a losing one, was to forfeit credibility. “Not to have it thought that when we commit ourselves we
really mean no major risk” -- that was the problem to be avoided at all cost. Rostow outdid even Bundy in hawkishness. Apart from
his relentless advocacy of coercive bombing to influence North Vietnamese policymakers, Rostow was a chief architect of something
called the Strategic Hamlet Program. The idea was to jumpstart the Rostovian process of modernization by forcibly relocating
Vietnamese peasants from their ancestral villages into armed camps where the Saigon government would provide security,
education, medical care, and agricultural assistance. By winning hearts-and-minds in this manner, the defeat of the communist
insurgency was sure to follow, with the people of South Vietnam vaulted into the “age of high mass consumption,” where Rostow
believed all humankind was destined to end up. That was the theory. Reality differed somewhat. Actual Strategic Hamlets were
indistinguishable from concentration camps. The government in Saigon proved too weak, too incompetent, and too corrupt to hold
up its end of the bargain. Rather than winning hearts-and-minds, the program induced alienation, even as it essentially destabilized
peasant society. One result: an increasingly rootless rural population flooded into South Vietnam’s cities where there was little work
apart from servicing the needs of the ever-growing U.S. military population -- hardly the sort of activity conducive to self-sustaining
development. Yet even when the Vietnam War ended in complete and utter defeat, Rostow still claimed vindication for his theory.
“We and the Southeast Asians,” he wrote, had used the war years “so well that there wasn’t the panic [when Saigon fell] that there
would have been if we had failed to intervene.” Indeed, regionally Rostow spied plenty of good news, all of it attributable to the
American war. ”Since 1975 there has been a general expansion of trade by the other countries of that region with Japan and the
West. In Thailand we have seen the rise of a new class of entrepreneurs. Malaysia and Singapore have become countries of diverse
manufactured exports. We can see the emergence of a much thicker layer of technocrats in Indonesia.” So there you have it. If you
want to know what 58,000 Americans (not to mention vastly larger numbers of Vietnamese)
died for, it was to encourage entrepreneurship, exports, and the emergence of technocrats
elsewhere in Southeast Asia. Appy describes Professor Huntington as another action
intellectual with an unfailing facility for seeing the upside of catastrophe. In
Huntington’s view, the internal displacement of South Vietnamese caused by the excessive use of American firepower, along with the
failure of Rostow’s Strategic Hamlets, was actually good news. It promised, he insisted, to give the Americans an edge over the
insurgents. The key to final victory, Huntington wrote, was “forced-draft urbanization and modernization which rapidly brings the
country in question out of the phase in which a rural revolutionary movement can hope to generate sufficient strength to come to
power.” By emptying out the countryside, the U.S. could win the war in the cities. “The urban slum, which seems so horrible to
middle-class Americans, often becomes for the poor peasant a gateway to a new and better way of life.” The language may be a tad
antiseptic, but the point is clear enough: the challenges of city life in a state of utter immiseration would miraculously transform
those same peasants into go-getters more interested in making a buck than in signing up for social revolution. Revisited
decades later, claims once made with a straight face by the likes of Bundy, Rostow, and Huntington -- action
intellectuals of the very first rank -- seem beyond preposterous. They insult our
intelligence, leaving us to wonder how such judgments or the people who promoted them were
ever taken seriously. How was it that during Vietnam bad ideas exerted such a perverse influence? Why were those ideas
so impervious to challenge? Why, in short, was it so difficult for Americans to recognize bullshit for what it was? Creating a TwentyFirst-Century Slow-Motion Vietnam These questions are by no means of mere historical interest. They are
no less relevant when applied to the handiwork of the twenty-first-century version of
policy intellectuals, specializing in national insecurity, whose bullshit underpins policies
hardly more coherent than those used to justify and prosecute the Vietnam War. The
present-day successors to Bundy, Rostow, and Huntington subscribe to their own reigning verities. Chief among them is this:
that a phenomenon called terrorism or Islamic radicalism, inspired by a small group of fanatic ideologues hidden away in
various quarters of the Greater Middle East, poses an existential threat not simply to America and its allies, but -- yes, it’s
still with us -- to the very idea of freedom itself. That assertion comes with an essential corollary dusted off and imported from the
Cold War: the only hope of avoiding this cataclysmic outcome is for the United States to vigorously
resist the terrorist/Islamist threat wherever it rears its ugly head. At least since September 11, 2001, and
arguably for at least two decades prior to that date, U.S. policymakers have taken these propositions for
granted. They have done so at least in part because few of the policy intellectuals specializing in
national insecurity have bothered to question them. Indeed, those specialists insulate
the state from having to address such questions. Think of them as intellectuals
devoted to averting genuine intellectual activity. More or less like Herman Kahn and Albert Wohlstetter
(or Dr. Strangelove), their function is to perpetuate the ongoing enterprise. The fact that the enterprise itself has
become utterly amorphous may actually facilitate such efforts. Once widely known as the Global War on Terror, or GWOT, it has
been transformed into the War with No Name. A little bit like the famous Supreme Court opinion on pornography: we can’t define it,
we just know it when we see it, with ISIS the latest manifestation to capture Washington’s attention. All that we can say for sure
about this nameless undertaking is that it continues with no end in sight. It has become a sort of slow-motion
Vietnam, stimulating remarkably little honest reflection regarding its course thus far or
prospects for the future. If there is an actual Brains Trust at work in Washington, it operates on
autopilot. Today, the second- and third-generation bastard offspring of RAND that clutter northwest
Washington -- the Center for this, the Institute for that -- spin their wheels debating latter day equivalents of
Strategic Hamlets, with nary a thought given to more fundamental concerns. What prompts
these observations is Ashton Carter’s return to the Pentagon as President Obama’s fourth secretary of defense. Carter himself is an
action intellectual in the Bundy, Rostow, Huntington mold, having made a career of rotating between positions at Harvard and in
“the Building.” He, too, is a Yalie and a Rhodes scholar, with a PhD. from Oxford. “Ash” -- in Washington, a first-name-only
identifier (“Henry,” “Zbig,” “Hillary”) signifies that you have truly arrived -- is the author of books and articles galore, including one
op-ed co-written with former Secretary of Defense William Perry back in 2006 calling for preventive war against North Korea.
Military action “undoubtedly carries risk,” he bravely acknowledged at the time. “But the risk of continuing inaction in the face of
North Korea's race to threaten this country would be greater” -- just the sort of logic periodically trotted out by the likes of Herman
Kahn and Albert Wohlstetter. As Carter has taken the Pentagon’s reins, he also has taken pains to convey the impression of being a
big thinker. As one Wall Street Journal headline enthused, “Ash Carter Seeks Fresh Eyes on Global
Threats.” That multiple global threats exist and that America’s defense secretary has
a mandate to address each of them are, of course, givens. His predecessor Chuck Hagel (no Yale
degree) was a bit of a plodder. By way of contrast, Carter has made clear his intention to shake things up. So on
his second day in office, for example, he dined with Kenneth Pollack, Michael O’Hanlon, and Robert
Kagan, ranking national insecurity intellectuals and old Washington hands one and all. Besides all
being employees of the Brookings Institution, the three share the distinction of having supported the Iraq
War back in 2003 and calling for redoubling efforts against ISIS today. For assurances that the
fundamental orientation of U.S. policy is sound -- we just need to try harder -- who better to
consult than Pollack, O’Hanlon, and Kagan (any Kagan)? Was Carter hoping to gain some fresh insight from his dinner companions?
Or was he letting Washington’s clubby network of fellows, senior fellows, and distinguished fellows know that, on his watch, the
prevailing verities of national insecurity would remain sacrosanct? You decide. Soon thereafter, Carter’s first trip overseas provided
another opportunity to signal his intentions. In Kuwait, he convened a war council of senior military and civilian officials to take
stock of the campaign against ISIS. In a daring departure from standard practice, the new defense secretary prohibited PowerPoint
briefings. One participant described the ensuing event as “a five-hour-long college seminar” -- candid and freewheeling. “This is
reversing the paradigm,” one awed senior Pentagon official remarked. Carter was said to be challenging his
subordinates to “look at this problem differently.” Of course, Carter might have said, “Let’s look at
a different problem.” That, however, was far too radical to contemplate -- the equivalent of
suggesting back in the 1960s that assumptions landing the United States in Vietnam should be
reexamined. In any event -- and to no one’s surprise -- the different look did not produce a different
conclusion. Instead of reversing the paradigm, Carter affirmed it: the existing U.S. approach to
dealing with ISIS is sound, he announced. It only needs a bit of tweaking -- just the result to give the
Pollacks, O’Hanlons, and Kagans something to write about as they keep up the chatter that
substitutes for serious debate. Do we really need that chatter? Does it enhance the quality
of U.S. policy? If policy/defense/action intellectuals fell silent would America be less secure?
Let me propose an experiment. Put them on furlough. Not permanently -- just until the last of the winter snow
finally melts in New England. Send them back to Yale for reeducation. Let’s see if we are able to make do without
them even for a month or two. In the meantime, invite Iraq and Afghanistan War vets to
consider how best to deal with ISIS. Turn the op-ed pages of major newspapers over to high
school social studies teachers. Book English majors from the Big Ten on the Sunday talk shows. Who knows what tidbits
of wisdom might turn up?
A2 Cede the Political
Normalization of neoliberalism eradicates civic participation—this
card ends the cede the political debate
Hay 4, PHD POLSIS, University of Birmingham, Edgbaston, Birmingham
(Colin, Economy and Society Volume 33 Number 4 November 2004: 500-527 p.523-4)
Accordingly, however
depoliticized and normalized neoliberalism has become, it remains a political and
economic choice, not a simple necessity . This brings us naturally to the question of alternatives. A number of points might here be
made which follow fairly directly from the above analysis. First, our ability to offer alternatives to neoliberalism rests now on
our ability to identify that there is a choice in such matters and, in so doing, to demystify and deconstruct
the rationalist premises upon which its public legitimation has been predicated . This, it would seem, is
a condition of the return of a more normative and engaging form of politics in which more is at
stake than the personnel to administer a largely agreed and ostensibly technical neoliberal
reform agenda . Second, the present custodians of neoliberalism are, in many cases, reluctant converts,
whose accommodation to neoliberalism is essentially borne of perceived pragmatism and necessity rather than
out of any deep normative commitment to the sanctity of the market . Thus, rather than defend
neoliberalism publicly and in its own terms, they have sought instead to appeal to the absence of a choice
which might be defended in such terms. Consequently, political discourse is technocratic rather than political.
Furthermore, as Peter Burnham has recently noted, neoliberalism is itself a deeply depoliticizing paradigm (2001), whose
effect is to subordinate social and political priorities, such as might arise from a more dialogic, responsive
and democratic politics, to perceived economic imperatives and to the ruthless efficiency of the market. As I
have sought to demonstrate, this antipathy to ‘politics’ is a direct correlate of public choice theory’s
projection of its most cherished assumption of instrumental rationality onto public officials.
This is an important point, for it suggests the crucial role played by stylized rationalist assumptions,
particularly (as in the overload thesis, public choice theory more generally and even the time-inconsistency thesis) those which relate
to the rational conduct of public officials , in contributing to the depoliticizing dynamics now reflected in political disaffection
and disengagement. As this perhaps serves to indicate, seemingly innocent assumptions may have alarmingly
cumulative consequences . Indeed, the internalization of a neoliberalism predicated on rationalist assumptions
may well serve to render the so-called ‘rational voter paradox’ something of a self-fulfilling prophecy.12 The
rational voter paradox / that in a democratic polity in which parties behave in a ‘rational’ manner it is irrational for citizens to vote (since the chances of
the vote they cast proving decisive are negligible) / has always been seen as the central weakness of rational choice theory as a set of analytical
techniques for exploring electoral competition. Yet, as the above analysis suggests, in a world constructed in the image of rationalist assumptions, it
may become depressingly accurate. Political
parties behaving in a narrowly ‘rational’ manner, assuming
others (electors and market participants) to behave in a similarly ‘rational’ fashion will contribute to a dynamic which sees real
electors (rational or otherwise) disengage in increasing numbers from the facade of electoral
competition. That this is so is only reinforced by a final factor. The institutionalization and normalization of
neoliberalism in many advanced liberal democracies in recent years have been defended in largely technical
and rationalist terms and in a manner almost entirely inaccessible to public
political scrutiny, contestation and debate . The electorate, in recent years, has not been invited to choose between
competing programmatic mandates to be delivered in office, but to pass a judgement on the credibility and competence of the respective candidates for
high office to behave in the appropriate (technical) manner in response to contingent external stimuli. Is it any wonder that they have chosen, in
increasing numbers, not to exercise any such judgement at all at the ballot box? As this final point suggests, the rejection
of the
neoliberal paradigm, the demystification of its presumed inevitability and the rejection
of the technical and rationalist terms in which that defence has been constructed
are intimately connected. They are, moreover, likely to be a condition not only of the return of
normative politics but also of the re-animation of a worryingly disaffected and disengaged
democratic culture.
Neolib degrades political engagement and locks in destructive rightwing populist politics---only the alt solves it
Solty 12, Politics Editor of Das Argument, and co-founder and Board member of the North-Atlantic Left Dialogue (NALD), an annual summit of
left intellectuals organized by the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation and funded by the German Foreign Office, 2012, “After neoliberalism: left versus right
projects of leadership in the global crisis,” in Global Crises and the Crisis of Global Leadership, ed. Gill, p. 205-208
The immediate empirical fallout of the neoliberalization of social democracy was quite obvious . The
consequences could be seen in the erosion of the middle classes, the shrinking of the public sector for skilled workers and the expansion of low-wage
sectors, especially in countries such as Germany, which, as a result of the lack of a national minimum wage, low strike levels and the dependence of the
average wage level on national bargaining coverage, as well as far-reaching employment security (Ku¨ndigungsschutz), were transformed into low-wage
economies in very short periods of time. This all found its empirical reflection in the many
studies that showed the growing social
inequality within the global North and the rapid return of poverty, especially among single mothers and their children. However,
these material developments were accompanied by the spread of a deep-seated sense of social
insecurity, often independent of actual income levels, that had to result in political change. Erosion of social democracy and conservatism and
growing right-wing populism Hegemonic theory is challenged by the fact that these social structural developments did not articulate themselves in an
identical fashion, either among individuals or groups, despite the fact that the experiences were the same across countries. Nonetheless, a
representation crisis was accelerated during the social democratic era of neoliberalism when it
became clear that social democratic parties and conservative/Christian democratic parties alike had little to offer to
the respective segments of the population that had been their traditional voters. This even included the
United States, in which the Democratic Party had never been a class party in the European sense but, rather, had assumed quasi-socialdemocratic
functions during the New Deal era while remaining to a large degree a classical liberal party. Thus, the
trend towards voter
abstention, or, to speak in terms of political sociology, the declining integrative potentials of political (cross-class) parties, was
characterized by a clear class nature and a growing disenfranchising of the working-class
segment of society, as well as of some parts of the eroding and less secure middle classes. This also meant that neoliberal attempts
to portray abstention as a reflection not of people’s dissatisfaction but, rather, of (passive) consent
were doomed to fail . However, this representation crisis was flanked by the rise of rightwing populism , both
in terms of right-wing parties attracting protest votes from the radicalized middle classes and some parts of the alienated working class and in
terms of deep-seated authoritarian reactions to the social restructuring under neoliberalism (Bischoff,
Do¨ rre and Gauthier 2004). Thus, not only did this right-wing populism form the backbone of any right-wing project, but it also
poisoned the political situation in so far as, where it emerged, it shifted the political climate markedly
to the right, and was partly responsible for new social democratic campaigns for workfare regimes and the increased flexibility of labour markets
throughout the global North. It is absolutely correct to define right-wing populism as a petty bourgeois or (private sector) middle-class movement. The
authoritarianism of the achiever ideology (Leistungsideologie) characteristic of right-wing populism (secular or religious) resonates among the
radicalized middle classes. The
middle classes experience capitalist competition in the most economically
individualized manner; they feel squeezed between, on the one hand, the bourgeoisie and big business and, on the other, the working class.
Many of them, such as members of the scientific and technical intelligentsia, as well as people in lower and middle management, are economically,
culturally and socially oriented towards and aspire to the top of society. Partly in response to their socialization and partly in response to the experience
of struggles connected to the need to succeed amid conditions of cut-throat competition, they tend to develop a habitus, in Pierre Bourdieu’s sense of
the term, that seeks to distinguish – or is supposed to distinguish – themselves from the working class ‘rabble’. Furthermore, often, and especially
during economic crises, they display the particular type of authoritarianism that the Frankfurt School analysed so well (recall the Studies in Prejudice
and Theodor Adorno’s description of the dialectic of authoritarian submission, to the ‘market’ status quo, and authoritarian aggression, against those
who cannot or do not want to keep pace in the market and are denounced as ‘unproductive’). Although this lack of solidarity can also be focused
towards ‘parasitic’ e´lites (financial speculators or politicians who support them), their
anger is often – indeed, mostly – directed
against groups at the social bottom. The form that this takes varies, but it is typically reflected in ‘tax revolts’. Although the
underlying sentiment is that those who are not as ‘honest’ and ‘hard-working’ should take the brunt of paying for the crisis (through higher taxation or
lower social benefits or a combination of both), the targeting normally involves some form of ideological disenfranchisement. The unemployed working
classes are targeted as ‘lazy bums’. Also common are forms of racism, targeting minorities, asylum seekers, etc. As Chip Berlet and Matthew Lyons
(2000) have argued in their classic text on US right-wing populism, such
populism uses the ‘ideology of the producer’,
which juxtaposes the ‘hard-working’, middle (or ‘real’) America and the objects of authoritarian
aggression , whatever they may be. In short, if right wing populism can be defined as the radicalization of economic liberalism propelled by
(middle-class) authoritarianism mobilized during times of crisis, with its corresponding distributional struggles, the radicalized middle classes, in their
fear of social decline, will turn the ideology of the producer against those groups that, according to them, should bear the costs of crisis, particularly
those who have gained some social and economic protection from the state. Therefore, the aggression of the middle classes’ core, such as the smallscale
entrepreneurs, is usually directed against the bottom third or half of society, which is portrayed as ‘parasitic’ and used as a scapegoat. Moreover, it
would be wrong to assume that the right-wing populist ideology could not become generalized
across many other social strata, including the (unorganized) working class as well: economic position and (objective) class interest are
important, but not determining, factors of political behaviour. Therefore, right-wing populism could hold hegemonic sway
across some elements of the working class, especially in situations in which no alternative left forces exist or
emerge , as a result of the shift towards neoliberalism on the part of traditional social democratic parties and the more or
less thorough demise of communist parties throughout Europe since the late 1980s. It should be noted, therefore, that the struggles
to decide
post-neoliberal pathways will be characterized by the struggle between two principles: the right-wing
populist achiever ideology, with its middle-class social base, versus the (mostly working-class and public-sector-based) social
democratic/socialist ideology, focused on the solidarity principle. The openness of the historic process is underlined by
the fact that multiple constellations and social coalitions become thinkable – given that the divide between authoritarianism and cultural libertarianism
runs vertical to the divide between horizontal collectivism and individualism, which is characteristic of the relationship of social forces vis-a`-vis the
economic sphere. Put another way, although the dominance of issues capable of mobilizing authoritarian sentiments among the precarious middle class
and the class-unconscious working class – such as foreign threats, high crime rates or racial targets – can lead to the ascent of political right turns and
more or less top–middle coalitions, the opposite is also possible if coalitions can be built between the culturally more left-/libertarian-minded middle
classes and the collective-solidarityoriented, but also more authoritarian, lower classes. This is particularly the case if the blocked wage-dependent
middle classes, instead of turning against the bottom, form ‘counter-e´lites’ (Walter 2006) within ‘middle–bottom coalitions’ (Brie, Hildebrandt and
Meuche-Ma¨ker 2008) as a result of successful left hegemonic politics.
A2 State K2 Solve
Political resistance to surveillance fails- Surveillance is ingrained
within capitalist culture
Price PhD 14
(David H., “The New Surveillance Normal: NSA and Corporate Surveillance in the Age of Global Capitalism”, David H. Price has a
PhD from the University of Florida in anthropology and has been documenting CIA and intelligence in the age of technology.
Monthly Review 66:3 Acc. 6/23/15 // yZ)
Notions of privacy and surveillance are always culturally constructed and are embedded within
economic and social formations of the larger society. Some centralized state-socialist systems, such as the USSR
or East Germany, developed intrusive surveillance systems, an incessant and effective theme of anti-Soviet propaganda. The
democratic-socialist formations, such as those of contemporary northern Europe, have laws that significantly limit the forms of
electronic surveillance and the collection of metadata, compared to Anglo-U.S. practice. Despite the significant limitations hindering
analysis of the intentionally secret activities of intelligence agencies operating outside of public accountability and systems of legal
accountability, the documents made available by whistleblowers like Snowden and WikiLeaks, and knowledge
of past intelligence agencies' activities, provide information that can help us develop a useful
framework for considering the uses to which these new invasive electronic surveillance
technologies can be put. We need a theory of surveillance that incorporates the political
economy of the U.S. national security state and the corporate interests which it serves and
protects. Such analysis needs an economic foundation and a view that looks beyond cultural
categories separating commerce and state security systems designed to protect capital. The
metadata, valuable private corporate data, and fruits of industrial espionage gathered under PRISM and other NSA programs all
produce information of such a high value that it seems likely some of it will be used in a context of global capital. It matters little
what legal restrictions are in place; in a global, high-tech, capitalist economy such information is invariably commodified. It is likely
to be used to: facilitate industrial or corporate sabotage operations of the sort inflicted by the Stuxnet worm; steal either corporate
secrets for NSA use, or foreign corporate secrets for U.S. corporate use; make investments by intelligence agencies financing their
own operations; or secure personal financial gain by individuals working in the intelligence sector. Their own operations; or secure
personal financial gain by individuals working in the intelligence sector. The rise of new invasive technologies
coincides with the decline of ideological resistance to surveillance and the compilation of
metadata. The speed of Americans' adoption of ideologies embracing previously unthinkable
levels of corporate and state surveillance suggests a continued public acceptance of a new
surveillance normal will continue to develop with little resistance. In a world where the CIA can hack the
computers of Senator Feinstein-a leader of the one of the three branches of government-with impunity or lack of public outcry, it is
difficult to anticipate a deceleration in the pace at which NSA and CIA expand their surveillance reach. To live a well-
adjusted life in contemporary U.S. society requires the development of rapid memory
adjustments and shifting acceptance of corporate and state intrusions into what were once
protective spheres of private life. Like all things in our society, we can expect these intrusions
will themselves be increasingly stratified, as electronic privacy, or illegibility, will increasingly become a commodity
available only to elites. Today, expensive technologies like GeeksPhone's Blackphone with enhanced PGP encryption, or Boeing's
self-destructing Black Phone, afford special levels of privacy for those who can pay.
Action separate from the state is crucial – try or die for the alt
Makwana ‘6
(Rajesh, 11/23/06, http://www.stwr.org/globalization/neoliberalism-and-economic-globalization.html) //RGDM
Neoliberal ideology embodies an outdated, selfish model of economy. It has been formulated by
the old imperial powers and adopted by economically dominant nations.
many commentators have
described this process as economic colonialism. The ultimate goal of neoliberal economic globalization is the removal of all barriers to
Given the state of the global trade and finance structures, wealthy
countries can maintain their economic advantage by pressurizing developing countries to adopt neo-liberal policies – even though they themselves do not. Understandably,
commerce, and the privatization of all available resources and services. In this scenario, public life will be at the mercy of volatile market forces, and the extracted profits will
The major failures of these policies are now common knowledge. Many countries,
particularly in Latin America, are now openly defying the foreign corporate rule that was forced
upon them by the international financial institutions. In these countries, economic ideologies based on competition and self interest are gradually being replaced by
policies based on cooperation and the sharing of resources. Changing well-established political and economic structures is a
difficult challenge, but pressure for justice is bubbling upward from the public. Change is crucial
benefit the few.
if the global public is to manage the essentials for life and ensure that all people have access to
them as their human right.
Surveillance is permanent within neoliberalism- direct action upon
surveillance is ineffective without shifts in economic formations
Price PhD 14
(David H., “The New Surveillance Normal: NSA and Corporate Surveillance in the Age of Global Capitalism”, David H. Price has a
PhD from the University of Florida in anthropology and has been documenting CIA and intelligence in the age of technology.
Monthly Review 66:3 Acc. 6/23/15 // yZ)
While the United States' current state of surveillance acceptance offers little immediate hope of a social movement limiting corporate
or government spying, there are enough historical instances of post-crises limits being imposed on government surveillance to offer
some hope. Following the Second World War, many European nations reconfigured long-distance billing systems to not record
specific numbers called, instead only recording billing zones-because the Nazis used phone billing records as metadata useful for
identifying members of resistance movements. Following the Arab Spring, Tunisia now reconfigures its Internet with a new infopacket system known as mesh networks that hinder governmental monitoring-though USAID support for this project naturally
undermines trust in this system.27 Following the Church and Pike committees' congressional investigations of CIA and FBI
wrongdoing in the 1970s, the Hughes-Ryan Act brought significant oversight and limits on these groups, limits which decayed over
time and whose remaining restraints were undone with the USA PATRIOT Act. Some future crisis may well provide
similar opportunities to regain now lost contours of privacies. Yet hope for immediate change
remains limited. It will be difficult for social reform movements striving to protect individual
privacy to limit state and corporate surveillance. Today's surveillance complex aligned with an
economic base enthralled with the prospects of metadata appears too strong for meaningful
reforms without significant shifts in larger economic formations. Whatever inherent contradictions exist
within the present surveillance system, and regardless of the objections of privacy advocates of the liberal left and libertarian right,
meaningful restrictions appear presently unlikely with surveillance formations so closely tied to
the current iteration
Neoliberalism coopts and appropriates resistance movements—
coexistence is impossible
Clarke, Professor of Social Policy at the Open University 08 (John, “Living with/in and without neo-liberalism”, Focaal 51, 2008,
http://oro.open.ac.uk/18127/1/10_Clarke.pdf)//AS
By cohabitation I mean
to identify the problem of how neo-liberalism lives with “others” in the world. As a
must find ways of engaging with other projects, seeking to displace,
subordinate, or appropriate them. Most attention has been focused on the work of displacement—the exclusion, marginalization, or
political–cultural project it
residualization of other projects, discourses, and ways of imagining the world and life within it. There are also the processes of subordination and
appropriation. Each of these terms accounts for the continued place of alternative political– cultural projects in a neo-liberal dominated or directed
assemblage. Subordination
points to the allocation of secondary or subsidiary roles for other
institutions, practices, and discourses: allowed to function but in more confined spaces, with narrowed scope (residual versions of
the “social” or “welfarism,” perhaps; Clarke, 2007). Appropriation points to a more active process that some have
described as cooption or incorporation. For example, Kothari (2005), writing about the politics of development, argues that the neoliberal agenda “co-opted the ‘alternative’ critical discourses” of development. As a consequence: Forms of
alternative development become institutionalized and less distinct from conventional, mainstream development discourse and practice. … This
strategy of appropriation reduced spaces of critique and dissent, since the inclusion and appropriation of ostensibly
radical discourses limited the potential for challenge from outside the mainstream to orthodox development planning and practice… .As these
approaches were adopted they were embedded within a neoliberal discourse … and became increasingly
technicalised, subject to regimes of professionalisation which institutionalized forms of knowledge,
analytical skills, tools, techniques and frameworks. (Kothari 2005: 438–9) This view of co-optation hints at the discursive
and political work of articulation—taking existing discourses, projects, practices, and
imaginaries and reworking them within a framing neoliberal conception of development and its place in the
world. Just as Kothari points to the incorporation of alternative/critical approaches to development, and work on “difference” points to the reworking
of radical politics of difference into a normalized model of the individual consumer citizen (Richardson 2005), so other
wouldbe
transformative political projects have been appropriated and reworked through a neo-liberal
frame. Dagnino (2006), writing about struggles over citizenship in Brazil, points to the “perverse confluence” between key organizing ideas and
principles of social movements and neoliberal politics, especially those of “participation” and citizenship, which were centrally articulated by radical
movements: Living with/in and without neo-liberalism | 139 s10_fcl510110 4/9/08 9:27 PM Page 139There is thus a perverse confluence between, on
the one hand, participation as part of a project constructed around the extension of citizenship and the deepening of democracy, and on the other hand,
participation associated with the project of a minimal state that requires the shrinking of its social responsibilities and its progressive exemption from
the role of guarantor of rights. The perversity of this confluence reflects the fact that, although pointing to opposite and even antagonistic directions,
both projects require an active, proactive civil society…
A particularly important aspect of the perverse confluence is
Perm Defense
precisely the notion of citizenship, which is now being redefined through a series of discursive
shifts to make it suitable for use by neo-liberal forces. This new redefinition, part of the struggle between
different political projects, attests to the symbolic power of citizenship and the mobilizing capacity it has
demonstrated in organizing subaltern sectors around democratizing projects. The need to neutralize these
features of citizenship, while trying to retain its symbolical power, has made its appropriation by neo-liberal
forces necessary (Dagnino 2006: 158f.; emphasis in original). Dagnino talks about the political frustration and confusion resulting from the
“apparently shared discourse” (2006: 162) in ways that are echoed by Bondi and Laurie’s observations about the “sense of uncertainty, ambivalence and
perplexity about the politics of the processes we were observing and analyzing” (2005: 394). This “confusion” emerges precisely at the point of
appropriation, articulation, and transformation exercised by the neo-liberal re-framing of existing radical and alternative discourses. Neo-
liberalism is marked by a capacity to bend these words (and the political and cultural
imaginaries they carry) to new purposes.
Negotiation DA – neoliberalism splinters alter-political resistance by
accepting small demands while leaving the structure of the economy
itself unquestioned causing extinction via multiple scenarios
Parr ’13 (Adrian, Assoc. Prof. of Philosophy and Environmental Studies @ U. of Cincinnati, THE WRATH OF CAPITAL:
Neoliberalism and Climate Change Politics, pp. 5-6)
The contradiction of capitalism is that it is an uncompromising structure of negotiation. It
ruthlessly absorbs sociohistorical limits and the challenges these limits pose to capital, placing
them in the service of further capital accumulation. Neoliberalism is an exclusive system
premised upon the logic of property rights and the expansion of these rights, all the while
maintaining that the free market is self-regulating, sufficiently and efficiently working to
establish individual and collective well-being. In reality, however, socioeconomic disparities have
become more acute the world over, and the world's "common wealth,” as David Bollier and later Michael
Hardt and Antonio Negri note, has been increasingly privatized.12 In 2010, the financial wealth of the world's high-net-
worth individuals (with investable assets of $1 to $50 million or more [all money amounts are in U.S. dollars] ) surpassed the 2007
pre-financial crisis peak, growing 9.7 percent and reaching $42.7 trillion. Also in 2010 the global population of high-net- worth
individuals grew 8.3 percent to 10.9 million.13 In 2010, the global population was 6.9 billion, of whom there were 1,000 billionaires;
80,000 ultra-high-net-worth individuals with average wealth exceeding $50 mil- lion; 3 billion with an average wealth of $10,000,
of which 1.1 billion owned less than $1,000; and 2.5 billion who were reportedly "unbanked'' (without a bank account and thus living
on the margins of the formal financial system) .14 In a world where financial advantage brings with it political
benefits, these figures attest to the weak position the majority of the world occupies in the arena
of environmental and climate change politics. Neoliberal capitalism ameliorates the threat posed
by environmental change by taking control of the collective call it issues forth, splintering the
collective into a disparate and confusing array of individual choices competing with one another over how
best to solve the crisis. Through this process of competition, the collective nature of the crisis is restructured and
privatized, then put to work for the production and circulation of capital as the average wealth of
the world's high-net-worth individuals grows at the expense of the majority of the world living in
abject poverty. Advocating that the free market can solve debilitating environmental changes
and the climate crisis is not a political response to these problems; it is merely a political ghost
emptied of its collective aspirations.
Alts Can’t Use the State
The permutation is a way to coopt movements that could actually
solve ecological degradation- radical criticism is necessary
Carroll, Professor of Sociology, 2014 (William K, “Chapter 9 - Neoliberal Hegemony and the Organization of Consent”,
Corporate Watch, Aug 9, 2014, http://www.corporatewatch.org.uk/resources/2014/chapter-9-neoliberal-hegemony-and-organization-consent)
Environmentalism has been co-opted; indeed, mainstream corporate environmentalism helps
disable more radical ideas. But it is by no means the only movement that has suffered this fate; another is
the labour movement. A major force for social transformation in the 19th and early 20th
centuries, labour (specifically in the global North) traded its radicalism for membership in the consumer-capitalist
‘affluent society’ of the second half of the 20th century, and has been hobbled in recent decades by the internationalization of labour markets, among other factors. Each of these
movements have largely accepted capitalist growth as an imperative and presumed that
progressive politics could be added ‘on top’ of the basic structure. These movements underestimated, or have been relatively powerless to oppose, the totalizing
dynamic of capitalism: its capacity to mute dissent by incorporating into its circuitry the immediate concerns of oppositional movements - as in the ‘green economy’ or, earlier, high-wage Fordism. Today
the ongoing global economic crisis, coupled with deteriorating ecological conditions
across the globe, demands a coherent and organized radical alternative. Yet despite signs of impending
ecological catastrophe and the deepening inequalities that consign billions to lives of permanent privation, the solution offered from on high is fiscal
austerity, more free trade and an increase in economic globalization while environmental
protections are scaled back. Governments and corporations increasingly act to create
short-term economic growth, to the benefit of a tiny minority - the investors and executives who comprise the ruling class. To struggle effectively for a better world, we
need to seek to understand how co-optation occurs, and how consent is managed. This article offers an analysis of how, despite its deepening
crisis, contemporary capitalism co-opts its potential opposition and organizes consent to an
unjust, unsustainable way of life. We will use the concept of hegemony, which Antonio Gramsci described as a state in which “spontaneous consent [is] given by
[civil society]… to the general direction imposed on social life,”i as a method to understand co-optation. Consent is established historically through the continued prestige of intellectual concepts, the free market
being the case in point. It is actively reinforced through institutions that support and expand these concepts as the ‘common sense’ of an era. But hegemony is more than ideology; it is also closely linked to capital
Capital accumulation is commonly called ‘economic
growth’ but regardless of the terminology, it is capitalism’s driving force. Without growth, capitalism spirals downward, in crisis.
Companies reduce their workforces, and this in turn shrinks the overall demand for goods and services
and the tax revenues that governments collect. If prospects for growth flag, capitalists hold back from investment, further amplifying the crisis. In 2008, it was this meltdown
scenario of under-investment/under-consumption that led many of the world’s governments to
provide banks and corporations with billions in public money to erase bad debt and encourage further investment.
accumulation, the profit-seeking process at the heart of the world economy.
Having bailed out corporate capital in its moment of global crisis, the same governments now insist on austerity for the masses as a means of paying the bail-out bill. The various programs that institutions create
to support the continued capital accumulation embody neoliberal capitalist hegemony, which is based around the norm of an unfettered free market. In this deeper, structural sense, hegemony has to do with “the
cohesion of the social system. It secures the reproduction of the mode of production and other basic structural processes.”ii In short, capitalist hegemony creates a material basis for its own reproduction while
Amid an ongoing global economic and ecological crisis, the
question of hegemony looms larger than perhaps at any time since the Great Depression of the 1930s, yet the challenges of constructing a political alternative to the rule of
capital seem more daunting than ever. We will focus on the three ‘mechanisms’ that underlie neoliberal hegemony:
cultural fragmentation; market insulation and dispossession; and globalization
from above. In combination, these mechanisms disorganize, disable and defang movements. However, if we are to move beyond our deeply
flawed contemporary world order we must build stronger forms of organisation that can repel
co-optation. (See also, The Free Association, Chapter 13.) To do this we must examine the processes of cooptation. Cultural Fragmentation: Hegemony is often conceptualized as a condition of cultural and political consensus, yet today one of its most important bases is the cultural fragmentation that
securing a manner of cohesion around the market. (See also Whyte, Chapter 3.)
issues from advanced consumer capitalism as a way of life, particularly in the global North. The full flowering of consumer capitalism has brought the commodification of everyday life, including culture. Beginning
in the 1970s, aided by information technologies, corporations in the global North began to produce not only for mass consumer markets but for niche markets. This meant more than a shift in business strategy.
Over time, it fragmented culture into many pieces, each of which can be cultivated and exploited for its commercial value. Each subculture and identity group offers a niche market to corporate capital. As market
principles invade culture they absorb and commodify the voices of subjugated groups within the chain of production and consumption. As David Teztlaff explains, “The genius of capitalism is its simplicity of
motive. As long as profit can be accumulated and maximized, other considerations are secondary. This gives capital great flexibility, allowing it to form alliances of convenience with other centers of power.”iiiTo
manage consent, any combination of ideologies that instills compliance in the workforce while discouraging challenges to the system is acceptable. Forces of capitalism organize society explicitly with that motive,
in a governance strategy of “divide and conquer.”iv Take for example the actions of Dove Cosmetics starting in 2004 when it established its “Self-esteem Fund” and its “Campaign for Real Beauty.”v Dove’s
campaign claimed to work towards a diversification of beauty and spawned commercials with the slogan “let’s make peace with beauty.” Dove reported constructing this campaign because a study they
commissioned showed that the vast majority of women were feeling alienated by the media and its idealization of women’s bodies. Their rationale suggests that this campaign was about a company’s growing
awareness of a social problem. However, grassroots activists and academics have been analyzing the negative social effects of the media’s idealization of women’s bodies at least since the early 1990s. Dove picked
up on this social movement and saw an opportunity to capitalize; Dove was attempting, through this marketing campaign, to sell a version of women’s diversity and then fuse the Dove brand to the idea. The
intended effect was for Dove to appear socially responsible, but the end goal was always capital accumulation. To that end, the marketing campaign succeeded: according to one account, “the campaign returned $3
The result of corporations seeking to appear socially responsible and agreeable to the
progressive goals of various social movements is the commodification of those movements and division within these
movements. In the example above, Dove commodified the alienation of women by the media and made the purchase of their products seem politically motivated. This organizes people
around a product as opposed to a collectively transformative project. Dove’s campaign is sharply contrasted by groups like Pretty,
for every $1 spent.”vi
Porky, and Pissed Off from Toronto, who are critical of consumer culture and involved in grassroots activism about women’s body image.vii The radical viewpoints of such a group, which are less compliant with
the chain of production and consumption, are alienated from mainstream culture. The Dove example serves to show how marketing creates culture, but a divided culture. Dove made great efforts to differentiate
itself within a broad category of beauty products by marketing a social mission. This marketing effort blurred the line between the actual products Dove sells and consumers’ sense of identity. This is generally true
about marketing. Marketing attempts to define experience by associating a brand with symbols that people recognize about that experience, but through this process,as corporations continue to jostle for
competitive position, marketing helps produce a culture that is fragmented. Products are created for increasingly esoteric markets and take increasingly divergent forms. Today our culture produces markets for
cable channels designed for classic movie fans, smart phones designed for being dropped in the mud, and board games designed for miniature train collectors. Niche markets are created first by marketers as they
try to differentiate their product and then are adopted by the masses. As Apple Computer former CEO, Steve Jobs, advocated, “people don’t know what they want until you show it to them.”viii From this
perspective, the hegemonic significance of cultural fragmentation lies in a consent without consensus that is sustained by two mechanisms: ideological diversification: the proliferation of many distinct style
cultures and subcultures - divided by age, gender, ethnic and other differences - that prevent subjugated groups from understanding one another and undertaking the difficult work of constructing solidarities; for
example, there is a conflict between younger generations, who blame baby-boomers for economic and environmental woes, and the baby-boomers who perceive youth as entitled and lazy. implosion of meaning:
the cultural fixation on superficial symbols and televisual spectacle - the Olympics, endlessly replayed footage of the latest militarized conflict or natural disaster, etc. - all of which distracts people from imagining a
Within “the cultural logic of late capitalism,”x consent is organized around the
market and fostered by the lack of other forms of social cohesion. The divisions between social
groups pose a challenge to oppositional movements intent on moving beyond the fragments
of single-issue politics and liberal multiculturalism that reinforce the pattern of
ideological diversification. Insulation and Dispossession: In the 1970s and 1980s, neoliberal politics, best exemplified by Thatcherism and Reaganomics, reorganized
collectively transformative project.ix
hegemony, and government efforts enabling this project were explicit. The main tenets of neoliberalism are the priority of ‘sound money’ and low inflation, attacks on unions, flexible labour markets, policies of
fiscal retrenchment, deregulation, and free trade - all of which are meant to strengthen the role of markets in human affairs. These policies have indeed amplified the impact of global market forces on working
people and communities, thereby shifting the balance of class power toward those who command capital.xi Neoliberalism strives to restore the optimal conditions for capital accumulation at the expense of social
At the heart of neoliberal economic policies is the
insulation of both capital and the state from democratic control. A key hegemonic claim is that
the market provides a natural mechanism for rational economic allocation. Thus, attempts to
regulate capital via political decisions produce suboptimal outcomes. This hegemonic claim is based on the fiction of a free
market comprised of many small firms. In fact, giant corporations and financial institutions,
commanded by members of a transnational capitalist class, dominate contemporary capitalism.xii
Deregulating these centres of class power insulates them from democratic control. The promise of increased freedom is belied by the reality
of ever-more concentrated economic power. By the same token, neoliberalism insists that key state agencies be insulated from popular will. Central banks and
protections inscribed within welfare state institutions: social housing provisions, public pensions etc.
institutions like the International Monetary Fund must be insulated from “myopic” elected governments, so that they can foster “sustainable real economic growth.”xiii Allowing politics to influence monetary
policy would result in unstable financial markets, reduced growth, or a recession. This perspective assumes that managing the economy independently from politics results in increases in private investment.
However, the opposite has been shown. Since the 1970s, investment has decreased in relation to GDP.xiv Profits for many businesses have increased as a result of market liberalization, but that capital is
accumulating as private wealth. This is referred to as the phenomenon of over-accumulation. As Jim Stanford observed, “while neoliberalism has been successful in restoring business profitability and, more
generally, business power, it has not lead to stronger world growth.”xv We can see neoliberal insulation at work in the paradigm shift from the welfare state to the “competition state.”xvi In a competition state, the
state’s role is to promote its territory as a site for investment. To accomplish this, the state must be insulated from popular will, and free to enact business-friendly policies. Promoting individual economic freedom
as the highest virtue is at the core of this aspect of hegemony. Citizens are asked to trade away any modicum of democratic control over economic decisions for the promise of enhanced personal opportunities in
markets buoyed by pro-business policies. Alongside what we have called insulation, a second hegemonic element in neoliberal economic policies arises from what David Harvey calls accumulation by
dispossession.xvii The insulation of capital and the state from democratic constraint is directed at promoting depoliticized economic activity within liberalized markets. In contrast, accumulation by dispossession
refers to the process of privatizing commonly-held assets (or rights to assets). These include public utilities, educational institutions, and transportation networks among others. By selling these assets,
governments free up new venues into which over-accumulated capital can flow. Harvey has connected the dots between a wide range of examples - biopiracy and the wholesale commodification of nature,
commercialization of culture and intellectual creativity, corporatization and privatization of public institutions and utilities - in short, the enclosure of the commons. What gives these initiatives persuasive power
in managing dissent is the disempowering implications of successful enclosure. As the elements of life are privatized, people lose collective capacity to resist. They become increasingly ‘free agents’ acting
as a stable material basis for social
cohesion, neoliberal capitalism remains problematic. Both aspects of neoliberal hegemony insulation and dispossession - create unstable material conditions. Corporate profits have
increased since the economic crises of the 1970s and early 1980s, but so have the economic shocks that accompany accumulation by
individually in various markets, rather than members of communities knit together through social stewardship. However,
dispossession. Such shocks can be observed as a result of the cumulative privatization campaigns in Argentina and elsewhere, which initially brought massive inflows of over-accumulated capital and a boom in
market liberalization may boost
profitability in the short term, but it “will not produce a harmonious state in which everyone is
better off.”xix Market liberalization and the global integration of deregulated national
economies resulted in the most recent, and ongoing, global financial crisis. As of early 2012,
asset values, followed by collapse into general impoverishment and social chaos as capital fled the scene.xviii Similarly,
large multinational corporations were sitting on trillions of dollars, and even the USxx and UKxxi governments, which have been the sites of much deregulation, struggle to get those companies to spend the capital
on hiring or investment. Moreover, the result of insulation through market liberalization nationally and internationally has been economic polarization - the growing gap between the 99% and the 1% - even during
boom times. Neoliberalism’s brutalizing ramifications render claims to hegemony tenuous. (See also Fisher, Chapter 2 and Whyte, Chapter 3.)
The alternative must use the people as it’s starting point, not the
government
von Werlhof, 8 Claudia von-Werlhof is prominent writer and academic, Professor of Women’s Studies and Political
Science at the University of Innsbruck, Austria, Global Research, February 01, 2008, (Claudia, “The Consequences of Globalization
and Neoliberal Policies. What are the Alternatives” http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-consequences-of-globalization-andneoliberal-policies-what-are-the-alternatives/7973)
No alternatives have ever come from “the top”. Alternatives arise where people,
alone or in groups, decide to take initiative in order to control their destiny (Korten
1996). From the bottom of society (Mies 2001), a new feeling of life, a new energy and a new solidarity spread and
strengthen each and every one involved. As a result, people are able to free themselves from a notion of
“individuality” that reduces them to “sentient commodities” or, even worse, “functioning
machines”. The mentioned examples of resistance and alternatives do truly undermine
neoliberalism and its globalization. People who are engaged in them reach a completely different way of
thinking. They have lost faith in “development” and have seen through the game. To them, “development” has become an affront or
an object of ridicule. Politicians are expected to “get lost”, as we have recently seen in Argentina: “Que se vayan todos!” It has
become clear that no one wants to have anything to do with conventional politics and politicians
anymore. People have realized that politics as a “system” never serves but betrays and divides
them. Some people have developed almost allergic reactions to conventional politics. They have experienced long enough that
domination inevitably negates life. Of course there are alternatives to plundering the earth, to making war and to destroying the
planet. Once we realize this, something different already begins to take shape. It is mandatory to let it emerge before the hubris’
boomerang finds us all.
Action separate from the state is crucial – try or die for the alt
Makwana Economic campaigning leader 6
(Rajesh, Director of Share the World’s Resources, a London based organization campaigning to strengthen the economy in all its
forms. 11/23/06, http://www.stwr.org/globalization/neoliberalism-and-economic-globalization.html) //RGDM
Neoliberal ideology embodies an outdated, selfish model of economy. It has been formulated by
the old imperial powers and adopted by economically dominant nations.
many commentators have
described this process as economic colonialism. The ultimate goal of neoliberal economic globalization is the removal of all barriers to
Given the state of the global trade and finance structures, wealthy
countries can maintain their economic advantage by pressurizing developing countries to adopt neo-liberal policies – even though they themselves do not. Understandably,
commerce, and the privatization of all available resources and services. In this scenario, public life will be at the mercy of volatile market forces, and the extracted profits will
The major failures of these policies are now common knowledge. Many countries,
particularly in Latin America, are now openly defying the foreign corporate rule that was forced
upon them by the international financial institutions. In these countries, economic ideologies based on competition and self interest are gradually being replaced by
policies based on cooperation and the sharing of resources. Changing well-established political and economic structures is a
difficult challenge, but pressure for justice is bubbling upward from the public. Change is crucial
if the global public is to manage the essentials for life and ensure that all people have access to
them as their human right.
benefit the few.
***Links***
Anti-Imperialism
Anti-imperialism is a guise for US intervention to “free” the markets of
imperialism
James Petras, Bartle Professor of Sociology at Binghamton University, 2012, “The Empire’s
Ideology: Imperialism and “Anti-Imperialism of the Fools”, http://www.globalresearch.ca/theempire-s-ideology-imperialism-and-anti-imperialism-of-the-fools/28456
The imperialist use of “anti-imperialist” moral rhetoric was designed to weaken rivals and was
directed to several audiences. In fact, at no point did the anti-imperialist rhetoric serve to “liberate” any of
the colonized people. In almost all cases the victorious imperial power only substituted one form
colonial or neo-colonial rule for another. The “anti-imperialism” of the imperialists is directed at
the nationalist movements of the colonized countries and at their domestic public. British
imperialists fomented uprisings among the agro-mining elites in Latin America promising “free
trade” against Spanish mercantilist rule; they backed the “self-determination” of the
slaveholding cotton plantation owners in the US South against the Union; they supported the
territorial claims of the Iroquois tribal leaders against the US anti-colonial revolutionaries …
exploiting legitimate grievances for imperial ends. During World War II, the Japanese imperialists
supported a sector of the nationalist anti-colonial movement in India against the British Empire . The US condemned Spanish
colonial rule in Cuba and the Philippines and went to war to “liberate” the oppressed peoples from tyranny….and remained to
impose a reign of terror, exploitation and colonial rule… The imperial powers sought to divide the anti-colonial movements and
create future “client rulers” when and if they succeeded. The use of anti-imperialist rhetoric was designed to attract two sets of
groups. A conservative group with common political and economic interests with the imperial power, which shared their hostility to
revolutionary nationalists and which sought to accrue greater advantage by tying their fortunes to a rising imperial power. A radical
sector of the movement tactically allied itself with the rising imperial power, with the idea of using the imperial power to secure
resources (arms, propaganda, vehicles and financial aid) and, once securing power, to discard them. More often than not, in this
game of mutual manipulation between empire and nationalists, the former won out … as is the case then and now. The
imperialist “anti-imperialist” rhetoric was equally directed at the domestic public, especially in
countries like the US which prized its 18th anti-colonial heritage. The purpose was to broaden
the base of empire building beyond the hard line empire loyalists, militarists and corporate
beneficiaries. Their appeal sought to include liberals, humanitarians, progressive intellectuals, religious and secular moralists
and other “opinion-makers” who had a certain cachet with the larger public, the ones who would have to pay with their lives and tax
money for the inter-imperial and colonial wars. The official spokespeople of empire publicize real and fabricated atrocities of their
imperial rivals, and highlight the plight of the colonized victims. The corporate elite and the hardline militarists demand military
action to protect property, or to seize strategic resources; the humanitarians and progressives denounce the “crimes against
humanity” and echo the calls “to do something concrete” to save the victims from genocide. Sectors of the Left join the chorus and,
finding a sector of victims who fit in with their abstract ideology, plead for the imperial powers to “arm the people to liberate
themselves” (sic). By lending moral support and a veneer of respectability to the imperial war, by
swallowing the propaganda of “war to save victims” the progressives become the prototype of
the “anti-imperialism of the fools”. Having secured broad public support on the bases of “antiimperialism”, the imperialist powers feel free to sacrifice citizens’ lives and the public treasury,
to pursue war, fueled by the moral fervor of a righteous cause. As the butchery drags on and the casualties
mount, and the public wearies of war and its cost, progressive and leftist enthusiasm turns to silence or worse, moral hypocrisy with
claims that “the nature of the war changed” or “that this isn’t the kind of war that we had in mind …”. As if the war makers
ever intended to consult the progressives and left on how and why they should engage in
imperial wars! In the contemporary period the imperial “anti-imperialist wars” and aggression have been greatly aided and
abetted by well-funded “grass roots” so-called “non-governmental organizations” which act to mobilize popular movements which
can “invite” imperial aggression. Over the past four decades US imperialism has fomented at least two dozen
“grass roots” movements which have destroyed democratic governments, or decimated
collectivist welfare states or provoked major damage to the economy of targeted countries. In Chile
throughout 1972-73 under the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende, the CIA financed and provided
major support – via the AFL-CIO–to private truck owners to paralyze the flow of goods and services .
Curtailment
To make up for complete market freedom, the neoliberal state strictly controls the
social and cultural climate. Government action is an exhibition of power
(you could apply this logic to the government on government regulation, not just the
government on the lower classes)
Wacquant, Prof. Sociology@UC Berkely, 09 Wacquant, Loïc J. D. Punishing the Poor: The Neoliberal Government of Social
Insecurity. Durham: Duke UP, 2009. 307. Print.
A central ideological tenet of neoliberalism is that it entails the coming of ‘small
government': the shrinking of the allegedly flaccid and overgrown Keynesian
welfare state and its makeover into a lean and nimble workfare state, which
‘invests’ in human capital and ‘activates’ communal springs and individual
appetites for work and civic participation through ‘partnerships’ stressing selfreliance, commitment to paid work, managerialism. The present book demonstrates that the
neoliberal state turns out to be quite different inactuality: while it embraces laissez-faire at the top,
releasing restraints on capital and expanding the life chances of the holders of
economic, and cultural capital, it is anything but laissez-faire at the bottom.
Indeed, when it comes to handling the social turbulence generated by deregulation
and to impressing the discipline of precarious labor, the new Leviathan reveals
itself to be fiercely interventionist, bossy and pricey. The soft touch of libertarian
proclivities favoring the upper class gives way to the hard edge of authoritarian
oversight, as it endeavors to direct, nay dictate, the behavior of the lower class.
‘Small government’ in the economic register thus begets ‘big government’ on the
twofold frontage of workfare and criminal justice. The results of Americas grand experiment in
creating the first society of advanced insecurity in history are in: the invasive, expansive, and expensive penal state is not a deviation
from neoliberalism but one of its constituents ingredients.” (307-8)
Corporations
Corporation will always have neoliberal ties
Price, PHD, 14
David, The New Surveillance Normal: NSA and Corporate Surveillance in the Age of Global Capitalism, Monthly review press,
volume 66, issue 3, p. 43-53
Snowden's revelations reveal a world where the NSA
is dependent on private corporate services for
the outsourced collection of data, and where the NSA is increasingly reliant on
corporate owned data farms where the storage and analysis of the data occurs. In
the neoliberal United States, Amazon and other private firms lease massive cloud
server space to the CIA, under an arrangement where it becomes a share
cropper on these scattered data farms. Thesearrangements present nebulous security
relationships raising questions of role confusion in shifting patron-client
relationships; and whatever resistance corporations like Amazon might have had to assisting NSA, CIA, or intelligence
agencies is further compromised by relations of commerce. This creates relationships of culpability, as
Norman Solomon suggests, with Amazon's $600 million CIA data farm contract: "if Obama
orders the CIA to kill a U.S. Citizen, Amazon will be a partner in assassination."10
Such arrangements diffuse complicity in ways seldom considered by consumers focused on Amazon Prime's ability to speedily
deliver a My Little Pony play set for a brony nephew's birthday party, not on the company's links to drone attacks on Pakistani
wedding parties. The Internet developed first as a military-communication system; only
later did it evolve the commercial and recreational uses distant from the initial
intent of its Pentagon landlords. Snowden's revelations reveal how the Internet's
architecture, a compromised judiciary, and duplexed desires of capitalism and the
national security state are today converging to track our purchases, queries,
movements, associations, allegiances, and desires. The rise of e-commerce, and the soft addictive
allure of social media, rapidly transforms U.S. economic and social formations. Shifts in the base are followed by shifts in the
superstructure, and new generations of e-consumers are socialized to accept phones that
track movements, and game systems that bring cameras into the formerly private
refuges of our homes, as part of a "new surveillance normal."11 We need to
develop critical frameworks considering how NSA and CIA surveillance programs
articulate not only with the United States' domestic and international security
apparatus, but with current international capitalist formations. While secrecy shrouds our understanding of these
relationships, CIA history provides examples of some ways that intelligence operations have supported
and informed past U.S. economic ventures. When these historical patterns are
combined with details from Snowden's disclosures we find continuities of means,
motive, and opportunity for neoliberal abuses of state intelligence for private
gains.
Corporations are intertwined with the neoliberal economy, any aff
involvement with the econ. Will continue surveillance of domestic
citizens.
Price, PhD, 14
David, The New Surveillance Normal: NSA and Corporate Surveillance in the Age of Global Capitalism, Monthly review press,
volume 66, issue 3, p. 43-53
Notions of privacy and surveillance are always culturally constructed and are
embedded within economic and social formations of the larger society. Some
centralized state-socialist systems, such as the USSR or East Germany,developed intrusive
surveillance systems, an incessant and effective theme of anti-Soviet propaganda. The democratic-socialist
formations, such as those of contemporary northern Europe, have laws that significantly limit the forms
of electronic surveillance and the collection of metadata, compared to Anglo-U.S. practice. Despite the
significant limitations hindering analysis of the intentionally secret activities of
intelligence agencies operating outside of public accountability and systems of
legal accountability, the documents made available by whistleblowers like Snowden and
WikiLeaks, and knowledge of past intelligence agencies' activities, provide information
that can help us develop a useful framework for considering the uses to which
these new invasive electronic surveillance technologies can be put. We need a
theory of surveillance that incorporates the political economy of the U.S. national
security state and the corporate interests which it serves and protects. Such analysis
needs an economic foundation and a view that looks beyond cultural categories
separating commerce and state security systems designed to protect capital. The metadata,
valuable private corporate data, and fruits of industrial espionage gathered under PRISM and other NSA
programsall produce information of such a high value that it seems likely some of it will be used in
a context of global capital. It matters little what legal restrictions are in place; in a global,
high-tech, capitalist economy such information is invariably commodified. It is
likely to be used to: facilitate industrial or corporate sabotage operations of the sort
inflicted by the Stuxnet worm; steal either corporate secrets for NSA use, or foreign corporate
secrets for U.S. corporate use; make investments by intelligence agencies financing their own operations; or secure personal
financial gain by individuals working in the intelligence sector. The rise of new invasive technologies coincides
with the decline of ideological resistance to surveillance and the compilation of
metadata. The speed of Americans' adoption of ideologies embracing previously
unthinkable levels of corporate and state surveillance suggests a continued public
acceptance of a new surveillance normal will continue to develop with little
resistance. In a world where the CIA can hack the computers of Senator Feinstein-a leader of the one of the
three branches of government-with impunity or lack of public outcry, it is difficult to anticipate a
deceleration in the pace at which NSA and CIA expand their surveillance reach . To live
a well-adjusted life in contemporary U.S.society requires the development of rapid memory
adjustments and shifting acceptance of corporate and state intrusions into what
were once protective spheres of private life. Like all things in our society, we can expect these
intrusions will themselves be increasingly stratified, as electronic privacy, or
illegibility, will increasingly become a commodity available only to elites. Today,
expensive technologies like GeeksPhone's Blackphone with enhanced PGP
encryption, or Boeing's self-destructing Black Phone, afford special levels of
privacy for those who can pay.
Neoliberalism creates an illusion of freedom, makes subjects more complicit to
corporation’s agendas
Davies, PHD, 07
Bronwyn, Neoliberalism and education, International Journal of Qualitative Studies in
Education, Volume 20, issue 3,
Because of this diffuse and largely invisible installation of neoliberal technologies
and practices it has taken a great deal of analytic and observational work to make
the constitutive force of neoliberalism open to analysis. Work such as that of
Rose (1999) has been crucial in this process of beginning to theorize neoliberalism
and show how it functions at the level of the subject, producing docile subjects who
are tightly governed and who, at the same time, define themselves as free.
Individuals, we suggest, have been seduced by their own perceived powers of
freedom and have, at the same time, let go of significant collective powers, through, for
example, allowing the erosion of union power.Individual subjects have thus
welcomed the increasing individualism as a sign of their freedom and, at the same
time, institutions have increased competition, responsibilization and the transfer
of risk from the state to individuals at a heavy cost to many individuals, and indeed
to many nations (Saul, 2005). The assembled technologies that shape the willing subjects
of liberal government have always worked directly on the ways that individuals
conduct themselves. That is, they persuade those governed individuals to adopt
particular practical relations for themselves in the exercise of their
freedom. The iterations of neoliberalism currently installed in Australia and New
Zealand, however, have involved a substantial reworking of liberal values. The liberal
model of individual rational‐ economic conduct has been extended beyond the
sphere of the economy, and generalized as a principle for both reshaping and
rationalizing government itself. Further, the new quasi‐ entrepreneurial and market
models of action have been extended to the conduct of individuals, and of groups and
institutions within those areas of life that were formerly seen as being either outside of or even
antagonistic to the economic (Burchell, 1996, p. 27). The papers in this special issue examine
that impact on individual and institutional life. Under neoliberalism, both government
and society have taken up, as their primary concern, their relationship with the
economy. What was called ‘society’ has been reconstituted as the product of earlier
mistaken governmental interventions, shaped by the unaffordable systems of
social insurance, unemployment and welfare benefits, social work, state education
and ‘the whole panoply of “social” measures associated with the Welfare
State’ (Burchell,1996 p. 27). 1 The Welfare State is reconstituted as an economically
and socially costly obstacle to the economic performance upon which survival
depends, since it leads inexorably (so the argument goes) to an
uncontrollable, unaffordable growth of the State. These changes have been introduced
in the form of choices that individuals and institutions can make in order to secure
funding, such that those individuals and groups experience the new forms of
governmentality as something they are responsible for. Through such successive
‘choices’, the social sphere and the conduct of each citizen has been circumscribed
by and captured within the economic. Within this new set of relations all aspects of social
behavior are rethought along economic lines ‘as calculative actions undertaken through the
universal human faculty of choice’ (Rose, 1999, p. 141). All human actors to be governed
are conceived of as individuals active in making choices in order to further their
own interests and those of their family. The powers of the state are thus directed at
empowering entrepreneurial subjects in their quest
for self‐ expression, freedom and prosperity. Freedom, then, is an economics shaped
by what the state desires, demands and enables.
Democracy
Proliferation of democracy is a cover for expansion of Western neoliberalism
Michael Neocosmos, Professor and Director of Global Movements Research at Monash
University, March 31, 2011. “Mass mobilisation, ‘democratic transition’ and ‘transitional
violence’ in Africa”, http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/72163
Yet the appearance of the masses on such a broad scale on the political scene for the first time
since independence cannot be assumed to mean that they will remain there, and not only
because coercive military power has yet to be transformed. Given the fact that this process is
generally understood as one of ‘democratisation’, it becomes sooner or later systematically
accompanied by an invasion of experts on ‘good governance’, ‘democracy’, ‘empowerment’, ‘civil
society’ and ‘transitional justice’ inter alia who all purport to provide advice to the struggling
people on how to consolidate their hard won gains, via a transitional process of reconciliation
between erstwhile enemies, into a functioning democracy.[2] In particular these experts do so
because they and their funders are concerned with the plight of victims of violence. But they
rarely see people from the Global South as knowledgeable rational subjects of their own history,
but as sad pathetic victims in need of ‘empowerment’ who thus require the benevolent support
of the West upheld since the nineteenth century by an ideology of ‘trusteeship’.[3] As experts
from Western governments, multinational agencies and international NGOs descend from on
high like clouds of locusts, voraciously eating up the new shoots of ‘people power’, it may be
important to rethink some of the assumptions upon which such theories of transition – perhaps
most explicitly outlined in the notion of ‘transitional justice’ – are founded.[4] These are so
common and so pervasive in their apparent ethical ‘goodness’ that they rarely elicit criticism.
Fundamental to this thinking is the assumption that democracy – understood as a form of state
of course, and not as a popular practice – must be accompanied by a ‘culture of rights’ which
itself is seen as inimical to the deployment of violence. The reason being the belief that
democracy implies an acceptance by all contenders for power of ‘the rules of the game’, that a
consensual value system based on the mutual respect for each other’s rights and the rule of law
excludes violence as a way of resolving differences, and that the commitment to such a
consensus, built during a period of transition through the judging of past abuses (gross
violations) of human rights through legitimate legal procedures, can lead to (elite) political
reconciliation and consequently to (popular) social peace. The core assumption is that
‘transition’ is to be understood as a process of change from a state of authoritarianism and
violence to a state of democracy and peace, the idea being that violence should decline as a
‘transition to democracy’ and a ‘culture of rights’ is gradually realised. A number of
characteristics of this form of reasoning are evident even at this stage of the argument. It is
manifestly a variant of the old historicist notion of change from the ‘traditional’ to the ‘modern’
made famous by the hegemony of modernisation theory in the immediate postcolonial period in
Africa in particular. What appears to be ‘the past’, seen as an undifferentiated whole, is simply
defined negatively in relation to an idealised (future) state of affairs. Much as the term
‘traditional’, the predicate ‘authoritarian’ refers here to any form of state – irrespective of its
historical location – which deviates from the Western liberal-democratic model, now global in
its scope. It includes most obviously the past ‘communist’ states in Eastern Europe, the old
militaristic states in Latin America as well as African post-colonial states whose secular
nationalism diverged from the neoliberal ideal until around the late 1980s when formal
universal suffrage was adopted by elites worried at the prospect of losing their power under
democratising pressures from ‘above’ (by the ‘Washington Consensus’) and from ‘below’ (by the
popular masses). African states in particular were seen as having embarked at the time on a
‘transitional’ process of ‘democratisation’ as ‘multi-party elections’, ‘good governance’, ‘civil
societies’ and ‘human rights’ were promoted inter alia through the use of ‘political
conditionalities’ by the ‘Washington Consensus’ as part of a process of incorporation into the
globalised ‘New World Order’ of neo-liberal capitalism and democracy.[5] When ‘political
conditionalities’ proved insufficient, it was (and still is) always possible to enforce such
democracy, human rights and incorporation into the global order through the deployment of
military might, more or less justified by notions of ‘humanitarian’ intervention. This may simply
have lengthened the process of ‘transition’ but was never meant to alter its final outcome. In fact
the ‘transition’ is apparently a never-ending one as the ideal of the West is rarely attained. The
present then is turned into an ongoing ‘transition’ to an always-receding future, all along
guaranteeing careers in the business of ‘good governance’. Moreover, the theoretical foundation
of human rights discourse (HRD), on which this whole reasoning was constructed, is that people
are seen only as victims, in particular as victims of oppressive regimes, and not as collective
subjects of their own liberation. As such the law along with its trustees (governments,
transnational and national NGOs, multinational agencies) are understood to be their
saviours.[6] The neocolonial relationship here should be apparent, not because HRD is in itself
inherently colonial, but because it is a form of state politics which is applied to neocolonial
conditions with all the zeal of a ‘democratizing mission’.[7] It is these conditions which require
elucidation and analysis. The construction of indices as measures of democracy and the training
by Western NGOs of experts from Africa in the use of these, much in the same way as indices
had been constructed in the past in order to measure development, evidently shows how politics
has been reduced to a technical process, for only a technique can be quantitatively measured.[8]
Efforts at Democratisation are imperial and introduce neoliberal
governments
Michael Neocosmos, Professor and Director of Global Movements Research at Monash
University, March 31, 2011. “Mass mobilisation, ‘democratic transition’ and ‘transitional
violence’ in Africa”, Issue 523, http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/72163
Democratisation which ultimately has its roots in the struggles of people from all walks of life for
greater control over their daily lives – hence in the self-constitution of a demos – is now
transformed into a technical process removed from popular control and placed into the hands of
experts such as ‘human rights lawyers’, ‘social entrepreneurs’, ‘governance professionals’ and
‘gender mainstreamers’ who together staff an industry whose tentacles hold up the liberal global
hydra of the new imperial ‘democratising mission’ on the continent. Rather than a transition
from authoritarianism to democracy, what occurred on the African continent during the 1990s
can be more profitably understood as a process of systematic de-politicisation, a process of
political exclusion. If we agree with the philosopher Jacques Rancière that ‘politics begins
exactly when those who “cannot” do something show that in fact they can’[9], then it is not
difficult to visualise ‘de-politicisation’ as a process whereby those same people are being
convinced that they really are quite incapable, that they did not do anything significant, new or
different after all, despite what they may or may not have thought, as it would have all happened
anyway and that in any case their work is now over. Everyone should return to their allotted
place in the social structure and vacate the field of politics, leaving it to those who know how to
follow unquestioningly the rules of the game (of the state): The trustees of the excluded. In fact
if historicist categories are preferred, this process could be described as a never-ending
‘transition’ from the inventive politics of popular agency to the oppressive technicism of state
and imperial power. A core feature of this process in South Africa in particular has been the
construction of people as political victims rather than (and after many had been) political
subjects, through an emphasis on legal procedures which evidently only recognise juridical
agency but not political agency.[10] The relative success of this process has in the past relied
inter alia on people’s lassitude with violence and demands for justice which they have so long
been denied, on the physical and emotional exhaustion of daily militancy, and on the fetishism
of power. The latter promises a world in which the difficult questions and problems of ‘decisionmaking’ can and should be left to professionals eminently qualified, and hence paid, to do so.
Yet it is apparent that this process, as currently constituted, merely gives rise to political
exclusion which is not overcome by the creation of a civil society for the latter’s politics are in
harmony with those of the state.[11] The result is that violence does not necessarily disappear
along with the construction of a democratic state. A new oligarchy is formed (or the old one is
reconstituted) precisely as a result of the de-politicisation of the masses and their political
exclusion, so that the authoritarianism against which the people had rebelled in the first place is
likely re-created, although now within the context of a somewhat different mode of rule and
different forms of political exclusion. Of course such de-politicisation in practice is simply
replicated within, as well as enabled by thought and subjectivities, as analysis becomes focussed
on visualising the world through state categories. Such categories (governance, civil society,
power, democracy, law, reparations, etc) objectify politics by ‘representing’ the social and
thereby stress the immutability of given social places, cultures, identities and hierarchies to such
an extent that state thinking becomes constructed as ‘natural’ and the immutability of place as
an incontrovertible ‘fact’ evident to all. The inevitable conclusion is that there can indeed be no
alternative to the politics of the state.
Democracy has been co-opted by neoliberal capitalism, makes change
impossible
Monzo, PH. D, 15
Lilia, A Critical Pedagogy for Democracy: Confronting Higher Education’s
Neoliberal Agenda with a Critical Latina Feminist Episteme, Journal for Critical Policy Studies,
12.1, p. 73-74
Regrettably, democracy has been co-opted by the transnational capitalist
class, stripped of its socialist underpinnings, and made to appear synonymous
to the current neoliberal capitalism (Carey, 1997). Amin (2010) points out that even though
it is evident that capitalism cannot Lilia sustain the democratic ideals that are
attributed to it, the mythical alignment of capitalism to democracy, orchestrated by the
U.S. and its allies in the 70s to bring down the Soviet Union,continues to this day, with
the majority of citizens believing that democracy could only be achieved within a
system that would stand in direct oppositional contrast to the then soviet regimes.
With a moralistic stance that belies its treacherous dealings to secure its name as the world’s
greatest superpower, the U.S. has designated itself the world’s watchdog to “protect”
against any and all dissent to capitalism and to spread “democracy” across the world.
This isevident through the U.S. led war on drugs and terrorism waged in Mexico
that serves more as a strategy for U.S. surveillance of Latin America (given the
overwhelming evidence that the war on drugs has not been effective and that terrorism coming
from the U.S.-Mexican border is virtually non-existent) (Monzó, McLaren, & Rodriguez, in
press), not to mention the recently discovered U.S. surveillance of its allies (McCoy,
2013). The hegemony of this “democratic capitalism” is secured throughout the
world through consent by promoting a numbing and stupefying hyper-consumer
culture as the greatest way of life, the ruse of humanitarian aid, and through
coercion via the threat of the U.S. military industrial complex (Amin, 2010).
Education
Their education props up neoliberal institutions
Giroux PhD 13
Henry A Public Intellectuals against the neoliberal university
http://philosophersforchange.org/2013/11/12/public-intellectuals-against-the-neoliberaluniversity/
Under such circumstances, to cite C. W. Mills, we are witnessing the breakdown of democracy,
the disappearance of critical intellectuals and “the collapse of those public spheres which offer a
sense of critical agency and social imagination.”[7] Mill’s prescient comments amplify what has
become a tragic reality. Missing from neoliberal market societies are those public spheres –
from public and higher education to the mainstream media and digital screen culture – where
people can develop what might be called the civic imagination. For example, in the last few
decades, we have seen market mentalities attempt to strip education of its public values, critical
content and civic responsibilities as part of its broader goal of creating new subjects wedded to
consumerism, risk-free relationships and the disappearance of the social state in the name of
individual, expanded choice. Tied largely to instrumental ideologies and measurable paradigms,
many institutions of higher education are now committed almost exclusively to economic goals,
such as preparing students for the workforce – all done as part of an appeal to rationality, one
that eschews matters of inequality, power and the ethical grammars of suffering.[8] Many
universities have not only strayed from their democratic mission, they also seem immune to the
plight of students who face a harsh new world of high unemployment, the prospect of downward
mobility and debilitating debt.¶ The question of what kind of education is needed for students to
be informed and active citizens in a world that increasingly ignores their needs, if not their
future, is rarely asked.[9] In the absence of a democratic vision of schooling, it is not surprising
that some colleges and universities are increasingly opening their classrooms to corporate
interests, standardizing the curriculum, instituting top-down governing structures, and
generating courses that promote entrepreneurial values unfettered by social concerns or ethical
consequences. For example, one university is offering a master’s degree to students who, in
order to fulfill their academic requirements, have to commit to starting a high-tech company.
Another university allows career officers to teach capstone research seminars in the humanities.
In one of these classes, the students were asked to “develop a 30-second commercial on their
‘personal brand.'”[10] This is not an argument against career counseling or research in
humanities seminars, but the confusion in collapsing the two.¶ Central to this neoliberal view of
higher education in the United States and United Kingdom is a market-driven paradigm that
seeks to eliminate tenure, turn the humanities into a job preparation service, and transform
most faculty into an army of temporary subaltern labor. For instance, in the United States out of
1.5 million faculty members, 1 million are “adjuncts who are earning, on average, $20,000 a
year gross, with no benefits or healthcare, no unemployment insurance when they are out of
work.”[11] The indentured service status of such faculty is put on full display as some colleges
have resorted to using “temporary service agencies to do their formal hiring.”[12]¶ There is little
talk in this view of higher education about the history and value of shared governance between
faculty and administrators, nor of educating students as critical citizens rather than potential
employees of Walmart. There are few attempts to affirm faculty as scholars and public
intellectuals who have both a measure of autonomy and power. Instead, faculty members are
increasingly defined less as intellectuals than as technicians and grant writers. Students fare no
better in this debased form of education and are treated as either clients or as restless children
in need of high-energy entertainment – as was made clear in the 2012 Penn State scandal. Such
modes of education do not foster a sense of organized responsibility fundamental to a
democracy. Instead, they encourage what might be called a sense of organized irresponsibility –
a practice that underlies the economic Darwinism and civic corruption at the heart of a debased
politics.
Modern education is in place to sustain and refine neoliberalism
Faith Agostinone Wilson, Professor at Aurora University, 2006, "Downsized Discourse:
Classroom Management, Neoliberalism, and the Shaping of Correct Workplace Attitude,"
http://www.jceps.com/wp-content/uploads/PDFs/04-2-06.pdf.
Brosio (2000) describes the dominant, if not hegemonic, ideologies of U.S. schools— idealism
and realism-- as stemming from “the historical quest for certainty” which has been translated
into various systems of elite power (p. 61). This quest has meant that high stakes testing and
standardized curriculum must appear neutral, or “as an immutable reality” (Lipman, 2004,
para. 30). Like neoliberalism itself, the essentialist project risks suffering a crisis of legitimacy
unless it can make testing, scripted instruction, and school-to-work curriculum appear to be a
logical response to a ‘naturally developing’ economic situation. The teacher required for this
project must “know the essentialist curriculum well…have a certain kind of character and moral
disposition,” and ultimately view the school’s role as one of “preserving and refining what
already exists” (Brosio, 2000, p. 69). To this end, an ideology of control always lurks behind the
essentialist project, with a strong focus on monitoring teacher conduct via testing and standards
(Beckmann & Cooper, 2004; Hill, 2004; Hursch & Martina, 2004). It is no surprise that the
ruling elite have discovered the political power of science, including No Child Left Behind’s use
of ‘scientific research’ as a key example. Lipman (2004) connects the ‘with us or against us’ logic
of the Bush administration to a containment-oriented, literalist insistence on the absolute
“need” for standardized testing. The testament to the power of this logic is the lack of a
collectively asked “why” in response to the claims of testing and efficiency experts throughout
history, beginning with Frederick Taylor (Oncu & Kose, 2002).
Economy
Neoliberalism is the root cause of economic distress
Cahill, PHD, 15
Damien, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste: How Neoliberalism Survived the Financial
Meltdown / The New Way of the World: On Neoliberal Society / Masters of the Universe:
Hayek, Friedman, and the Birth of Neoliberal Politics/ The Great Persuasion: Reinventing Free
Markets Since the Depression, Forum for Social Economics, 44:2, 201-210, DOI:
Since the onset of the global financial crisis, there has been enormous growth of scholarly
interest in neoliberalism—its dynamics, intellectual lineage and its relationship to the crisis
itself. Of course, scholarly investigations of neoliberalism predate the crisis. Yet, in the
immediate aftermath of the sub-prime crash and the subsequent financial contagion that spread
across the globe, leading fundamentalist neoliberal economists such as Milton Friedman and
Friedrich Hayek were seen by many as responsible for the ensuing economic disaster. And this,
perhaps, helps to explain the burgeoning scholarly field of ‘neoliberalism studies’ since 2007. It
is not only that the calamitous events besetting the global economy lent greater
urgency and relevance to analyses of neoliberalism. Neoliberal intellectuals have
come to be seen as the chief culprits behind the global economic downturn from
which follows a focus upon the development of fundamentalist neoliberal ideas
and the organisations through which they were proselytised as the key to
deciphering the crisis. A chief concern of recent literature therefore has been to
interrogate the relationship between neoliberal ideas, and neoliberal political and
economic practices. Of course, how one approaches this depends very much upon
how one understands both the nature of neoliberalism, as well as how one
understands the nature of neoliberal ideas. Nonetheless, one of the great benefits of
this recent literature is to have provided a much more detailed history of
neoliberal ideas and their organisational forms, such as the Mont Pelerin Society and its
associated global network of think tanks. Not that such a history was absent from previous
analyses of neoliberalism. Richard Cockett’s (1994) Thinking the Unthinkable, for example,
stands out as a detailed archival and interview-driven history of neoliberalism written over
Downloaded by [] at 13:37 23 June 2015 FORUM FOR SOCIAL ECONOMICS a decade before
the onset of the crisis, while Andrew Gamble’s (1996) Hayek: the Iron Cage of Liberty offers a
detailed analysis of Hayek’s thought. Several articles, mainly from progressive critics of
neoliberalism also sought, during this pre-crisis period, to understand the
development of a neoliberal hegemony through an examination of its key
intellectuals and think tanks (Desai, 1999; George, 1997). Moreover, one of the earliest
scholarly analysis of neoliberalism—that provided by Foucault in his 1979 lectures on The
Birth of Biopolitics—has the history of neoliberal ideas as its subject. Long before
neoliberalism entered the scholarly or progressive political lexicons, and even before
the Margaret Thatcher became Britain’s iconic neoliberal prime minister, Foucault identified
a link between neoliberal intellectuals—stretching back to the German ‘ordoliberals’,
through to Hayek and Gary Becker—and an emerging neoliberal state rationality. Yet, it
is only recently that such concerns have been put at the centre of scholarly analysis
of neoliberalism. Indeed, since the onset of the crisis, such analysis has come to
occupy a much more central place in popular discussions of the nature of the
contemporary economy and its historical evolution.
The financial crisis was a product of structural instability within the
capitalist economy
Green, PHD, 14
Jeremy & Colin Hay, Towards a New Political Economy of the Crisis: Getting What Went Wrong
Right, New Political Economy, 20:3, 331-341, DOI:
Not only did the global financial crisis transform the prevailing institutions,
policies and practices of contemporary capitalism, it also had a profound impact
upon the discipline of economics itself. From 2008 a different crisis, one of public
legitimacy, engulfed academic economics as critics railed against its failure to predict the onset
of unprecedented global economic turmoil. But despite the public focus upon the failings
of mainstream economics, the rise of alternative disciplinary and epistemological
perspectives has been muted. Scho- lars of international political economy
(IPE), unconstrained by the debilitating equilibrium assumptions of neoclassical economics
and keenly aware of the inti- mate connectivity between politics and economics, might
justifiably have expected to make gains during the economics profession’s darkest
hour. That they have not managed, thus far, to substantially unsettle the
intellectual and insti- tutional predominance of economics should not, however, be a
source of dismay. Political economy scholars possess the analytical tools to produce a
much-needed counterpoint to prevailing academic economics. It is with
demonstrating that capacity, and restating the holistic merits of political economy
scholarship, that this Special Issue is concerned. Bringing together a number of diverse
theoretical perspectives and employing a wide range of conceptual categories, this Special
Issue showcases the rich variety of IPE scholarship and its collective capacity to
generate much deeper and more holistic analyses of the global economic crisis
than those provided by the reigning economics orthodoxy, and in doing so, to get
what went wrong right. the present crisis, though starkly uneven in their
distribution, have been felt in all corners of the globe and across all sections of
society – mapping, in effect, exposure to the risks of Anglo-liberal globalisation.
Capitalism in crisis means not only stuttering growth or stagnation, but also the
dislocation of prevailing societal patterns and the exacerbation of existing social,
economic and political tensions. This makes it both all the more remarkable and all the
more shocking that mainstream economics prepared us so badly for all of this. It gave us no
sense of the gathering storm, confidently telling us, as in the eerily un-prophetic words of Lucas
in his Presidential Address to the American Economics Associ- ation, that ‘for all practical
purposes . . . the central problem of recession preven- tion has been solved’ (2003: 1). It is
difficult to get something so staggeringly important so profoundly wrong. That it did so, and that
Lucas’ words were expres- sive of a then pervasive consensus within the discipline, is testament
to the hold over it of dubious equilibrium assumptions and its spurious preoccupation with
prediction. Unremarkably, conventional economics still struggles with the crisis and has proved
ill-equipped to respond to its challenges. Given this, it is perhaps unsurprising that the
discipline of economics has suf- fered something of a public legitimacy crisis in the
wake of the storm of 2008. The failure to predict the crisis was widely interpreted
as a failing of mainstream econ- omics on its own intellectual terms. An academic
field which had put so much stock in the predictive capacity of mathematical
modelling and deductive reason- ing was seemingly stumped by the way in which
events unfolded since the onset of the crisis. The scale of the failure prompted
Greenspan (2013), the former head of the Federal Reserve, to speak of an
‘existential crisis for economic forecasting’. Add to this the scandals that have since beset
those influential economic models that did prosper in the immediate aftermath of the crisis
(think Rogoff – Reinhart), alongside economics undergraduates rebelling against the staid
orthodoxy of the ‘economics 101 curriculum’ (Moore 2013, Inman 2014), and the picture of a
dis- cipline in disarray starts to paint itself. Yet despite the controversy and infighting
within which professional economics have become embroiled, the advocacy of
alternative epistemological perspectives and disciplinary contenders, which we
might justifiably have expected, has been somewhat muted. Indeed, the enormous
hype and discussion associated with Piketty’s (2014) ground-breaking volume, Capital in the
twenty-first century, appears to have confirmed, if anything, the enduring
predominance of economists in the debates to which policy-makers pay attention.
The content of the economics is certainly a little different to that of the neoclassical orthodoxy
which reigned supreme in the pre-crisis era, and we should perhaps be grateful for that, but the
core debate for policy-makers remains that with the discipline of economics. Arguably this has
to change. As scholars of international political economy (IPE), we might quite
reasonably have thought that now was the time for our own field to gain greater
access to the debate. But this has yet to happen. There are, undoubtedly, several reasons for
this. One is, quite simply, the privilege of incumbency. It would surely be na ̈ıve to expect
economics to be unsettled from its predominant intellectual and insti-tutional
position overnight. Too many commitments of resources, careers, entrenched
ideas and powerful interests are at play for the primacy of economics Towards a new
political economy of the crisis within the social sciences to simply melt away. This is
something that scholars of political economy (well versed, as they typically are, in
institutional and ideational path-dependencies) should be particularly well placed to
appreciate. Yet, however powerful and seemingly entrenched the incumbency
effect may seem, scholars of IPE should not exogenise entirely the sources of their
continued exclusion from the debate. For part of the problem, we would contend, rests a
little closer to home. One of the more obvious endogenous reasons for the failure of
IPE to make greater gains in the public debate since the crisis stands out. It is the
comparable, although certainly less acute, process of soul-searching and reflection that has gone
on within the field in recent years. There is a certain irony here. For some of the agonised
introspection that has occurred in IPE in recent years is itself a product of a
similar perceived failure to have better anticipated the likelihood and nature of the
crisis (Cohen 2009). Though, of course, not entirely inappropriate, the judgement is a harsh
one and, unsurprisingly, it has itself been contested by, amongst others, those within the field
with a rather better track record in anticipating the crisis (notably Helleiner 2011). But the point
is that IPE scholars, like their economist counterparts, have been fighting
themselves – an inauspicious way of going about making the case for IPE as an alternative to
mainstream econ- omics as the policy-makers’ guide to the risk, uncertainty and instability
of the global economic order we have made.
Economic control fuels neoliberalism- Economic policies are hidden
from the public
Adaman PhD and Madra Professor of Economics 12
(Fikret and Yahya, “Understanding Neoliberalism as Economization: The Case of the Ecology”,
Fikret is a BA and MA in Economics from Bogazici University and PhD in Economics from
Manchester University. He is an expert on social inclusion currently on a trip to the European
Commission. Yahya is a professor of Economics at Bogazici University.
http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.464.3195 Acc. 6/24/15 // yZ)
Neoliberal reason is therefore not simply about market expansion and the withdrawal of the
welfare state, but more broadly about reconfiguring the state and its functions so that the state
governs its subjects through a filter of economic incentives rather than direct coercion. In other
words, supposed subjects of the neoliberal state are not citizen-subjects with political and social
rights, but rather economic subjects who are supposed to comprehend (hence, calculative) and
respond predictably (hence, calculable) to economic incentives (and disincentives). There are
mainly two ways in which states under the sway of neoliberal reason aim to manipulate the
conduct of their subjects. The first is through markets, or market-like incentive-compatible
institutional mechanisms that economic experts design based on the behaviorist assumption
that economic agents respond predictably to economic (but not necessarily pecuniary)
incentives, to achieve certain discrete objectives. The second involves a revision of the way the
bureaucracy functions. Here, the neoliberal reason functions as an internal critique of the way
bureaucratic dispositifs organize themselves: The typical modus operandi of this critique is to
submit the bureaucracy to efficiency audits and subsequently advocate the subcontracting of
various functions of the state to the private sector either by fullblown privatization or by publicprivate partnerships. While in the first case citizen-subjects are treated solely as economic
beings, in the second case the state is conceived as an enterprise, i.e., a production unit, an
economic agency whose functions are persistently submitted to various forms of economic
auditing, thereby suppressing all other (social, political, ecological) priorities through a
permanent economic criticism. Subcontracting, public-private partnerships, and privatization
are all different mechanisms through which contemporary governments embrace the discourses
and practices of contemporary multinational corporations. In either case, however, economic
policy decisions (whether they involve macroeconomic or microeconomic matters) are isolated
from public debate and deliberation, and treated as matters of technocratic design and
implementation, while regulation, to the extent it is warranted, is mostly conducted by experts
outside political life—the so-called independent regulatory agencies. In the process, democratic
participation in decision-making is either limited to an already highly-commodified,
spectacularized, mediatized electoral politics, or to the calculus of opinion polls where consumer
discontent can be managed through public relations experts. As a result, a highly reductionist
notion of economic efficiency ends up being the only criteria with which to measure the success
or failure of such decisions. Meanwhile, individuals with financial means are free to provide
support to those in need through charity organizations or corporations via their social
responsibility channels. Here, two related caveats should be noted to sharpen the central thrust
of the argument proposed in this chapter. First, the separation of the economic sphere from the
social ecological whole is not an ontological given, but rather a political project. By treating
social subjectivity solely in economic terms and deliberately trying to insulate policy-making
from popular politics and democratic participation, the neoliberal project of economization
makes a political choice. Since there are no economic decisions without a multitude of complex
and over-determined social consequences, the attempt to block (through economization) all
political modes of dissent, objection and negotiation available (e.g., “voice”) to those who are
affected from the said economic decisions is itself a political choice. In short, economization is
itself a political project. Yet, this drive towards technocratization and economization—which
constitutes the second caveat—does not mean that the dirty and messy distortions of politics are
gradually being removed from policy-making. On the contrary, to the extent that policy making
is being insulated from popular and democratic control, it becomes exposed to the “distortions”
of a politics of rent-seeking and speculation—ironically, as predicted by the representatives of
the Virginia School. Most public-private partnerships are hammered behind closed doors of a
bureaucracy where states and multinational corporations divide the economic rent among
themselves. The growing concentration of capital at the global scale gives various industries
(armament, chemical, health care, petroleum, etc.—see, e.g., Klein, 2008) enormous amount of
leverage over the governments (especially the developing ones). It is extremely important,
however, to note that this tendency toward rent-seeking is not a perversion of the neoliberal
reason. For much of neoliberal theory (in particular, for the Austrian and the Chicago schools),
private monopolies and other forms of concentration of capital are preferred to government
control and ownership. And furthermore, for some (such as the Virginia and the Chicago
schools), rent-seeking is a natural implication of the “opportunism” of human beings, even
though neoliberal thinkers disagree whether rent-seeking is essentially economically efficient
(as in “capture” theories of the Chicago school imply) or inefficient (as in rent-seeking theories
of the Virginia school imply) (Madra and Adaman, 2010). This reconfiguration of the way
modern states in advanced capitalist social formations govern the social manifests itself in all
domains of public and social policy-making. From education to health, and employment to
insurance, there is an observable shift from rights-based policymaking forged through public
deliberation and participation, to policy-making based solely on economic viability where policy
issues are treated as matters of technocratic calculation. In this regard, as noted above, the
treatment of subjectivity solely in behaviorist terms of economic incentives functions as the key
conceptual choice that makes the technocratization of public policy possible. Neoliberal
thinking and practices certainly have a significant impact on the ecology. The next section will
focus on the different means through which various forms of neoliberal governmentality
propose and actualize the economization of the ecology.
English
The aff’s use of the English language is representative of American
imperialism and the neoliberal agenda of forcing a culture upon a
group of others.
Holborrow, Professor, 2007
(Marnie, Language Ideology and Neoliberalism, Journal of Language and Politics, Volume 6,
No. 1, p. 51-53)
When the ideas of capitalist globalisation appear to speak as one across the world, it is timely to
re-examine the interconnections between language and ideology. The global market and its
dominant neoliberal ideology, increasingly expressed in English, have led some to hold that the
language itself constructs the hegemonic order of global capitalism. Others have focussed on
language not only as the bearer of ideology but as part of the immaterial production of
capitalism. This paper discusses the way in which language and ideology interconnect but argues
that the ideology of neoliberalism cannot be adequately described as a discourse. Instead, it is an
ideology with specific historical roots and which, as a dominant ideology, makes itself felt in
language, although not without contradictions. Two aspects of language and neoliberal ideology
are examined here: firstly the way in which the customer metaphor has been adopted in
different and unexpected settings and, secondly, how models of listening and speaking in call
centres are framed around neoliberal assumptions. Both processes aim to impose a kind of
‘corporate speak’ to reinforce neoliberal ideas as common sense, but both also contain tensions
because language is neither a straitjacket nor a settled ideological product. This paper argues
that language and ideology are not the same and that it is in the dynamic of their
interconnection that world views are both made and contested. The ideology of the global
market insinuates itself everywhere. At a macro level, international reports, often emanating
from the IMF, the World Bank and the OECD, chime thick and fast with assumed notions about
the need to deregulate, to open up state companies and services to market competition, to
pursue further trade liberalisation. At a micro level, almost every company website, mission
statement and strategic plan pronounces that ‘demand’ and ‘competition’ are synonymous with
efficiency, cost-effectiveness and ‘best practice’. This is the neoliberal world in which “free
markets in both commodities and capital contain all that Journal of Language and Politics 6:1
–73. issn 1569–2159 / e-issn 1569–9862 © John Benjamins Publishing Company 52
Marnie Holborow is necessary to deliver freedom and well-being to all and sundry” (Harvey
2003: 201). The strains of the market resonate not just through official documents, but at every
meeting, in emails and the language of individuals. Ironically, for an ideology so given to the
promotion of ‘choice’, it is expressed in a drab uniformity which would have made a Soviet bloc
bureaucrat blush. Such strident sameness, so detectable in language, raises sharply issues
around the relationship between ideology and language, and specifically between a dominant
ideology and language. In what ways is English the bearer of this ideology and part of US global
dominance? Is language playing a more salient, constitutive role in capitalism today? With ever
greater use of communication technologies to promote, sell and keep selling, has language itself
become a product in capitalist production? Is discourse the same as ideology and, if not, how
does ideology interact with language? These are the concerns of this article. Through an
examination of some specific interconnections between neoliberal ideology and English, I hope
to describe something of how ideology works through language and, conversely, how language
can contest ideology. I shall investigate two aspects of the language–ideology interconnection.
The first concerns the use of the ‘customer’ metaphor and the second models of listening
promoted in call centres, both of which are activated by neoliberal ideology. Before this,
however, I will make some general remarks about ideology and language and the debate around
and, briefly, chart the contours of the ideology of neoliberalism. Ideology and power in society
In recent times, discourse has come to be used in place of ideology. For Foucault, whose
influence in this area still remains considerable, the blurring between ideology and discourse
involved a shift away from the classical Marxist understanding of ideology and, correspondingly,
the downplaying of the social and economic foundations of power in favour of ‘discursive
regimes’ (Foucault 1979: 36). Because this paper does not take this interpretation, and because
the concept of ideology is contentious, I propose to define the way in which I am using the term.
It revolves around three strands: 1. Ideology can appropriately be described as meaning in the
service of power (Thompson 1990: 7). It is a set of ideas that emerges from specific social
relations and supports the interests of a particular social class. Thus, rather than being the
expression of what is objectively true, ideologies are true according to particular standpoints;
therefore, ideology is a concept that cannot easily Language, ideology and neoliberalism 53 be
stripped of its negative sense. I use the term here in conformity with a broadly Marxist position
that ideology is representation as in a camera obscura whereby things appear in a slanted
fashion, ‘upside down’ (Marx and Engels 1974: 47), distortions that suit the interests of its
promoters.1 2. The bias of an ideology also gives rise to contradictions within the ideology which
become manifest at different levels. First, the vision of the world that an ideology presents can
clash with what is actually happening and this can lead to its seemingly accepted status being
questioned. Secondly, there are competing and different ideologies that exist in society, which
means that even dominant ideologies do not always hold sway and, depending on the weight of
other forms of social contest, are open to being opposed in unpredictable ways (Gramsci 1971:
333). Far from ideologies constituting a kind of social cement or a social given, they can fall
victim to their own inconsistencies, and like the globalization anti-globalization case, implode
into their opposites. 3. Language, particularly, because it is everywhere in society and a highly
sensitive indicator of social change, is an immediate (although not the only2) way of grasping
ideology. An examination of the workings of ideology in language highlights just how
unpredictable this process is, and that far from language being ideologically predetermined, its
speakers, as social actors in their own right and faced with different social developments, may at
the same time accept some aspects of the ideology and challenge others. Language and ideology
overlap in so many ways that it is difficult to say where one begins and the other ends. Both
represent reality, both are symbolic, both interpret the world. Although some language is
patently more ideological, all language has the potential to be ideological (Volosinov 1973: 10).
Because ideology crystallizes in language, ideology can appear as if frozen in language. Repeated
from the lofty heights of the media and positions of power, these ideological representations can
acquire the status of natural truths and common sense. This was the significant insight that
Gramsci made when he identified that this uncritical acceptance was part of how ruling ideas
won consent, or hegemony. In particular, language could give specific expression to a whole
ideology, bestow a new twist to established ways of thinking which then becomes taken for
granted, almost self-evident (Gramsci 1971: 323–325; 418–425). Others have expressed this
sedimentation of ideology in language in a different way. Lakoff and Johnson have described
how widely used metaphors often mask the social impetus of their original adoption and thus
become invisible envelopes 54 Marnie Holborow of ideology. They give the example of the now
widely used metaphor ‘Labour is a resource’. The metaphor equates human work with a natural
resource which places the speaker inadvertently in a position which ignores the quality of labour
and sees labour like oil — the cheaper the better (Lakoff and Johnson 1980: 236–237). These
metaphors are social standpoints and can be true or false according to where you are standing.
The wider the usage, the less salient is the metaphor and the more its meaning appears ‘natural’.
As we shall see, within neoliberal ideology, certain metaphors obtain with varying degrees of
acceptance.
Foucault Link
Foucault was a neoliberalist
Zemora 12¶
Zemora, Daniel. "Can We Criticize Foucault?" Jacobin Can We Criticize Foucault Comments.
Jacobin, Dec.-Jan. 2012. Web. 25 June 2015.
I hope so. That’s sort of the point of the book. I wanted to clearly break with the far too
consensual image of Foucault as being in total opposition to neoliberalism at the end of his life.
From that point of view, I think the traditional interpretations of his late works are erroneous, or
at least evade part of the issue. He’s become sort of an untouchable figure within part of the
radical left. Critiques of him are timid, to say the least.
This blindness is surprising because even I was astonished by the indulgence Foucault showed
toward neoliberalism when I delved into the texts. It’s not only his Collège de France lectures,
but also numerous articles and interviews, all of which are accessible.Foucault was highly
attracted to economic liberalism: he saw in it the possibility of a form of
governmentality that was much less normative and authoritarian than the socialist
and communist left, which he saw as totally obsolete. He especially saw in
neoliberalism a “much less bureaucratic” and “much less disciplinarian” form of
politics than that offered by the postwar welfare state. He seemed to imagine a
neoliberalism that wouldn’t project its anthropological models on the individual,
that would offer individuals greater autonomy vis-à-vis the state.
Foucault seems, then, in the late seventies, to be moving towards the “second left,”
that minoritarian but intellectually influential tendency of French socialism, along
with figures like Pierre Rosanvallon, whose writings Foucault appreciated. He
found seductive this anti-statism and this desire to “de-statify French society.”
Even Colin Gordon, one of Foucault’s principal translators and commentators in the AngloSaxon world, has no trouble saying that he sees in Foucault a sort of precursor to the
Blairite Third Way, incorporating neoliberal strategy within the social-democratic corpus.
Globalization
Aff’s call for globalization reinforces racial separation
O’ Brien PhD and Leichenko PhD 2000 (Karen O ’ Brien - PhD in geography,
Center for International Climate and Environmental Research At the U of Oslo, and Robin
Leichenko - PhD Geography, Department of Geography and Center for Urban Policy Research,
Rutgers University, "Double exposure: assessing the impacts of climate change within the
context of economic globalization," Global Environmental Change Volume 10, Issue 3, October
2000, Pages 221–232, Yung Jung)
Despite a widespread perception that globalization is a unifying and all-encompassing force,
these processes have (heretofore) been highly uneven across all geographic scales. In fact, it has
been argued that globalization accentuates, rather than erodes, national and regional differences
(Mittelman, 1994). Processes of globalization have been uneven among major regions of the
world, characterized by an increasing proportion of trade and resource flows taking place both
within and between three major economic regions, including North America (US, Canada and
Mexico), the European Union and East and Southeast Asia (led by Japan). These three regions,
often referred as the Triad, accounted for 76% of world output and 71% of world trade in 1980
(Dicken, 1997). By 1994, the Triad accounted for 87% of world merchandise output and 80% of
world merchandise exports (Dicken, 1997). Increased concentration of global economic activity
among the Triad has meant that large regions outside the Triad, particularly Sub-Saharan Africa
and South Asia, have become increasing marginalized vis a vis the global economy (Castells,
1996; Mittelman, 1994). Examination of the global distribution of foreign direct investment
among low and middle income countries aptly illustrates these regional differences (Table 2).
More than 10% of the world population currently lives in Sub-Saharan Africa, yet this region
receives only 1% of total world foreign direct investment (World Bank, 1998). Similarly, South
Asia contains 22% of the world population, but receives only 1.1% of world foreign direct
investment (World Bank, 1998). Globalization processes are also uneven among regions within
countries (Hirst and Thompson, 1996). Within China, for example, coastal regions have been
increasingly integrated into the global economy, while more remote areas of the country remain
largely untouched by globalization. As a result, globalization is exacerbating existing patterns of
uneven development within China. Even within an advanced country such as the United States,
the impacts of globalization have been highly uneven. Studies of international trade involvement
of US cities and regions by Markusen et al. (1991), Hayward and Erickson (1995) and Noponen
et al. (1997), for example, "and substantial variability in the level of involvement in international
trade and in the relative contribution of international trade to regional economic growth. As
with climate change, the uneven nature of globalization leads to the emergence of winners and
losers. In addition to globalization's frequently identified winners, which include large
transnational corporations and advanced and newly industrializing countries (Cook and
Kirkpatrick, 1997; Fischer, 1990; Greider, 1997), winners may also include subnational regions
and social groups which benefit directly or indirectly from globalization (Tardanico and
Rosenberg, 2000). Frequently identified losers in the process of globalization include countries
of Sub-Saharan Africa, as noted above, as well as unionized labor and small, locally oriented
farms (Conroy and Glasmeier, 1993). Additional losers may include other regions and groups
that are left out of globalization processes or that experience direct negative impacts. Like
climate change vulnerability assessments, the identification of winners and losers in
globalization is not strictly an advanced versus developing country issue. In analyzing the
impacts of changing patterns of international trade for wages and employment within both
advanced and developing countries, Wood (1994) identifies groups of both winners and losers
within advanced (`Northa) and developing areas (`Southa). Based on traditional theory of
comparative advantage, Wood demonstrates that liberalization of trade benefits those factors of
production that are relatively abundant in both the North and South, and harms factors that are
relatively scarce in each region. The example of NAFTA further illustrates how globalization
results in new categories of winners and losers (Conroy and Glasmeier, 1993; Tardanico and
Rosenberg, 2000). Conroy and Glasmeier (1993) identify some of the winners with NAFTA,
including US workers in high technology and service-oriented industries, especially in large
urban areas, as well as Great Plains farmers producing crops such as corn, sorghum and
soybeans. Within Mexico, winners are identified as workers in low-skill manufacturing
industries and farmers producing specialty crops for export. Losers within the US include
workers in low-wage sectors, especially those located in rural areas of the US South, such as
textiles and apparel, and farmers in dairy, sugar and specialty fruit and vegetable sectors. Within
Mexico, losers include workers in previously protected manufacturing industries and grain
farmers located in rural areas throughout the country (Conroy and Glasmeier, 1993).
Heg
Hegemony is a means of spreading global capitalism.
Niall Ferguson, Professor of History at Harvard, 2004, "Colossus: The Rise and Fall of the
American Empire”, pg. 10
To the majority of Americans, it would appear, there is not contradiction between the ends of
global democratization and the means of American military power. As defined by their
president, the democratizing mission of the United States is both altruistic and distinct from the
ambitions of past empires, which (so it is generally assumed) aimed to impose their own rule on
foreign peoples. The difficulty is that President Bush's ideal of freedom as a universal
desideratum rather closely resembles the Victorian ideal of "civilization." "Freedom" means, on
close inspection, the American model of democracy and capitalism; when Americans speak of
"nation building" they actually mean "state replicating," in the sense that they want to build
political and economic institutions that are fundamentally similar, though not identical, to their
own. They may not aspire to rule, but they do aspire to have others rule themselves in the
American way. Yet the very act of imposing "freedom" simultaneously subverts it.
The affirmative perpetuates the hegemonic ideas of “manifest
destiny”
Whyte, PhD, 08 (Professor David Whyte has a BA with Honors and a PhD. He is currently
a reader in Sociology at the University of Liverpool. “Market Patriotism and the ‘War on
Terror’”, Social Justice (journal), Vol. 34, No. 3/4, 2007-2008,
http://www.jstor.org/stable/29768467)
To argue that the structural features of the global and domestic political economy produce
particular policy outcomes is not to deny the agency of the current ruling group. Clearly, a tightknit, self-proclaimed group of neocons has emerged to provide intellectual leadership to U.S.
imperialist strategy. However, the coercive brutality of contemporary U.S. imperialism is
expressed by, rather than determined by, the rise to prominence of this political elite. To the
extent that the neocons represent a distinctive grouping, their power is derived from the
ideological continuities they are able to express. Those continuities—adapted to the current
conditions—provide intellectual substance to ruling elites.¶ It is doubtful whether
neoconservatism represents a break from neoliberalism that is significant enough to distinguish
the two perspectives within the power bloc. An intrinsic incompatibility is not expressed if, for
example, the ideal of the laissez-faire) state is conceptualized differently in Chicago School
economic theory (in which the state’s proper role is reduced to maintaining a rudimentary
system of rules that can guarantee access to “free” markets) and Straussian political philosophy
(which stresses the requirement of a nationally cohesive authoritarian state—led by a beneficial
tyranny—that must establish a solid moral order and ensure the defense of Western civilization).
The relationship between the two positions is revealing in that the chief intellectuals identified
with the neocons (e.g., Francis Fukuyama, Samuel P. Huntington, Robert Kagan, and William
Kristol), though they frequently disagree in public on matters of philosophy and policy, are
united by their enthusiasm for neoliberal economics. Giving continuity to the U.S. ruling class is
a belief in a neoliberal market standard of civilization and in the leading role of the U.S. in
securing this standard of civilization, by force if necessary. The more brutal and coercive form of
capitalist rule that is currently being reconfigured, then, is less concerned with liberal tropes of
prosperity, representation, and freedom than with asserting a universal (neoliberal) market
standard of civilization.¶ Since the birth of the U.S. state, the central legitimating myth has been
the assumption that the U.S. had adopted the mantle of the guardian of Western civilization.
The genocides of indigenous populations that enabled European colonization of the Americas,
particularly in North America, were committed with reference to a “chosen people” mythology
derived from the Christian Bible. Central to this mythology is the idea that the U.S. inherited
from the Europeans the guardianship of Western civilization. As Amin (2004: 63) notes,
“thereafter, the United States extended to the whole planet its project of realizing the work that
‘God’ had commanded it to carry out.” The chosen-people myth formed the basis of the Manifest
Destiny doctrine; it was particularly influential in the post-World War II period, especially in
George Kennan’s writings. Recent neocon texts express this view, by contrasting the willingness
with which the U.S. defends Western civilization with the spinelessness of “old” Europe (see
Kagan, 2003). The core legitimating narrative for U.S. imperialism, then, is the claim that the
U.S. is uniquely placed to guarantee peace and stability, and to provide leadership for the weak,
backward, wayward rest of the world; this “chosen people” myth allows the U.S. to stake claims
to global economic leadership and American exceptionalism (Said, 1993: 343-349).¶ The
program first set out by the neocon pressure group—the Project for the New American Century—
has now been fully realized in Afghanistan and Iraq and has taken American exceptionalism to
new heights. Seeking to use a full complement of diplomatic, political, and military efforts to
preserve and extend “an international order friendly to our security, our prosperity, and our
principles,”2 the program represents a profoundly nationalist stance that expresses U.S.
preemptive strategy in terms derived from a “chosen people” myth. Legitimacy for U.S. global
hegemony at this juncture is based upon a patriotism that reasserts the U.S. as the guardian of
Western civilization.¶ Two features of hegemonic rule, the economy and nationhood,
characterize the political moment at the heart of the Imperium that is often “blamed” upon a
neocon cabal. It is the neoliberal economic doctrine, wedded to a strengthening of patriotic
allegiances to the United States. This moment of political leadership in the U.S. invokes loyalty
to the nation-state as an explicit means of strengthening a particular form of market capitalism
and uses the market to strengthen allegiance to particularly violent and authoritarian forms of
state power. It seeks a commitment to supporting the coercive responses of national states and
the uninterrupted progress of the global market as twin bulwarks against terrorism.¶
US hegemony is rooted in the promotion of a neoliberal economics- it
allows institutions to be controlled by Multinational Corporations
which fuels a new form of ultra-imperialism
Glenn, Professor of IR and Politics @ Southhampton University, 2014 (John, “Imperial governance, sovereignty and the
management of chronic instability in Africa”, Third World Quarterly, 35:8, 1476-1495, 2014, Taylor and Francis)
The need to try to refashion all the states of the world so that they become
adequate
for the administration of global order
is now seen as
the reproduction and
extension of global capitalism
The foreign policy of Bush
heralded
a flurry of works on
new imperialism’
the end of the Cold War,
created a
unipolar moment’ in which the US
stood head and shoulders above any other state
A general
trend emerged in which US imperialism was portrayed in a positive light, arguing that it
provided international public goods, such as security and stability,
Such
support emanated not only from conservative think-tanks, such as the American Enterprise
Institute
but from various academics, who argued that the US should
become an imperialist power set up a fully functioning colonial office and establish itself as
a ‘liberal empire’.
a liberal imperial model
offers the best prospects for economic growth by guaranteeing not just economic openess but,
more important, the institutional foundations for successful development
Introduction
at least minimally
– and this
also
a general condition of
– is now the central problem for the American state.1
what was labelled the ‘
the
administration
. Such writings not only reflected the move by the USA towards a far more assertive foreign policy after 9/11, but also the fact that, with
the demise of the only other superpower
economic and military power,
rather unusual ‘
A, in terms of
and looked likely to do so for the foreseeable future.2 As Charles Krauthammer succinctly put it at the
time, ‘American pre-eminence is based on the fact that it is the only country with the military, diplomatic, political and economic assets to be a decisive player in any conflict in whatever part of the world it ch ooses to involve itself’.3
while at the same time promoting democracy and human rights.4
(AEI) and the Project for the New American Century (PANC),
reluctance to
A
shake off its
,
5 This sometimes took the form of a modern day version of the ‘white man’s burdern’, in which it was argued that: [for] many colonies, the experiment with political independence has been a failure in economic
and in political terms. Sub-Saharan Africa, in particular, has been impoverished not by the oft-denounced legacies of colonialism but by decades of misrule since independence. By contrast,
.6 In reaction to this a wide range of writers has analysed the
changes in US foreign policy and its increasingly interventionist stance from a Marxist perspective. This has been undertaken from three principal directions: (1) the argument that capitalism has evolved to a contemporary state in which it is ‘organized both
economically and politically along transnational lines’; (2) the argument that the USA has succeeded (and will continue to do so) in subordinating ‘other leading states to American hegemony’; and (3) an analysis based on Lenin’s and Bukharin’s thesis of
capitalism may move beyond imperialism to that of ultraimperialism, eventually leading to a pacific global capitalist system in which inter-state rivalry
imperialism.7 The first of these approaches takes its cue from Karl Kautsky’s arguments that
is rendered redundant
transnationalist capitalist
resembles less and
less competition between national capitalist
The transnational corporations directly
distribute labor power over various markets
leading to ‘the
new biopolitical structuring of the world’
conception of a transnational
capitalist class, loosened from any state
to spawn a supranational global state’ as ‘clearly
exceedingly extravagant
.8 Thus William Robinson identifies the emergence of a
class such that politics ‘
groups, expressed in earlier epochs as state rivalries’ to a situation where ‘transnational conglomerates now compete against each other’.9
Although they come from a rather different school of thought, Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri concur with this position, arguing that ‘
, functionally allocate resources, and organize hierarchically the various sectors of world production’,
.10 The second approach views the neo-Kautskyian ‘
moorings or about
’. Yet at the same time it argues that ‘so too is any conception of a return to rival national bourgeoisies’.11 Rather, the second approach argues that, unlike other hegemons, the USA has been singularly
successful ‘in integrating all the other capitalist powers into an effective system of coordination under its aegis’.12 The final approach is heavily influenced by Lenin’s and Bukharin’s arguments that the most advanced states are driven towards imperialism as ‘the
policy of finance capital’,13 to overcome crises of capital surplus.14 Thus contemporary followers of this thesis argue that it still holds true that the ‘internationalisation of production, circulation and investment’ combined with the ‘interpenetration of private capital
and the nation-state’ leads to the global economy becoming ‘the arena for competition among capitals that tends now to take the form of geopolitical conflict among states’.15 This paper uses the insights of the latter group, arguing that the over-accumulation crisis of
that we remain in
an era marked by a US empire, that ‘the asymmetric power relationships that
emerged out of the penetration and integration among the leading capitalist countries
under the rubric of informal American empire
and the development
of greater trade competitiveness and capital mobility that accompanied it; rather they were
refashioned and reconstituted through the era of neoliberal globalization over the
past two decades’.1 Although the economic crisis
galvanised the US into promoting at
times painful economic reforms among
these states continued to benefit from the liberal
economic trade and investment regime
they have not only acquiesced but have also been
active participants in the promotion of neoliberal economic policies
The
resulting rise of imperial governance
came about in large part because of the perturbations caused by these policies
this
restructuring of capitalist relations represented a spatio-temporal fix to the recurring problem of
capital over-accumulation in order for the reproduction and extension of capitalism to be
successful
the dominant powers have had to become ever more involved in the
administration of these states, mediated through multinational institutions and a
plethora of other agencies
the multinational institutions have
embedded themselves in the sinews of these states
The rise of these so-called ‘governance states’ and the new emphasis on
‘governance with government’ constitutes a new non-territorial, political form of
imperialism.19 Clearly these changes do not constitute the re-emergence of traditional colonialism marked by ‘systems of rule, by one group over another, where the first claims a right...to
the late 1960s and early 1970s within the advanced industrialised economies was a watershed moment leading to a major reconfiguration of economic relations.16 However, it also argues, à la Panitch and Gindin
were not dissolved in the wake of the crisis of the Golden Age in the 1970s,
7
of the 1970s
A
its allies,
. Moreover,
in Africa and elsewhere.
, in which a plethora of external actors not only set the parameters of the political and economic agenda but also help imple ment it on a quotidian basis,
. As David Harvey points out,
. 18 Yet,
in Africa,
(G7)
. However, unlike in the pre-First World War colonial form of dominance,
, directing and setting the general parameters of state policy to such an extent that one can no longer speak of these countries
as possessing full de facto independence.
exercise exclusive sovereignty over the second and to shape its destiny’.20 Rather it is argued that, in the current epoch, juridical sovereignty has become so firmly established as an international norm that the
costs of violating such a norm over an extended period and on a regular basis have become too high (ie in contrast to the short-term military interventions that have become common since the end of the Cold
the emergence of governance states does represent a form of neo-imperialism in which
not only are the policies that these states can pursue severely delimited, but the actual
implementation of such policies is both monitored and facilitated by an array of external actors
that have embedded themselves within the very sinews of these states. Moreover, such reforms have entailed an interpellative process shaping the very subjectivities of state elites. This goes
beyond the traditional debates surrounding sovereignty in International Relations
concerning external influences on policy making, agenda setting and policy outcomes. Rather,
the focus is also on how ‘habits and conduct have deepened’ and the way in which ‘the
neoliberal repertoire has become more embedded in social practice…Aid technicians and high-level civil
servants have articulated the language of international development into their own policymaking and
discussions with external agency representatives.’ 21 This re-constitution of elites’ subjectivities
involves a shift away from the concept of the state as provider to one of enabler in a new
probusiness, pro-competitive environment that emphasises open borders in terms of trade and
capital. Such an interpellative process, if successful, will ensure the continuance of neoliberal reforms even if the aforementioned external actors withdraw over time.
War). However,
Immigration
Immigration requires acceptance of neoliberal institutions to truly be
an American
Cisneros Professor of communications university of Illinois at Urbana
Champaign 8
David A Nation of Immigrants and a Nation of Laws: Race, Multiculturalism, and Neoliberal
Exception in Barack Obama’s Immigration Discourse
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/cccr.12088/abstract
In his public discourse, Obama provided another archetype of the exemplary immigrant, the
military service member, who, in contrast to the entrepreneur, provided a different model for
neoliberal responsibility and self-management. In his 2010 speech, for example, the president
talked about Perla Ramos, an immigrant “born and raised in Mexico, [who] came to the United
States shortly after 9/11, and eventually joined the Navy” (para. 7). Obama (2011) also talked
about “a young man named Granger Michael from Papua New Guinea, a Marine who deployed
to Iraq three times. Here’s what he said about becoming an American citizen. ‘I might as well. I
love this country already’” (para. 7). Obama (2013a) praised Alan Aleman, one of the first to
receive a stay of deportation through the DACA program because he had “emerge[d] from the
shadows” and was “studying to become a doctor” and “hope[d] to join the Air Force” (para. 46–
47). In addition to these specific references, Obama (2012a) also regularly invoked the military
service member as an example of an ideal, responsible, and desirable immigrant, stating, “I’ve
got a young person who is serving in our military, protecting us and our freedom. The notion
that in some ways we would treat them as expendable makes no sense” (para. 29; cf. Obama,
2012b). Obama’s logic here was a welcome check to those who would argue that the rule of law
trumps all other humanitarian considerations. Instead, Obama celebrated immigrants’
contributions to the nation and argued that concern for immigrants’ welfare and attention to
their expression of cultural citizenship should factor into decisions about immigration
enforcement. However, these stories, like those of economic entrepreneurs, also helped to
establish the difference between ideal and nonideal immigrants by representing another type of
responsible self-management, the highest expression of which was national service. Previous
presidents also made explicit reference to immigrant service members in their speeches (see
Amaya, 2007; Beasley, 2004; Edwards & Herder, 2012). However, Obama’s stories were unique
because they helped to define the neoliberal exception as the governing logic of his
administration’s approach to immigration and citizenship. The image of the immigrant service
member functioned as what Ong (2006) called “exception to neoliberalism” and “neoliberalism
as exception” (p. 5). The service member represented one of the few ways to exercise prudential
self-management and responsibility outside of the explicit logic of the marketplace—an
exception to neoliberal rationality calculated for the sake of national sovereignty. At the same
time, this was neoliberalism as exception because immigrants who embodied responsibility in a
way that presented a significant social benefit to the nation were the exception to concerns about
jobs, protectionism, and economic calculability. Apart from the stories referenced above, the
emphasis on responsibility as a neoliberal exception can also be seen governing immigration
policies such as the DREAM Act, DACA, and prosecutorial discretion. These policies rely heavily
on the dichotomy between responsible/good immigrants versus irresponsible/criminal/bad
immigrants, the former who are exceptions to concerns about national sovereignty and the rule
of law and the latter who are excepted from promises of neoliberal mobility and individualism.
For example, the administration’s prosecutorial discretion policy was touted as part of an
approach to targeting and deporting “criminal” immigrants, and the DACA and DREAM Act
both work on the idea that certain immigrants should be exempted from deportation because of
their embrace of neoliberal responsibility (Gonzales, 2010; Nevins, 2012). Obama (2010) also
tied comprehensive immigration reform to neoliberal values, arguing that “we should make it
easier for the best and brightest to come to start a business and develop products and create
jobs” (para. 38), and that undocumented immigrants “earn their way to citizenship” by paying
taxes, learning English, and “going to the back of the line” (Obama, 2013a, para. 30). Again that
Obama drew distinctions between desirable and undesirable immigrants should not be
surprising, since it is an inherent thread of presidential immigration discourse and policy; the
important point to emphasize here is the way in which these distinctions contributed to and
participated in a cultural moment of neoliberal racialization. The trope of responsibility, like
that of entrepreneurialism discussed previously, was indexed to neoliberal forms of whiteness
(Garner, 2012). Obama (2011) told the story of engineer and NASA astronaut José Hernández,
who encapsulated the figure of entrepreneur and national serviceman. Hernández was born in
California, “though he could have just as easily been born on the other side of the border, had it
been a different time of year, because his family” of migrant farm workers “moved with the
seasons. Two of his siblings were actually born in Mexico” (para. 41). Despite the place of his
birth and the educational and economic challenges he faced, Hernández kept studying, and
graduated high school. He kept studying, earning an engineering degree and a graduate degree.
He kept working hard, ending up at a national laboratory. … And a few years later, he found
himself more than 100 miles above the surface of the earth, staring out the window of the
Shuttle Discovery, remembering the boy in the California fields with a crazy dream and an
unshakable belief that everything was possible in America. … That’s the American Dream right
there. That’s what we’re fighting for. We are fighting for every boy and every girl like José with a
dream and potential that’s just waiting to be tapped. (para. 45–47) Neoliberal values of
individual responsibility and entrepreneurialism provided the exception to nation-state logics of
citizenship and belonging for Hernández, for though he was born as a U.S. citizen, Hernández’s
real inclusion into the American community came through his faith and success in achieving the
American Dream (as an entrepreneur and through his national service). The racialized image of
the migrant farmworker performing stoop labor in the hot sun was transformed into the
engineer, entrepreneur, and astronaut through embrace of the American Dream and neoliberal
values of hard work, responsibility, and service. Hernández’s embodiment of neoliberal
subjectivity and a moral economy of whiteness helped to insure his belonging more than did his
actual legal status as citizen. On the contrary, Hernández’s siblings had been born on the other
side of the border, a clarification that highlighted the exceptions to entrepreneurialism that
turned on national sovereignty. Racialization also took shape through the administration’s
rhetoric of criminalization. Criminal immigrants embodied an excess/absence of neoliberal
characteristics because they worked too hard for too little, they stole jobs from other citizens,
and they crossed borders and went outside of the law for economic benefit. These
undocumented immigrants were too entrepreneurial (or not enough), too individual (or not
enough), or too monocultural. This meant they did not really believe in the nation’s precepts
and/or that they threatened its sovereignty and economy, making them the target of police
surveillance, prosecution, or deportation. This dichotomy between exemplary and “criminal”
immigrants points to what Lisa Marie Cacho (2012) termed the “dilemma” of social value: the
fact that the social value of one marginalized group is often constructed through the “social
death” of “an/other, and that other is almost always poor, racialized, criminalized, segregated,
legally vulnerable, and unprotected” (p. 17). These populations “are excluded from law’s
protection, [but] they are not excluded from law’s discipline, punishment, and regulation” (p. 5).
While certain undocumented immigrants, such as the DREAMers or immigrant service
members, were recuperated and given social value, the method of doing so revolved around the
denial of value to other racialized archetypes of immigrants, such as the unskilled worker, the
criminal border crosser, or the irresponsible immigrant become a public charge. So pervasive
are these racialized forms of demanding social value that they are found in the discourse of some
immigrant activists, who through their efforts to assert their social worth normalize certain
forms of socioeconomic class and education as markers of the “model” citizen (Anguiano &
Chávez, 2011). This discourse granted social value to certain immigrants who embraced
responsibility and entrepreneurialism while contributing to the social death of criminalized and
racialized populations.
Immigrants are accepted in order to benefit neoliberal institutions
Cisneros Professor of communications university of Illinois at Urbana
Champaign 8
David A Nation of Immigrants and a Nation of Laws: Race, Multiculturalism, and Neoliberal
Exception in Barack Obama’s Immigration Discourse
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/cccr.12088/abstract
Throughout his immigration rhetoric, Obama (2010, 2011, 2013a) spoke consistently about
great immigrant entrepreneurs, industrialists, and geniuses who contributed to the economic
competitiveness of the nation through their ingenuity. These exemplary immigrants “helped
make this country stronger[,] more prosperous,” and “more competitive in the global economy”
(2011, para. 13). “America reaps incredible economic rewards because we remain a magnet for
the best and brightest from across the globe,” because “folks travel here in the hopes of being a
part of a culture of entrepreneurship and ingenuity.” Meanwhile, the “countless names and quiet
acts” of immigrants helping to build the U.S. economy also contribute to “a younger workforce—
and a faster-growing economy—than many of our competitors” (Obama, 2010, para. 13–14).
Although the economic framing of immigration and stories of exemplary immigrants have been
features of presidential immigration rhetoric since at least President Reagan (Beasley, 2004),
Obama specifically emphasized entrepreneurialism, self-employment, the founding of industry,
and the “creation” of jobs, as markers of ideal immigrants’ assimilation. In the neoliberal era,
immigrants’ economic calculability is defined specifically as entrepreneurialism and hightech/high-skilled labor. One clear example here is the story of Prachee Devadas who, Obama
(2010) stated, “came to this country, became a citizen, and opened up a successful technology
services company. … Today, she employs more than a hundred people” (para. 15). The stories of
Devadas and of other exemplary immigrant entrepreneurs “remind us that immigrants have
always helped to build and defend this country—and that being an American is not a matter of
blood or birth. … Anybody can help us write the next great chapter in our history” (para. 16).
Immigration was a “driving force” in economic growth because “almost half of the Fortune 500
companies … were started by first- or second-generation immigrants” (Obama, 2013c, para. 5;
see also Obama, 2013d). It was not only immigrants’ hard work that was valorized here but more
specifically the fact that immigrants’ were a net gain in the neoliberal economic calculus because
they started industries and “created” jobs (Obama, 2013a, para. 20; see also Obama, 2011). In
contrast to the above stories of immigrant entrepreneurs, Obama’s references to blue collar
immigrant laborers were fewer and far between and did not feature specifics. Speaking about
nonentrepreneurial, working-class immigrants, he referenced them as “the countless names and
quiet acts”— the “steady stream of hardworking and talented people [that] has made America
the engine of the global economy and a beacon of hope around the world” (Obama, 2010, para.
13–14; see also Obama, 2011). This sort of argument helped to humanize unauthorized
immigrants through appeals to values of hard work and humility. However, the industrial
metaphor of this passage was telling because it contrasted the bifurcated roles for immigrants:
on one side, the many stories of talented entrepreneurs charting new industry, and, on the
other, the nameless stream of immigrant workers who provided fuel for the national economy.
The president noted that “the presence of so many illegal immigrants makes a mockery of all
those who are trying to immigrate legally” (2011, para. 11). He stated that “an indiscriminate
approach” to legalization “would be both unwise and unfair. It would suggest to those thinking
about coming here illegally that there will be no repercussions for such a decision. And this
could lead to a surge in more illegal immigration” (Obama, 2010, para. 29). Undocumented
immigrants also “live in the shadows” and fall prey to “unscrupulous businesses” that “put
companies who follow those rules, and Americans who rightly demand the minimum wage or
overtime or just a safe place to work, at an unfair disadvantage” (2010, para. 20). Although
Obama celebrated immigrants’ entrepreneurial economic contributions, he also painted lowskilled immigrants as to blame, at least in part, for lost jobs, rising wages, broken borders, and a
shrinking middle class.
Immigration serves to normalize the neoliberal perception of an ideal
citizen
Cisneros Professor of communications university of Illinois at Urbana
Champaign 8
David A Nation of Immigrants and a Nation of Laws: Race, Multiculturalism, and Neoliberal
Exception in Barack Obama’s Immigration Discourse
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/cccr.12088/abstract
Building on this research, I suggest that the portrayals of responsibility and the American
Dream that dominate modern neoliberal rhetorics of immigration may themselves be seen as a
primary mode through which racialization of immigration and citizenship take shape. In other
words, in an era of racial neoliberalism, governments use such forms of purportedly kinder and
gentler political discourse to designate “different forms of immigration, and/or sources of
immigration” as “problematic or unproblematic,” implicitly engaging “race” and recentering
whiteness through markers of class, nationality, and culture (Garner, 2007, p. 72). This is
because racial neoliberalism hides and disperses racism and racialization through culture, class,
nationality, and so on, which allows for the possibility of racialization that purports to be
colorblind (Jones & Mukherjee, 2010; Kundnani, 2012). As Lentin and Titley (2012) wrote,
“‘Race’ is a category error that the West has resolved,” but “culture, post-race, is elevated
ontologically” and represents the way in which “race-thinking remains immanent” (p. 132). We
see this process, for example, in the “moral economy of whiteness” (Garner, 2012, p. 461) that is
produced through discourses about values, competence, hard work, and respectability—all of
which become indexed to whiteness. Through such a process, whiteness functions as “strategic
rhetoric” (Nakayama & Krizek, 1995) that can move and shift, sometimes incorporating people
of color into whiteness as exceptions that normalize the white/Western norm.
Their Immigration policy see people by their potential monetary value
to the economy.
Cisneros PhD, 2015 (Dr. J David Cisneros Department of Communication at U of Illinois,
PhD in Speech Communication (Rhetoric), Specializes in Critical Rhetoric, Race/ Ethnicity,
Immigration, Social Movement Rhetoric, “A Nation of Immigrants and a Nation of Laws: Race,
Multiculturalism and Neoliberal Exception in Barack Obama’s Immigration Discourse”
Published, January 23, 2015, pages 1-20, Yung Jung)
Throughout his immigration rhetoric, Obama (2010, 2011, 2013a) spoke consistently about
great immigrant entrepreneurs, industrialists, and geniuses who contributed to the economic
competitiveness of the nation through their ingenuity. These exemplary immigrants “helped
make this country stronger[,] more prosperous,” and “more competitive in the global economy”
(2011, para. 13). “America reaps incredible economic rewards because we remain a magnet for
the best and brightest from across the globe,” because “folks travel here in the hopes of being a
part of a culture of entrepreneurship and ingenuity.” Meanwhile, the “countless names and quiet
acts” of immigrants helping to build the U.S. economy also contribute to “a younger workforce—
and a faster-growing economy—than many of our competitors” (Obama, 2010, para. 13–14).
Although the economic framing of immigration and stories of exemplary immigrants have been
features of presidential immigration rhetoric since at least President Reagan (Beasley, 2004),
Obama specifically emphasized entrepreneurialism, self-employment, the founding of industry,
and the “creation” of jobs, as markers of ideal immigrants’ assimilation. In the neoliberal era,
immigrants’ economic calculability is defined specifically as entrepreneurialism and hightech/high-skilled labor. One clear example here is the story of Prachee Devadas who, Obama
(2010) stated, “came to this country, became a citizen, and opened up a successful technology
services company. … Today, she employs more than a hundred people” (para. 15). The stories of
Devadas and of other exemplary immigrant entrepreneurs “remind us that immigrants have
always helped to build and defend this country—and that being an American is not a matter of
blood or birth. … Anybody can help us write the next great chapter in our history” (para. 16).
Immigration was a “driving force” in economic growth because “almost half of the Fortune 500
companies … were started by first- or second-generation immigrants” (Obama, 2013c, para. 5;
see also Obama, 2013d). It was not only immigrants’ hard work that was valorized here but more
specifically the fact that immigrants’ were a net gain in the neoliberal economic calculus because
they started industries and “created” jobs (Obama, 2013a, para. 20; see also Obama, 2011). In
contrast to the above stories of immigrant entrepreneurs, Obama’s references to blue collar
immigrant laborers were fewer and far between and did not feature specifics. Speaking about
nonentrepreneurial, working-class immigrants, he referenced them as “the countless names and
quiet acts”— the “steady stream of hardworking and talented people [that] has made America
the engine of the global economy and a beacon of hope around the world” (Obama, 2010, para.
13–14; see also Obama, 2011). This sort of argument helped to humanize unauthorized
immigrants through appeals to values of hard work and humility. However, the industrial
metaphor of this passage was telling because it contrasted the bifurcated roles for immigrants:
on one side, the many stories of talented entrepreneurs charting new industry, and, on the
other, the nameless stream of immigrant workers who provided fuel for the national economy.
The president noted that “the presence of so many illegal immigrants makes a mockery of all
those who are trying to immigrate legally” (2011, para. 11). He stated that “an indiscriminate
approach” to legalization “would be both unwise and unfair. It would suggest to those thinking
about coming here illegally that there will be no repercussions for such a decision. And this
could lead to a surge in more illegal immigration” (Obama, 2010, para. 29). Undocumented
immigrants also “live in the shadows” and fall prey to “unscrupulous businesses” that “put
companies who follow those rules, and Americans who rightly demand the minimum wage or
overtime or just a safe place to work, at an unfair disadvantage” (2010, para. 20). Although
Obama celebrated immigrants’ entrepreneurial economic contributions, he also painted lowskilled immigrants as to blame, at least in part, for lost jobs, rising wages, broken borders, and a
shrinking middle class. Obama emphasized entrepreneurialism (rather than class mobility, cf.
Demo, 2006) as key to immigrants’ economic utility. Speaking of DREAM Act eligible youth,
Obama (2012a) stated, “If there is a young person here who has grown up here and wants to
contribute to this society, wants to maybe start a business that will create jobs for other folks
who are looking for work, that’s the right thing to do” (para. 29, see also Obama, 2012b). Stories
of successful immigrants constructed a “moral economy” (Garner, 2007, p. 67) in which highly
skilled and entrepreneurial immigrants were valued as worthy of exceptional rights, mobility,
and ultimately citizenship because of their class, economic calculability, and embrace of
neoliberal subjectivity. And although visa categories had already been created by past presidents
for highly skilled immigrants and immigrant investors, the administration’s proposal for reform
included several more such provisions such as “‘stapling’ a green card to the diplomas” of
successful STEM graduates and creating a “startup visa” for job creators (“Fact sheet,” 2013).
Some immigrants were neoliberal entrepreneurs who helped to build the country and thus
possessed human capital and economic/cultural value, and other immigrants did not have that
value, and thus they represented fuel for the nation’s economy, at best, or economic or political
threats, at worst. I argue that a “neoliberal exception” was the linchpin in such public discourse
and policy about immigration. The neoliberal exception describes “the interplay among
technologies of governing and of disciplining, of inclusion and exclusion, of giving value or
denying value to human conduct” (Ong, 2006, p. 5). Here, exception regulated the right and
wrong kinds of immigrants by indexing neoliberal values. Stories of immigrant entrepreneurs
and immigration as an economic calculus seemed to dichotomize entrepreneurial and ordinary
immigrants, the former who remained exempt from concerns about national sovereignty
because of their neoliberal value(s) and the latter who could be exempted from neoliberal
promises of economic opportunity and belonging because they raised protectionist fears about
lost jobs or threatened U.S. sovereignty. In Obama’s discourse, this “graduated citizenship” did
not turn on race or ethnicity (cf. Ong, 2006, pp. 78–79) but rather participated in the
racialization of certain groups based on their economic calculability. Whiteness took shape
through characteristics such as “industriousness, community-mindedness, fitting in to norms
(not being different) and [economic/societal] contributions” (Garner, 2012, p. 461), rather than
through appeals to phenotype. Some exemplary immigrants could become part of this moral
economy, while others were racialized as “living within the shadows,” as not ideal at least in part
because they did not represent the proper neoliberal economic calculus. Of course, one would
expect a U.S. president to designate certain types of immigrants as desirable and others as not
desirable. What bears emphasis here are the types of characteristics that were valorized and how
these characteristics intersected with racial neoliberalism and neoliberal multiculturalism. In
this case, neoliberal values and qualities dovetailed with the mobility of whiteness as a strategic
rhetoric and with images of the global, entrepreneurial citizen. Obama’s discourse of
entrepreneurial immigrants was indicative of the ways in which neoliberal economic logics
subtend immigration and citizenship and entwine with colorblind racialization (a colorblind
racialization that implicates the president himself). Such a logic of neoliberal exception was also
evident in the way that “responsibility” structured policies, such as DACA, prosecutorial
discretion programs, and the targeting of “criminal” immigrants
Internet
A free internet is inherently capitalist in nature
Ragnedda , PHD, 07¶ (Massimo, p. 21-23)¶ Ragnedda, Massimo, and Glenn W.
Muschert. The Digital Divide: The Internet and Social Inequality in International Perspective.
1st ed. Vol. 1. N.p.: 7 Stories, 07. Print.
The innovation of digital technology alongside globalization, neo- liberalism, and
consumerism is generating social transformation and is ushering in what some
commentators call an “information society” (Webster, 2004) or a “networked
society” (Castells, 2001). In changes to a network and information society there is continuity
in that the economy is still based on capitalism (Robins and Webster, 1999). The use of
digital technology in economic activity is situated within global capitalism that is
based on a networked organization of production processes and patterns of
consumption (Fuchs, 2008).
This networked organization of social and economic life is facilitated by a digital
infrastructure for an e-economy and information society (Castells, 2001). For economies
to be competitive in a global market, they need to be connected to the digital infrastructure and they
require a labor force that has the education and skills to work in an e-economy. From the point of
view of ordinary people their life chances are linked to having the capability to
work in the e-economy to ensure employment. The acquisition of the appropriate
education and skills to enable people to engage in economic life is differentiated
amongst class, cultural capital and status, gender, ethnicity, digital literacy and
opportunities across the life course at the local, regional, and national level .
Furthermore as digital technology is embedded in political communication,
individuals need access and skills to engage in the democratic process (Wessels,
2010). Access to social and cultural networks is highly differentiated along class,
status, and ethnic lines in terms of cultural capital, which relates to inequality in
participation (Kolko, Nakamura and Rodman, 2000). Age and gender cuts across
all of these divisions and undermines older people and women’s ability to engage
and participate (Cockburn, 1983; Hacker, 1990). The e-economy facilitates the agile
development of global value chains of production and consumption. Global corporations are
able to produce, distribute, and market products and services efficiently and cheaply by taking
advantage of national and regional low labor costs and just-in-time production processes. A
consequence of this type of networked process is that it dis-empowers nation states and weakens
national economies (Castells, 2001; Freeman, 2000). This interacts with the provision of
welfare, both for Western advanced economies and for developing countries. In various
corporate settlements after the Second World War, governments in European nation states
created types of welfare systems that could mitigate to some degree the inequalities inherent in a
capitalist economy by providing basic support for those living in poverty and those unemployed;
by providing greater equality of opportunity through education; and providing a universal
health care system free at the poin Given the networked context of inequality, an
expansion of the definition of digital divides is one that addresses the multidimensional aspect of inequality in a digital age. The multi-dimensional approach
includes the dynamics of socio-economic position, geographic location, ethnicity
and language, as well as educational capacities and digital literacy. These
dynamics are further complicated at the global level, where lower Internet
penetration in developing countries (although this can be uneven within these
countries), combined with the rapid change of the Internet-based technological
paradigm, requires that the less-developed countries have to outperform advanced
economies just to stay where they are, thus fostering and reproducing global
inequalities (Castells, 2001). Under the current social and institutional conditions
of transnational-networked capitalism there is uneven development that is putting
many at risk of poverty and social exclusion (Wessels, 2010). The dynamics of
inclusion and exclusion require consideration of the restructuring of the capitalist economy, its
networked logic underpinned by digital technology and trends towards post-Fordist welfare. The
dynamics of transnational informational capitalism within an ethos of neo-liberalism is
interacting with social and economic life at the local, regional, national and global level (Room,
1995). Situations of exclusion are experienced at the local level, which link to regional and
national economic conditions and policy, whilst also relating to trends in the global economy
(Steinert and Pilgram, 2007; Young, 2000). A phenomenology of exclusion points to different
dimensions, such as political exclusion (via citizenship), economic exclusion (through lack of
means), social exclusion (through isolation), and cultural exclusion (through deficits in
education). Steinert’s (2007) definition captures the dynamics of exclusion, arguing that social
exclusion is adynamic and multi-dimensional process ... as the continuous and gradual
exclusion from full participation in the social, including material as well as symbolic, resources
produced, supplied and exploited in a society for making a living, organizing a life and taking
part in the development of a (hopefully better) future (p.
Neoliberalism fills the gap created by a reduction in governmental
regulation of the Internet.
Mansell, PhD, 2011
(Robin, Continuum: Journal of Media and Cultural Studies, Volume 25, No.1 p. 19-22)
Raymond Williams’ comment applies as much to the media and communication systems of his
time as it does to today’s Internet era. As Silverstone (2007: 26) wrote, “mediated connection
and interconnection define the dominant infrastructure for the conduct of social, political and
economic life across the globe”. The Internet is no more a neutral configuration of technologies
than was the earlier media and communication system. If there are forces that are shaping the
Internet’s development in ways that are not equitable then there is a case for countering them.
This paper offers an assessment of current trends in policy and regulation that bear on the
Internet. The aim is to discern whether visions of a post-neoliberal period are visible in policy
and regulatory practice in this area. Though some argue that developments in Internet
governance are beginning to wrest control of the Internet away from state or private sector
influence,i I suggest that this is a very one-sided view. In this paper, I argue that the forces
influencing Internet developments are not benign because an unregulated Internet is unlikely to
maximise the benefits of the Internet for all. This paper focuses on corporate interests in the
Internet’s evolution and on the state’s role in regulating various components of the
infrastructure and services that employ the Internet. The following section considers the
paradoxical alliance between the neoliberal agenda and the advocates of the open unregulated
Internet. The impact of the neoliberal agenda on the 2 telecommunication, broadcast and
Internet segments of the media and communication industry is then considered briefly,
providing a basis for a more in-depth consideration of the incentives encouraging corporate
actors to engage in monopolisation strategies as a means of maximising their profits. In the
penultimate section, the likelihood of a shift to policy based on a post-neoliberal paradigm is
explored through an examination of some recent developments in network infrastructure,
broadcast content and radio frequency spectrum policy. Neoliberalism and the Information
Society Neoliberalism is a philosophy that privileges markets as the primary means of
organising society. It also serves as a metaphor for the workings of capitalism. Stiglitz (2008: 1)
calls it a “grab-bag of ideas based on the fundamentalist notion that markets are self-correcting,
allocate resources efficiently, and serve the public interest well”. In the mid-2000s following the
recession he commented that, not only was neoliberalism never supported by economic theory,
it is a political doctrine, the influence of which may wane in the wake of new evidence that
markets are not self-correcting. His hope is for a guiding theory that might provide a foundation
for policy practice more consistent with the goals of equity and enhanced social welfare. What is
the evidence for this in the context of Internet-related policy and regulation? Proponents of
neoliberalism favour the supply side of the economy and the welfare of the individual over that
of the community. Neoliberalism encourages market decentralisation, consistent with the idea
that in ‘free markets’ no transacting party has power over any other. For neoliberals, the welfare
maximising pathway is towards economic growth through non-interference by governments in
markets. Bentham’s liberalism of the early 18th century preceded neoliberalism. He called for
the liberal state to guarantee free markets so that “… everyone’s natural desire to maximize his
own utility, or at least not to starve, would bring everyone into productive relations which would
maximise the aggregate utility of the society” (MacPherson, 1964: 488). J S Mill later “rejected
the maximization of indifferent utilities as the criterion of social good, and put in 3 its place the
maximum development and use of human capacities – moral, intellectual, aesthetic, as well as
material productive capacities” (MacPherson, 1964: 489). Mill found no means through which
these values could provide a mechanism for economic growth and so the way was open for
marginal utility theory to offer a model in which rewards would flow to people in relation to the
marginal productivity of their contributions. This neoclassical theory requires that an income
distribution be assumed, regardless of whether it is unequal. The result is a theory that assists in
the maintenance of “a massive inequality between owners and workers” (MacPherson, 1964:
494), which limits the development and fulfilment of citizen’s capacities. MacPherson (1964), a
keen observer of markets and democracy, saw that firms would seek to build empires and that
unless the premises of utility maximisation are relinquished, economic growth is unlikely to
become subservient to a democratic vision. The Internet is at the core of the information
economy. This is an economy driven, in part, by a small number of ‘empire-building’ firms such
as Google and Facebook. There are some, like Stiglitz, who hope that the financial problems of
the late 2000s will bring an end to neoliberalism as a political ideology and as a guide to policy
action (Rustin, 2010). Others are more circumspect about claims of the arrival of a postliberalism world (Harvey, 2009). Within the core of the information society – networks and
their applications - there is increasing reliance on market exchange and a reluctance to entertain
policy or regulatory measures that might intervene in the ‘free’ workings of the Internet. Private
interest in profit serves as a benchmark against which many – certainly not all - developments
in Internet activities are judged in relation to their contribution to society. Neoliberal arguments
paradoxically are closely allied with arguments suggesting that any regulation of the Internet
will have dire consequences for its evolution as an open network available to all who choose to
use it. Zittrain (2008: 35), for instance, acknowledges that there are policy problems (privacy,
security, and capacity), but says that intervention, “if undertaken, might ruin the very
environment it is trying to save”. He suggests that we should rely on “technically 4 skilled people
of goodwill … to serve as true alternatives to a centralized, industrialized information economy
…” (Zittrain, 2008: 246). There clearly is an epistemic community of scientists and engineers
who develop internetworking protocols in line with norms of cooperation and sharing and
whose norms are consistent with democratic values and equitable development.ii However, the
privatisation of components of the Internet has meant that there are corporate interests at stake
as well. As a scholar with the foresight to imagine the information society before it became the
focal point of policy promoting the diffusion of digital technologies and their applications, Bell’s
words are salutary. He argued that if “the ‘unmasking’ of ideology, thus is to reveal the
‘objective’ interest behind an idea, and to see what function it serves” (Bell, 1962: 397), in our
case, forbearance of Internet regulation, then the implication is that we need to see if this is
consistent with a society in which power is diffused; one where no single individual or group
“should be able to dictate” (Bell, 1962: 86) what is produced for whom. The Internet market
dynamics bear few of the hallmarks of this vision of an absence of market power, no matter how
much the technical experts may wish for it. Castells (2009: 4) maintains that “the
communication process decisively mediates the way in which power relationships are
constructed and challenged in every domain of social practice, including political practice”.
There is, therefore, a case for scrutiny of what values are prevailing and for a consideration of
the case for policy action.
Islamophobia
Aff incorrectly diagnoses Islamophobia - it is sustained by neoliberal
policies
Cole PhD 2014 (Mike Cole, Professor in Education and Equality, at University of East
London, PhD supervisor, UK, Researches Critical Race Theory ad Marxism within educational
theory, Published November 1st, 2014 http://pfe.sagepub.com/content/12/1/79.full.pdf, pg. 82,
Yung Jung)
The crucial point is that, whereas David Cameron believes that the ‘rule of law’ is neutral, from a
Marxist perspective the legal apparatuses of the state uphold the values and protect the wealth
and privileges of the ruling class. While any society needs a legal system, in the context of
capitalism, especially neo-liberal capitalism, and even more especially austerity capitalism, the
legal ideological and repressive apparatuses of the state work hard, and with considerable
success, to maintain ruling-class hegemony and wealth, and to increase working-class poverty
and immiseration. They also work, via the ideological and repressive apparatuses of the state
(ISAs and RSAs), to restrict immigration and to demonise immigrants and Muslims.
Islamophobia Muslims are one of a plethora of racialised groups denigrated in the UK
historically and contemporaneously (Cole, 2011, chapter 2), but more so in the current
austerity/immiseration climate. Islamophobia is exacerbated by the permanent ‘war on terror’,
and its Islamist response in the context of the continuing imperialist wars in Muslim countries
in which the UK is a major player. The first recorded use of the term ‘Islamophobia’ in English
was, according to Robin Richardson (2011), in 1985 by Edward Said in an article Said wrote for
the journal Race and Class (Said, 1985). The French word ‘islamophobie, Richardson notes, was
coined at least one hundred years ago (Richardson, 2011). It is important to stress that while
Islamophobia may be sparked by skin colour, like other forms of non-colour-coded racism (see
Cole, 2011, chapter 2), Islamophobia is not necessarily triggered by colour of skin – it can also be
set off by one or more (perceived) symbols of the Muslim faith. As Sivanandan (2009, p. ix) puts
it, referring to British Muslims – ‘the terrorist within’ – ‘the victims are marked out not so much
by their colour as by their beards and headscarves’. Liz Fekete (2009) points out how Muslim
cultures are presented in the media ‘through the grossest of stereotypes and simplification’ (p.
48), whereas in fact such cultures are no more of a monolith than Christian ones (p. 85).
Nevertheless, they are treated as all the same, both in terms of the racism directed at them and
in terms of being a threat (p. 125). Fekete (2009, p. 55) discusses the growing trend whereby
arrests and prosecutions are based not on material evidence but on ‘crimes of association’ – that
is, ‘association with terrorists or with the associates of terrorists’. Thus the trustees of mosques
fall under suspicion if they have been fundraising for international causes, such as humanitarian
relief for Palestinian refugees in the occupied territories on the spurious ground that ‘even
though the emergency relief was not destined for terrorist organisations, some of it may have
ended up in their hands’ (p. 50). The UK Terrorism Act of 2000 further cemented institutional
racism aimed at Muslims by creating new offences based on the circulation of information useful
for terrorism (Fekete, 2009, p. 109). The possession of certain books, for example, is an offence.
Even accessing the Internet, perhaps merely out of interest, for information on political or
radical Islam can lead to imprisonment (p. 109). Finally, measures introduced throughout
Europe make it possible to deny citizenship to those with dual nationality who display
symptoms of ‘unacceptable behaviour’ such as the glorification of terrorism (p. 119). Unlike
many other forms of racism, Islamophobia has less to do with immigration and more, in its
contemporary form, to do with the aforementioned ideological processes and policies.
Islamophobic attacks tend to be followed by an increase in Islamist violence, which fuels more
Islamophobia, which, in turn, exacerbates Islamic violence. According to a recent report by
Nigel Copsy (Rawlinson & Gander, 2013), about half (around 700) of mosques and Muslim
centres in Britain have been subject to Islamophobic attacks since 9/11 (September 11, 2001).
Islamophobia is closely related to both old UK (the British Empire) and new US imperialisms
(e.g. in Iraq and Afghanistan) to hegemony and oil.
The aff can’t solve- discrimination of Muslims comes from colonialist
expansion and power struggles between West and East
Chauhuan Professor of History 2005 (Eugenio Chahuan, professor of history and
director of the Center of Arabic Studies at the Faculty of Philosophy and Humanities, the
University of Chile, Vol 12. No.2, http://www.pij.org/details.php?id=346, Yung Jung)
The September 11 attacks set into motion a profound and sensitive debate as the world realized
that even the greatest power in the world can be vulnerable. The impact was felt far and wide,
and Islam became the focus of attention in the media, in seminars, in forums, and in thousands
of publications worldwide. Against the expectation of the many, religion does not seem to be on
the wane; if at all, it is seeing a resurgence, coupled with an enormous capacity to mobilize and
produce changes in various part of the world. There are the cases of Iran, the Philippines,
Afghanistan, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Ireland, the Balkans, Chechnya, and the U.S.A. — with
Bush’s born-again Christianity. Today, most political leaders are adopting an apocalyptic
discourse. They talk of the struggle against evil; they speak in the name of God and try to impose
their own laws and their perception of the good. The German philosopher and sociologist,
Jürgen Habermas, pointed out in a conference that the September 11 attacks have led, in various
ways, to the explosion of the tension between secular and religious societies. And the
anticipation by some social analysts that the 21st century would start under the sign of a clash of
religions, cultures, and civilizations seems to be materializing. The Need for an Antithesis The
long-standing negative mental construct the West has of Islam and the Arabs has been
intensified by the determining role played by the media these days, especially when they are in
the service of colonial interests, military and economic expansionist ideologies, or a vehicle for
the promotion of Western values, which necessarily calls for the demonization of the Other. This
situation has been heightened in the wake of the collapse of the East-West system. It was a
decisive turning point in the process of self-legitimization of the West which predicated its own
identity upon an antithesis — Us/We as opposed to the Other/Them. The Gulf war (1990) that
was orchestrated with a great deal of propaganda has since been used to breach the gap that was
left by the unraveling of the Soviet bloc, replacing it by an even more radical one — Islam —
generally seen not only as an antithetical ideology, but as an all-encompassing cultural
antithesis to the West and its universal identity. In this sense Islam gets converted into the basis
of anti-Westernism, anti-modernism, and anti-civilization all in one. Bringing Western values to
the Middle East? The psychological necessity of the Us to create its identity through the
confrontation with and the discrimination against the Other serves, in this case, a dual purpose.
On the one hand, it promotes the chauvinistic, xenophobic propaganda against the Orient,
Islam, the Arabs, as well as many others; on the other hand, Islam is presented as a threat to the
security of the West. In creating the new antagonism East-West, rationality-irrationality,
modernity-traditionalism by pitting the Us against the Other, the West is in reality negating the
fact that it has since long been an authentically multicultural society. The danger of the present
cultural discourse against Islam is that it is in essence a racist discourse that lumps together
without distinction all persons of differing traits. The counterpoint is that such discrimination
engenders a re-identification on the other side. By this is meant that the propagation of this
erroneous dichotomy could serve dangerously as a self-fulfilling prophecy — those who perceive
themselves as marginalized and are labeled as the new face of the enemy could be drawn into
reconstructing their identity accordingly. Mirror Constructs Occidental societies have formed a
distorted perception of the Arab world. Fanaticism, terrorism, and the danger of an immigration
invasion are features attributed to the Arabs and the Muslims, while the qualities and the rich
cultural and scientific heritage of these people and their contribution to civilization are being
ignored. The problem of Islamophobia is very acute in countries like the U.S., and in many
European countries where attacks have been carried out against Muslims for the simple fact that
they are Muslims, as representatives of this Other that is not accepted on their own territory. A
mirror construct is happening on the side of the Other that finds itself totally invaded by the
West in all areas of life. The Arab East has its own perception of the occidental Other. They are
different images, even contradictory to the extent that each has formed his/her specific concept
of the Occident and the Other. For the West, the Orient can be many things, springing from the
divergence of interests and/or cultural and political assessments. For some, it is a place of
exoticism, a haven of spiritual peace to flee the tumult of civilization. For others it can be a place
for exploitation, colonialism and domination; or the breeding ground of despotism, fanaticism
and fundamentalism. A similar disparity in perception is to be found in the East. To some, the
West is a civilizing and political model that is to be imitated in order emerge from a state of
underdevelopment. It is also a font of scientific and cognitive knowledge that leads to liberation
from the hold of traditionalism and fundamentalism. At the same time, the West also embodies
the colonialist power as it sets out to subjugate the Muslim and the Arab, disparaging their
values and exploiting their resources No More ‘Mare Nostrum’ It has been argued by some, most
notably by Edward Said, the denigration of Islamic civilization associated with Islamophobia is
central to the concept of Western civilization. The ousting and marginalizing of Islam marks the
debut of Western civilization and, thus, explains the depth and longevity of Western
Islamophobia. In order to understand the Western vision of the Orient, it is necessary to go back
in history. Christian Europe between the VII and X centuries was shaken to its depths by the
repercussions of the Arab Islamic conquests. From this moment onwards, the Orient became
identified with Islam. Its birth and rapid expansion modified to a large extent the political
geography of the Mediterranean basin. The Mediterranean Sea ceased to be Mare Nostrum (“our
sea”) and got converted into a place of confrontation between East and West. The Belgian
historian and orientalist, Henri Pirenne wrote in 1935, “Along the shores of Mare Nostrum since
then lay two different and hostile civilizations.”1 There were, then, two different worlds, two
rivals who, since the outset, began their interactions on a belligerent footing. The Muslim Arab
conquests were perceived as unjustified. The West was led into a defensive stance expressed in
the denigration or the demonization of the aggressor; thus, the Muslim was termed as
“devastator of cities,” “destroyer,” “hostage taker,” or “white slave dealer.” Islam was a
provocation in many ways. It lay uneasily close to Christianity, geographically and culturally. It
drew on the Judeo-Hellenic traditions. It borrowed creatively from Christianity — it could boast
unrivalled military and political successes. Nor was this all. The Islamic lands sit adjacent to and
even on top of the biblical lands. Moreover, the heart of the Islamic domain has always been the
region closest to Europe.... From the end of the 7th century to the 16th century, Islam in either
its Arab, Ottoman, North African or Spanish form dominated or effectively threatened European
Christianity. 2 From the Military to the Religious The East-West confrontation that took place as
a result of the Arab expansion in the VIII century was mostly political, economic, and cultural.
The conflict between Christianity and Islam so far did not exist. This was to occur later with the
Crusades between the XI and XIII centuries. Since then the Moor is no more the military enemy
of the West, but Islam is the enemy of Christianity. With the Crusades the virtual line between
the Christian West and the Muslim East is drawn and does not disappear except on rare
occasions. To the negative image of the Muslim is added a pejorative view of Islam the religion.
Such an image was so extensively promoted throughout the Middle Ages that it now forms part
of the Western collective subconscious. Starting with the XIII century, the Orient began to lose
some of its glory. The Muslim Arabs were eclipsed by the emerging Ottoman Empire. The
changes henceforth determine the Western perspectives of the East. If the religious antagonism
lost its edge, it did not disappear entirely, as Islam through the Turk became the impetus behind
the many voyages to the Orient. The main purpose was, nonetheless, to reaffirm the intellectual
supremacy of the West and its art of governance, so much so that the basis of conflict between
the two worlds ceased to be religious as much as political and cultural. With the XVII-XVIII
centuries, the sense of superiority in the West gets coupled with technological progress. To the
vital and progressive Europe is opposed the archaic and immobile East. The colonial act is thus
seen as fully justified. In his Philosophy of History, Hegel incorporates this modern-primitive
dichotomy, associating Islam and the Orient with the primitive world. Perhaps the most
representative synthesis of the modern view of the East and Islam can be found in one of the
discourses the French philologist and Orientalist Ernest Renan made at the Sorbonne in 1883,
when he said that “Islam and the Muslim are incompatible with rationality.”3 Intolerance and
Mental Inertia This Orientalist position is based then on a reality underpinned by the
superiority of the Western Us over the foreign, i.e., the Orient, Them. Its tenet is the binary
opposition of two worlds, two styles, and two cultures. It is the dichotomy between, on the one
hand, the Westerners who are rational, pacific, liberal, logical, and capable of entertaining real
values, and, on the other hand, the Orientals who possess none of these values. The confluence
of negative images facilitates the triumph of the racist message of the ultra-right in the
U.S.A.and Europe. The lack of respect towards other cultures and the exaltation of the Western
model constitute a clear expression of intolerance and resistance to dialogue. Thus, nothing is
more legitimate than for the West to exercise a benevolent tutelage over these weak people —
spreading democracy and “our way of life.” This stereotyping is generated not only by a certain
mental inertia to appreciate anything different, but also accomplishes an actively defensive
function: the prejudices of today preserve and perpetuate the falsehoods of the past. The
European colonial aggression in the Arab countries during the XIX and XX centuries have been
justified by a series of arguments whose common denominator was the depreciation of the
Other, and the negative view of the Arab today is an extension of the imperialist attitudes of a
past not so far away, The crises experienced by Arab societies today — economic political and
cultural — run very deep and their solution is very complex. The violence, consequence of an
accumulation of unresolved conflicts cannot in any way be attributed to cultural or religious
causes, and even less to a so-called genetic disposition towards fanaticism making up the
identity of the Arab. This notion of identity dynamics has been conveniently and
indiscriminately used, often leading to confused and inadequate analyses of the many conflicts
in the Middle East, and giving rise to a monolithic view of the Arabs and the Muslims among the
political community, the media, and even in the world of academe. Conclusion Undeniably,
Islamism is gaining ground today. But this could be viewed as a result of decades of exploitation,
political frustration and discrimination. And this is what gives the Islamist movements their
impetus. If the problems of today stem from a social origin and are getting reinforced by current
economic and political processes, then their solution should be social, carried out on a genuinely
transnational level through a policy of cooperation, especially in the economic sphere, and a
sincere and balanced collaboration in the political domain. If the West is as rational as it claims,
it should address the problems rationally and not through inadequate and inhumane means, as
are armies and bombs. Juan Goytisolo, the contemporary Spanish writer, has this to say about
the situation: “The historical circumstances of the past forty years, the struggle against Western
colonialism, the establishment of the Sate of Israel and the consequent expulsion of the
Palestinians, the Lebanese civil war, and the Iranian revolution have all engendered situations of
violence which place the Islamic world in bloc in the bench of the accused, as causing all the
problems and ills that afflict the world. The Westerners seem to forget that their history and
recent past does not qualify them to give lessons to anybody. Those who systematically denigrate
Islam should be reminded that in this context there have never been bloody inquisitions such as
ours, nor genocides of entire peoples such as those of the Amerindians and the Aborigines, nor
the collective extermination of an entire people of the magnitude of Hitler’s Holocaust, nor the
use of lethal weapons as in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.”
.
Terror talk is part of the neoliberal agenda of intensifying
Islamophobia
Rana PhD Social Anthropology, 2007 (Junaid Rana, studies in Asian American
studies, PhD in Social Anthropology, “The Story of Islamophobia”, Souls Volume: 9 Issue 2,
published June 06, 2007, pages 148-159, Yung Jung)
The language of anti-Muslim racism has named the Muslim as the Saracens, Moors, Turks,
Orientals, Arabs, Africans, Asians, Jews, Indians, Muselmann, etc. To this language we must
consider how the infidel overlaps with the terrorist, the slave with the immigrant. The race-ing
of Islam does not take place in a vacuum but within the context of a specific historical
relationship. In the current racial formation, Islam and Muslims have taken a familiar yet
strange meaning often evoked in the language of war, conquest, terror, fear, and the new
crusades. The racial figure of the Muslim ranges far and wide primarily to include populations
hailing from the Middle East to Africa to South Asia. There is a pervasive logic that connects the
tropes of religion and race. The contemporary racialization of Muslims in the United States
reconnects these histories. Indeed, this process has been quite wide ranging, cutting across
notions of national origin, ethnicity, gender, and color. The contemporary Muslim in the U.S. is
first what Nadine Naber has referred to as the ‘‘Arab-Middle Eastern-Muslim,’’ a conflation of
Arab Americans with Muslim39, but also significantly South Asian American, and is as evident
in so-called terrorist-related arrests in the U.S.: white, Latino, and African American. For the
later two groups, race plays a double threat with racialized religion. Media analysis of the arrests
of Latino and African-American Muslims on suspicion of terrorist activities inevitably harkens
to a connection to the threats of ghettoes, gangs, and hip-hop.40 Indeed, Mahmood Mamdani is
right to argue that in the context of the Cold War and its aftermath in the War on Terror,
religious identities are often political identities that mobilize religious idiom.41 But it is equally
appropriate to ask when such political identities become racialized in the engagement with
modern forms of power. Here a broadened view of modern racism as biological and cultural is
required. A return to an understanding of racialized religion in the form of Islamophobia can
only strengthen our analysis and complicate struggles around this emerging global racial
formation. With the U.S. War on Terror, the Muslim is incorporated into a racial formation that
is adamantly anti-immigrant. Certainly anti-Muslim racism has much in common with an antiimmigrant racism premised on the social characteristics of foreign-ness. As Vijay Prashad has
suggested, perhaps ‘‘immigrant’’ is a type of race in which racist xenophobia is a perpetual form
of scapegoating.42 Anti-immigrant racism and Islamophobia incorporate the Muslim into the
U.S. racial formation in several social and cultural groups to become a singular threat: the
Muslim. Arab, Black, Latino, South Asian, and white have been collapsed into this racial
category of the Muslim in the U.S. This is a particular history that I have sketched here. As
American empire and exceptionalism expands in the War on Terror both domestically and
globally, the historic disenfranchisement of communities of color through policing, state and
popular violence, combines the immigrant with the Muslim in a reinvigorated racism that goes
beyond a Black–white US racial formation.43 U.S. racism is exported globally these days
through state technologies, media and film, popular culture, and pervasive political discourses
and ideologies. To struggle against the global racial formation the task of scholarship invested in
liberation is to elaborate complex histories and concepts that map strategies of decolonization to
undo empire.
Military Action
Military action is impossible without the neoliberal agenda
interfering
Ettlinger, PhD, 04
(Nancy, Antipode Volume 36, issue 2, pages 249-271)
The war against Iraq was undertaken in the Bush administration to achieve a military goal
established by Dick Cheney as the Secretary of Defense in the earlier (senior) Bush
administration, specifically, the dismantling of ‘‘rogue states'' such as Iraq; it would also
accom¬modate US business interests that underwrite the neoliberal agenda (notably regarding
oil but also encompassing US export products such as rice, wheat, poultry) (Lincoln 2003). Although
recognizing these military and economic goals helps clarify the logic of US approaches to terrorism, this understanding is
nonetheless insufficient to answer why the Bush Administration targeted Iraq, specifically
Saddam Hussein, at this particular time. Answering this question requires thinking through the
implications of conventional geographic discourse. The war formally waged against Iraq in
March 2003 reflected a crystallization of a military mentality that is spatially concise, and at least in the
design phase, entailed targets that were seemingly more manageable than ‘‘shadowy networks’’ across international
space. Conventional locational thinking facilitated a much[M6] needed answer, of sorts,
to the
terrorism of 9/11 that the Bush administration could handle. Little matter that Iraq did not have
any demonstrable relation to Al-Qaeda because the main issue was doing something about
terrorism, and, as it happened, Vice President Cheney had previously declared Iraq as an agent
of terror slated for defeat. The difficulty of dealing with ‘‘shadowy networks’’ rendered traditional locational targeting of a
(‘‘rogue’’) nation-state a logical solution. Further,this particular military agenda coincided with a neoliberal
agenda in which the Bush administration, notably the President and Vice President, have
personal, vested interests. The novel ‘‘solutions’’ to terrorism have focused on military
technologies. The war in Iraq was to be a high-tech exercise of precision weaponry and
surveillance, capable of ‘‘shock and awe”. The results of such an exercise were to have been few casualties among US
troops and Iraqi civilians and a sure and quick victory. We argue, however, that physically destroying places and
people, whether in Iraq or a Taliban/Al-Qaeda stronghold in Afghanistan, may result at best in a
hiatus in the war against terrorism, but cannot terminate the war or resolve the problem.
The US armed forces used in the 1AC are nationalist and prop up
neoliberalism
Lafer, PhD, 2003
(Gordon, New Political Science, Volume 26, Issue 3, p. 323-326)
The fact that no two countries have gone to war since they both got McDonald’s is partly due to
economic integration, but it is also due to the presence of American power and America’s
willingness to use that power against those who would threaten the system of globalization—from
Iraq to North Korea. The hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist…And the hidden fist that keeps
the world safe for Silicon Valley’s technologies to flourish is called the U.S. Army, Air Force,
Navy and Marine Corps. (Thomas Friedman, The Lexus and The Olive Tree1) One year after American victory in Iraq, the
most pressing question remains: what was the war about? Indeed, this question has only grown more pointed as evidence mounts
that even the Bush administration could not have been primarily driven by concerns over weapons of mass destruction.2 A parallel
question at this point is: why not internationalize the occupation? It would seem that a UN- or NATO-led coalition could accomplish
all of the occupation’s stated 1 Thomas Friedman, The Lexus and the Olive Tree (New York: Farrar, Strauss & Giroux, 1999), p. 373.
2 In addition to the evidence that the government never had clear-cut evidence that Iraq possessed such weapons, administration
figures conceded as much before the WMD argument became strategically necessary. In February 2001, Secretary of State Powell
stated that “He (Saddam Hussein) has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction. He is
unable to project conventional power against his neighbors.” In April of that year, National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice
similarly explained that “We are able to keep [Saddam’s] arms from him. His military forces have not been rebuilt.” “Pilger Claims
White House Knew Saddam Was No Threat,” Sydney Morning Herald, September 23, 2003. Likewise, the President finally
acknowledged that “We have no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved with the September 11” attacks. “Bush: No Evidence
Saddam Was Involved in 9/11 Attacks,” September 18, 2003, available online at: cnn.com. ISSN 0739-3148 print/ISSN 1469-9931
online/04/030323–23 © 2004 Caucus for a New Political Science DOI: 10.1080/0739314042000251306 Downloaded by [] at 10:33
24 June 2015 324 Gordon Lafer goals—preventing a Ba’athist resurgence, addressing local terror, and facilitating a transition to
democracy—at much lower cost to the United States. Why, then, has the administration insisted on unilateral control? If the war and
occupation were not about weapons of mass destruction, what were they about? While the corporate designs on Iraqi oil are
troubling, and the war-profiteering of politically-connected contractors is obscene, neither of these appears sufficient to explain the
administration’s broad agenda. I believe that, in its broadest logic, the war must be understood as a means of
advancing the neoliberal agenda of global economic transformation. Both abroad and at home, the
pattern of administration behavior reflects an ambitious and aggressive drive to restructure the
economy in line with neoliberal dictates. The choice of Iraq as the target of invasion and
occupation was no doubt driven both by Iraq’s vast oil reserves and its potential to substitute for
Saudi Arabia as the market maker in the global oil exchange. Apart from the Saudis, Iraq is the only country
whose reserves are large enough that it could regulate world prices by choosing to expand or contract production at strategic points
in the price cycle. This strategic value of Iraqi oil—above and beyond its straight economic value—explains why, within one month of
capturing Baghdad, US overseers raised the prospect of pulling Iraq out of the OPEC consortium.3 Control of Iraqi oil offers the
potential to exercise critical leverage over the economies of the Middle East, Russia, China and other oil-dependent nations. But the
allure of Iraq is about more than oil. Unique among regional economies, the oil-producing nations of the Middle East constitute the
one region of the world whose economies are both significantly wealthy and largely state-run. As most of Europe, the Americas, Asia
and increasingly Africa have been drawn into the neoliberal regime of the IMF and WTO, the oil wealth of the Mideast has allowed
these nations to evade the discipline of austerity budgets and structural adjustment plans. In the eyes of neoliberal reformers, oil
wealth is not a blessing that lets governments protect citizens against the dangers of unemployment or public service cutbacks, but a
curse that prevents nations from adopting more aggressive free-market policies. Thus Thomas Friedman notes that “there is simply
no way to stimulate a process of economic and political reform in the Arab-Muslim world without radically reducing their revenues
from oil, thereby forcing these governments to reform their economies.”4 As it is, oil revenue has insulated these governments from
the strictures enforced virtually everywhere else. On the eve of the invasion, only two of the 13 oil-producing nations of the Mideast
had any IMF debt whatsoever.5 Thus, public employment, state-run industries, subsidized public services, and restrictions on
foreign capital—all of which have elsewhere been increasingly dismantled over the past 20 years—remain flourishing hallmarks of
Mideast economies. An IMF review of the region concludes that these economies are characterized by “lagging political and
institutional reforms; large and costly public sectors…[ and] high trade restrictiveness,” and grades the region’s regulatory 3 Peter S.
Goodman, “US Adviser Says Iraq May Break with OPEC: Carroll Hints National Could Void Contracts,” Washington Post Foreign
Service, May 17, 2003, p. E01. 4 Thomas Friedman, “Shoulda, Woulda, Can,” New York Times, May 27, 2004. 5 International
Monetary Fund, Financial Statements, quarter ended January 31, 2002, available online at: www.imf.org. Downloaded by [] at 10:33
24 June 2015 Neoliberalism by Other Means 325 burden as significantly worse than that of Latin America, East Asia or the OECD
countries.6 It is this form of economic governance that the administration aims to undo in Iraq. This is neoliberalism by
other means: what could not be achieved by trade or treaty will be imposed by military force. A
Tsunami of Liberalization In the leadup to the war, administration hawks proclaimed their goal of using Iraq to spark a “tsunami of
democracy” across the region. Assuming this is heartfelt ideology and not merely rhetorical posturing, what is the form of
“democracy” that these policy-makers have in mind? Clearly, they are not primarily driven by a passion to export even the “thin”
democracy that Americans enjoy at home. Looking at Afghanistan—a country where, for more than two years, the US has enjoyed a
largely free hand to remake the political system from the ground up—there has been no serious attempt at installing popular
democracy. The loya jirga—described by one observer as “one warlord, one vote”—may or may not produce stability. But it bears no
relationship to democracy. Two years on, there is not a single popularly elected official in Afghanistan. And with women around the
country either culturally cowed or physically intimidated out of political participation, it is unlikely that a government “of the
people” would result even if open elections were held.7 My point here is not simply to criticize the lack of democratic process in
Afghanistan—the country is hardly unique in this respect—but to note that this absence does not appear to particularly trouble the
Bush administration. But if the champions of “democracy” are not concerned by the absence of popular elections, what is the vision
they are pursuing? The answer to this question can be found in the post-war administration of Iraq. In Afghanistan, an impoverished
country with little natural wealth, the administration’s goal is merely to insure stability, prevent the return of al- Qaeda, and secure
long-term military bases that may prove useful in projecting force into more strategic neighbors. In Iraq, the goal is much more
ambitious: a fundamental transformation of the social and political system. Yet here too, the administration’s actions betray no
urgency regarding the establishment of what any political scientist would consider the fundamental ingredients of democracy. Not
only are there no elected officials in Iraq; the CPA has taken no steps to institute even the most basic rights of democratic citizens.
There are, of course, no due process rights for the administration’s enemies. By refusing to declare victory even a year after Saddam’s
statue was toppled, the Bush administration continues to govern Iraq in a state of permanent martial law. Prisoners of war are not
released; but neither are they charged with crimes and brought to trial. There is, in fact, no clear distinction between criminals and
combatants. Furthermore, even in those realms of life that have no connection to threats of crime, war or terrorism, the CPA has
avoided instituting any of the building blocks of 6 George T. Abed and Hamid R. Davoodi, “Challenges of Growth and Globalization
in the Middle East and North Africa,” International Monetary Fund, Washington, DC, 2003. 7 On this point, see Steven R. Weisman,
“U.S. Aides Hint Afghan Voting May Be Put Off,” New York Times, February 16, 2004; and Pepe Escobar, “Holdup at the Ballot
Box,” Asia Times, February 19, 2004.
Narratives
Narratives are hegemonic structures used for social control
Ewick PhD and Sibley PhD ’95 (Patricia Ewick- PhD Sociology, Womens and Gender’s studies and Susan
S. Silbey- PhD Political Science, Humanities and Sociology, Law & Society Review, 00239216, 1995, Vol. 29, Issue 2)
In the previous section, we discussed how narratives, like the lives and experiences they recount, are cultural productions.
Narratives are generated interactively through normatively structured performances and interactions. Even the most personal of
narratives rely on and invoke collective narratives-symbols, linguistic formulations, structures, and vocabularies of motive without
which the personal would remain unintelligible and uninterpretable. Because of the conventionalized character of
narrative, then, our stories are likely to express ideological effects and hegemonic assumptions.10
We are as likely to be shackled by the stories we tell (or that are culturally available for our
telling) as we are by the form of oppression they might seek to reveal. In short, the structure, the
content, and the performance of stories as they are defined and regulated within social settings
often articulate and reproduce existing ideologies and hegemonic relations of power and
inequality. It is important to emphasize that narratives do more than simply reflect or express existing ideologies. Through
their telling, our stories come to constitute the hegemony that in turn shapes social lives and
conduct. "The hegemonic is not simply a static body of ideas to which members of a culture are obliged to conform" (Silberstein
1988:127). Rather, Silberstein writes, hegemony has "a protean nature in which dominant relations are preserved while their
manifestations remain highly flexible. The hegemonic must continually evolve so as to recuperate alternative hegemonies." In other
words, the hegemonic gets produced and evolves within individual, seemingly unique, discrete personal narratives. Indeed, the
resilience of ideologies and hegemony may derive from their articulation within personal stories.
Finding expression and being refashioned within the stories of countless individuals may lead to a polyvocality that inoculates and
protects the master narrative from critique. The hegemonic strength of a master narrative derives, Brinkley Messick (1988:657)
writes, from "its textual, and lived heteroglossia . .. [, s]ubverting and dissimulating itself at every .. . turn"; thus ideologies that are
encoded in particular stories are "effectively protected from sustained critique" by the fact that they are constituted through variety
and contradiction. Research in a variety of social settings has demonstrated the hegemonic potential
of narrative by illustrating how narratives can contribute to the reproduction of existing
structures of meaning and power. First, narratives can function specifically as mechanisms of
social control (Mumby 1993). At various levels of social organization-ranging from families to nation-states storytelling
instructs us about what is expected and warns us of the consequences of nonconformity. Oft-told family tales about lost fortunes or
spoiled reputations enforce traditional definitions and values of family life (Langellier & Peterson 1993). Similarly, bureaucratic
organizations exact compliance from members through the articulation of managerial prerogatives and expectations and the
consequences of violation or challenge (Witten 1993). Through our narratives of courtship, lost accounts, and failed careers, cultures
are constructed; we "do" family, we "do" organization, through the stories we tell (Langellier & Peterson 1993). Second, the
hegemonic potential of narrative is further enhanced by narratives' ability to colonize
consciousness. Well-plot ted stories cohere by relating various (selectively appropriated) events and details into a temporally
organized whole (see part I above). The coherent whole, that is, the configuration of events and characters arranged in believable
plots, preempts alternative stories. The events seem to speak for themselves; the tale appears to tell itself.
Normalizing Surveillance
Normalized surveillance is a product of the neoliberal age we live in
Price, PHD, 14
(David, The New Surveillance Normal: NSA and Corporate Surveillance in the Age of Global Capitalism, Monthly review press,
volume 66, issue 3, p. 43-53)
(NSA) document cache released by Edward Snowden reveals a need to retheorize the role of state and corporate surveillance systems in an age of neoliberal global
capitalism. While much remains unknowable to us, we now are in a world where private communications
are legible in previously inconceivable ways, ideologies of surveillance are undergoing rapid
transformations, and the commodification of metadata (and other surveillance intelligence) transforms
privacy. In light of this, we need to consider how the NSA and corporate metadata mining converge
to support the interests of capital.
This is an age of converging state and corporate surveillance. Like other features of the political economy,
these shifts develop with apparent independence of institutional motivations, yet corporate and spy
agencies' practices sharecommon appetites for metadata. Snowden's revelations of the NSA's global
surveillance programs raises the possibility that the state intelligence apparatus is used for
industrial espionage in ways that could unite governmental intelligence and corporate interestsfor which there appears to be historical precedent. The convergence of the interests, incentives,
and methods of U.S. intelligence agencies, and the corporate powers they serve, raise questions
about the ways that the NSA and CIA fulfill their roles, which have been described by former CIA agent Philip
Agee as: "the secret police of U.S. capitalism, plugging up leaks in the political dam night and day so that
shareholders of U.S. companies operating in poor countries can continue enjoying the rip-off."1
There is a long history in the United States of overwhelming public opposition to new forms of
electronic surveillance. Police, prosecutors, and spy agencies have recurrently used public crisesranging from the Lindbergh baby kidnapping, wars, claimed threats of organized crime and
terror attacks, to marshal expanded state surveillance powers.2 During the two decades preceding the 9/11
terror attacks, Congress periodically considered developing legislation establishing rights of privacy; but even in the preInternet age, corporate interests scoffed at the need for any such protections. Pre-2001 critiques
of electronic-surveillance focused on privacy rights and threats to boundaries between
individuals, corporations, and the state; what would later be known as metadata collection were then broadly
understood as violating shared notions of privacy, and as exposing the scaffolding of a police state or a
corporate panopticon inhabited by consumers living in a George Tooker painting.
The National Security Agency
Privatization
Privatization of programs like PRISM leads to capitalism – Russia
proves
Clarke ’92
(Simon, sociology professor at the University of Warwick. “Privatization and the Development of Capitalism in Russia” 1992 p. 4-5
http://newleftreview.org/static/assets/archive/pdf/NLR19201.pdf) //RGDM
Privatization is the culmination of a period in which the growth of the market and the collapse of
the administrative-command system has meant that the control of state property has largely
passed out of the hands of the state. However, to see this as the end of the process is to adopt a
very superficial understanding of the transition to capitalism, which focuses on juridical and
political changes, without reference to the development of the social relations of production. This
is not a dogmatic theoretical point, emanating from an outmoded Marxism.4 It is merely the conceptual expression of a very obvious
social reality. Capitalist elements have undoubtedly emerged in Russia, but these remain in the
interstices of the former administrative-command system, and are largely parasitic on it. The
disintegration of the administrative-command system has not been accompanied by any transformation of production relations at
the enterprise level. The growth of the market has not been associated with the development of
competition, through which enterprises would be subjected to the law of value, but to the
consolidation of monopolies and cartels through which enterprises suppress competition and
resist pressures for fundamental change. The liberalization of prices has not provided the basis for the growth of the
capitalist sector, but for its absorption by the state sector, in removing the dualistic price system which was the basis of the most
profitable forms of entrepreneurial activity. The growth of a banking sector has not subjected enterprises to a ‘hard budget
constraint’, but has removed all constraint by fuelling an explosion of credit.
Queer people
Neoliberal ideologies overshadow any progress the queer community
hopes to make.
Croitoru, BA in women’s and gender studies, 15
(Croitoru, Sarah (2015) "Homonormativity: An Ineffective Way to Approach Queer Politics," Strigidae: Vol. 1: Iss. 1, Article
6. Available at: http://commons.keene.edu/strigidae/vol1/iss1/6)
Neoliberalism is used by Lisa Duggan as a critique of “pro-corporate, free market, antibig government rhetoric shaping U.S. policy
and dominating international financial institutions since the early 1980s” (177). Neoliberalism negates thestructures of
institutional power and focuses entirely on the agency of the people within our society. The neoliberal
view of marriage is that marriage equality is good because the individual nuclear family becomes
the primary economic unit responsible for itself, instead of the state having to take responsibility for the
people within the family unit. Neoliberal ideals and movements such as the Log Cabin
Republicans foster an ignorance of the intersections ofrace, gender, and class in issues such as marriage
equality. Gay marriage, specifically, is a homonormative practice that diminishes other priorities
of the sexual politics of the queer community by ignoring the structural forces in oursociety. Duggan explains
that homonormativity is “a politics that does not contest dominant heteronormative assumptions and
institutions but upholds and sustains them while promising the possibility of a demobilized gay constituency and a
privatized, depoliticized gay culture anchored in domesticity and consumption”
(179). Homonormativity reproduces a culture of oppression by focusing solely on personal agency
while ignoring the structural problems within our culture and society. Homonormativity focuses
attention on access to the military, gay marriage, and the “free” market (179) and, in doing so, prohibits
queer politics from addressing the structural power dynamics within the UnitedStates that reproduce
racism, sexism, classism, and homophobia. Rhetoric produced by the Independent Gay Forum (IGF),
a neoliberal group consisting mostly of white men who believe they are the “new gay movement,” constructs ideology that
rejects “‘conservative” claims that gays and lesbians pose any threat to social morality or the political
order” while “equally [opposing] “progressive” claims that gays should support radical social change or
restructuring of society” (Duggan 176). Neoliberals claim to be a middle ground; they want to keep the
same social structures of power that are currently in place, while allowing gay people to be a part of
these structures. Andrew Sullivan, a writer for the IGF, says it is “heterosexual identity… undeniably valuable in any
society and culture, that seems to characterize the vast majority of humanity, and without which civilization
would simply evaporate” (qtd. in Duggan 184). Sullivan, a queer activist, implicitly shares a belief that homonormativity is
good. He seems to be saying that problems in our system do not lie in gapping structural holes that need to be fixed.
He argues that the problems stem from society’s resistance to accept slight deviations from
the
norm, such as gay marriage or gay people serving in the military. Since the norm of our society has been taught to
us as white, middle-class, heterosexual, married, and patriotic, Sullivandoes not account for the different identities
within each of these realms that are not addressed explicitly by marriage.
Neoliberal institutions are advancing their agenda onto the queer
community by reproducing structural problems
Croitoru, BA in women’s and gender studies, 15
(Croitoru, Sarah (2015) "Homonormativity: An Ineffective Way to Approach Queer Politics," Strigidae: Vol. 1: Iss. 1, Article
6. Available at: http://commons.keene.edu/strigidae/vol1/iss1/6)
Homonormative ideas, like those of Sullivan, reproduce structural problems of our government by focusing
on one area of oppression without taking into account the intersectionality of multiple facets of
identity. These components of identity include (but are not limited to) race, gender, sexual orientation,
religion, and ethnicity. Structurally, as argued by Judith Butler, we can understand that identity politics are
cultural struggles as well as economic struggles (Oswin 655). From this assumption, it is argued that queer
people do not threaten capitalism, and therefore should be allowed to be part of the same
heteronormative societal structures regardless of their sexuality (655). By focusing on allowing
LGBT people to assimilate, the queer movement no longer fights to support queer homeless
youth, but it rather “fights for assimilation and social acceptability” arguing only for
acceptance within marriage and the military(656). There is an assumption by neoliberals that with
marriage and military equality, “gay and lesbian life [will move] beyond discrimination.” In
reality, marriage and military equality will not solve all the oppressions faced by queer
people. Passing, or being read as heterosexual, uses “heteronormative premises (specifically, the
presumption of heterosexuality, and the gender binary)” to frame homonormative practices (Rosenfeld 619). The
gender binary leads tothe notion of “a gender-conforming homosexual” who is seen as more
normative and privileged. Certain assimilationsist groups think that unless you are politically organizing, as a
homosexual, you should attempt to pass (621). Passingblatantly does not reconstruct institutionalized
forms of homophobia or sexism, but it reproduces the idea that you must fit within societal
norms in order to have a privileged life. Stonewall also “refashioned homosexuality from a private matter to be enacted within a
private arena into an essentially political matter to be enacted in a public one” (Rosenfeld 622). The neoliberal agenda of
gay marriage which, according to Duggan, “is not simply a private contract; it is a social and public
recognition of a private commitment” (187) appears to refocus the emphasis from the public back to
the private. The homonormative practice of same-sex marriage, which reproduces the same structural
problems of heterosexual marriage, is seen as liberating simply due to the fact that it publicizes
the private. In reality, gay marriage does not attempt to dismantle any of structural or social
problems of marriage within the United States. Butler argues that structural problems are not dismantled through
marriage because “the state becomes the means by which a fantasy becomes literalized: desire and sexuality are ratified, justified,
known, publicly instated, imagined as permanent, durable” (22). She shows how the neoliberals publicize the private
through the example that relationships in marriage are not private, but innately public, as marriage
leads to public gains, such as qualification within our capitalist society for tax breaks and other
benefits. Marriage is not a private matter in any sense; it is “publicly mediated and…[a] legitimated
public sex” (23) because marriage leads to a general understanding and expectation that as amarried person
one has rights. These rights include, but are not limited to hospital visitation, the right to mourn, and the right
to build a family together (23). The state is given the power to control matters that should be
personal choices and not tied exclusively to a public institution such as marriage. Due to the
assumption that homonormative homosexuals are “respectable” and non-conforming
homosexuals are “unrespectable,” the exact same problems produced by heterosexuality are reproduced
by homonormativity (Rosenfeld 632). Heteronormativity is produced through homonormativity by the
“rhetorical remapping of public/private boundaries designed to shrink gay public spheres and
redefine gay equality against the “civil rights agenda” and “liberationism,” as access to the institutions
of domestic privacy, the “free” market, and patriotism” (Duggan 179). This leads to the assumption
that the right way to be gay is to participate in the “free” market and be
patriotic. Therefore, the heteronormative structure of nuclear families and marriage
is the perfect structure for homosexual couples because the state will no longer be responsible
for them; nuclear homosexual families will be financially responsible for
themselves. Homonormativity neglects to contest dominant heterosexual assumptions such as the
goal that we should all be married, middle class, and capitalist.
Neoliberalism attempts to hide the connections between sexuality and
the role it plays in the market
Croitoru, BA in women’s and gender studies, 15
(Croitoru, Sarah (2015) "Homonormativity: An Ineffective Way to Approach Queer Politics," Strigidae: Vol. 1: Iss. 1, Article
6. Available at: http://commons.keene.edu/strigidae/vol1/iss1/6)
Heterosexual marriage is structurally flawed, and therefore it is potentially not useful for queer people
and queer people of color to strive for marriage equality. As Marlon Bailey states, “I am not heterosexual, nor do I want to
be heterosexual; therefore, personally, I have no use for a heterosexual institution like marriage” (qtd. in Bernstein Sycamore 88).
Bailey’s assertion shows that the problems with marriage are not that it is not open to homosexuals; they liewithin
the institution and the structures of power that are created by marriage laws. Mattie Udora Richardson argues
that hospital visitation, medical decisions, and social security benefits should not be determined
by marriage, they should be determined by the person whose decisions and benefits they belong
to. For example, if she wants to give her social security benefits to her nephews, why should that be questioned? (qtd. In Bernstein
Sycamore 89). Pamphlets distributed by The Equality Project in South Africa claim that the right to gay marriage will help solve
socioeconomic problems: “Marriage allows families and communities to recognize the relationships of their members. This is
especially important for poor people, as the state cannot afford to provide many crucial services to everyone. Because of this, many
poor families depend on extended family and community support for their survival” (Oswin 663). This advertisement
represents the misunderstanding that marriage will fix all socioeconomic problems, and
reproduces the heteronormative ideal of middle-class to upper-middle class nuclear families. Marriage is also
innately connected to property(Bernstein Sycamore 93). Marriage is designed in a way that allows the two people
in the relationship to claim property together, have joint bank accounts, and pay taxes together. Oswin
states that the homonormative ideal of marriage absolves the state of the responsibility to
provide assistance to married queer folks (664). The extended family is expected to be the caretakers of married gays
and lesbians, providing assistance when needed (665). Privatization is often a strategy of neoliberals. Duggan
defines privatization as “the transfer of wealth and decision making from public, more-or-less
accountable decision-making bodies to individual or corporate accountable hands” (178). Privatization as a neoliberal strategy
“absolves collective accountability and public intervention” pertaining to “the marking of sex outside of
capitalism” (Agathangelou 132). By ignoring the relationship between sex and the market, privatization implicitly
dismisses the connections between sexuality, the market, colonial, racial, and class
relationships. Maxime Cervulle’s article, “French Homonormativity and the Commodification of the Arab Body,” addresses the
reality that although the FHAR (Homosexual Front for Revolutionary Action) may have been created based on radical ideology, it
has fallen into representing contemporary homonormativity in France (171-2). Through her exploration of the FHAR, it is clear
that by “[prioritizing sexuality above all else, [they] inadvertently [maintained] privileged
positions of class, gender, and race through the figure of the universal homosexual” (173). There is
an assumption that all homosexuals are the same,meaning that all their struggles with oppression are
equivalent. This reality ignores the fact that race, gender, and class can all lead to oppression
and struggle. Given that oppression and struggle can focus on race, gender, class, religion, and ethnicity, not all
oppression people face is the same. One person can face oppression because of the intersection
of multiple identities at one time
Race
Immigration rhetoric is neoliberal and racialized- the dream of
multiculturalism makes race invisible
Cisneros PhD, 2015 (Dr. J David Cisneros Department of Communication at U of Illinois, PhD in
Speech Communication (Rhetoric), Specializes in Critical Rhetoric, Race/ Ethnicity, Immigration, Social
Movement Rhetoric, “A Nation of Immigrants and a Nation of Laws: Race, Multiculturalism and Neoliberal
Exception in Barack Obama’s Immigration Discourse” Published, January 23, 2015, pages 1-20, Yung Jung)
The contemporary neoliberal moment imagines this ideal (self-)governing citizen to be an
individualized, entrepreneurial, “post-race, post-feminist, and difference-blind” responsible
subject (Jones & Mukherjee, 2010, p. 416). This involves “racial neoliberalism,” or the simultaneous
embrace of individual difference along with the denial of racial identification and structural
racism (Goldberg, 2009). Western society has presumably solved racism, the vestiges of which are only expressions of individual
prejudice. Race (as well as class, gender, and other signifiers of difference) is seen as anachronistic, and the best solution to continue
racial progress is to move beyond race: “forgetting, getting over, moving on, wiping away the terms of reference, at best (or worst) a
commercial memorializing” (p. 21). Under “racial neoliberalism,” to bring up claims of racism and/or to embrace race/ethnicity as a
source of political struggle constitutes “reverse racism” because it violates the politics of antiracialism—the push to let go of race and
embrace neoliberal equality as absolute individualism (Jones & Mukherjee, 2010). Neoliberal ideology has influenced
the politics of immigration in a number of ways, including through an increasing emphasis on
responsibility as marker of the “good” citizen-subject (Baker-Cristales, 2009; Hiemstra, 2010; Varsanyi, 2009).
As a case in point, take shifts in presidential immigration rhetoric over the last several decades. Rhetorical scholars have argued that
presidents traditionally defined U.S. American identity based on the nation’s foundational ideals. Vanessa Beasley (2004) called this
the “shared beliefs hypothesis,” which describes how a number of shared beliefs define what it means for immigrants to be/become
an “American.” Beasley argued that modern presidents employ a “kinder, gentler rhetoric of distinction” (p. 88) than did past
presidents, eschewing biological, racial, and nativist beliefs and emphasizing instead stories of exceptional, assimilated immigrants,
and (neo)liberal logics of economic calculability, class mobility, and cultural assimilation (see also Demo, 2006; Edwards & Herder,
2012). Of course, even as presidents rhetorically emphasized such shared ideals, currents of nativism continued to influence
presidential definitions of the nation’s shared beliefs (Beasley, 2004). Thus, most recently, Edwards and Herder (2012) identified
such a tension in the rhetoric of President George W. Bush, who, on one hand, emphasized the “kinder and gentler” elements of
(neo)liberal immigration rhetoric while, on the other hand, he “salted his speeches on immigration with images of a dangerous
Hispanic other” (p. 58). Building on this research, I suggest that the portrayals of responsibility and the American
Dream that dominate modern neoliberal rhetorics of immigration may themselves be seen as a primary
mode through which racialization of immigration and citizenship take shape. In other words, in an era of
racial neoliberalism, governments use such forms of purportedly kinder and gentler political
discourse to designate “different forms of immigration, and/or sources of immigration” as
“problematic or unproblematic,” implicitly engaging “race” and recentering whiteness through
markers of class, nationality, and culture (Garner, 2007, p. 72). This is because racial neoliberalism hides
and disperses racism and racialization through culture, class, nationality, and so on, which
allows for the possibility of racialization that purports to be colorblind (Jones & Mukherjee, 2010;
Kundnani, 2012). As Lentin and Titley (2012) wrote, “‘Race’ is a category error that the West has resolved,” but
“culture, post-race, is elevated ontologically” and represents the way in which “race-thinking remains immanent”
(p. 132). We see this process, for example, in the “moral economy of whiteness” (Garner, 2012, p. 461) that is
produced through discourses about values, competence, hard work, and respectability—all of
which become indexed to whiteness. Through such a process, whiteness functions as “strategic
rhetoric” (Nakayama & Krizek, 1995) that can move and shift, sometimes incorporating people of color
into whiteness as exceptions that normalize the white/Western norm. In this sense, the contemporary
racialization of immigration rhetoric and policy occurs not just or even primarily through appeals to phenotype but through
perceived cultural factors that make certain groups problematic, not ideal for membership, a “cultural mismatch,” and thus seen as
excludable and/or unassmilable (Garner, 2007, p. 61). Examples include cultural discourses about the incompatibility of “Middle
Eastern” or “Arab” immigrants with Western, “democratic” cultures or anxieties about the cultural contamination that
“monocultural” Latin American immigrants supposedly pose to “multicultural” U.S. culture. Here a particular, Western identity is
elevated as the image of the ideal multicultural/global citizen, one who embraces Western democracy, liberal ideals of tolerance,
secularism, and who is blind to differ ence (Shome, 2012). Neoliberal multiculturalism becomes another way to
entrench whiteness and racialization, which takes shape, on one hand, through the opposition of
Western-style (neoliberal) culture as truly multicultural/open and in opposition to the
monocultural “excess” of non-White/non-Western cultures (e.g., Western multiculturalism as secular,
reasonable, democratic, versus the fundamentalist, authoritarian, and undemocratic monocultures of Islam [Lentin, 2012; Melamed,
2006]). On the other hand, Ahmed (2008) points out that neoliberal multiculturalism is also linked to
whiteness/racialization when it is, paradoxically, framed as a “defence [sic] against
multiculturalism” (para. 8). Western multiculturalism is seen as under attack from the monocultural difference of the other,
which necessitates the assimilation of difference to the purportedly more multicultural national ideal. In these ways, the
“beneficiaries” of neoliberalism are framed as “multicultural, reasonable, law-abiding, and good
global citizens” (Melamed, 2006, p. 19), while those who do not embrace neoliberal multiculturalism
are “doomed by their own monoculturalism, deviance, inflexibility, criminality, and other
attributes deemed antisocial” (p. 16).
The affirmative’s immigration discourse reifies the difference between the
“exemplary” immigrant and the “criminal immigrant”.
Cisneros PhD, 2015 (Dr. J David Cisneros Department of Communication at U of Illinois, PhD in Speech
Communication (Rhetoric), Specializes in Critical Rhetoric, Race/ Ethnicity, Immigration, Social Movement
Rhetoric, “A Nation of Immigrants and a Nation of Laws: Race, Multiculturalism and Neoliberal Exception in
Barack Obama’s Immigration Discourse” Published, January 23, 2015, pages 1-20, Yung Jung)
In his public discourse, Obama provided another archetype of the exemplary immigrant, the military
service member, who, in contrast to the entrepreneur, provided a different model for neoliberal
responsibility and self-management. In his 2010 speech, for example, the president talked about Perla Ramos, an
immigrant “born and raised in Mexico, [who] came to the United States shortly after 9/11, and eventually joined the Navy” (para. 7).
Obama (2011) also talked about “a young man named Granger Michael from Papua New Guinea, a Marine who deployed to Iraq
three times. Here’s what he said about becoming an American citizen. ‘I might as well. I love this country already’” (para. 7). Obama
(2013a) praised Alan Aleman, one of the first to receive a stay of deportation through the DACA program because he had “emerge[d]
from the shadows” and was “studying to become a doctor” and “hope[d] to join the Air Force” (para. 46–47). In addition to these
specific references, Obama (2012a) also regularly invoked the military service member as an example of an
ideal, responsible, and desirable immigrant, stating, “I’ve got a young person who is serving in
our military, protecting us and our freedom. The notion that in some ways we would treat them as expendable
makes no sense” (para. 29; cf. Obama, 2012b). Obama’s logic here was a welcome check to those who would
argue that the rule of law trumps all other humanitarian considerations. Instead, Obama
celebrated immigrants’ contributions to the nation and argued that concern for immigrants’
welfare and attention to their expression of cultural citizenship should factor into decisions
about immigration enforcement. However, these stories, like those of economic entrepreneurs, also helped to
establish the difference between ideal and nonideal immigrants by representing another type of
responsible self-management, the highest expression of which was national service. Previous
presidents also made explicit reference to immigrant service members in their speeches (see Amaya, 2007; Beasley, 2004; Edwards
& Herder, 2012). However, Obama’s stories were unique because they helped to define the neoliberal exception as the governing
logic of his administration’s approach to immigration and citizenship. The image of the immigrant service member
functioned as what Ong (2006) called “exception to neoliberalism” and “neoliberalism as exception” (p. 5). The
service member represented one of the few ways to exercise prudential self-management and responsibility outside of the explicit
logic of the marketplace—an exception to neoliberal rationality calculated for the sake of national sovereignty. At the same time,
this was neoliberalism as exception because immigrants who embodied responsibility in a way
that presented a significant social benefit to the nation were the exception to concerns about
jobs, protectionism, and economic calculability. Apart from the stories referenced above, the
emphasis on responsibility as a neoliberal exception can also be seen governing immigration
policies such as the DREAM Act, DACA, and prosecutorial discretion. These policies rely heavily
on the dichotomy between responsible/good immigrants versus irresponsible/criminal/bad
immigrants, the former who are exceptions to concerns about national sovereignty and the rule
of law and the latter who are excepted from promises of neoliberal mobility and individualism.
For example, the administration’s prosecutorial discretion policy was touted as part of an approach to targeting and deporting
“criminal” immigrants, and the DACA and DREAM Act both work on the idea that certain immigrants should be exempted from
deportation because of their embrace of neoliberal responsibility (Gonzales, 2010; Nevins, 2012). Obama (2010) also tied
comprehensive immigration reform to neoliberal values, arguing that “we should make it easier
for the best and brightest to come to start a business and develop products and create jobs” (para.
38), and that undocumented immigrants “earn their way to citizenship” by paying taxes, learning
English, and “going to the back of the line” (Obama, 2013a, para. 30). Again that Obama drew distinctions
between desirable and undesirable immigrants should not be surprising, since it is an inherent
thread of presidential immigration discourse and policy; the important point to emphasize here is the way in
which these distinctions contributed to and participated in a cultural moment of neoliberal racialization. The trope of
responsibility, like that of entrepreneurialism discussed previously, was indexed to neoliberal forms of whiteness (Garner,
2012). Obama (2011) told the story of engineer and NASA astronaut José Hernández, who encapsulated the figure of entrepreneur
and national serviceman. Hernández was born in California, “though he could have just as easily been born on the other side of the
border, had it been a different time of year, because his family” of migrant farm workers “moved with the seasons. Two of his
siblings were actually born in Mexico” (para. 41). Despite the place of his birth and the educational and economic challenges he
faced, Hernández kept studying, and graduated high school. He kept studying, earning an engineering degree and a graduate degree.
He kept working hard, ending up at a national laboratory. … And a few years later, he found himself more than 100 miles above the
surface of the earth, staring out the window of the Shuttle Discovery, remembering the boy in the California fields with a crazy
dream and an unshakable belief that everything was possible in America. … That’s the American Dream right there. That’s what
we’re fighting for. We are fighting for every boy and every girl like José with a dream and potential that’s just waiting to be tapped.
(para. 45–47) Neoliberal values of individual responsibility and entrepreneurialism provided the exception to nation-state logics of
citizenship and belonging for Hernández, for though he was born as a U.S. citizen, Hernández’s real inclusion into the
American community came through his faith and success in achieving the American Dream (as
an entrepreneur and through his national service). The racialized image of the migrant
farmworker performing stoop labor in the hot sun was transformed into the engineer,
entrepreneur, and astronaut through embrace of the American Dream and neoliberal values of
hard work, responsibility, and service. Hernández’s embodiment of neoliberal subjectivity and a
moral economy of whiteness helped to insure his belonging more than did his actual legal status as
citizen. On the contrary, Hernández’s siblings had been born on the other side of the border, a clarification that highlighted the
exceptions to entrepreneurialism that turned on national sovereignty. Racialization also took shape through the administration’s
rhetoric of criminalization. Criminal immigrants embodied an excess/absence of neoliberal characteristics because they worked too
hard for too little, they stole jobs from other citizens, and they crossed borders and went outside of the law for economic benefit.
These undocumented immigrants were too entrepreneurial (or not enough), too individual (or
not enough), or too monocultural. This meant they did not really believe in the nation’s precepts
and/or that they threatened its sovereignty and economy, making them the target of police
surveillance, prosecution, or deportation. This dichotomy between exemplary and “criminal” immigrants
points to what Lisa Marie Cacho (2012) termed the “dilemma” of social value: the fact that the social value of one
marginalized group is often constructed through the “social death” of “an/other, and that other is almost always
poor, racialized, criminalized, segregated, legally vulnerable, and unprotected” (p. 17). These populations “are excluded
from law’s protection, [but] they are not excluded from law’s discipline, punishment, and regulation” (p. 5). While certain
undocumented immigrants, such as the DREAMers or immigrant service members, were recuperated and given social value, the
method of doing so revolved around the denial of value to other racialized archetypes of immigrants, such as the unskilled worker,
the criminal border crosser, or the irresponsible immigrant become a public charge. So pervasive are these racialized forms of
demanding social value that they are found in the discourse of some immigrant activists, who through their efforts to assert their
social worth normalize certain forms of socioeconomic class and education as markers of the “model” citizen (Anguiano & Chávez,
2011). This discourse granted social value to certain immigrants who embraced responsibility and
entrepreneurialism while contributing to the social death of criminalized and racialized populations.
Immigration policies only benefit those who assimilate to US identity of
neoliberal multiculturalism
Cisneros PhD, 2015 (Dr. J David Cisneros Department of Communication at U of Illinois, PhD in Speech
Communication (Rhetoric), Specializes in Critical Rhetoric, Race/ Ethnicity, Immigration, Social Movement
Rhetoric, “A Nation of Immigrants and a Nation of Laws: Race, Multiculturalism and Neoliberal Exception in
Barack Obama’s Immigration Discourse” Published, January 23, 2015, pages 1-20, Yung Jung)
One final theme to consider is the neoliberal articulation of cultural assimilation and integration. Obviously, questions of cultural
assimilation have long been central in debates about immigration. As I noted earlier, recent scholars have argued that modern
presidents emphasize a “kinder, gentler” picture of class mobility and cultural accommodation rather than incorporation into the
melting pot or crucible. This was true of Obama’s discourse as well. However, Obama’s discourse was interesting because it
celebrated immigrants’ embrace of U.S. culture as the apogee of neoliberal multiculturalism. For
example, at the start of his May 2011 immigration speech from El Paso, Obama stated that he had just given a commencement
speech at Miami. Dade Community College, “one of the most diverse schools in the nation” whose students “claim heritage from 181
countries around the world” (para. 3). He related that, during the ceremony, flags from each one of the 181 represented countries
were marched across the stage: So when the Haitian flag went by, all the Haitian kids—Haitian American kids shouted out. And
when the Guatemalan flag went by, all the kids of Guatemalan heritage shouted out. … But then, the last flag, the American flag,
came into view. And everyone in the room erupted in applause. Everybody cheered. So, yes, their parents and grandparents—some
of the graduates themselves—had come from every corner of the globe. But it was here that they had found opportunity. It was here
that they had a chance to contribute to the nation that is their home. It was a reminder of a simple idea, as old as America itself: E
pluribus unum. Out of many, one. (para. 3–5) The president, then, articulated a stirring example of the ideational thesis of U.S.
American identity—a secular faith that did not replace but subsumed immigrants’ racial/ethnic/cultural differences into an “e
pluribus unum.” Flags became a synecdoche for the relationship of nationalities and cultural identities to U.S. identity and culture.
Each flag was honored by its particular cultural group, but all united behind the more transcendent U.S. flag and what it represented
(multiculturalism, opportunity, and so on). Viewed in this way, the “e pluribus unum” was not pluralist but rather
framed non-U.S. traditions as singular in relationship to a more universal, transcendent, and
multicultural U.S. identity. The immigrant graduates emanated from particular
cultures/histories but subsumed these to a more universal (though particular) U.S. identity . In
fact, one of the hallmarks of U.S. identity, according to this view, was the way in which it respected and tolerated cultural difference.
Multiculturalism became identified with U.S. culture and U.S. American/Western identity (Jones
& Mukherjee, 2010; Oh & Banjo, 2012). In contrast to traditional models of assimilation, it implied that immigrants
could
maintain their native allegiances as long as they were subsumed under U.S. American,
multicultural culture. It should be noted that there are significant strengths to this narrative of (multi)cultural integration.
Obama embraced the importance of cultural citizenship as a mode of immigrants’ accommodation, the recognition of cultural
dimensions to citizenship, and the respect for cultural difference within the parameters of national belonging. Cultural citizenship
involves recognizing that culture (and not just legal status) is a primary determinant of belonging and that citizenship
accommodates a degree of cultural diversity (Flores & Benmayor, 1997). Rather than demonize immigrant cultures as threatening
and/or calling on immigrants to abandon their cultural difference entirely (as, at times, did his predecessor [see Edwards & Herder,
2012]), Obama argued that U.S. culture could accommodate and make room for this difference under its mantle of multicultural
tolerance and diversity. Another example of this view can be found in the president’s rhetoric surrounding the DREAM Act and
DACA: Immigrants who had “done everything right [their] entire life—studied hard, worked hard, maybe even graduated at the top
of [their] class”; these were “Americans in their heart, in their minds, in every single way but one: on paper” (Obama, 2012a, para.
2–3). The Dreamers were “incredible young people who understand themselves to be Americans, who have done everything right
but have still been hampered in achieving their American Dream” (Obama, 2013c, para. 2). Obama articulated a cultural
dimension to belonging and identified Dreamers as having adopted the characteristics of
cultural citizenship, which was important because it could demonstrate that, for many
immigrants, their legal citizenship status was at odds with their cultural and social belonging. In
addition, U.S. citizenship could accommodate a degree of cultural difference and diversity, which was represented in the
multicultural panoply of graduates at Miami Dade Community College. The Obama administration’s discourse concerning
immigrants’ cultural integration certainly did not represent an assimilationist goal; nor did it explicitly malign “foreign” cultures as
threats to the nation, both of which made it a “kinder, gentler rhetoric of distinction.” However, this “e pluribus unum”
could also be seen as ensconced in a broader neoliberal multicultural hegemony. The embrace of
multiculturalism within the president’s stories of ideal and exemplary immigrants turned on the
neoliberal exception; multiculturalism did the same work as entrepreneurialism and
responsibility, as an ideal that distinguished acceptable and unacceptable immigrant subjects.
The students were celebrated because they embraced and embodied the “multicultural American
citizen [as] emblem for the most universal and legitimate form of global citizenship” (Melamed, 2006,
p. 19). Many see Obama, with his mixed race heritage and transnational upbringing, as the embodiment of this view (Parameswaran,
2009). As noted above, this neoliberal multiculturalism centered whiteness by presenting U.S. culture
as truly multicultural, transcendent, and even “normative” while associating it with the
prevailing discourse of “postracialism” (Oh & Banjo, 2012, p. 466). In Western culture, multiculturalism has been
figured both as a threat to national unity/happiness and as a defining quality of a happy community insofar as it “involves loyalty to
what has already been established as a national ideal. Happiness is thus promised in return for loyalty to the nation, where loyalty is
defined in terms of playing its game” (Ahmed, 2010, p. 123). The explicit celebration and happiness of the Miami Dade graduates
was associated with their performance of U.S. American multiculturalism, which could lend credence to Obama’s narrative of the
happy, multicultural exceptionalism of U.S. culture, a nation of immigrants. Whether he meant it to or not, this lent credence
to the implicit assumption of neoliberal multiculturalism that “the dispossessed [are]
monocultural, backward, weak, and irrational—unfit for global citizenship because they lack the
proper neoliberal subjectivity” (Melamed, 2006, p. 19). The contrasting figure here could be what Ahmed (2010) called
the melancholic migrant, who holds on to their past culture and to their difference, the cause of their unhappiness, rather than
letting go and embracing the (multicultural) happiness of their new home. Neoliberal multiculturalism was yet
another exception that regulated the difference between, on one hand, those exceptional
immigrants who subsumed their monocultures to a transcendent and multicultural U.S. culture,
and on the other, those immigrants who were excepted from inclusion because they held fast to
their particular identities and did not embody the “e pluribus unum.”
Securitization
Securitization serves as a justification for the violent expansion of
neoliberal dominance
Alcock ‘9 (Rupert, graduated with a distinction in the MSc in Development and Security from the Department of Politics,
University of Bristol in 2009, “Speaking Food: A Discourse Analytic Study of Food Security” 2009, p. 10-14) //RGDM
Since the 1970s, the
concept of ‘food security’ has been the primary lens through which the ongoing
prevalence and inherent complexity of global hunger has been viewed. The adoption of the term at the FAOsanctioned World Food Conference in 1974 has led to a burgeoning literature on the subject, most of which takes ‘food
security’ as an unproblematic starting point from which to address the persistence of so-called
‘food insecurity’ (see Gilmore & Huddleston, 1983; Maxwell, 1990; 1991; Devereux & Maxwell, 2001). A common activity
pursued by academics specialising in food security is to debate the appropriate definition of the term; a study undertaken by the
Institute of Development Studies cites over 200 competing definitions (Smith et al., 1992). This pervasive predilection for
empirical clarity is symptomatic of traditional positivist epistemologies and constrains a more far-sighted
understanding of the power functions of ‘food security’ itself, a conceptual construct now accorded considerable institutional depth.2
Bradley Klein contends that to understand the political force of organizing principles like food security,
a shift of analytical focus is required:
‘Instead of presuming their existence and meaning, we ought to
historicize and relativize them as sets of practices with distinct genealogical trajectories ’ (1994: 10).
The forthcoming analysis traces the emergence and evolution of food security discourse in
official publications and interrogates the intertextual relations which pertain between these
publications and other key sites of discursive change and/or continuity. Absent from much (if not all) of
the academic literature on food security is any reflection on the governmental content of the concept of ‘security’ itself. The
notion of food security is received and regurgitated in numerous studies which seek to establish
a better, more comprehensive food security paradigm. Simon Maxwell has produced more work of this type than
anyone else in the field and his studies are commonly referenced as foundational to food security studies (Shaw, 2005; see Maxwell,
1990; 1991; 1992; 1996; Devereux & Maxwell, 2001). Maxwell has traced the evolution in thinking on food security since the 1970s
and distinguishes three paradigm shifts in its meaning: from the global/national to the household/individual, from a food first
perspective to a livelihood perspective and from objective indicators to subjective perception (Maxell, 1996; Devereux & Maxwell,
2001). There is something of value in the kind of analysis Maxwell employs and these three paradigm shifts provide a partial
framework with which to compare the results of my own analysis of food security discourse. I suggest, however, that the conclusions
Maxwell arrives at are severely restricted by his unwillingness to reflect on food security as a governmental mechanism of global
liberal governance. As a ‘development expert’ he employs an epistemology infused with concepts borrowed from the modern
development discourse; as such, his conclusions reflect a concern with the micro-politics of food security and a failure to reflect on
the macro-politics of ‘food security’ as a specific rationality of government. In his article ‘Food Security:
A Post-Modern Perspective’ (1996) Maxwell provides a meta-narrative which explains the discursive shifts he distinguishes. He
argues that the emerging emphasis on ‘flexibility, diversity and the perceptions of the people concerned’ (1996: 160) in food security
discourse is consistent with currents of thought in other spheres which he vaguely labels ‘post-modern’. In line with ‘one of the most
popular words in the lexicon of post-modernism’, Maxwell claims to have ‘deconstructed’ the term ‘food security’; in so doing, ‘a new
construction has been proposed, a distinctively post-modern view of food security’ (1996: 161-162). This, according to Maxwell,
should help to sharpen programmatic policy and bring theory and knowledge closer to what he calls ‘real food insecurity’ (1996:
156). My own research in the forthcoming analysis contains within it an explicit critique of Maxwell’s thesis, based on three main
observations. First, Maxwell’s ‘reconstruction’ of food security and re-articulation of its normative
criteria reproduce precisely the kind of technical, managerial set of solutions which characterise
the positivistic need for definitional certainty that he initially seeks to avoid. Maxwell himself acknowledges ‘the risk of
falling into the trap of the meta-narrative’ and that ‘the ice is admittedly very thin’ (1996: 162-163), but finally prefers to ignore these
misgivings when faced with the frightening (and more accurately ‘post-modern’) alternative. Second, I suggest that the third shift
which Maxwell distinguishes, from objective indicators to subjective perceptions, is a fabrication which stems more from his own
normative beliefs than evidence from official literature. To support this part of his argument Maxwell quotes earlier publications of
his own work in which his definition incorporates the ‘subjective dimension’ of food security (cf. Maxwell, 1988). As my own analysis
reveals, while lip-service is occasionally paid to the lives and faces of hungry people, food security
analysis is constituted by increasingly extensive, technological and professedly ‘objective’
methods of identifying and stratifying the ‘food insecure’. This comprises another distinctly positivistic
endeavour. Finally, Maxwell’s emphasis on ‘shifts’ in thinking suggests the replacement of old with new – the global/national
concern with food supply and production, for example, is replaced by a new and more enlightened concern for the
household/individual level of food demand and entitlements. Discursive change, however, defies such linear boundary drawing; the
trace of the old is always already present in the form of the new. I suggest that Maxwell’s ‘shifts’ should rather be conceived as
‘additions’; the implication for food security is an increasingly complex agenda, increasingly amorphous definitions and the
establishment of new divisions of labour between ‘experts’ in diverse fields. This results
in a technocratic discourse which
‘presents policy as if it were directly dictated by matters of fact (thematic patterns) and deflects
consideration of values choices and the social, moral and political responsibility for such choices’
(Lemke, 1995: 58, emphasis in original). The dynamics of technocratic discourse are examined further in the forthcoming analysis.
These observations inform the explicit critique of contemporary understandings of food security which runs conterminously with the
findings of my analysis. I adopt a broad perspective from which to interrogate food security as a discursive
technology of global liberal governance.
Food security is not conceived as an isolated paradigm, but as
a component of overlapping discourses of human security and sustainable development which
emerged concurrently in the 1970s. The securitisation process can be regarded in some cases as an extreme form of
politicisation, while in others it can lead to a depoliticisation of the issue at hand and a replacement of the political with
technological or scientific remedies. I show how the militaristic component of traditional security discourse is
reproduced in the wider agenda of food security, through the notions of risk, threat and permanent emergency
that constitute its governmental rationale.
Supreme Court
Empirics prove that neoliberals use the Supreme Court as a tool to
provide a legal basis to their actions.
Lerner, PhD, 1933
(Max, Yale Law Journal, Volume 42, No. 5, p. 668-672)
THE American state has developed two of its institutions to a degree never before attained-the
capitalist form of business enterprise and the judicial power. At first sight the combination
seems paradoxical, joining in a single pattern an exploitative type of economic behavior with the objectivity of the judicial
process. But those who have studied the building of the American state know that the paradox lies
only on the surface. It is no historical accident but a matter of cultural logic that a Field should grow where a Morgan does;
and a Brandeis is none the less organic a product of capitalist society than is a Debs. If the contrast between the first pair and the
second is precipitous, it is none the less contrast and not contradiction. Between our business enterprise and our
judicial power there is the unity of an aggressive and cohesive cultural pattern. They seem of the
same fibre; have, both of them, the same toughness, richness, extravagant growth; hold out at once portent and promise.
Capitalist business enterprise, while it has reached its most consummate form in the United
States,' is generic to the whole western world. But the judicial power-or more exactly, judicial supremacy -is
a uniquely American institution: 2 it could arise only in a federal state which attempts, as we do, to drive a wedge of
constitutional uniformity through heterogeneous sectional and economic groupings. The core of judicial supremacy is of course the
power of judicial review of legislative acts and administrative decisions.3 And the t Managing Editor of the Encyclopaedia of the
Social Sciences. See the author's The Social Thought of Mr. Justice Brandeis (1931) 41 YALE L. J. 1. The substance of this article was
presented in briefer form in a paper read before the American Political Science Association, in Detroit, December, 1932. 1. An
analysis of the course of American capitalism is included in section III, infra. 2. There have perhaps been states in the past more
completely under the judicial sway than America. But that the rule of judges through their veto power over legislation is the unique
American contribution to the science of government has become a truism of political thought. 3. The literature on judicial review is
extensive and polemical. E. S. CORWIN, THE DOCTRINE OF JUDICIAL REVIEW (1914) is still unsurpassed for the history of the
doctrine and his article on Judicial Review (1932) 8 ENCYCLOPAEDIOAF THE SOCIAL SCIENCES 457, is at once sane and
penetrating. BOUDIN, GOVERNMENT BY JUDICIARY(1 932), in the course of a vigorous attack on the institution, pre- [668] This
content downloaded from 35.2.195.193 on Wed, 24 Jun 2015 20:52:15 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions THE
SUPREME COURT exercise of that power by the United States Supreme Court has made it not only "the world's most powerful
court" 4 but the focal point of our bitterest political and constitutional polemics. At the heart of these polemics is the
recognition that the real meaning of the Court is to be found in the political rather than the legal
realm, and that its concern is more significantly with power politics than with judicial
technology. The Court itself of course, in its official theory of its own function, disclaims any relation to the province of
government or the formation of public policy: it pictures itself as going about quietly applying permanent canons of interpretation to
the settlement of individual disputes. If there is any truth in this position the Court's quietness must be regarded as that of the quiet
spot in the center of a tornado. However serene it may be or may pretend to be in itself, the Court is the
focal point of a set of dynamic forces which play havoc with the landmarks of the American state
and determine the power configuration of the day. Whatever may be true of the function of private law as
restricting itself to the settlement of disputes and the channeling of conduct in society, public law in a constitutional state operates to
shift or stabilize the balance of social power. There has been a tendency in some quarters to regard the power function of the Court
as the result of an imperialistic expansion by which the justices have pushed their way to a "place in the sun.' 5 We still think in the
shadow of Montesquieu and view the political process as an equation in governmental powers. The growth of the Court's power has,
by this conception, taken place at the expense of the legislative and executive departments, and the American state has become the
slave of a judicial oligarchy. The literature in which this enslavement is traced and expounded is voluminous, polemical and, even
when very able, somewhat dull. It is dull with the dullness of a thin and mechanical leitmotiv-the theory of usurpation, of the
deliberate annexation by the Court of powers never intended for it. This theory is part of the general philosophy of political
equilibrium which, originating with the eighteenth century philosophes, was reenforced by nineteenth century physics. It holds that
the safety of the individual can be assured only by maintaining a balance between the departments of the state. Whatever may have
been the validity of such a philsents a valuable although overaccented examination of the sequence of Court Supreme decisions from
the standpoint of the development of the judicial power. 4. The phrase is that of Felix Frankfurter, "Mr. Justice Brandeis and the
Constitution," in Frankfurter, ed., MR. JUSTICE BRANDEIS (1932) at 125; but the appraisal represented is a general one. 5. For the
most recent and most powerful development of this theme, see BOUDIN, op. cit. supra note 3. 19331 669 This content downloaded
from 35.2.195.193 on Wed, 24 Jun 2015 20:52:15 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions osophy in a pre-industrial
age, it has become archaic in a period when government is itself dwarfed by the new economic forces. It is as if generals in a besieged
city should quarrel over precedence while the enemy was thundering at the gates. There was, let it be admitted, a period in which the
problem of judicial usurpation was a lively issue. Readers of Beveridge's volumes on Marshall 6 are struck by the bitter political tone
of the early years of the Court, beginning even with its decision in Chisholm v. Georgia.7 Charge and countercharge, invective and
recrimination were staple, and in the din of party conflict it was no wonder that the still small voice of judicial objectivity was often
completely drowned. In such an atmosphere usurpation had meaning and utility. The polity was in its formative stage, and there was
little about the constitutional structure that was irrevocably settled. The Revolution had hewn out a new world but, as we who have
been contemporaries of another Revolution can well understand, the task of giving that world content and precision of outline still
remained. In the jockeying for political position and the general scramble for advantage, every argument counted, and much of the
political theory of the day can be best understood in terms of this orientation toward the distribution of power. But what counted
even more than theory was the fait accompli. Every new governmental step was decisive for later power configurations, and might
some day be used as precedent. And the battles of the giants, Marshall's battles with Jefferson and Jackson, were the battles of men
who knew how to use the fait accompli. The Court has then from the very beginning been part of the power-structure of the state,
acting as an interested arbiter of disputes between the branches of the government and between the states and the federal
government, and with an increasingly magistral air distributing the governmental powers. But to a great extent the significant social
struggles of the first half-century of the new state were waged outside the Court. Each period has its characacteristic clashes of
interests and its characteristic battlegrounds where those clashes occur. In the pre-industrial period the party formations measured
with a rough adequacy the vital sectional, economic and class differences in the country. The party battles of the period had some
meaning, and accumulated stresses could 6. THE LIFE OF JOHN MARSHALL (1916-20). This was of course due to some extent to
the general bitterness of party polemics in a period of political realities. See also WARREN, THE SUPREME COURT IN UNITED
STATES HISTORY (1922) for a vivid depiction of a similar effect. Both Beveridge and Warren drew copiously upon newspaper
material. 7. 2 Dall. 419 (U. S. 1793). 670 YALE LAW JOURNAL [Vol. 42 This content downloaded from 35.2.195.193 on Wed, 24 Jun
2015 20:52:15 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions THE SUPREME COURT find release through changes of party
power. The function of the Supreme Court in this scheme lay rather in settling the lines of the polity than in resolving disputes that
could not be resolved outside. But when party formations grew increasingly blurred and issues like slavery and industrialism arose
to cut across party lines, an attempt was made, notably in the Dred Scott case, to draw the Supreme Court into the struggle over
social policy. The attempt was of course disastrous, for the slavery issue reached too deep to the economic and emotional
foundations of the life of the day to be resolved by a counting of heads of more or less partisan judges. It is significant that the most
direct effect of the Dred Scott decision was the sudden growth to power of a new political party, which should settle the basic
question of public policy in the approved manner at the polls. The subsequent resort to war revealed that there might be some issues
so basic that they could not be settled at all within the constitutional framework. The coming of industrialism cut clear across the
orientation and function of the Court as it cut across every other phase of American life. The doctrine of judicial review, whatever
may have been its precedents and whatever the legalisms of its growth, had become by the middle of the century an integral part of
the American political system. But it was not the dominant political institution, nor had it acquired the compelling incidence upon
public policy that it has today. Before that could happen there had to be such a shift in the nature of the state that the characteristic
clashes of interest would be taken out of the sphere of democratic control. In short only through the building of an extra-democratic
structure of reality upon the framework of a democratic theory could the judicial power be given a real vitality or the Supreme Court
attain its present towering command over the decision of public policy. That transformation was effected by the maturing of
capitalism with its strange combination of individualism as a pattern of belief and the corporation as a pattern of control .
Business enterprise furnished the setting within which the Court was to operate, and in this
setting the ramifications of the problems that came up for solution effected a complete change in
the meaning and function of the judicial power. That power had always, when exercised, had far-reaching effects
upon the process of our national life; even when in abeyance it had been a force to be reckoned with. The Court by expounding and
applying the written Constitution had always constituted one of the elements that determined the shape and direction of the real
constitution-the operative controls of our society. But the real Constitution became under capitalism merely
the modus operandi of business enterprise. Between it on the one hand, and 1933] 671 This content downloaded
from 35.2.195.193 on Wed, 24 Jun 2015 20:52:15 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions on the other the ideals of the
American experiment and the phrases in which the eighteenth century had clothed those ideals, there was an ever lengthening gulf:
it became the function of the Supreme Court to bridge that gulf. Capitalist enterprise in America generated, as
capitalism has everywhere generated, forces in government and in the underlying classes hostile
to capitalistic expansion and bent upon curbing it: it became the function of the Court to check
those forces and to lay down the lines of economic orthodoxy. For the effective performance of its purposes
capitalist enterprise requires legal certainty amidst the flux of modern life,8 legal uniformity amidst the
heterogeneous conditions and opinions of a vast sprawling country, the legal vesting of interests amidst the swift
changes of a technological society: to furnish it with these was the huge task which the Supreme
Court had successfully to perform. The Court had of course other functions, and may be regarded from other angles. But
if we seek a single and consistent body of principles which will furnish the rationale of the judicial power in the last half century, we
must find in it the dynamics of American business enterprise. II The steady growth in the judicial power and the increasing
evidences of its economic affiliations have made the Court one of the great American ogres , part of the
demonology of liberal and radical thought.9 It has served, in fact, as something of a testing-ground for political attitudes of every
complexion. The Marxist, making the whole of politics merely an addendum to capitalism, sees the
Court as the tool and capitalism as the primary force. The contemporary Jeffersonian, fearful of all centralizing
power and zealous for the liberties of the common man, fears Wall Street and the Supreme Court alternately, uncertain as to which is
the shadow and which the substance. His cousin the liberal, if he is of a constructive turn, counts on using the machinery of the
Court to control in a statesmanlike fashion a developing capitalism which it is futile 8. It is generally accepted that one of the
essential elements of law is certainty, and that it is especially essential for the development of capitalism. It encourages accumulation
and investment by certifying the stability of the contractual relations. But it is to be conjectured that a speculative period in capitalist
development thrives equally or better on uncertainty in the law. And in periods of economic collapse the crystallized certainty of
capitalist law acts as an element of inflexibility in delaying adjustments to new conditions. 9. In America the liberals have been
extremely critical of the power of judicial review. In Germany, however, on the question of introducing it, the liberals supported it
while the conservative parties opposed it.
Surveillance General
Decreases in government surveillance fuel neoliberal institutions
Završnik PhD 12
Ales chapter 3 page 14 Transformations of Surveillance: From National Security to Private
Security Industry http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-4614-3517-4_3
Private security industry encompasses four segments, according to de Waard (1999): (1) private
security companies which perform ‘‘activities on a professional basis for third parties’’, also
known as ‘‘contract-security’’; (2) private in-house security services ‘‘performing functions for
their own company’’ and also known as ‘‘in-house security’’; (3) private central alarm
monitoring stations that perform functions for third persons on a professional basis; and (4)
private security transport companies offering services for transporting limited quantities of cash
and other valuables for third persons. After the collapse of socialism, surveillance regimes
became much more dispersed. The privatisation of public property, development of information
technology and adoption of neo-liberal ideology spread surveillance to other domains. It became
embedded in the consumer domain, architecture and urbanism, transport systems, schools and
kindergartens where parents could become full-time surveillants of their offspring (and their
guardians) through video surveillance. The shift toward ‘‘commercialized security’’ was mainly
generated by privatisation of ‘‘public property’’ and the state’s withdrawal from providing
the same extent of social and economic safety. In general terms, policing always involves
a body of largely uniformed representatives of the state—who may exercise powers on behalf of
the state which are unavailable to others. However, there are many forms of policing besides the
police, such as private security actors, citizens’ self-protective organisations, hybrid private–
public institutions (e.g. the Internet Watch Foundation which monitors internet abuses in the
UK), governmental non-police organisations (e.g. customs and postal services) or even
infrastructure providers (e.g. Internet service providers) (Wall 2007). But ‘‘commercial policing’’
is a complete novelty in CEE countries, where it has developed in a very short period of time
since the beginning of the 1990s with the transformation of the social and political system
(Sotlar and Meško 2009; Kešetovic´ 2010, p. 63). Such rapid change took place in sharp
contrast to western countries where developments in commercial (and public)
The affirmative describes surveillance using the discourse of
corporations
Jansen, a graduate student 14
Leon, Defining Reality After Snowden published by University of Erasmus
http://thesis.eur.nl/pub/17686/ p50-51
Furthermore, while in commercial discourse the corporate sector positions itself as the protector
of the public on one side (see Chapter 4.3.2), and the government as the party that the public
needs to be shielded from on the other side, the corporate sector positions a myth of government
that is fundamentally ideological. Through logic of equivalence, the corporate sector creates an
artificial dichotomy among the general public and companies versus the government, which if
naturalized may (have) become social imaginary. A good illustration of this logic of equivalence
is used by Facebook: “We will continue to be vigilant in protecting our users’ data from
unwarranted government requests, and we will continue to push all governments to be as
transparent as possible.” (Text 1). Simultaneously, by adopting terrorism as a key signifier from
national security discourse through interdiscursivity with commercial discourse, the corporate
sector engages in the contradictory activity of justifying an activity it also condemns through
logic of equivalence. Indeed, while the corporate sector justifies government data requests on
national security grounds, by stating that they help protect users “From criminal activity,
including terrorism” (Text 2), it also through logic of equivalence creates a myth of government
engaging in grave surveillance excesses. In addition, while Facebook argues that “national
security-related cases are by their nature classified and highly sensitive” (Text 1), it also states
that it pushes government to be as transparent as possible. Furthermore, the discourse used by
the corporate sector fundamentally omits its own role in current mass surveillance. Indeed, even
though technology companies perceive a decrease in customer trust, it has been exactly the
public’s trust in commercial companies to facilitate the commercial infrastructure of internet for
our communicative, informational - and since the web 2.0 and social media, increasingly also
our social needs (Andrejevic, 2012a). Especially companies such as Facebook and Google have
built their profit models around targeted third party advertising (Fuchs et al., 2012), which has
turned the digital enclosure (Andrejevic, 2007) into a profitable business model. The result of
this is what Cohen (2008) names the valorization of surveillance. In other words, many
technology companies have built services for users that generate as much data on these
customers as possible, which is the product they sell to advertisers, thereby effectively
capitalizing on the activity of surveillance. In this light, the logic of equivalence in a ‘we versus
them’ representation of reality, where the corporate sector together with the public situates
themselves as opposed to government becomes fundamentally ideological. Notwithstanding the
inconsistencies within discourses.
The affirmative fails to address the inherently capitalist nature of
surveillance
Jansen, a graduate student 14
Leon, Defining Reality After Snowden published by University of Erasmus
http://thesis.eur.nl/pub/17686/ p13
The effectiveness of targeted advertising is largely dependent on one aspect: consumer data. As
a result of technology development, is has become possible to build extensive customer profiles
from collected data. Customer can be targeted individually with tailored advertisements, this
way increasing advertising returns. The use of cookies, collaborative filtering, spyware,
clickstream analysis, log file analysis, and web crawlers are but a few examples of techniques
used to build consumer profiles on individual internet users (Fuchs et al., 2012). Such
“information capitalism” (Wall, 2006, p. 340) may come in the annoying form of spam e-mails
or intrusive search engine advertisements. However, the larger issue here is what Cohen (2008)
names the “valorization of surveillance” (p. 8), which refers to the underlying profit structure of
a large portion of today’s internet – one that makes profitable the potential surveillance by
means of consumer data gathering on a mass scale. Most notably, the three triangular sectors
univocally omit the role of web 2.0 commodification in current mass surveillance. Indeed, while
the corporate sector presents the government as the party to blame for mass surveillance,
citizen groups in fact reinforce this position by a failure to address the corporate sector
involvement in mass surveillance. More specifically, the failure to acknowledge the
fundamental consequences of the trust citizens have in the corporate sector for providing the
infrastructure citizens use for their communicative, informational, and social needs leads to
omission of the central issue of valorization of surveillance. Instead, the corporate sector
presents solutions such as increased encryption, or occasional Transparency Reports; a part of
the government sector argues for more oversight; and citizen groups advocate for more
transparency and accountability. As a result, all of the parties fail to address the fundamental
issue of data commodification. Hereby, the main research question (RQ) has been answered.
The 1ac was filled with corporate discourse, demonstrating an
acceptance of the neoliberalism present in surveillance
Jansen, a graduate student 14
Leon, Defining Reality After Snowden published by University of Erasmus
http://thesis.eur.nl/pub/17686/ p57-58
Perhaps, most notable in the previous discussion of discourses among societal sectors is the
complete failure to mention the corporate sector’s role in the surveillance process for it is the
corporate sector that amasses and transmits the data that government is accused of tapping into
on such a mass scale. Especially the fact that the citizen group sector has been found to adopt
much of the corporate sector’s technological optimism, and in doing so fails to address the
fundamental commercial infrastructure underlying much of today’s communication through
internet. As a result, the fundamentally ideological positioning of the myth of government in
corporate sector discourse is reinforced by citizen group discourse. The complete absence of any
mention to the role of the corporate sector in current mass surveillance suggests hegemonic
intervention by corporate sector discourse. Furthermore, considering the emphasis on human
rights for a global audience in citizen group discourse it is especially striking that the
phenomenon of prosumer commodification (Fuchs, 2011) by the corporate sector is entirely
omitted by citizen groups. As Fuchs (2011) argues, while prosumers use services of web 2.0
applications, their data is collected and sold as a commodity. The laborers in this context are
users themselves who while using the web 2.0 services also effectively produce data that
companies reap the benefits from in the form of monetary profit (Fuchs, 2011). In this context,
“prosumers are digitally enclosed and digitally exploited” (Fuchs, 2011, p. 299). A prominent
explanation for the widespread failure to acknowledge this new form of capitalist exploitation is
the transformation of the role of work itself in society. Indeed, towards the middle of the 1970s
capitalism gradually moved from the traditional ‘Fordist’ form of organizing work to a postFordist network structure characterized by more flexible labor systems and relative work
autonomy. While the traditional structures of capitalism and bureaucracy were critiqued, the
gradually evolved network structure triumphed while the hierarchical division of labor
effectively remained the same. As a result, while traditional exploitation was extensively
addressed and critiqued after the 1960s, the newly emerged neocapitalism effectively continued
exploitation while going relatively uncontested (Boltanski & Chiapello, 2006). The ignoring of
capitalism in citizen groups’ critique of mass surveillance suggests that the neocapitalist
hegemonic intervention is replicated discursively by the societal sectors in the triangle.
Notwithstanding the stark differences between surveillance discourse and national security
discourse on issues of privacy or secrecy, very notably both univocally present U.S. citizenship as
a privileged status that positions one’s privacy or protection from mass surveillance as superior
to those of non-U.S. citizens. This is a stance from the government sector that has potentially
profound ideological implications. While the U.S. politicians are very prominently covered in the
governmental sector, the relatively large coverage of their stances in global mass media
potentially reinforces the ideological influence of their articulations of reality on public
discourse. Furthermore, while both commercial discourse as well as activist discourse include
the key signifier of transparency, both articulate it fundamentally different in their respective
discourses. To clarify, activist discourse advocates for more transparency, for instance with help
of whistleblowers, in order to aide increased accountability to a global public. By contrast, the
corporate sector hopes increased ‘transparency’ will reinforce customer trust in their product.
More specifically, the corporate sector publishes Transparency Reports including very
undetailed information about government requests for customer data. Arguably, this practice of
publishing Transparency Reports has two immediate effects. First, the attention is distracted
from corporate involvement in mass surveillance by reinforcing the myth of government
through logic of equivalence in a ‘we versus them’ structure. And secondly, the corporate sector
emphasizes the impression that their minimum act of transparency helps to solve a program
that they help to maintain to exist in the first place. Furthermore, the combination of the
technological optimism regarding the role of technology in society with the firm belief in
neoliberalist free market forces shows rather large resemblance to the Californian Ideology as
posited by Barbrook and Cameron (1996). Their critique on dotcom companies argues that
Silicon Valley companies univocally promote an ideology which can be characterized as a
combination of technological optimism and neoliberalism.
Terrorism – Empirics/”War on Terror”
The affirmative’s fear of terrorism advances “market patriotism”
Whyte, PhD, 08 (Professor David Whyte has a BA with Honors and a PhD. He is currently a reader in Sociology at the
University of Liverpool. “Market Patriotism and the ‘War on Terror’”, Social Justice (journal), Vol. 34, No. 3/4, 2007-2008,
http://www.jstor.org/stable/29768467)
Market Patriotism¶ The war on terror, then, is both particularistic and universal. Liberal universalizing discourses
are
now read through the lens of a combination of the particular (nation) and universal (market).
The result of this combination, organized around a crude economic egotism, is an ideological formation that we
can describe as “market patriotism.” The term is used here to denote the hegemonic attempt to
crudely promote a universal “market” and particular “nation” in equal measure and to couple
the “public interest” to the “economic interest” of the ruling bloc. It is in market patriotism that we find the
most open ideological defense of that naked brutality and economic egoism of neoliberalism. Neoliberalism in the present era relies
upon ever more opportunistic means of seeking consent for ever more opportunistic forms of economic and social organization.¶
Market patriotism is typically opportunistic in this sense. In times of war or acute economic crisis, nation-states
have traditionally relied upon market patriotism as a technique of popular mobilization. In the
second world war of the 20th century, appeals for people to adapt their patterns of consumption in
line with the war effort were commonplace (Calder, 1969). In this respect, it is worth recalling “Buy British”
and “Buy American” campaigns that surface intermittently during economic crises. In the context
of the “war on terror,” market patriotism has been used to abstract crises in uneven
development or the uneven distribution of profits by conflating a common security threat to the
general population (terrorism) with a threat to uninterrupted profit accumulation. The new market
patriotism therefore couples the common public interest to the unobstructed accumulation of
profits by capital in a way that does not rely on—and explicitly eschews—liberal principles of
universalism.¶ Market patriotism seeks to resolve two sets of contradictions: those arising between and within class interests.
For example, the neoliberal reconstruction of the distinction between “public” and “private” interests discussed above can be read as
an attempt to reconfigure the contradictory relationship between the wider public interest and a narrow elite interest. To achieve
this, market populism mobilizes general support for a project of “national unity,” in which the interests of state-corporate elites are
aligned with the general public interest. It also seeks to reconcile conflict between different sections of the ruling elite. Market
patriotism is fundamentally premised on the idea that the “general” or “national” interest is best
secured when governments act (or should act) on behalf of capital. Its key effects are the development of
intellectual legitimacy for, and the provision of momentum to, particular formations of government-capital symbiosis. Therefore, it
is concerned with organizing the support of subordinate groups for projects of national unity
and with organizing unity across ruling elites.¶ The remainder of this article considers how, under conditions of a
“war on terror” (no matter how contrived), market patriotism has been mobilized to facilitate the uninterrupted accumulation of
profits and to provide a basis for heightened collaboration between corporations and government institutions. It points to how
market patriotism has found political expression in two very different, but crucial moments for the organization of consent for a
“war on terror.” It then argues that market patriotism is emerging to provide a more general common-sense basis for the
mobilization of public and private apparatuses to “secure the Imperium” at home and abroad.¶ Trenches Around the Market¶
Following the September 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, ideologies of
market supremacy became prominent in relation to the defense of “our” markets and “our”
market system against the terrorists. Elsewhere, this has been documented with reference to a range of
appeals to “consumer patriotism,” including Bill Clinton’s public shopping spree for ties to
remind citizens of their “patriotic duty to spend money” (Whyte, 2002). When the New York Stock
Exchange reopened on September 17,2001, it organized a ceremony that included a recital of God Bless
America led by a U.S. Marine. The traders themselves were lauded as “heroes” after they
managed to buy and sell a record value in shares that day (The Financial Times, September 22-23,2001). PostSeptember 11 tales about terrorist exploitation of U.S. corporate brand names also circulated, as if to
keep consumers on the righteous path. The Washington Post, for example, highlighted how
terrorists and “rogue states” benefit from counterfeited goods that corrupt brand names such as
Nikes and Levis (Klein, 2001). Messages of condolence and “united against terrorism” sloganeering became
ubiquitous in corporate advertising in the aftermath of the attacks (Ashby, 2006). The purity of the U.S.
brand itself briefly symbolized the war on terror.¶ For political leaders, encouraging market patriotism serves a range of purposes. At
one level, it is a pragmatic means of encouraging economic activity during crises in which profit accumulation is at threat of
interruption. At another level, its effect is much more profound. Market patriotism, in the forms noted above, is aimed at
locating collective opposition to terrorism in the economy, reifying neoliberal markets as a bulwark against
terrorism, and achieving ontological security in the everyday lives of people.
The corollary is that opponents
of neoliberalism can be easily labeled as a cause of the widespread fear and ontological
insecurity sought by the “terrorists.”¶ Shortly before the U.S. presidential election in November 2004, Osama bin
Laden released a tape of a speech addressed to the U.S. public. He cited a British estimate that the cost of conducting the September
2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon was roughly half a million dollars, a figure dwarfed by the cost to the U.S.
economy (perhaps in excess of a trillion dollars):3¶ “Every dollar of al Qaeda defeated a million dollars, by the permission of Allah,
besides the loss of a huge number of jobs.... As for the economic deficit, it has reached record astronomical numbers estimated to
total more than a trillion dollars.... And it all shows that the real loser is you...it is the American people and their economy”.4¶ In
December 2001, bin Laden had claimed that the attacks had “shaken the throne of America and hit
hard the American economy at its heart and its core.” The U.S. government took the opportunity
to make a stalwart defense of U.S. economic integrity. The FBI’s rejoinder to a similar message in 2002
is typical of the dialogue of the U.S. state with bin Laden:¶ “The focus on economic targets is
consistent with al-Qaeda’s stated ideological goals and longstanding strategy. The September 11
attacks and commentary on these attacks by bin Laden and others indicate how central
economic targets are to this strategy: The group’s leaders have said that they aim to undermine
what they see as the backbone of U.S. power, the economy. Our adversary is trying to portray American
influence as based on economic might and therefore seeks to strike an economic target prominent enough for economic and
symbolic reasons that it would have immediate resonance around the world (U.S. Department of Justice, 2002).Ӧ As bin Laden
talks up the economic vulnerability of the U.S., the U.S. government talks up the U.S.’s central
role in defending and promoting a “free” global market. The positioning of “terrorists” in
opposition to the free-market system enables profit-making activity to be valorized as a bulwark
against terrorism. If terrorists seek to harm us economically and prevent us from realizing the freedoms we can
enact through participation in the marketplace, then they are out to destroy not only democracy and freedom,
but also market democracy and market freedom. This construction of neoliberal market civilization fits well with
George W. Bush’s constituency in the Southern and Midwestern heartlands of the U.S., where Presbyterian fundamentalism has
virtually adopted the capitalist market as part of its religious iconography (Schwartz, 2004; Gallaher, 1997).5 In this vision,
terrorism threatens American lives and American livelihoods (as realized by the economic predominance of
the U.S.). Market patriotism thus allows the war on terror to be reconstructed as a war in which the
security of the people depends upon the security of the neoliberal economy.¶
Hegemony and the war on terror are just methods to advance the
neoliberalist agenda- Iraq proves
Lafer Associate Professor of Labor 04
(Gordon, “Neoliberalism by other means: the “war on terror” at home and abroad”, New Political Science, 26:3, 323-346, Gordon
Lafer is a political economist and is an Associate Professor at the University of Oregon’s Labor Education and Research Center. He
has written widely on issues of labor and employment. Pg. 324-325 policyhttp://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0739314042000251306 Acc.
6/24/15 // yZ)
If the war and occupation were not about weapons of mass destruction, what were they about?
While the corporate designs on Iraqi oil are troubling, and the war-profiteering of politically-connected contractors is obscene,
neither of these appears sufficient to explain the administration’s broad agenda. I believe that, in its broadest logic, the war
must be understood as a means of advancing the neoliberal agenda of global economic
transformation. Both abroad and at home, the pattern of administration behavior reflects an
ambitious and aggressive drive to restructure the economy in line with neoliberal dictates. The
choice of Iraq as the target of invasion and occupation was no doubt driven both by Iraq’s vast
oil reserves and its potential to substitute for Saudi Arabia as the market maker in the global oil exchange. Apart from the
Saudis, Iraq is the only country whose reserves are large enough that it could regulate world prices
by choosing to expand or contract production at strategic points in the price cycle. This strategic value
of Iraqi oil—above and beyond its straight economic value—explains why, within one month of capturing Baghdad, US overseers
raised the prospect of pulling Iraq out of the OPEC consortium.3 Control of Iraqi oil offers the potential to exercise critical leverage
over the economies of the Middle East, Russia, China and other oil-dependent nations. But the allure of Iraq is about
more than oil. Unique among regional economies, the oil-producing nations of the Middle East
constitute the one region of the world whose economies are both significantly wealthy and
largely state-run. As most of Europe, the Americas, Asia and increasingly Africa have been drawn into the neoliberal regime of
the IMF and WTO, the oil wealth of the Mideast has allowed these nations to evade the discipline of
austerity budgets and structural adjustment plans. In the eyes of neoliberal reformers, oil wealth
is not a blessing that lets governments protect citizens against the dangers of unemployment or
public service cutbacks, but a curse that prevents nations from adopting more aggressive freemarket policies. Thus Thomas Friedman notes that “there is simply no way to stimulate a process of economic and political
reform in the Arab-Muslim world without radically reducing their revenues from oil, thereby forcing these governments to reform
their economies.”4 As it is, oil revenue has insulated these governments from the strictures enforced virtually everywhere else. On
the eve of the invasion, only two of the 13 oil-producing nations of the Mideast had any IMF debt whatsoever.5 Thus, public
employment, state-run industries, subsidized public services, and restrictions on foreign capital—all of which have elsewhere been
increasingly dismantled over the past 20 years—remain flourishing hallmarks of Mideast economies. An IMF review of the region
concludes that these economies are characterized by “lagging political and institutional reforms; large and costly public sectors …
[and] high trade restrictiveness,” and grades the region’s regulatory burden as significantly worse than that of Latin America, East
Asia or the OECD countries.6 It is this form of economic governance that the administration aims to undo in Iraq. This is
neoliberalism by other means: what could not be achieved by trade or treaty will be imposed by
military force.
Defeating terrorism masks a global enriching of capitalists and
policies focused on preventing protest
Lafer Associate Professor of Labor 04
(Gordon, “Neoliberalism by other means: the “war on terror” at home and abroad”, New Political Science, 26:3, 323-346, Gordon
Lafer is a political economist and is an Associate Professor at the University of Oregon’s Labor Education and Research Center. He
has written widely on issues of labor and employment. Pg. 345-346 policyhttp://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0739314042000251306 Acc.
6/24/15 // yZ)
In these and other ways, we see that when there is a conflict between security concerns and corporate
interests, it is generally the latter that triumphs. This, finally, brings us back to our opening question. As Lawrence
Fishburne’s Morpheus might put it: What is the “War on Terror”? And as in Fishburne’s Matrix, to a large extent the answer is : the
“War on Terror” is control. Having come through this side of the corporate looking glass, it is
clear that things are not what they initially appear (You think that’s air you’re breathing?). While there is a
genuine need to take whatever steps are necessary to prevent future attacks on American
civilians, these steps account for a small share of the policies that make up this war. The bulk of
this offensive, both abroad and at home, has nothing to do with making us safer. On the
contrary, it is a strategy for further enriching the select few who are indeed busy knitting
together a seamless system of global governance beyond the grasp of democratic citizens, while the
rest of us will find both our standard of living and our ability to exert control over our economic lives continually diminished. Above
all, this strategy relies crucially on popular subscription to the belief that we are a nation at war.
This is why, no
matter how many enemies are defeated, the Bush administration will never declare
the war over. Imagine, for a moment, what the shape of American politics would be if there were two million jobs lost, record
bankruptcies, record families without health insurance, record retirees losing their pensions and health insurance, and massive
raiding of the public treasury by the richest people in the country—and no threat of terrorism. Clearly, the administration’s
agenda would be impossible to enact. To avoid this scenario, the administration’s strategy must
include a creeping police state, with laws that are increasingly aimed not at foreign terror but at
domestic protest, in order to keep a lid on the unrest that would otherwise surface, and with the ever-present accusation that
administration critics are traitors to the country.94 And above all, it’s to convince us that we are in a permanent state of war that
must trump all other concerns. The truth is that we are not at war. The war against terrorism is over. We won the war in
Afghanistan, dealing a massive blow to both the troops and infrastructure of those who knocked down the Twin Towers. Of course it
will never be possible to guarantee that there will never be another attack on American civilians. There is still a need for
the government to police against possible terrorist acts. But this is the job of the police or the
FBI, not of every one of us. Not all of us are potential suspects. Not all of us have to be junior police. And not
everything has to be subordinated to a state of national emergency. The world did not permanently change on September 11, 2001. It
didn’t even mark Americans’ initiation into the circle of nations accustomed to domestic terror; that was accomplished in Oklahoma
City if not before. There is no reason that the police and intelligence agencies cannot pursue terror threats as they did after the first
World Trade Center bombing, while the rest of us carry on our lives the same as they were three years ago. Their work does
not amount to a “war,” nor does it require our involvement. While the war on terrorism is over,
the class war at home is still raging. And this is not a war that we are waging, but that is being
waged on us—by the Bush administration and the class interests it represents. This is the truly
urgent front of our war. Our country is under siege by what may be the most cynical
administration in history—and frankly, the most un-American. It is up to us to stand up against
the illusion of war and the insidious agenda it masks, and to insist that this truly be a
government of, by, and for the people.
Terrorism - Media Framing
The affirmative’s rhetoric prescribes globalization to solve terrorism.
Rojecki, PhD, 2005 (Andrew Rojecki got his PhD in Communication Studies from Northwestern. He is now Associate
Professor and Director of Graduate Studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago Department of Communications. This article was
published in Political Communication, Volume 22, Issue I, 2005. “Media Discourse on Globalization and Terror”, Political
Communication, http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10584600590908447?journalCode=upcp20)
The Dark Side of Globalization ¶ This frame has two versions—one political, one economic—that are functioning
parts of the same structure of understanding, weighing
the short-term risks of globalization against longterm benefits. Illustrated by the Friedman quote that opened this article, the political frame speaks to previously
unimaginable consequences of globalization: The world is brought closer together but must now
confront problems that at one time seemed at a comfortable distance. Nearly all of the instances of the
political frame appear in the news/editorial pages. The economic version also speaks to the short-term risks
posed by terrorism but places a greater emphasis on the long-term benefits of an expanding
market economy. The economic frame structures coverage in the business sections of the paper; when it appears in the
editorial section, it is usually advanced by an economist or an official of a regulatory body such as the WTO. ¶ The
most common metaphor used to evoke the political frame is the “dark side,” “underbelly,” or
“downside” of globalization. The dark-side frame concedes the inescapability of the underlying
technological dynamics of globalization but also of the importation of the world’s ills along the
same communication and transportation networks that enlarge and accelerate markets. This frame
complicates the end of history thesis of the 1990s with the dark realities of continuing social and political dislocations that intrude
on the states of the West, particularly the United States. The lesson to be drawn is that, pace Fukuyama (1992), history continues
apace: ¶ We have been lulled by the disappearance of the menace of the Cold War, and the indisputable erosion of the national
security state by the cultural and economic forces of globalization. Open borders were inevitable, markets were never wrong and
there was an irreversible dependence by all on vast easy flows of goods, capital and people among nations. Why worry? Those are
compelling ideas with solid veins of truth. But even they need to be put in perspective by looking realistically at the chances for evil
that such freedom from control offers. Globalization is a circle that pumps poison as well as benefit through the system. (Hoagland,
2001b, p. A25) ¶ The underlying theme is that terrorism draws upon the same global circuits of
trade, finance, and information that drive beneficial economic development. These same
circuits, however, inadvertently supply the highly leveraged form of power by which non- state
actors gain an asymmetrical power advantage over nation states. Because terrorists are beyond
the control of a democratically empowered people, finding a means of accountability or
responsibility is not possible. As such, the actions of terrorists present a brazen challenge to
state sovereignty, and the state is encouraged to reply with due force: ¶ Now, American president George
W. Bush and Russian president Vladimir Putin trade horses and roll logs as if they had never heard of globalization. They take their
playbook not from the theorist of the moment but from Metternich and Thucydides. Last week’s summit in Washington and Texas
marked a return to the bad old days of power politics, secret diplomacy and backroom deals. And it’s about time. International
institutions, regional associations and non-governmental organizations all have important roles to play in today’s world. Only states,
however, can mobilize the resources, popular will and territorial base to fight terrorist organizations like al-Qaeda—which in turn
relies on state support in places such as the Taliban’s Afghanistan or Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. (Strauss, 2001, p. B4) ¶ In those
articles and editorials that recommend an explicit remedy to the “dark-side” theory of globalization
and its facilitation of terrorism (14 of 28), all recommend the reinvigoration of state power as the
most effective solution. Of the remaining 14, 8 focus on the problem of increased vulnerability to a globally dispersed
economy, potentially tainted food supplies from foreign sources, opportunities for laundering money intended for terrorist cells, and
the asymmetries of power created by terrorists who strike and then melt away. Although there is no explicit call for
increased state intervention, the implication is inescapable. The remaining 6 pieces simply use the metaphor
in broader analyses that range from the death of globalization to that of civilization itself, and thus provide a politically
nonfunctional frame. One colorful example of the latter includes an instructive quote from Gibbon: ¶ “The present is always a
fleeting moment, the past is no more; and our prospect of futurity is dark and doubtful.” It has always been thus. That we belong to
the cycle of history—not, as Mr. Fukuyama would have us believe, to its “endpoint,” but caught within its motion of rise and fall—is a
profoundly disquieting thought; who really believes that nothing is eternal? (Atlas, 2001, p. 5) ¶ On the whole, the political
rhetoric in this framework defines a critical area of vulnerability and cedes power to the state for
a program of increased vigilance and regulation. Popular support for an invigorated state during
a national emergency is a deeply embedded feature of U.S. political culture and provides a deeply
resonant base of support for this frame. The “rally round the flag effect” was much in evidence
after the 9/11 attacks, a surge of patriotic pride in the United States (Smith, Rasinski, & Toce, 2001) and nearunanimous levels of approval for a war on terror that would begin with an attack on Afghanistan. Critically,
however, this
solution does not warrant isolation from global economic interdependence. In short,
the economic benefits of globalization outweigh the security dangers that would otherwise
justify isolation. ¶ To the extent that terror requires state intervention and added security
measures, however, both are regarded as frictions that impede the efficient operation of the
engine of global prosperity. State intervention connects the political short-term frame to the
economic frame of the long-term benefits of free trade. Through this connection, the dark-side
frame smuggles in the broad principles of neo-liberalism, that the prosperity of a nation
depends on its openness to the global economy and on the reform of institutions that restrict
free trade. The dark side frame does not undermine globalization of the economy, for it is
regarded as the long-range solution to the problems of poverty and underdevelopment that are
the source of the anger and frustration. The clearest statement of this appears in an op-ed written by the
United States trade representative to the WTO: ¶ Open markets are vital for developing nations, many
of them fragile democracies that rely on the international economy to overcome poverty and
create opportunity; we need answers for those who ask for economic hope to counter internal
threats to our common values. . . . We need to infuse our global leadership with a new sense of
purpose and lasting resolve. Congress, working with the Bush administration, has an
opportunity to shape history by raising the flag of American economic leadership. The terrorists
deliberately chose the World Trade towers as their target. While their blow toppled the towers, it
cannot and will not shake the foundation of world trade and freedom. (Zoellick, 2001, p. A35). ¶ The
tenets of neo-liberalism assert that the free movement of capital and informa- tion creates a
rising tide of wealth that lifts all economic boats. Thus, it follows that because the events of 9/11
will require the levying of a security tax, the resulting drag on the global marketplace will retard
prosperity and may further fuel the frustration that animates terror. This is likely to find
resonance in an issue culture that accepts the long- run benefits of a global economy in the face of
possible short-term losses to domestic job security. Indeed, a number of public opinion polls
reveal solid majority support for free trade as a solution to global poverty (e.g., Pew Research Center for
the People and the Press, 2003). ¶ The prosperity interpretation is at odds with the view that globalization,
understood as unregulated free market neo-liberalism, results in the inequalities that lead to terror- ism in
the first place. Inequality understood as a system-specific negative outcome of capitalism in general is a relatively minor frame,
related to the American hegemony frame. Notably, those who make this claim are representatives of the anti-globalization
movement who suffer some loss of credibility in accounts that call attention to their eclectic political agenda and exotic dress (see,
e.g., Pinkerton, 2001a). This is rarely the case for other frames of reference. The greater part of the inequality discourse takes place
within the American hegemony frame, where, as I noted earlier, the claims are only weakly supported and contested vigorously by
the discourses on the inevitability of globalization and the prosperity that is its chief benefit. ¶ To summarize, the dark-side
frame finds the source of terrorist power in the infrastructures of globalization itself, the same
networks that increase the chances for global prosperity. Because of the asymmetry of power
that provides terrorists with a formidable advantage over sovereign states, the clearly articulated
solution is an increase in state power. State intervention undermines globalization only to the
extent that increased regulation is a drag on the efficiencies of a growing global market, which is
still regarded as the long-term solution. Thus, the difference between this frame and the American hegemony frame is that
the dark side frame is focused mainly on the universally applicable economics of free trade.
Whereas American hegemony is responsible for terrorism in the first instance, the space-time compression of globalization itself is
responsible for the latter. This short-term risk is weighed favorably against the more desirable long-
term benefits of a global market, however, a position heavily sponsored by recent presidential administrations and the
greater majority of U.S. think tanks (Rojecki, 2003). For these reasons, the dark-side frame is likely to remain
a salient part of the globalization/terrorism issue culture.
Portraying terrorism as a threat advances globalization as something
to defend in the face of extremism.
Rojecki, PhD, 2005 (Andrew Rojecki got his PhD in Communication Studies from Northwestern. He is now Associate
Professor and Director of Graduate Studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago Department of Communications. This article was
published in Political Communication, Volume 22, Issue I, 2005. “Media Discourse on Globalization and Terror”, Political
Communication, http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10584600590908447?journalCode=upcp20)
The importance of the issue of terrorism for globalization is revealed by a comparison of its
linkage in the press pre- and post-9/11. In the nine-month period prior to September 11, 2001, less
than 2% of the stories on globalization in the New York Times included references to terrorism.
By contrast, in the three-month period following the attacks, a third of the stories on globalization
included such references. Terrorism had become, after 9/11, a significant part of the issue
culture of globalization. ¶ Three master frames made explicit connections between globalization and the terror attacks (the
percentages in parentheses represent the proportion of appearances of a particular frame across the whole of press coverage): (a) the
dark side of globalization (51%); (b) American hegemony (35%); and (c) clash of worldviews (7%). The remaining 7% didn’t fit any of
these categories but also didn’t warrant separate categories of their own because of their infrequency. A sampling of these frames
includes regarding the attacks as a signal of the end of civilization (Atlas, 2001), the hopelessness of divining the meaning of
anything as abstract as globalization (Vitello, 2002), the inadequacy of United States government efforts in promoting the
fundamental goodness of the nation to the rest of the world, and linking the attacks to Americans’ ignorance of international politics:
“Though it is the engine of globalization around the world, the nation has never been more inward looking, less worldly” (Klein,
2001, p. M1). ¶ The three dominant frames appeared as singular organizing frameworks for about a third of the coverage, mainly in
editorials, op-eds, and news analyses that offer the opportunity for an author (columnist, invited commentator, or expert) to explore
a single thesis. For example, an op-ed piece in the Los Angeles Times traced the origins of the terror
attacks to a negative reaction by religious fundamentalists to corrupting cosmopolitanism
brought to light by globalization (Balzar, 2001). News articles were more likely to offer several frames in the form of
analyses and opinions offered by two or more experts. Thus, a single article could offer multiple causes and solutions for the attacks,
depending on the number and variety of sources or experts consulted. One example of the latter includes a string of summaries of
unrelated editorials from the world’s press (see, e.g., World Press Roundup, 2001). But seemingly unrelated themes sometimes
represented different facets of a common frame. Thus, a Minneapolis Star Tribune piece on the origins of the
terror attacks (Black, 2001, p. A6) bore this subtitle: “Hatred of America has many complex roots;
Anti-U.S. attitudes involve religion, economics, military power and often the globalization of
American culture.” Note here that although four separate themes are mentioned, a closer look at the whole of the coverage
reveals that these were merely facets of a single, master frame. I now turn to an analysis of these frames. ¶ American Hegemony ¶
Although by the numbers American hegemony is the second most common frame, I regard it as the most dominant because of its
concentration in the news and editorial sections of the press. The most common frame, the dark side of globalization, appears in two
versions split between the news/editorial and the business sections and may, therefore, reach a more divided audience. ¶ The
American hegemony frame addresses the role of United States responsibility for the terrorist attacks. Given the negative reaction to
Susan Sontag’s essay in The New Yorker in which she traces a line from the attacks to Washington policy (“Where is the
acknowledgement that this was not a ‘cowardly’ attack on ‘civilization’ or ‘liberty’ or ‘humanity’ or ‘the free world’ but an attack on
the world’s self-proclaimed super-power, undertaken as a consequence of specific American alliances and actions?”), it is surprising
to find that this is the dominant frame in news coverage and editorial reaction. There are, however,
important qualifications that complicate and in due course soften this interpretation. ¶
Press coverage includes three
versions of a frame that raises the primacy of American influence in one or more of the
economic, political, or cultural domains of globalization. The general assumption is that the
United States inspires envy and resentment because of its powerful economy and the political and
cultural influence that follows from its economic prowess. From an economic standpoint, because capitalism is
said to spread inequality in and between nations, the United States is perceived to have benefited the most by
the system. In the political domain, globalization is a cover for reinforcing American dominance with the
UN as a fig leaf, most notably in the Middle East, where the United States is said to support corrupt
regimes that routinely violate human rights. Perceptions of U.S. one-sided support of Israel by the “Arab street”
increase the bitterness of those oppressed by their governments. Finally, in the cultural domain, globalization
spreads American popular culture, which is believed to displace cherished tradition and sacred
belief. This excerpt from an op-ed is a characteristic example: ¶ Fouad Ajami of Johns Hopkins University
wrote years ago that since the 1920s, “Muslim cults . . . have looked at the defiled world around them—
wild cities, shocking cultural trends, foreigners with alien ways, subjugation to the outsiders, a world that seems to be perpetually in
crisis, young men and women who have strayed from time-honored ways—and have felt at one time or another the urge to
destroy or the urge to withdraw and escape.” Since the end of the Cold War and the beginning of globalization,
America has emerged as the symbol of everything that has gone wrong for them. ¶ Note that in this
(common) example, the frame is not an assertion of American hegemony but rather a claim of the
perception by others that such is the case. In fact, these perceptions may be exaggerated or entirely mistaken. As
the previous text concludes, “And who is responsible for their misfortune? Those in power in their
individual countries, often. But who has corrupted their leaders? What is the font of everything they
half envy and half fear? The United States of America, or so they believe” (Greenway, 2001, p. A15). ¶
The affirmative ignores the real motive for terrorism, citing jealousy
instead.
Rojecki, PhD, 2005 (Andrew Rojecki got his PhD in Communication Studies from Northwestern. He is now Associate
Professor and Director of Graduate Studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago Department of Communications. This article was
published in Political Communication, Volume 22, Issue I, 2005. “Media Discourse on Globalization and Terror”, Political
Communication, http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10584600590908447?journalCode=upcp20)
A second way the coverage weakens the equation of American hegemony with globalization is to
attribute the supposition to generic foreign others who, in their desperation, appear less than fully
rational: ¶ They live where globalization is not working or not working well enough. They believe, or
can be led to believe, that America—or their pro-America government, if they live under one—is to
blame for their misery. Many are adrift, cut off from their social foundations. Perhaps they moved
into the city from dying villages, or were driven there by war or famine. There is no going back for them, yet
in the city there is not much going forward; the movement tends to be downward. As they fall,
they grab hold of whatever they can, and sometimes it is the violent ideas of religious extremists. (Maas, 2001,
p. 48) ¶ The following example does not impugn the rationality of the impoverished but nevertheless weakens the
connection between their poverty and American responsibility by attributing it to the
understandable but perhaps unreliable perceptions of the afflicted: ¶ “Perhaps we should not have been
surprised that the success of capitalism should have also created violent hostility among those
who’ve been left out—people with no power in the world of international diplomacy. They feel
that the squalor and poverty of their lives is something being done to them by those who do have
the power” (Holstein, 2001, p. 7). ¶
USFG Reform
The USFG is an extension of the corporations, thus reforms would
still benefit the class of elites and wealthy.
Levine, PhD, 11
(Bruce, “The Myth of U.S. Democracy and the Reality of U.S. Corporatocracy”, The Huffington Post, 3/11/2011)
Polls show that on the major issues of our time -- the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, Wall Street bailouts and health insurance --
the
opinion of We the People has been ignored on a national level for quite some time. While the
corporate media repeats the myth that the United States of America is a democracy, Americans ,
especially Wisonsiners and Ohioans, know that this is a joke. On March 3, 2011, a Rasmussen Reports poll declared that
"Most Wisconsin voters oppose efforts to weaken collective bargaining rights for union workers." This of course didn't stop
Wisconsin Governor Walker and the Wisconsin legislature from passing a bill that -- to the delight of America's ruling class -
- trashed most collective bargaining rights of public employee unions . Similarly in Ohio, legislation to limit
collective bargaining rights for public workers is on the verge of being signed into law by Governor Kasich, despite the fact that
Public Policy Polling on March 15, 2011 reported that 54 percent of Ohio voters would repeal the law, while 31 percent would keep it.
It is a myth that the United States of America was ever a democracy (most of the famous founder elite such as John Adams equated
democracy with mob rule and wanted no part of it). The United States of America was actually created as a
republic, in which Americans were supposed to have power through representatives who were
supposed to actually represent the American people. The truth today, however, is that the United States
is neither a democracy nor a republic. Americans are ruled by a corporatocracy: a partnership of
"too-big-to-fail" corporations, the extremely wealthy elite, and corporate-collaborator
government officials. The reality is that Americans, for quite some time, have opposed the U.S.
government's wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, but We the People have zero impact on policy. On
March 10-13, 2011, an ABC News/Washington Post poll asked, "All in all, considering the costs to the United States versus the
benefits to the United States, do you think the war in Afghanistan has been worth fighting, or not?"; 64 percent said "not worth
fighting" and 31 percent said "worth fighting." A February 11, 2011, CBS poll reported Americans' response to the question, "Do you
think the U.S. is doing the right thing by fighting the war in Afghanistan now, or should the U.S. not be involved in Afghanistan
now?"; only 37 percent of Americans said the U.S. "is doing the right thing" and 54 percent said we "should not be involved." When a
CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll on December 17-19, 2010, posed the question, "Do you favor or oppose the U.S. war in
Afghanistan?" only 35 percent of Americans favored the war while 63 percent opposed it. For several years, the majority of
Americans have also opposed the Iraq war, typified by a 2010 CBS poll which reported that 6 out of 10 Americans view the Iraq war
as "a mistake." The opposition by the majority of Americans to current U.S. wars has remained steady for several years. However, if
you watched only the corporate media's coverage of the 2010 election between Democratic and Republican corporate-picked
candidates, you might not even know that America was involved in two wars -- two wars that are not only opposed by the majority of
Americans but which are also bankrupting America. How about the 2008 Wall Street bailout? Even when
Americans believed the lie that it was only a $700 billion bailout, they opposed it; but their
opinion was irrelevant. In September 2008, despite the corporate media's attempts to terrify Americans into believing that
an economic doomsday would occur without the bailout, Americans still opposed it. A Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll in
September 2008, asked, "Do you think the government should use taxpayers' dollars to rescue ailing private financial firms whose
collapse could have adverse effects on the economy and market, or is it not the government's responsibility to bail out private
companies with taxpayers' dollars?"; only 31 percent of Americans said we should "use taxpayers" dollars while 55 percent said it is
"not government's responsibility." Also in September 2008, both a CBSNews/New York Times poll and a USA Today/Gallup poll
showed Americans opposed the bailout. This disapproval of the bailout was before most Americans
discovered that the Federal Reserve had loaned far more money to "too-big-to-fail" corporations
than Americans had been originally led to believe (The Wall Street Journal reported on December 1, 2010, "The
US central bank on Wednesday disclosed details of some $3.3 trillion in loans made to financial
firms, companies and foreign central banks during the crisis.") What about health insurance? Despite the fact
that several 2009 polls showed that Americans actually favored a "single-payer" or "Medicare-for-all" health insurance plan, it was
not even on the table in the Democrat-Republican 2009-2010 debate over health insurance reform legislation. And polls during this
debate showed that an even larger majority of Americans favored the government providing a "public option" to compete with
private health insurance plans, but the public option was quickly pushed off the table in the Democratic-Republican debate. A July
2009 Kaiser Health Tracking poll asked, "Do you favor or oppose having a national health plan in which all Americans would get
their insurance through an expanded, universal form of Medicare-for-all?" In this Kaiser poll, 58 percent of Americans favored a
Medicare-for-all universal plan, and only 38 percent opposed it -- and a whopping 77 percent favored "expanding Medicare to cover
people between the ages of 55 and 64 who do not have health insurance." A February 2009 CBS News/New York Times poll reported
that 59 percent of Americans say the government should provide national health insurance. And a December 2009 Reuters poll
reported that, "Just under 60 percent of those surveyed said they would like a public option as part of any final healthcare reform
legislation." In the U.S. corporatocracy, as in most modern tyrannies, there are elections, but the
reality is that giant corporations and the wealthy elite rule in a way to satisfy their own selfinterest. In elections in a corporatocracy, as is the case in elections in all tyrannies, it's in the interest of the ruling class to
maintain the appearance that the people have a say, so more than one candidate is offered up.
In the U.S. corporatocracy,
it's in the interest of corporations and the wealthy elite that the winning candidate is beholden to
them, so they financially support both Democrats and Republicans. It's in the interest of corporations and
the wealthy elite that there are only two viable parties--this cuts down on bribery costs. And it's in the interest of these two parties
that they are the only parties with a chance of winning. In the U.S. corporatocracy, corporations and the wealthy elite directly and
indirectly finance candidates, who are then indebted to them. It's common for these indebted government
officials to appoint to key decision-making roles those friendly to corporations, including executives
from these corporations. And it's routine for high-level government officials to be rewarded with high-paying industry positions
when they exit government. It's common and routine for former government officials to be given high-paying lobbying jobs so as to
use their relationships with current government officials to ensure that corporate interests will be taken care of. The
integration between giant corporations and the U.S. government has gone beyond revolving
doors of employment (exemplified by George W. Bush's last Treasury secretary, Henry Paulson, who had previously been
CEO of Goldman Sachs; and Barack Obama's first chief economic adviser, Lawrence Summers who in 2008 received $5.2 million
from hedge fund D. E. Shaw). Nowadays, the door need not even revolve in the U.S. corporatocracy ; for
example, when President Obama earlier in 2011 appointed General Electric CEO Jeffrey Immelt as a key economic advisor, Immelt
kept his job as CEO of General Electric. The United States is not ruled by a single deranged dictator but by an impersonal
corporatocracy. Thus, there is no one tyrant that Americans can first hate and then finally overthrow so as to end senseless wars and
economic injustices. Revolutions against Qaddafi-type tyrants require enormous physical courage. In the U.S.
corporatocracy, the first step in recovering democracy is the psychological courage to face the
humiliation that we Americans have neither a democracy nor a republic but are in fact ruled by a
partnership of "too-big-to-fail" corporations, the extremely wealthy elite, and corporatecollaborator government officials.
Warming
The logic of just blindly “going green” leads to neoliberal exploitation.
Parr, PhD, 2015 (Adrian Parr, Taft Research Center, UNESCO co-chair of water, Associate
Professor Department of Sociology & School of Architecture and Interior Design at The
University of Cincinnati (PhD, Monash University). She happens to also be qualified in
Deleuzian literature, explaining her job in the architecture school, as Deleuze is an influence in
the field. Geoforum (journal), “The Wrath of Capital: Neoliberalism and Climate Change Politics
– Reflections”, 4-20-2015 (ha),
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0016718515000767)
To briefly restate the argument I develop. I start with a now well known and oft cited fact that
the scientific consensus is human activities are changing global climate. If this situation
continues predictions for the future of all life on earth are far from good, and by some accounts
these are quite simply catastrophic. Obviously we need to change course but the lingering
question is how to do this? Unsurprisingly, given the prevailing economic and political influence
neoliberalism currently has, solutions to the question of what to do about climate change have
used a neoliberal point of reference. The principles of the free market, privatization,
individualism, consumerism, and competition all shape the current direction of climate change
politics.¶ In the book I describe how the logic of the free market has resulted in a new brand of
capitalism – climate capitalism – that has led to the creation of a market in pollution (cap and
trade, or emissions trading) which has placed the limits climate change poses for capitalism
back in the service of capital accumulation. Vast tracts of land have accordingly been turned into
green energy farms (solar panels or wind farms), which in theory is a fabulous idea, but when
practiced unchecked leads to land grabbing. Another form of land appropriation taking place
under the guise of climate change solutions is the greening of cities. Green urbanism, as it is
commonly called, refers to modifying cities so as to make them more environmentally friendly.
This involves the creation of bike paths, green roofs, public transportation, green spaces,
pedestrian friendly cities, efficient land use policies, and energy efficient buildings; all fabulous
initiatives that potentially could improve the lives of all city dwellers. I show how green
urbanism trumps equitable urbanism. Green urbanism in Chicago has also been used to justify
demolishing public housing in a city where land values are growing and the poor are turned out
on to the rental market with vouchers in hand designed to offset the higher rental costs. David
Harvey fittingly calls this ‘accumulation by dispossession’, when public wealth is privatized and
the poor are displaced (Harvey, 2003).
The affirmative’s obsession with population numbers hides
differences in footprint size and marginalizes women.
Parr, PhD, 2015 (Adrian Parr, Taft Research Center, UNESCO co-chair of water, Associate
Professor Department of Sociology & School of Architecture and Interior Design at The
University of Cincinnati (PhD, Monash University). She happens to also be qualified in
Deleuzian literature, explaining her job in the architecture school, as Deleuze is an influence in
the field. Geoforum (journal), “The Wrath of Capital: Neoliberalism and Climate Change Politics
– Reflections”, 4-20-2015 (ha),
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0016718515000767)
The global population is expected to peak at just over 9 billion people in 2050. The argument is
that more people will place the ecological balance of life on earth under serious strain, and along
with more people comes more greenhouse gas emissions. Focusing on population numbers
means that the population debate, as it figures within climate change political discourse, fails to
acknowledge qualitative differences. For instance, not everyone impacts the climate equally. Not
everyone has a dangerously high ecological footprint. The more well to do citizens of the world
produce the greatest ecological burdens. Similarly the fear over China’s growing national
emissions typically points to a growing Chinese middle class of eager consumers. However,
comparing national greenhouse gas emissions does not honestly represent national emissions.
One can easily be fooled into thinking China poses the greatest threat to achieving a global
reduction in green- house gas emissions. However, if we consider how much dirty
manufacturing high-income nations outsource to China then we come to realize that highincome nations are in large part responsible for China’s growing emissions.¶ In addition, there
are serious theoretical shortcomings to how per capita emissions statistics figure within climate
change dis- course. Rates of consumption rely upon the individual subject being the primary
unit of analysis, at the expense of analyses that produce a nuanced examination of how different
collective scenarios, such as household size and whether a person is an urban or rural dweller,
also impact patterns of consumption. More importantly the per capita analysis of reproduction
does not account for how inequity works within the larger discourse of reproductive rights. I
ask: ‘Are the poor women from low-and middle-income countries having fewer babies so that
the affluent can continue to consume a steady line of cheap commodities that are made by the
cheap labor of these selfsame women?’ (Parr, 2013: 50). I use the example of women working at
the plastic-recycling center in the Dharavi slum in Mumbai to explain that women being
‘liberated’ from the reproductive role traditionally assigned to them does not necessarily lead to
emancipation. Indeed the women I met were working around the clock in filthy conditions with
no workers rights returning to a tiny shack and a long list of domestic chores that had them
working well into the night and rising before the sun came up. In this context the population
debate fails to tackle the feminist problem of how women’s bodies are coded, and the location of
female bodies in a matrix of power that is oppressive and exploitative.¶
Fear-mongering the scarcity of water leads to neoliberal exploitation
of resources
Parr, PhD, 2015 (Adrian Parr, Taft Research Center, UNESCO co-chair of water, Associate
Professor Department of Sociology & School of Architecture and Interior Design at The
University of Cincinnati (PhD, Monash University). She happens to also be qualified in
Deleuzian literature, explaining her job in the architecture school, as Deleuze is an influence in
the field. Geoforum (journal), “The Wrath of Capital: Neoliberalism and Climate Change Politics
– Reflections”, 4-20-2015 (ha),
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0016718515000767)
Tangentially related to the population debate is the growing concern over the diminishing
quality and quantity of potable water. For example, the United Nations ‘predicts that by 2025
two out of three people will be living in conditions of water stress, and 1.8 billion people will be
living in regions of absolute water scarcity’ (Parr, 2013: 53). If we also consider how climate
change is changing the hydrologic cycle it is unsurprising that competition over water resources
is mounting. This situation has spurred on a burgeoning water market, resulting in the
privatization of water resources and unlikely marriages between the public and private sector to
form. Water scarcity, when combined with extreme weather events and changing seasonal
patterns also impacts food production. The solution to this has been the widespread
industrialization of food production which I explain has led to a growing market in patenting
indigenous ecological knowledge, seeds, and the violent exploitation of animal reproductive
systems and immigrant labor.¶
The aff’s solutions to global warming use neoliberal discourse
Parr Professor of sociology at the University of Cincinnati 15
Adrian The wrath of capital neoliberal climate change and politics, reflections
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0016718515000767
Using a neoliberal framework to craft solutions to climate change produces a vicious circle that
reinstates the selfsame social organization and broader sociocultural and economic structures
that have led to global climate change The Wrath of Capital shows that climate change is not just
an economic, cultural, or technological challenge. It is a political dilemma. Rigorous thinking
and broadening our understanding of flourishing and emancipatory politics are important
resources we can use to counter the narrow-minded view that the free market will solve the
challenges climate change poses. The central focus of The Wrath of Capital is how ‘opportunity’
is put to work in climate change politics. Is it a moralizing or political operation? The conclusion
I draw is that thus far the neoliberal framework of climate change politics has turned it into a
moralizing discourse. For as I show the discourse exposes a racist, sexist, privileged political
subject who points the finger of blame in the direction of underdeveloped countries
overpopulating the earth, the Chinese polluting the atmosphere, ‘primitive societies’ in need of
‘modernizing’ their economies and governments, and an inefficient and ineffectual public sphere
that should hand the ownership and management of common pool resources over to the private
sector. All are moralizing arguments presented under the umbrella of climate change solutions.
It is therefore important we recognize these are not political arguments. Arguments of this kind
do not view the ‘opportunity’ in question as a platform for transforming otherwise oppressive,
exploitative, and coercive power relations.
***Impacts***
Corporate Control
Neoliberalism creates an illusion of freedom, makes subjects more
complicit to corporation’s agendas
Davies, PHD, 07
Bronwyn, Neoliberalism and education, International Journal of Qualitative Studies in
Education, Volume 20, issue 3,
Because of this diffuse and largely invisible installation of neoliberal technologies
and practices it has taken a great deal of analytic and observational work to make
the constitutive force of neoliberalism open to analysis. Work such as that of
Rose (1999) has been crucial in this process of beginning to theorize neoliberalism and
show how it functions at the level of the subject, producing docile subjects who are
tightly governed and who, at the same time, define themselves as free. Individuals ,
we suggest, have been seduced by their own perceived powers of freedom and have, at the same
time, let go of significant collective powers, through, for example, allowing the erosion of
union power.Individual subjects have thus welcomed the increasing individualism as a
sign of their freedom and, at the same time, institutions have increased competition,
responsibilization and the transfer of risk from the state to individuals at a heavy
cost to many individuals, and indeed to many nations (Saul, 2005). The assembled technologies that
shape the willing subjects of liberal government have always worked directly on
the ways that individuals conduct themselves. That is, they persuade those governed
individuals to adopt particular practical relations for themselves in the exercise of
their freedom. The iterations of neoliberalism currently installed in Australia and New Zealand,
however, have involved a substantial reworking of liberal values. The liberal model of
individual rational‐ economic conduct has been extended beyond the sphere of
the economy, and generalized as a principle for both reshaping and rationalizing
government itself. Further, the new quasi‐ entrepreneurial and market models of action have been extended to the
conduct of individuals, and of groups and institutions within those areas of life that were formerly seen as being either outside of or
even antagonistic to the economic (Burchell, 1996, p. 27). The papers in this special issue examine that impact on individual and
institutional life. Under neoliberalism, both government and society have taken up, as their
primary concern,
their relationship with the economy. What was called ‘society’ has been
reconstituted as the product of earlier mistaken governmental
interventions, shaped by the unaffordable systems of social insurance,
unemployment and welfare benefits, social work, state education and ‘the whole
panoply of “social” measures associated with the Welfare State’ (Burchell,1996 p. 27). 1 The
Welfare State is reconstituted as an economically and socially costly obstacle to the
economic performance upon which survival depends, since it leads inexorably (so the
argument goes) to an uncontrollable, unaffordable growth of the State. These changes have been
introduced in the form of choices that individuals and institutions can make in
order to secure funding, such that those individuals and groups experience the new
forms of governmentality as something they are responsible for. Through such
successive ‘choices’, the social sphere and the conduct of each citizen has been
circumscribed by and captured within the economic. Within this new set of relations all aspects of social behavior
are rethought along economic lines ‘as calculative actions undertaken through the universal human faculty of choice’ (Rose, 1999, p.
141). All human actors to be governed are conceived of as individuals active in
making choices in order to further their own interests and those of their
family. The powers of the state are thus directed at empowering entrepreneurial
subjects in their quest for self‐ expression, freedom and prosperity. Freedom, then, is an
economics shaped by what the state desires, demands and enables.
Economy
Neoliberalism is the root cause of economic distress
Cahill, PHD, 15
Damien, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste: How Neoliberalism Survived the Financial Meltdown / The New
Way of the World: On Neoliberal Society / Masters of the Universe: Hayek, Friedman, and the Birth of Neoliberal
Politics/ The Great Persuasion: Reinventing Free Markets Since the Depression, Forum for Social Economics, 44:2,
201-210, DOI:
Since the onset of the global financial crisis, there has been enormous growth of scholarly interest in neoliberalism—its dynamics,
intellectual lineage and its relationship to the crisis itself. Of course, scholarly investigations of neoliberalism predate the crisis. Yet,
in the immediate aftermath of the sub-prime crash and the subsequent financial contagion that spread across the globe, leading
fundamentalist neoliberal economists such as Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek were seen by many as responsible for the
ensuing economic disaster. And this, perhaps, helps to explain the burgeoning scholarly field of ‘neoliberalism studies’ since 2007.¶
It is not only that the calamitous events besetting the global economy lent greater
urgency and relevance to analyses of neoliberalism. Neoliberal intellectuals have
come to be seen as the chief culprits behind the global economic downturn from
which follows a focus upon the development of fundamentalist neoliberal ideas
and the organisations through which they were proselytised as the key to
deciphering the crisis.¶ A chief concern of recent literature therefore has been to
interrogate the relationship between neoliberal ideas, and neoliberal political and
economic practices. Of course, how one approaches this depends very much upon
how one understands both the nature of neoliberalism, as well as how one
understands the nature of neoliberal ideas.¶ Nonetheless, one of the great benefits of
this recent literature is to have provided a much more detailed history of
neoliberal ideas and their organisational forms, such as the Mont Pelerin Society and its associated global network of think
tanks. Not that such a history was absent from previous analyses of neoliberalism. Richard Cockett’s (1994) Thinking the
Unthinkable, for example, stands out as a detailed archival and interview-driven history of neoliberalism written over¶ Downloaded
by [] at 13:37 23 June 2015¶ FORUM FOR SOCIAL ECONOMICS¶ a decade before the onset of the crisis, while Andrew Gamble’s
(1996) Hayek: the Iron Cage of Liberty offers a detailed analysis of Hayek’s thought. Several articles, mainly from
progressive critics of neoliberalism also sought, during this pre-crisis period, to
understand the development of a neoliberal hegemony through an examination of
its key intellectuals and think tanks (Desai, 1999; George, 1997). Moreover, one of the earliest
scholarly analysis of neoliberalism—that provided by Foucault in his 1979 lectures on The Birth of Biopolitics—
has the history of neoliberal ideas as its subject. Long before neoliberalism entered
the scholarly or progressive political lexicons, and even before the Margaret Thatcher became Britain’s
iconic neoliberal prime minister, Foucault identified a link between neoliberal intellectuals —
stretching back to the German ‘ordoliberals’, through to Hayek and Gary Becker—and an emerging neoliberal
state rationality.¶ Yet, it is only recently that such concerns have been put at the centre
of scholarly analysis of neoliberalism. Indeed, since the onset of the crisis, such
analysis has come to occupy a much more central place in popular discussions of
the nature of the contemporary economy and its historical evolution.
The financial crisis was a product of structural instability within the
capitalist economy
Green, PHD, 14
Jeremy & Colin Hay, Towards a New Political Economy of the Crisis: Getting What Went Wrong
Right, New Political Economy, 20:3, 331-341, DOI:
Not only did the global financial crisis transform the prevailing institutions,
policies and practices of contemporary capitalism, it also had a profound impact
upon the discipline of economics itself. From 2008 a different crisis, one of public legitimacy, engulfed
academic economics as critics railed against its failure to predict the onset of unprecedented global economic turmoil. But
despite the public focus upon the failings of mainstream economics, the rise of
alternative disciplinary and epistemological perspectives has been muted. Scholars of international political economy (IPE), unconstrained by the debilitating equilibrium assumptions
of neoclassical economics and keenly aware of the inti- mate connectivity between politics and economics, might justifiably
have expected to make gains during the economics profession’s darkest hour. That
they have not managed, thus far, to substantially unsettle the intellectual and institutional predominance of economics should not, however, be a source of dismay. Political
economy scholars possess the analytical tools to produce a much-needed
counterpoint to prevailing academic economics. It is with demonstrating that
capacity, and restating the holistic merits of political economy scholarship, that
this Special Issue is concerned. Bringing together a number of diverse theoretical perspectives and employing a
wide range of conceptual categories, this Special Issue showcases the rich variety of IPE
scholarship and its collective capacity to generate much deeper and more holistic
analyses of the global economic crisis than those provided by the reigning
economics orthodoxy, and in doing so, to get what went wrong right.¶ the present
crisis, though starkly uneven in their distribution, have been felt in all corners of
the globe and across all sections of society – mapping, in effect, exposure to the
risks of Anglo-liberal globalisation. Capitalism in crisis means not only stuttering
growth or stagnation, but also the dislocation of prevailing societal patterns and
the exacerbation of existing social, economic and political tensions. This makes it both all
the more remarkable and all the more shocking that mainstream economics prepared us so badly for all of this. It gave us no sense of
the gathering storm, confidently telling us, as in the eerily un-prophetic words of Lucas in his Presidential Address to the American
Economics Associ- ation, that ‘for all practical purposes . . . the central problem of recession preven- tion has been solved’ (2003: 1).
It is difficult to get something so staggeringly important so profoundly wrong. That it did so, and that Lucas’ words were expres- sive
of a then pervasive consensus within the discipline, is testament to the hold over it of dubious equilibrium assumptions and its
spurious preoccupation with prediction. Unremarkably, conventional economics still struggles with the crisis and has proved illequipped to respond to its challenges.¶ Given this, it is perhaps unsurprising that the discipline of
economics has suf- fered something of a public legitimacy crisis in the wake of the
storm of 2008. The failure to predict the crisis was widely interpreted as a failing
of mainstream econ- omics on its own intellectual terms. An academic field which
had put so much stock in the predictive capacity of mathematical modelling and
deductive reason- ing was seemingly stumped by the way in which events unfolded
since the onset of the crisis. The scale of the failure prompted Greenspan (2013),
the former head of the Federal Reserve, to speak of an ‘existential crisis for
economic forecasting’. Add to this the scandals that have since beset those influential economic models that did
prosper in the immediate aftermath of the crisis (think Rogoff – Reinhart), alongside economics undergraduates rebelling against
the staid orthodoxy of the ‘economics 101 curriculum’ (Moore 2013, Inman 2014), and the picture of a dis- cipline in disarray starts
to paint itself.¶ Yet despite the controversy and infighting within which professional
economics have become embroiled, the advocacy of alternative epistemological
perspectives and disciplinary contenders, which we might justifiably have
expected, has been somewhat muted. Indeed, the enormous hype and discussion associated with Piketty’s
(2014) ground-breaking volume, Capital in the twenty-first century, appears to have
confirmed, if anything, the enduring predominance of economists in the debates
to which policy-makers pay attention. The content of the economics is certainly a little different to that of the
neoclassical orthodoxy which reigned supreme in the pre-crisis era, and we should perhaps be grateful for that, but the core debate
for policy-makers remains that with the discipline of economics. Arguably this has to change.¶ As scholars of
international political economy (IPE), we might quite reasonably have thought
that now was the time for our own field to gain greater access to the debate. But this has
yet to happen. There are, undoubtedly, several reasons for this. One is, quite simply, the privilege of incumbency. It would
surely be na ̈ıve to expect economics to be unsettled from its predominant
intellectual and insti-tutional position overnight. Too many commitments of
resources, careers, entrenched ideas and powerful interests are at play for the
primacy of economics Towards a new political economy of the crisis within the social sciences to simply melt away.
This is something that scholars of political economy (well versed, as they typically are, in institutional
and ideational path-dependencies) should
be particularly well placed to appreciate. Yet,
however powerful and seemingly entrenched the incumbency effect may seem,
scholars of IPE should not exogenise entirely the sources of their continued
exclusion from the debate. For part of the problem, we would contend, rests a little closer to home.¶ One of the
more obvious endogenous reasons for the failure of IPE to make greater gains in
the public debate since the crisis stands out. It is the comparable, although certainly less acute, process of
soul-searching and reflection that has gone on within the field in recent years. There is a certain irony here. For some of the
agonised introspection that has occurred in IPE in recent years is itself a product
of a similar perceived failure to have better anticipated the likelihood and nature
of the crisis (Cohen 2009). Though, of course, not entirely inappropriate, the judgement is a harsh one and, unsurprisingly, it
has itself been contested by, amongst others, those within the field with a rather better track record in anticipating the crisis (notably
Helleiner 2011). But the point is that IPE scholars, like their economist counterparts, have been
fighting themselves – an inauspicious way of going about making the case for IPE as an alternative to mainstream economics as the policy-makers’ guide to the risk, uncertainty and instability of the global economic
order we have made.
Economic decline as a result of neoliberalism leads to genocide and
state violence
Robert J. Calleja Jr, “Neoliberalism and Genocide The
Desensitization of Global Politics” by. April 2013
(http://repository.asu.edu/attachments/110537/content/Calleja_asu_
0010N_12955.pdf)
Poverty and a shortage of economic opportunities are important factors leading to genocide.
There are several ways for impoverished conditions to arise, and neoliberalism is a source.
Despite promises of prosperity and equality, neoliberal policies have the potential to send
developing nations spiraling deeper into debt and misery. People reduced to subhuman living
conditions can look to rebellion to stop suffering or to change regimes. These moments of
defiance present opportunities for violence by both perpetrators and through the state response
to deviance. When the state represses uprising with violence, particularly in developing
countries, there exist a possibility for extreme violence including genocide. The majority of
western-based developed countries have adopted neoliberalism as a politico-economic
philosophy that promotes minimum state involvement and laissez-faire beliefs when it comes to
intervention. Those in power have become desensitized to the suffering of othered groups, as the
routine discomfort of people has become understood as costs of economic growth, development,
and national security. The result has been an increase in the willingness of the international
community to accept justifications for state violence as a matter national security or response to
deviance. National security is often used as a means of justification for state violence, but the
routine othering of groups and daily suffering through neoliberal policies and agendas have
allowed the justifications to become easier for the international community to accept.
Neoliberalism exacerbates economic inequality and harms the world economy
Harvey ‘7
(David W. Harvey FBA is the Distinguished Professor of Anthropology and Geography at the Graduate Center of the City University
of New York. He received his PhD in Geography from the University of Cambridge in 1961. “A Brief History of Neoliberalism”
http://www.sok.bz/web/media/video/ABriefHistoryNeoliberalism.pdf) //RGDM
Aside from some academics and members of the business community, the term neoliberalism is
largely unknown and by the public-at-large, especially in the United States. There, to the contrary,
neoliberal initiatives are characterized as free market policies that encourage private enterprise and consumer choice, reward
personal responsibility and entrepreneurial initiative, and undermine the dead hand of the incompetent, bureaucratic, and parasitic
government, that can never do good even if well intended, which it rarely is. A generation of corporate-financed
public relations efforts has given these terms and ideas a near sacred aura. As a result, the
claims they make rarely require defense, and are invoked to rationalize anything from lowering
taxes on the wealthy and scrapping environmental regulations to dismantling public education
and social welfare programs. Indeed, any activity that might interfere with corporate domination of society is
automatically suspect because it would interfere with the workings of the free market, which is advanced as the only rational, fair,
and democratic allocator of goods and services. At their most eloquent, proponents of neoliberalism sound as if they are doing poor
people, the environment, and everybody else a tremendous service as they enact policies on behalf of the wealthy few. The
economic consequences of these policies have been the same just about everywhere, and exactly
what one would expect: a massive increase in social and economic inequality, a marked increase
in severe deprivation for the poorest nations and peoples of the world, a disastrous global
environment, an unstable global economy and an unprecedented bonanza for the wealthy.
Confronted with these facts, defenders of the neoliberal order claim that the spoils of the good life will invariably spread to the broad
mass of the population—as long as the neoliberal policies that exacerbated these problems are not interfered with!
Capitalism is the root cause of economic collapse
Bichler and Nitzan political economy teachers 14
Shimshon and Johnathan Why capitalists do not want reform for America, and what that means
for America Published in Frontline Journal
http://bnarchives.yorku.ca/395/3/20140416_nb_profit_from_crisis_frontline_preprint_web.
htm
Can it be true that capitalists prefer crisis over growth? On the face of it, the idea sounds silly. According to Economics 101, everyone
loves growth, especially capitalists. Profit and growth go hand in hand. When capitalists profit, real investment rises and the
economy thrives, and when the economy booms the profits of capitalists soar. Growth is the very lifeline of capitalists. Or is it? What
motivates capitalists? The answer depends on what motivates capitalists. Conventional economic theories tell us that
capitalists are hedonic creatures. Like all other economic “agents” – from busy managers and hectic workers to active
criminals and idle welfare recipients – their ultimate goal
is maximum utility. In order for them to
achieve this goal, they need to maximize their profit and interest; and this income –
like any other income – depends on economic growth. Conclusion: utility-seeking capitalists have every reason to love booms and
hate crises. But, then, are capitalists really motivated by utility? Is it realistic to believe that large American corporations are guided
by the hedonic pleasure of their owners – or do we need a different starting point altogether? So try this: in our day and age, the key
goal of leading capitalists and corporations is not absolute utility but relative power. Their real purpose is not to maximize hedonic
pleasure, but to “beat the average.” Their ultimate aim is not to consume more goods and
services (although that happens too), but to increase their power over others. And the
key measure of this power is their distributive share of income and assets. Note that capitalists have no choice
in this matter. “Beating the average” is not a subjective preference but a rigid rule,
dictated and enforced by the conflictual nature of the system. Capitalism pits capitalists against
other groups in society – as well as against each other. And in this multifaceted struggle for greater power, the yardstick is always
relative. Capitalists – and the corporations they operate through – are compelled and conditioned to accumulate differentially; to
augment not their personal utility but their relative earnings. Whether they are private owners like Warren Buffet or institutional
investors like Bill Gross, they all seek not to perform but to out-perform – and outperformance means re-distribution.
Capitalists who beat the average redistribute income and assets in their favor; this
redistribution raises their share of the total; and a larger share of the total means
greater power stacked against others. In the final analysis, capitalists accumulate
not hedonic pleasure but differential power. Now, if you look at capitalists through the lens of relative
power, the notion that they should love growth and yearn for recovery is no longer self-evident. In fact, the very opposite seems to be
the case. For any group to increase its relative power in society, that group must be
able to strategically sabotage others in that society. This rule derives from the very
logic of power relations. It means that capitalists, seeking to augment their
income-share-read-power, have to threaten or undermine the rest of society. And one
of the key weapons they use in this power struggle –sometimes conscientiously, though usually by default – is unemployment.
Joblessness affects redistribution Unemployment affects distribution mainly through the impact it has on relative prices and wages.
If higher unemployment causes the ratio of price to unit wage cost to decline, capitalists will fall behind in the redistributional
struggle, and this retreat is sure to make them eager for recovery. But if the opposite turns out to be the case – that is, if higher
unemployment helps raise the price/wage cost ratio – capitalists would have good
reason to love crisis and indulge in stagnation. In principle, both scenarios are possible. But as Figure 1
shows, in America the second prevails: unemployment redistributes income systematically in
favor of capitalists. The chart contrasts the share of pretax profit and net interest in domestic income on the one hand
with the rate of unemployment on the other (both series are smoothed as 5-year moving averages).
Current economic model is unsustainable- new model necessary to avoid collapse
Reich, PhD, 15
(Robert, one of the nation’s leading experts on work and the economy, is Chancellor’s Professor of Public Policy at the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of
California at Berkeley. He has served in three national administrations, most recently as secretary of labor under President Bill Clinton. Time Magazine has named him one of
the ten most effective cabinet secretaries of the last century , 3-15 http://www.salon.com/2015/03/17/robert_reich_economic_redistribution_is_our_only_hope_partner/)
The same year Kodak went under, Instagram, the world’s newest photo company, had 13 employees serving 30 million customers.
The ratio of producers to customers continues to plummet. When Facebook purchased “WhatsApp” (the messaging app) for $19
billion last year, WhatsApp had 55 employees serving 450 million customers. A friend, operating from his home in Tucson, recently invented a machine that can find particles of
certain elements in the air. He’s already sold hundreds of these machines over the Internet to customers all over the world. He’s manufacturing them in his garage with a 3D
New technologies aren’t just labor-replacing. They’re
also knowledge-replacing. The combination of advanced sensors, voice recognition, artificial
intelligence, big data, text-mining, and pattern-recognition algorithms, is generating smart robots capable of quickly
learning human actions, and even learning from one another. If you think being a “professional” makes your job safe, think again. The two sectors of the
economy harboring the most professionals — health care and education – are under increasing pressure to cut costs. And expert machines are poised to
take over. We’re on the verge of a wave of mobile health apps for measuring everything from your cholesterol to your blood pressure, along with diagnostic software that
printer. So far, his entire business depends on just one person — himself.
tells you what it means and what to do about it. In coming years, software apps will be doing many of the things physicians, nurses, and technicians now do (think ultrasound,
CT scans, and electrocardiograms). Meanwhile, the jobs of many teachers and university professorswill disappear, replaced by online courses and interactive online textbooks.
Imagine a small box – let’s call it an “iEverything” – capable of producing everything you
could possibly desire, a modern day Aladdin’s lamp. You simply tell it what you want, and – presto – the object of your desire arrives
Where will this end?
at your feet. The iEverything also does whatever you want. It gives you a massage, fetches you your slippers, does your laundry and folds and irons it. The iEverything will be the
The only problem is no one will be able to buy it. That’s because no one will have
any means of earning money, since the iEverything will do it all. This is obviously fanciful, but when more
and more can be done by fewer and fewer people, the profits go to an ever-smaller
circle of executives and owner-investors. One of the young founders of WhatsApp, CEO Jan Koum, had a 45 percent equity stake
best machine ever invented.
in the company when Facebook purchased it, which yielded him $6.8 billion. Cofounder Brian Acton got $3 billion for his 20 percent stake. Each of the early employees
Meanwhile, the rest of us will be left providing the
only things technology can’t provide – person-to-person attention, human touch, and care. But these sorts of
person-to-person jobs pay very little. That means most of us will have less and less money to buy the dazzling
array of products and services spawned by blockbuster technologies – because those same technologies will be supplanting our jobs and driving down our pay. We
need a new economic model. The economic model that dominated most of the twentieth century
was mass production by the many, for mass consumption by the many. Workers were consumers; consumers were
reportedly had a 1 percent stake, which presumably netted them $160 million each.
workers. As paychecks rose, people had more money to buy all the things they and others produced — like Kodak cameras. That resulted in more jobs and even higher pay.
That virtuous cycle is now falling apart. A future of almost unlimited production by a handful,
for consumption by whoever can afford it, is a recipe for economic and social collapse. Our
underlying problem won’t be the number of jobs. It will be – it already is — the allocation of
income and wealth. What to do? “Redistribution” has become a bad word. But the economy toward
which we’re hurtling — in which more and more is generated by fewer and fewer people who reap almost all the rewards, leaving the rest of us without enough
purchasing power – can’t function. It may be that a redistribution of income and wealth from the rich
owners of breakthrough technologies to the rest of us becomes the only means of making the
future economy work.
Collapse is imminent—now is unique because public policy has exhausted the
range of viable fixes
Wallerstein, PhD., 11—senior research scholar at Yale University, PhD from Columbia
(Immanuel, January/ February 2011, “THE GLOBAL ECONOMY WON'T RECOVER, NOW OR
EVER,”
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/01/02/unconventional_wisdom?page=0,9,
RBatra)
The problem is that the basic costs of all production have risen remarkably. There are the personnel
expenses of all kinds -- for unskilled workers, for cadres, for top-level management. There are the costs incurred
as producers pass on the costs of their production to the rest of us -- for detoxification, for renewal of resources,
for infrastructure. And the democratization of the world has led to demands for more and more
education, more and more health provisions, and more and more guarantees of lifetime income.
To meet these demands, there has been a significant increase in taxation of all kinds. Together, these
costs have risen beyond the point that permits serious capital accumulation. Why not then simply raise
prices? Because there are limits beyond which one cannot push their level. It is called the elasticity of demand. The result is a
growing profit squeeze, which is reaching a point where the game is not worth the candle. What we are witnessing as a
result is chaotic fluctuations of all kinds -- economic, political, sociocultural. These fluctuations cannot easily
be controlled by public policy. The result is ever greater uncertainty about all kinds of short-term decision-making, as
well as frantic realignments of every variety. Doubt feeds on itself as we search for ways out of the menacing
uncertainty posed by terrorism, climate change, pandemics, and nuclear proliferation. The
only sure thing is that the present system cannot continue. The fundamental political
struggle is over what kind of system will replace capitalism, not whether it should survive. The
choice is between a new system that replicates some of the present system's essential features of hierarchy and
polarization and one that is relatively democratic and egalitarian. The extraordinary expansion of
the world-economy in the postwar years (more or less 1945 to 1970) has been followed by a long period
of economic stagnation in which the basic source of gain has been rank speculation sustained by
successive indebtednesses. The latest financial crisis didn't bring down this system; it merely exposed it
as hollow. Our recent "difficulties" are merely the next-to-last bubble in a process of boom and bust the world-system has been
undergoing since around 1970. The last bubble will be state indebtednesses, including in the so-called emerging economies, leading
to bankruptcies. Most people do not recognize -- or refuse to recognize -- these realities. It is wrenching to accept that the historical
system in which we are living is in structural crisis and will not survive. Meanwhile, the system proceeds by its
accepted rules. We meet at G-20 sessions and seek a futile consensus. We speculate on the markets. We "develop" our
economies in whatever way we can. All this activity simply accentuates the structural crisis.
The real action, the struggle over what new system will be created, is elsewhere.
s
Environment
Neoliberalism dooms the environment- The promises of ecological justification
cause endless consumption
Adaman PhD and Madra Professor of Economics 12
(Fikret and Yahya, “Understanding Neoliberalism as Economization: The Case of the Ecology”,
Fikret is a BA and MA in Economics from Bogazici University and PhD in Economics from
Manchester University. He is an expert on social inclusion currently on a trip to the European
Commission. Yahya is a professor of Economics at Bogazici University.
http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.464.3195 pg 17-19 Acc. 6/24/15 //
yZ)
The reduction of ecological valuation through a market mechanism (or various techniques) to a
mere aggregation of individual subjective valuations—which is the main premise of neoliberal
ideology—may be inappropriate for complex and uncertain phenomena ridden with
incommensurabilities and inter- and intra-generational distributional conflicts, such as global warming, where individual
valuations will have clear implications for all living beings. Indeed, in making decisions with substantial consequences pertaining to
our current life as well as our future (such as the overall growth rate, distributional trajectories, technological path, consumption
habits, risk attitude [say, vis-à-vis nuclear energy]), the market response or the 18 aggregation of individuals’ valuation through a set
of available techniques (e.g., the contingent valuation) may substantially differ from what could be derived through collective
deliberation and negotiation of various stakeholders including the scientific community (see, e.g., Özkaynak, Adaman and Devine,
2012). This criticism applies not only to neoliberal positions that favor the current unequal
distribution of power but also to the Post-Walrasian one which although concerned with distributional
issues keeps relying on individualist ontologies of calculative and calculable agency. Indeed,
there is a growing theoretical and applied literature arguing that in incommensurable cases,
where all relevant aspects cannot be captured in a single dimension (such as those derived from monetary
cost-benefit analyses), a multi-criteria methodology would seem better placed, as it will be possible to involve not only economic but
also political, moral, scientific and cultural inputs from a variety of stakeholders (see, e.g., Martinez-Alier, Munda and O’Neil, 1999;
Munda, 2008). The key promise of the multicriteria decision-making tool and other similar participatory and deliberatory dispositifs
is that rather than finding a “solution” to a conflictual decision, they shed light on the multifaceted dimensions of the problem at
hand and thus facilitate the consensus-building process from below (see, e.g., Adaman, 2012). In this regard, they constitute a
formidable path to be explored as an alternative to the surreptitiously normative neoliberal governmental dispositifs, designed by
experts from above, under the assumption that all actors are calculative and calculable. The current indiscriminate
application of neoliberal policies over the entire scope of the social field has brought about such
political, economic, cultural and ecological devastation that any type of reform suggestion along
the line to halt this process is met with much welcoming by many of us—even if some of them are still
acting as if economic incentives are the only viable policy tool in town. Consider the case of carbon markets, for
example, where the cap is decided either through a scientific body or through aggregating
individuals’ preferences. The fact of the matter is that, far from addressing the inefficiencies that emanate from
opportunistic and manipulative activities, these mechanisms are vulnerable precisely because they end up soliciting manipulative,
predatory, and rent-seeking behavior (because they are designed to function under such behavioral assumptions in the first place).
In other words, these solutions subject a commons such as global climate into the economic
logic of markets and “performatively” turn it into an object of strategic-calculative logic (MacKenzie,
Muniesa and Siu, 2007; Çalışkan and Callon, 2009; MacKenzie, 2009; Çalışkan and Callon, 2010; see also Spash, 2011). Consider,
furthermore, the case of price-per-bag policies. Laboratory 19 experiments and anthropological evidence both suggest that charging
a price for some activity that should in fact be treated as a duty or a commitment may well create perverse results (see, e.g.,
Campbell, 1998; Bowles and Hwang, 2008). Monetizing the pollution-generating activity instead of limiting
the use of plastic bags (along with an awareness program) may well result in an increase of the unwanted activity. Similarly,
while nationalization is the trend in areas of natural resource extraction and energy production, many continue to argue for
privatization and private-public partnerships instead. Nevertheless, the problem with the private versus public
dichotomy, given our reading of the contemporary state as an agent of economization, is
precisely that both forms, to the extent that they are informed by the different variants of
neoliberal reason, serve to isolate these critical areas from the deliberations and political
demands of various stakeholders and the general public, limiting the only channels for
communication available to them to the price (or price-like) mechanisms. However, perhaps most importantly,
neither can be immune towards all sorts of rent-seeking activities that occur behind the close doors of the technocracy that operates
in the area where state shades into market in the various forms of dispositifs. Needless to say, economic activities that generate
pollution and consume energy are not recent phenomena that are exclusive to what is now increasingly being called the neoliberal
era. If anything, postwar Keynesian developmentalism was possible precisely because of the availability of cheap oil, and is
responsible for an enormous amount of environmental pollution and ecological degradation (Mitchell, 2011). In this sense, it would
be wrong to present neoliberal as being the only responsible mode of governmentality for the dual crises of climate change and
natural resource depletion. Yet, this does not change the fact that the neoliberal reason (in its free-
market and mechanism-design variations) is pushing its agenda in an era where both of these
crises are reaching catastrophic levels, and it is highly questionable whether neoliberal methods
of handling the environmental pollution and the extraction crisis will be capable of addressing
long-term concerns.
The neoliberal’s “profit-over-people” economic philosophy results in
agricultural catastrophe and resource wars.
Hopma, PhD, 2014
(Justa, Geography Compass, Volume 8, Issue 11, p. 773-780)
The geopolitical significance of food as a vital resource for human life has come
into sharp focus again in recent years as uncertainties have gathered around the
sustainability of the food regimes that had by the end of the 20th century seemed
to have delivered stable and abundant food supplies to the global north and to
have made progress in combating the threat of famine in the global south. The doubling of global
food prices between 2005 and 2008 (driven by a com- bination of factors including, though not restricted to, rising oil prices and
financial speculation) produced effects in both domestic and international politics: food riots and protests
erupted in more than a dozen countries, contributing to political instability in
regions within the Arab world, while seventeen countries imposed restrictions on
the export of key commodities such as grain, and others intensified programmes
to secure food supply through foreign land investment. In these ways, the politics of food is
intrinsically geographical. It matters where food is produced, where food is consumed and how it gets from plant or pasture to plate.
Geographical research on food has flourished in the past two decades, with a burgeoning literature by social and cultural
geographers on the consumption and cultures of food (see Bell and Valentine 1997; Cook 2006, 2008; Cook et al. 2011) and the
rediscovery by economic and rural geographers of research on food production,
the globalisation of food and trade and commodity chains that had once been
central to both sub-disciplines (see Barnett et al. 2010; Goodman 2004; Goodman and Watts 1997; Guthman
2008; Jackson et al. 2006; Jaffee et al. 2004; Kneafsey et al. 2008; Stringer and Le Heron 2008). In this article, however, we focus
on the political geographies of food, which we would position as part of a broader trend of engagement by political geographers with
resource politics, commonly within the context of environmental change (see Bakker 2007; Feitelson and Fischendler 2009; Le
Billon 2001; Norman and Bakker 2009; Perreault 2005; Whitehead et al. 2007). In particular, we critique the
geographical imaginations articulated by two competing discourses that have
come to dominate political debate on food supply. The first of these, ‘food security’, is a proto-
hegemonic discourse that is widely deployed by international organisations, including the United Nation’s Food and Agriculture
Organization (FAO), national govern- ments, especially in the global north, and transnational agribusiness, to promote
technological, market and political solutions that are variously framed at global, regional or national scales ( Jarosz 2011). The
second approach, ‘food sovereignty’, is a counter-hegemonic discourse that has emerged
from grassroots activists in the global south and which combines global and local
geographical imaginaries in presenting a challenge to the geopolitical vision of the
global agri-industrial complex. Yet, while ‘food sovereignty’ has been championed by
progressive commentators, including within elements of critical geography and rural sociology, we argue that its
political-geographical imagination is not entirely unproblematic and reveals tensions within the movement and ambiguity in its
objectives. In making this argument, we echo Jarosz’s (2014) analysis of food security and food sovereignty as fluid and changing
discourses that are interrelated, but which have been framed in oppositional terms – especially at the international scale – reflecting
the different geohistorical contexts of their development. Yet, Jarosz contends that following the global food crisis of 2006–2008,
the two terms have been reframed in relation to each other in policy documents and initiatives at the local, national and
transnational scales. As such, ‘the oppositional nature of the two terms remains, but it is complicated now by the ways in which the
reframing of the two terms yields a view of a plurality of pathways to transforming food systems and address- ing hunger’ ( Jarosz
2014: 170). Jarosz calls for research to explore these relational geographies of food security and food security, including
investigation of the role of class and ethnicity in framing the conf luences and tensions between the two discourses. In this paper, we
refine this call as an agenda for a more specific political geography of food security and food sovereignty, responding as the sections
below discuss to the significance of securitization narratives, geopolitical strategizing and the dynamics of social movement
mobilisation to the framing and propagation of the two discourses and to the role of political pragmatism in the apparent points of
convergence of the discourses. The reappearance of food security as a significant discourse in
national and international politics at the start of the 21st century marked the final
rattle of the post-war food regime, which had largely successfully underpinned the
reliable supply of food across substantial parts of the world. Established against
the background of war-time food shortages and projections of rapid urbanization,
the post-war food regime had combined state regulation, private sector innovation
and international trade to support the industrialization of agricul- ture and the
marketisation of food supply, through productivist policies introduced in
measures such as the Common Agricultural Policy in Europe, the 1947 Agriculture
Act in Britain and the 1949 Farm Bill in the United States (Atkins and Bowler 2001; Friedmann
1993; McMichael 2009a). As such, post-war food security was initially envisioned at the national scale but positioned within an
international agri-food system. However, as productivism secured domestic food supply in the global north, and as the international
media raised public consciousness of famine in parts of Africa and Asia, the discursive emphasis was shifted over the 1970s and
1980s to global food security, as articu- lated in the FAO’s definition that ‘food security exists when all people, at all times, have
physical and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an active
and healthy life’ (FAO 1996). This shift in the geographical imagination of food security presented challenges to the post- war food
regime, but the initial response was to expand and export the principles and
techniques of the regime: promoting agricultural modernisation in developing
countries, distributing Western commodity surpluses as emergency relief through
the World Food Program and negotiating new trade agreements to liberalise
international agri-food markets. By the late 1990s, note Dupont and Thirlwell, ‘famine-induced deaths had been
largely confined to poverty-stricken, war-torn pockets of the globe’ (2009:73), indicating the triumph of the
technocratic strategy of the food regime. However, this reading of hunger as a
technological problem disguises the production and management of famines as
‘politico-socio-economic processes’ (Edkins 2000). The representation and depoliticisation of famine have been of immense geo-strategic significance because
associated relief measures have often been used as geo-strategic weapons
implemented with a view to influence local and regional politics (Davis 2001; Edkins 2000;
Essex 2012). Celebration of the confinement of famine to a few ‘war-torn pockets of the
globe’ ignores awkward questions about the persistence of famine in conf lict
zones as a tool of warfare and about the longer-term legacies of famine alleviation
programmes for endogenous economies and societies. Furthermore, the undoubted
achievement of the post-war food regime in reducing hunger masked fractures in
the regime that had intensified since the 1970s under the weight of several
geopolitical pressures: the impacts on international food supply chains of both
bilateral trade agreements and ‘trade wars’, the rise in inf luence of agricultural
exporting countries as a counter-weight to the protectionist tendencies of Europe
and the USA, the increasing com- mercial power of transnational agri-food
corporations in tension with nation state regulation, and domestic political
concerns about the financial and environmental costs of productivist policies in
Europe and elsewhere (Atkins and Bowler 2001; McMichael 2009a). Accordingly, some food regime
scholars have identified the emergence of a new food regime in the period from
the 1980s, characterised by international and privatised food governance on
neoliberal principles and the promotion of biotechnology as the basis for capital
accumulation (Burch and Lawrence 2009; Busch and Bain 2004; Pechlaner and Otero 2008). In contrast to the post-war
food regime, the geographical imagination of the new regime is resolutely global, with national state power subordinated to
transnational authority. It is therefore significant that the turn-of-the-century crisis of confidence in the food supply system arose at
a moment of transition between two food regimes, marking perhaps recognition of the eclipse of the post-war regime, but
uncertainty about the capacity of the new regime to delivery (McMichael 2009b). The renewed concerns about food security conflate
a number of issues that have been prompted in part by two geopolitical shocks: the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the USA in 2001, which
revived arguments about the vulnerability of food chains to malicious disruption and the spike in agri-food commodity prices in
2008, which provoked questions about the ability of a market-based system to guarantee a supply of affordable food to all.
Moreover, these shocks occurred against background trends that were already challenging assumptions about food security, notably
the rate of global population expansion combined with rapid urbanization (Boland 2000; Dupont and Thirlwell 2009; Tomlinson
2013), and the impact of climate change on food production (Allouche 2011; Ingram et al. 2010; McMichael 2011). Thus, although
‘food security’ has been commonly presented as a singular discourse, its articulation in reality has embodied a range of different
emphases (Maye and Kirwan 2013; Carolan 2013), including different geographical imaginations of the problem and appropriate
solutions. Firstly, one set of responses has revived the conceptualisation of food security as national food security, in what might be
regarded as a challenge to the geopolitical vision of the new food ‘Food Security’ and ‘Food Sovereignty’ 775 regime and an attempt
to reassert the principles of the post-war regime. Certainly, the political impacts of recent shocks to food security have been most
keenly felt at the national scale. The effects of the 2008 food price spike, for instance, were most pronounced in lower-income
countries where small increases in food prices could exclude large numbers of the population from being able to afford to eat
adequately (Conceicao and Mendoza 2009). This was translated into food riots and demonstrations in a number of countries
including Argentina, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Cote d’Ivorie, Egypt, Haiti, India, Indonesia, Mauritania, Mozambique, Peru, Senegal
and Yemen, creating political instability that has been credited by some commentators as a factor in the revolutions of the Arab
Spring ( Joffé 2011). Similarly, concerns about disrup- tion from terrorism (including bioterrorism) have been primarily framed in
terms of national security, with, for example, Homeland Security Directives introduced by the USA after 9/11 including measures to
‘defend’ food and agriculture systems (Hinrichs 2013). In this context, Essex (2012: 192) recognises that
‘development and food security have become central parts of national security and
geopolitical strategies’ and highlights how ‘the hungry’, ‘vulnerability’ and ‘risk’
are constructed within these discourses as objects of political control, requiring
specific neoliberal forms of intervention. In this way, it is clear that a critical awareness of the social
construction of threats and food (in)security is warranted (Essex 2012). The national food security discourse was manifested in the
decision by several countries during the 2008 crisis to protect domestic food supplies by limiting the export of certain commodities. As Dupont and Thirlwell record, ‘by the end of June 2008, 14 countries had limited or banned rice exports, 15 countries
had capped or halted wheat exports, and more than 12 had restricted maize exports, exacerbating food shortages’ (2009: 87). These
included some major producers including Argentina and Russia. More prosaically, national food security has
been seized on by farm lobbies in countries including Australia, Britain and the USA to justify
the continuation of productivist policies and argue against trade liberalisation and the removal of agricultural subsidies (Fish et al.
2013; Lawrence et al. 2013), as well as to resist weakening of agricultural exceptionalism in rural policy and to oppose the loss of
farmland to non-agricultural developments (Woods 2010). However, the retrenchment of food security to the national scale risks the
intensification of food insecurity in countries with limited agricultural resources. Temporary export bans during the 2008 crisis, for
instance, had severe impacts in states such as Qatar, which is 90% dependent on imported food, leading to a re-appraisal of the
country’s food security strategy (Sippel and Kemmerling 2013). Significantly in Qatar and several similarly positioned countries, this
resulted not in a championing of global food security but in moves to protect national food security through preferential trade deals
and investment in land and farms abroad (Sippel and Kemmerling 2013; Woertz 2013). As such, concerns for national
food security have amplified the boom in international land investments (so-called ‘land-
grabbing’) since 2008 (Cotula 2012; McMichael 2013). Although the impacts of these investments in diverting food supplies and
displacing endogenous farmers have been compared to imperialism, they in fact reveal new geopolitical dynamics. The major
purchasing states are not the traditional imperial powers but expanding economies of Asia and the Middle East, notably China,
India, Saudi Arabia, South Korea and the United Arab Emirates. Neither are ‘land-grabs’ exclusively north–south, but including
south-to-south transactions, and investments in Australia, New Zealand and the USA. Patterns of investment also ref lect broader
geopolitical relationships and interests, with Arab states frequently demonstrating a preference for investments in other Islamic
nations and Chinese land investments in Africa accompanying other industrial investments in securing geopolitical allies. Secondly,
however, an alternative response to pressures on the global food system has been to reassert a discourse of global food security, tied
to the principles of the new food regime. In particular, this approach is associated with a scientisation of food security, with key
articulations including articles in Science (Godfray et al. 2010; Rosegrant and Cline 2003), and a Royal Society report in the UK
(Royal Society 2009), presenting food security as a scientific problem rather than a political problem. This message was consolidated
by the FAO Rome Summit on World Food Security in 2009, which, as Maye and Kirwan (2013) note, adopted two projections that
have become the central pillars of the global food security discourse: ‘first, that food production needed to increase by 50% by 2030
to meet rising demand; and second, that food production needed to double by 2050 to feed a world population of 9 billion’ (p. 1).
These projections have subsequently been employed to justify the intensification of agricultural production, particularly through
biotechnology solutions, but the implications are neither apolitical nor straightforward (Tomlinson 2013). Such interventions
arguably represent a return to the so-called ‘Green Revolution’ of the 1960s to 1980s, the productivist ideology of which had
foregrounded increased production and technological innovation as the solution to the world’s food problems, yet which has been
critiqued for providing a stable food supply at the cost of environmental and social damage ( Jewitt and Baker 2007; Shiva 1991).
Democracy
discussing and learning about neoliberalism is necessary to prevent
the collapse of democracy
Giroux PhD. @ Carnegie-Mellon University, Global TV Network Chair Professorship at McMaster University in the English and Cultural
Studies Department 2013 (Henry A., “Radial Democracy Against Cultures of Violence”, December 17, http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/20669radical-democracy-against-cultures-of-violence//CB)
Casino capitalism's paranoiac and increasingly repressive institutional and ideological
apparatuses live in fear of dissent, critical rationality and the possibility of collective struggles
moved by the desire for justice and a radical democracy. This is precisely where questions about
education and resistance connect to broader debates about producing critical agents capable
of acting as engaged and responsible citizens in a substantive democracy. Education matters not
simply as a space where students can learn to read texts critically or cite the latest fashionable
theorists but where they are taught to actually think critically and connect what they learn to the
belief that democracy is desirable, possible and has to be defended and constantly renewed.
And it is precisely this struggle over ideologies, modes of governance, and social relations that
necessitates that educators, workers, young people, intellectuals, artists, journalists and others
make clear that any attempt to develop a radical notion of democracy must be inextricably tied
to a defense of those institutions where critical thinking, informed dialogue and the
resurrection of critical agency become possible. It must also be seen as a site of constant
struggle. As Chantal Mouffe argues: "Democracy is something uncertain and improbable and
must never be taken for granted. It is an always fragile conquest that needs to be defended as
well as deepened. There is no threshold of democracy that, once reached, will guarantee its
continued existence."[17] In the current historical moment, democracy is not in peril because it
has been taken for granted, but because under the various regimes of neoliberalism it is viewed
as an excess, a burden, a pathology and a potential threat to the corporate and financial elite.
Democracy harbors a political antibody to the concentration of power that now abhors its ideals
and discourse of equality, justice, and freedom - made evident in the various revolts and
insurrections among young people, workers, and others taking place all over the globe. Given
the current crisis, educators, artists, intellectuals, youth and workers need a new political and
pedagogical language for addressing the changing contexts and issues facing a world in which
capital draws upon an unprecedented, ruthless appropriation of resources - financial, cultural,
political, economic, scientific, military and technological -to exercise powerful and diverse forms
of control. Theorists such as Stanley Aronowitz, Angela Davis, Michael Albert, Michael Yates,
Richard Wolff, Bill McKibben, Dorothy Roberts, Michelle Alexander and Michael Lerner have
made invaluable contributions toward rethinking the role of labor, abolishing the prisonindustrial complex, decoupling capitalism from the war machine, abolishing the world-wide gap
between the rich and the poor, addressing ecological sustainability, championing women's rights
and the need for a new Marshall Plan. All of these theorists share a recognition that democracy
is under siege all over the globe by the forces of neoliberalism and that it is time to reclaim its
most noble and promising ideals and practices. All of them have suggested a need to reclaim
democracy as a radical rather than liberal ideology, mode of governance, and set of policies. C.
Douglas Lummis is right in arguing that "Democracy was once a word of the people, a critical
word, a revolutionary word. It has been stolen by those who would rule over the people, to add
legitimacy to their rule. It is time to take it back."[18] If educators and others are to counter
global capitalism's increased efforts to eviscerate democracy as a result of separating the
traditional sphere of politics from the now transnational reach of power, it is crucial for them
and other cultural workers to develop a political language and educational approaches that
reject a collapse of the distinction between market liberties and civil liberties, a market economy
and a market society. This suggests developing public spheres capable of constructing forms of
moral and political agency willing to challenge neoliberalism and other antidemocratic
traditions, including the increasing criminalization of social problems such as homelessness,
while resurrecting a radical democratic project that provides the basis for imagining a life
beyond the dream-world of capitalism. Once again, under such circumstances, education
becomes more than a business, an obsession with accountability schemes, measurable utility,
authoritarian governing structures, a crude empiricism for defining what counts as research,
and a site for simply delineating students as consumers and training them for the workforce. At
stake here is the need to recognize and assert the power of schooling, public pedagogy, and the
educational influence of the alternative public spheres. Such educational forces are crucial to
produce the formative cultures capable of producing the subjectivities, identities, dispositions
and capacities necessary to both challenge the various threats being mobilized against the very
idea of justice and democracy while also fighting for those ideals, values and policies that offer
alternative modes of identity, social relations and politics. More specifically, any viable vision of
radical democracy must acknowledge that the foundation for a radical democracy is rooted not
merely in economics but in the realm of beliefs, without which there is neither a discourse of
critique nor a sense of utopian possibility.
Generic
Neoliberal globalization is a protection racket—it’s the root cause of
every major impact
Naidu 98(MV, PhD Poli Sci, Peace Research 30.2 (May 1998): 1. proquest)
All the above arguments present globalization as the positive, the constructive and the beneficial evolution of the
modern age being shaped by the forces of industrialization, technologicalization and internationalization. In other words, globalization is being
considered as a process that is providing solutions to serious problems of world wars, ecological disasters,
transportation restrictions, cultural misunderstandings, bad use of world resources, high unemployment, Third World poverty,
imbalances in international trade, and economic crises resulting out of poor investments, high interest rates and high inflation. But the
question that should be raised is--what caused these problems ? Otherwise we end up with the logic of the
tragedies caused by drunk driving. More policing, more fines, more restrictions on licensing or more punishment, while selling more alcohol, can't end
the problem of drunk driving; at best, these steps can help as first aid. Only prohibiting alcohol consumption by drivers can eliminate drunk driving. In
rooting out the causes, not the treatment of the symptoms, can avoid
diseases . Globalized military action can, at best, stop or limit war, but can't eliminate war. What
causes have led to the world wars of the modern age, should be the question. Answer? Modern weapons and their enormous
destructive capabilities.(f.6) And modern weapons of war are very much the products of modern industry
and technology.(f.7) Modern militarization and weaponry of mass destruction are now threatening the very
existence of life on earth . What factors have causedtoday's life endangering phenomena of ecological
disasters--the depletion of the ozone layer, the warming of the global temperature,(f.8) the dead rivers, lakes and oceans,
deforestation, the poisoned fruits, fishes and food grains, and species extinction? Worldwide reckless massive
industrialization and dehumanized science-technology. By dehumanization I mean the total concentration of
the industries on power and profitto the almost total exclusion of concerns for human health and happiness in terms of
physical, emotional, intellectual and economic well-being. While modern facilities of ships, planes, trains and trucks, essentials of
modern industrialization and products of modern technology, have globalized transportation, they have also globalized
the shipment of arms, military equipment, war tanks, battleships, submarines, bombers,(f.9) and transportation, in a matter of hours or
other words,
days, of thousands of troops to wage wars in every nook and corner of the world. Besides, the massive increase in the numbers and accidents in
transportation have been causing unprecedented damages to economic wealth, human health and the global ecology.(f.10) Before the advent of modern
technology and industry, knowledge, especially in the realms of the histories, the religions and the cultures of the peoples of the world, was seriously
limited. Consequently, international understanding was lacking. However, misunderstanding was not then a problem. But thanks
to the
globalization of the modern modes and instruments of mass communications--from the printing press to computer chips
and communication satellites--the necessary concomitants of massive industrialization--powerful techniques of propaganda, thought control
and brainwashing have been globalized. The evils of ethnicism, racism, religionism, chauvinism and jingoism(f.11)
are now spread worldwide through the instrumentality of media colonialism.(f.12) An accounting of the world's natural resources today
reveals the realities that the global resources have either been unused or misused, maldeveloped or mismanaged, distorted or
depleted. This globalization of resource misuse or destruction is thevery result of unscrupulous exploitation of the globalized
colonialism. Neo-colonialism is now proclaiming that globalization of natural resources is good for all. In other words, neo-colonialism is
spreading the deceptive slogan that what is good for the developed states is also good for the poor
states. The haunting fact is that out of 185 states in the world, almost 40% of world resources are used up by just one country--the United States. Can
we name one politician in the United States, or in any of the developed states, whose campaign slogan is--"vote for me and I promise to reduce your
standards of living?" The
argument that Third World poverty cannot be eradicated except through globalized
efforts hides the fact that poverty has been the very result of globalized economic exploitation for the
industrial development of the Western world. As the only superpower, the United States hegemony is now globalized. Remember, the
sun never sets on the globalized British Empire! The old imperialists now call themselves G-7 or G-8, the OECD countries, the developed states, the
donor nations, the money lenders to the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. The old victims of colonial exploitation have been given
new names--the protectorates, the military allies, the satellites, the Mandates of the League of Nations, the Trust Territories of the United Nations, the
client states, the recipients of development assistance, and so on. Modern mass industrialization has always resulted in colonialism, i.e., the
exploitation and impoverishment of the masses through deception, coercion and political domination by an elite that works for the enrichment of a
handful of captains of industry and for the benefit of the ruling class.(f.13) In its early stage colonialism was domestic, i.e., within the political
boundaries of the country. The victims were the landless peasantry, the slaves bought or captured, the ethnic and religious minorities, destitute women
and children, and the undeveloped regions in the country. These victims were best portrayed by the British novelist Charles Dickens and by American
writers like Jane Addams. As industrialization advanced, colonial exploitation reached foreign lands. Military conquests and occupations of territories
in Asia, Africa and the Western Hemisphere created colonies(f.14) that became the backbone of European industrialization by supplying vast natural
resources(f.15), enormous slave or cheap labor, millions of captive consumers, and tremendous opportunities for trade, invest-ment,(f.16) employment
and emigration. Thus domestic colonialism evolved into international colonialism. In other words, colonialism was globalized. Massive
industrialization is impossible without globalized colonialization. Colonialization, in turn, is unavoidable by
globalized industrialization. Because modern economy of mass industrialization--i.e., the economy of mass production, mass distribution and mass
consumption--cannot be sustained without colonial exploitation, neo-colonialism
now wears the garbs of globalization--
of foreign aid,( f.17) of international investment, of free trade , of technology transfer, and so on.
It is an oxymoron to argue that globalized poverty and economic inequalities can be eliminated
by globalized industrialization and neo-imperialism. Today one-third of the world controls three-fourths of world trade.
Yet this phenomenon is considered a reflection of beneficial globalization whose advocates are now calling for further globalization through expanded
free-market economies. Economically developed countries benefit through unrestricted trade in two ways: one, they are ever ready to buy or secure raw
materials from the Third World countries, but not their finished products. The other, they have enormous surpluses of finished products to sell to the
developing countries. These proponents have already set up free trade zones like the Canada-U.S. Free Trade agreement, NAFTA, the European
Common Market, the OECD, the World Trade Organization, etc. The globalization of free trade is undoubtedly to the advantage of the developed states.
On the other hand, the less developed states that cannot earn much through international trade can ill afford to buy foreign goods. If they do buy, out of
pressure or unavoidability, they become heavily indebted.(f.18) These debts, in turn, retard their economic development. More than this, the less
developed industries of the Third World that cannot compete, either in quality or in quantity, with the products from developed economies, need
protection. In the words of Kaiser, free
trade is the weapon of the strong, and protectionism is the shield of
the weak. As long as economic inequalities exist in the world, and as long as the rich and developed states insist on
improving or sustaining their own development, globalization of free trade will never bring about equitable trade among all
states of the world. In every case of massive industrialization, some groups and regions within and without the state always end up as
the victims suffering trade inequalities. Another tragic consequence that is often played down by the advocates of massive industrialization is the
fact that the more technological and industrialized an economy becomes, the more susceptible its economy becomes to increased unemployment.
Irrespective of all the complex and complicated explanations offered by the sophisticated economists with econometric models, the simple truth behind
unemployment is the fact that mechanization displaces workers; automation decreases human employment by making workers surplus or
redundant.(f.19) Advanced industrialization, whether under capitalism, communism or fascism, becomes dehumanized when it pays least or no
attention to the fate of the workers and the problems of the unemployed. Instead, its main focus is on the twin goals of increasing productivity and
competitiveness, both of which mean higher levels of mechanization, automation and rationalization, leading inevitably to lower levels of employment.
When European industrialization during the 18th and 19th centuries made workers redundant, Europe got rid of the surplus of the unemployed and the
unemployable population in more than one way. The main method of reducing the unemployable and the unwanted was sending them away to new
colonies in the Western Hemisphere, Africa, Asia, Australia, New Zealand, and so on. Today people of European ancestry--pure or mixed--living
outside Europe amount to hundreds of millions. Most of the European emigrants were peasants, unemployed workers and artisans, criminals, social
misfits and exploited ethnic, racial, and religious minorities. These colonies of Europeans not only saved and supported European industries by
absorbing the unwanted population of Europe, the colonies also boosted European industrialization by becoming suppliers of raw materials, primary
industries, cheap labor, huge markets, big profits, large investment and employment opportunities. Besides, the colonies also provided arms,
armies(f.20) and battlefields, thereby enhancing the military capability to fight colonial wars,(f.21) to defend old possessions or to acquire new
territories. These factors further boosted European commerce, diplomacy and international power status .
As profitability of mass
industries leads to huge capital surpluses, need arises for investment opportunities. Of course, only
the rich nations and the wealthy multinational corporations (MNCs) seek outlets for their surplus wealth. The
recipients for such investments are always the poor and the not-so-rich nations. The current
euphemisms for such surplus trade and investments are foreign aid, development
loans, technological assistance, free markets , financial assistance from the World Bank or International Monetary
Fund, and so on. The recent proposal called the Multinational Agreement on Investments (MAI) by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and
Development (OECD), consisting of the 29 richest nations in the world, is a good example of the latest neo-colonial machinations.(f.22) While
proclaiming pious platitudes of humanitarianism, the lenders and investors, of course, workfor their
own profitability. It is like my banker who lends me money and seeks high interest and a mortgage on everything I own, and then claims that
he was doing me a favor, while awaiting to confiscate my possessions the moment I fail to make the payments. Without the opportunities to
substantially increase my earnings, I end up being at the mercy of the bank, borrowing more to pay the interest on previous borrowings. My banker
Shylock will not hesitate to demand his pound of my flesh! Should I feel grateful to this Shylock? Globalization
of trade, investment and
only mean further dictation and domination of the developed countries and further
indebtedness and impoverishment of the undeveloped or developing countries. The globalized Shylock will undoubtedly demand
the pound of flesh from the globalized debtors. Countries like the G-7 that control most of the world's trade, investment and lending,
indirectly control the world's financial markets; they can manipulate interest rates, stock markets, currency values,
inflation, deflation, etc. The recent episodes of the financial collapse of the seemingly thriving industrialization and
economies of countries like South Korea, Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia stand as testimony to the fact that
the so-called development of the dependent economies can be flimsy(f.24), deceptive, corrupt
and dehumanized. Thus the globalization of the financial markets simply means the strengthening of the
stranglehold that the developed world has on the economies of the underdeveloped world. There is no gainsaying that wars,
ecological disasters, transportation bottlenecks, cultural misunderstandings and brainwashing have become
globalized. The root causes of these problems are massive and dehumanized technology and
industrialization . Similarly, the evils of globalized poverty and economic inequalities, globalized misuse of world
resources and international trade, and globalized manipulation of the world's investments and financial markets are the results of
massive industrialization and colonialism and neocolonialism--domestic and external. The antidote for these cases of
economic globalization is not more globalization, but less of it. The distinction between "globalization from the top" and
"globalization from the bottom" is false. The premise that we can evolve a "globalized civil society" out of the
"globalized militaristic society" is misleading. Superficial globalized counter-moves for
banking(f.23) can
immediate solutions can only be counter-productive. The target of attack for the evils of globalization
should be globalization, through in-depth and long-term measures, not through band-aid
treatments . In order to reduce and eliminate the root causes, measures should be
initiated to reduce in varying stages the current levels of technologicalization,
industrialization and dehumanization of world economies . This means decentralization, devolution
and indiginization of huge economies into small-scale and self-sustaining economies. Such small economies will only need small-sized and selfgoverning polities. In a word, small can be beautiful. Reduction in the economic-political system implies
fundamental changes
at the intellectual and cultural level--a reduction in the aspiration of material wealth, greed and selfishness, and an expansion in the
values of co-operation, compassion and humanism. These changes in politico-economic-cultural aspects of life
necessitate a paradigm shift. Two main arguments can be raised against the proposed paradigm shift. One, science-technology and
industry are not inherently negative or immoral, because they are non-human and therefore amoral. It is their misuse or misdirection that causes
problems discussed above. The other, reduction or elimination of massive industrialization and technologicalization is neither practical nor desirable.
The first argument is falsely formulated because the criticism
is not of science-technology and industry per se; the
criticism is of their massiveness and their dehumanization.When their impacts on human life and well-being
are deliberately disregarded by those who use them, then science-technology and industry become
dehumanized and cause all the evils of our modern age. It may be argued that science-technology and industry by themselves are not harmful or
immoral. This argument is similar to the one which says that a sword by itself does not kill people; people using it kill people. Therefore the sword is
amoral! But in the human context, the very purpose (telos) in the creation of the sword is to inflict physical harm or death on human beings. The sword
is not meant to till the soil. It is not built to serve as a crutch for a lame person. The destructive purpose of the sword will not change until it is beaten
into a ploughshare. But when it becomes a ploughshare, it is not a sword by definition. For modern science-technology and mass industries power and
profit have become the driving forces, and materialism has become the cherished goal. Power is the capacity of A to influence, persuade, dominate,
coerce or force B so as to make B do or not do something according to the will of A. Profit reflects the drive and the desire to buy, acquire or possess
material wealth. The craze for power, pelf or profit, either at the personal or national level, usually resorts to unscrupulousness, exploitativeness and
immorality. Obsession with materialism devalues intellectual or spiritual goals and induces instinctual behavior, thereby reducing Homo sapiens to the
level of beasts. Thus dehumanized science-technology and industries would cause greater harm when further globalized. Those
who argue
that limiting globalization of science-technology and industry is impractical and hence
impossible, seem to adhere to the doctrines of fatalism or predestination or historicism similar to the Augustinian
concept of original sin and damnation, or Herbert Spencer's concept of social Darwinism, or the Marxist concept of historical materialism or the
evolutionist concept of unidirectional linear progression. Though raised in the name of realism, none of these concepts are rational, real or proven; all
of them are cynical or pessimistic. Does the argument of impracticality mean the inevitability of globalized self-destruction of humanity? Cannot
human Karma (action) play a part in shaping human destiny? I s
it unrealistic to believe that human suffering and
destruction can be limited, reduced or eliminated through deglobalization of weapons and wars,
and through deglobalization of political oppression, economic exploitation, and environmental
degradation? When someone claims to be "practical," she really means that she will get what she
wants by hook or crook. In this sense, any means whatsoever could be employed to achieve the ends one desires. That is, the ends should
not determine in any way the means to be employed. This approach, thus sets up a dichotomy between ends and means. Further, when someone argues
that something is impractical, she really means she cannot be successful in attaining her goals. In this sense, success is the essential consideration. The
argument that there is no interrelatedness between ends and means is a false dichotomy. The seed predetermines the nature of the tree, the flower and
the fruit, the results. Similarly, hate-filled or violent or immoral means are bound to lead to results that endorse or establish hatred or violence or
immorality. When people are obsessed with success, they want to get what they want within a prescribed or a short period of time, and if they cannot,
then they won't even try. When effort is enslaved to success, human will loses its autonomy; and pessimism and cynicism that set in rob humanity of its
challenge and dynamism. To avoid such losses, we should focus upon and emphasize the view that effort is essential, not the result, that struggle is
important, not the success! For the cynics, being "practical" means being successful in achieving any goal by any means. Success is critical; means could
be immoral or amoral. The Gandhian paradigm of "practical idealism" overcomes both the problems of bad means and of obsession with success. The
paradigm avoids the artificial dichotomy between ends and means by postulating that moral means are essential for moral goals; the formulation
avoids cynicism and frustration by focusing on the struggle without any concern over its success, and by prescribing modest measures that are feasible
in a given situation. The Gandhian paradigm can be translated into two simple phrases--"Think morally and act morally," and "Think globally and act
locally." In fine, deglobalization
of dehumanized science-technology and mass industrialization can be
pursued through practical idealism. In conclusion, globalization is not the panacea for the world
crises; instead it is the deepening of the crises. The answer to the problems of globalization is
decrease, not increase, in globalization. Rehumanization of science-technology and industrialization is the permanent panacea
for the 21st century.
Queer Otherization
Neoliberal ideologies overshadow any progress the queer community
hopes to make.
Croitoru, BA in women’s and gender studies, 15
Croitoru, Sarah (2015) "Homonormativity: An Ineffective Way to Approach Queer Politics," Strigidae: Vol. 1: Iss. 1,
Article 6. Available at: http://commons.keene.edu/strigidae/vol1/iss1/6
Neoliberalism is used by Lisa Duggan as a critique of “pro-corporate, free market, antibig government rhetoric shaping U.S. policy
and dominating international financial institutions since the early 1980s” (177). Neoliberalism
negates thestructures of institutional power and focuses entirely on the agency of the
people within our society. The neoliberal view of marriage is that marriage equality is
good because the individual nuclear family becomes the primary economic unit responsible
for itself, instead of the state having to take responsibility for the people within the family
unit. Neoliberal ideals and movements such as the Log Cabin Republicans foster an ignorance of the
intersections ofrace, gender, and class in issues such as marriage equality. Gay marriage,
specifically, is a homonormative practice that diminishes other priorities of the sexual politics
of the queer community by ignoring the structural forces in oursociety. Duggan explains
that homonormativity is “a politics that does not contest dominant heteronormative
assumptions and institutions but upholds and sustains them while promising the possibility of a
demobilized gay constituency and a privatized, depoliticized gay culture anchored in domesticity and
consumption” (179). Homonormativity reproduces a culture of oppression by
focusing solely on personal agency while ignoring the structural problems within our
culture and society. Homonormativity focuses attention on access to the military,
gay marriage, and the “free” market (179) and, in doing so, prohibits queer politics from
addressing the structural power dynamics within the UnitedStates that reproduce
racism, sexism, classism, and homophobia. Rhetoric produced by the Independent Gay
Forum (IGF), a neoliberal group consisting mostly of white men who believe they are the “new gay
movement,” constructs ideology that rejects “‘conservative” claims that gays and lesbians
pose any threat to social morality or the political order” while “equally [opposing]
“progressive” claims that gays should support radical social change or restructuring of
society” (Duggan 176). Neoliberals claim to be a middle ground; they want to keep the same
social structures of power that are currently in place, while allowing gay people to be a
part of these structures. Andrew Sullivan, a writer for the IGF, says it is “heterosexual
identity… undeniably valuable in any society and culture, that seems to characterize the vast majority
of humanity, and without which civilization would simply evaporate” (qtd. in Duggan
184). Sullivan, a queer activist, implicitly shares a belief that homonormativity is good. He seems to be saying that problems in
our system do not lie in gapping structural holes that need to be fixed. He argues that the problems stem from
society’s resistance to accept slight deviations from the norm, such as
gay marriage or gay people serving in the military. Since the norm of our society has been taught to us as white,
middle-class, heterosexual, married, and patriotic, Sullivandoes not account for the different identities
within each of these realms that are not addressed explicitly by marriage.
Neoliberal institutions are advancing their agenda onto the queer
community by reproducing structural problems
Croitoru, BA in women’s and gender studies, 15
Croitoru, Sarah (2015) "Homonormativity: An Ineffective Way to Approach Queer Politics," Strigidae: Vol. 1: Iss. 1,
Article 6. Available at: http://commons.keene.edu/strigidae/vol1/iss1/6
Homonormative ideas, like those of Sullivan, reproduce structural problems of our government by
focusing on one area of oppression without taking into account the intersectionality
of multiple facets of identity. These components of identity include (but are not limited to)
race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, and ethnicity. Structurally, as argued by Judith
Butler, we can understand that identity politics are cultural struggles as well as
economic struggles (Oswin 655). From this assumption, it is argued that queer people do not threaten
capitalism, and therefore should be allowed to be part of the same heteronormative
societal structures regardless of their sexuality (655). By focusing on allowing LGBT
people to assimilate, the queer movement no longer fights to support queer
homeless youth, but it rather “fights for assimilation and social acceptability”
arguing only for acceptance within marriage and the military(656). There is an assumption
by neoliberals that with marriage and military equality, “gay and lesbian life [will
move] beyond discrimination.” In reality, marriage and military equality will not
solve all the oppressions faced by queer people. Passing, or being read
as heterosexual, uses “heteronormative premises (specifically, the presumption of heterosexuality, and
the gender binary)” to frame homonormative practices (Rosenfeld 619). The gender binary leads
tothe notion of “a gender-conforming homosexual” who is seen as more normative
and privileged. Certain assimilationsist groups think that unless you are politically organizing, as a
homosexual, you should attempt to pass (621). Passingblatantly does not
reconstruct institutionalized forms of homophobia or sexism, but it reproduces
the idea that you must fit within societal norms in order to have a privileged life. Stonewall also
“refashioned homosexuality from a private matter to be enacted within a private arena into an essentially political matter to be
enacted in a public one” (Rosenfeld 622). The neoliberal agenda of gay marriage which, according to Duggan,
“is
not simply a private contract; it is a social and public recognition of a private
commitment” (187) appears to refocus the emphasis from the public back to the
private. The homonormative practice of same-sex marriage, which reproduces the same
structural problems of heterosexual marriage, is seen as liberating simply due to
the fact that it publicizes the private. In reality, gay marriage does not attempt to
dismantle any of structural or social problems of marriage within the United States. Butler
argues that structural problems are not dismantled through marriage because “the state becomes the means by which a fantasy
becomes literalized: desire and sexuality are ratified, justified, known, publicly instated, imagined as permanent, durable” (22). She
shows how the neoliberals publicize the private through the example that relationships in
marriage are not private, but innately public, as marriage leads to public gains, such
as qualification within our capitalist society for tax breaks and other
benefits. Marriage is not a private matter in any sense; it is
“publicly mediated and…[a] legitimated public sex” (23) because marriage leads to a
general understanding and expectation that as amarried person one has rights. These rights include, but are
not limited to hospital visitation, the right to mourn, and the right to build a
family together (23). The state is given the power to control matters that should be
personal choices and not tied exclusively to a public institution such as marriage. Due
to the assumption that homonormative homosexuals are “respectable” and nonconforming homosexuals are “unrespectable,” the exact same problems produced by heterosexuality are
reproduced by homonormativity (Rosenfeld 632). Heteronormativity is produced through
homonormativity by the “rhetorical remapping of public/private boundaries designed to
shrink gay public spheres and redefine gay equality against the “civil rights
agenda” and “liberationism,” as access to the institutions of domestic privacy, the “free”
market, and patriotism” (Duggan 179). This leads to the assumption that the right way to
be gay is to participate in the “free” market and be
patriotic. Therefore, the heteronormative structure of nuclear families and marriage
is the perfect structure for homosexual couples because the state will no longer be
responsible for them; nuclear homosexual families will be financially responsible for
themselves. Homonormativity neglects to contest dominant heterosexual
assumptions such as the goal that we should all be married, middle class, and capitalist.
Neoliberalism attempts to hide the connections between sexuality and
the role it plays in the market
Croitoru, BA in women’s and gender studies, 15
Croitoru, Sarah (2015) "Homonormativity: An Ineffective Way to Approach Queer Politics," Strigidae: Vol. 1: Iss. 1,
Article 6. Available at: http://commons.keene.edu/strigidae/vol1/iss1/6
Heterosexual marriage is structurally flawed, and therefore it is potentially not useful for
queer people and queer people of color to strive for marriage equality. As Marlon Bailey states, “I am not
heterosexual, nor do I want to be heterosexual; therefore, personally, I have no use for a heterosexual institution like marriage” (qtd.
in Bernstein Sycamore 88). Bailey’s assertion shows that the problems with marriage are not that it is not open to
homosexuals; they
liewithin the institution and the structures of power
that are created by marriage laws. Mattie Udora Richardson argues that hospital visitation, medical
decisions, and social security benefits should not be determined by marriage, they
should be determined by the person whose decisions and benefits they belong to.
For example, if she wants to give her social security benefits to her nephews, why should that be questioned? (qtd. In Bernstein
Sycamore 89). Pamphlets distributed by The Equality Project in South Africa claim that the right to gay marriage will help solve
socioeconomic problems: “Marriage allows families and communities to recognize the relationships of their members. This is
especially important for poor people, as the state cannot afford to provide many crucial services to everyone. Because of this, many
poor families depend on extended family and community support for their survival” (Oswin 663). This advertisement
represents the misunderstanding that marriage will fix all socioeconomic
problems, and reproduces the heteronormative ideal of middle-class to upper-middle class nuclear
families. Marriage is also innately connected to property(Bernstein Sycamore 93). Marriage is
designed in a way that allows the two people in the relationship to claim property together, have joint
bank accounts, and pay taxes together. Oswin states that the homonormative ideal of
marriage absolves the state of the responsibility to provide assistance to married
queer folks (664). The extended family is expected to be the caretakers of married gays and lesbians, providing assistance
when needed (665). Privatization is often a strategy of neoliberals. Duggan
defines privatization as “the transfer of wealth and decision making from public, more-or-less
accountable decision-making bodies to individual or corporate accountable hands” (178). Privatization as a neoliberal
strategy “absolves collective accountability and public intervention” pertaining to “the marking of
sex outside of capitalism” (Agathangelou 132). By ignoring the relationship between sex and the market, privatization
implicitly dismisses the connections between sexuality, the market, colonial,
racial, and class relationships. Maxime Cervulle’s article, “French Homonormativity and the Commodification of
the Arab Body,” addresses the reality that although the FHAR (Homosexual Front for Revolutionary Action) may have been created
based on radical ideology, it has fallen into representing contemporary homonormativity in France (171-2). Through her
exploration of the FHAR, it is clear that by “[prioritizing sexuality above all else, [they]
inadvertently [maintained] privileged positions of class, gender, and race through
the figure of the universal homosexual” (173). There is an assumption that all
homosexuals are the same,meaning that all their struggles with oppression are
equivalent. This reality ignores the fact that race, gender, and class can all lead to
oppression and struggle. Given that oppression and struggle can focus on race, gender, class, religion, and
ethnicity, not all oppression people face is the same. One person can face oppression
because of the intersection of multiple identities at one time
Risk Distribution
A. The Neoliberal state shifts costs of operation onto the individual
under the illusion of choice. This traps the populace into dependency
because making choices in those circumstances force them to be
informed consumers, snaring them back into the system
Hay ‘7
(Hay, Colin. "The Normalizing Role of Rationalist Assumptions in the Institutional Embedding of Neoliberalism." Economy and
Society 33.4 (2004): 500-27. Web.)
Another aspect of this discourse, which a number of researchers have noted, is that ‘risk’ has become a central
framework for describing and managing the welfare policy of today. In this perspective
‘old’ welfare states like Sweden have dealt with a limited amount of risk resulting
from the industrial production process while in post-industrial societies, new
risks fundamentally challenge old welfare states and welfare policy (Taylor-Gooby,
2006; Bonoli, 2005) which have responded with shifting some risks from the state to
the individual (Hacker 2006; Marston et al. 2010). Activation policies and the changing ethical
foundations of welfare have also created competing discourses of responsibility
in different ‘welfare-settings’ in the transfer from welfare to workfare, as well as in individual responses (Dean,
2006). The penetration of market relations and of abstract systems into every
aspect of the life-world compels the individual to choose. At the same time, these
processes promote forms of market and institutional dependency. Each
individual is to be her own political economy, an informed, self-sufficient
consumer of labour markets, personal security markets, and other consuming
interests. Within a regime of responsible risk-taking, all differences, and the
inequalities that result from them, are seen as a matter of choice (Shamir, 2008). Hence,
governmental risk-management (intended to reduce uncertainty about future national welfare obligations) has offloaded
responsibility for welfare procurement and use to the private consumer.
B. This renders unequal power relations because certain groups are
excluded
Hay ‘7
(Hay, Colin. "The Normalizing Role of Rationalist Assumptions in the Institutional Embedding of Neoliberalism." Economy and
Society 33.4 (2004): 500-27. Web.)
Our point of departure is that such normalizing processes tend to render unequal power relations, for
example, those of gender, invisible. Notions of normalcy of this type, but also notions of
normalization, creates an integrating ‘us’ at the same time as it tend to exclude certain groups of
people and (re)produce inequality (Fahlgren et al., 2011). In order to problematize this kind of belonging from the
perspectives of feminist theory it is necessary to continue the kind of genealogical questioning of the
very relations between selves and society that are found in Foucault, Cannon, and Latour,
making the contingency of these relations visible, or, according to the metaphor above, picking them out of
their black boxes. It is the notion that individual actors and society (or structure) fit together
that has to be problematized, and this is not done by emphasizing either the freedom of individual actors or structural
determination.
Structural Violence, Racism, Sexism, etc.
Neoliberalism perpetuates structural violence against marginalized
groups—to remain silent is to be complicit in the abuse
Springer ‘12
(Simon, assistant Professor in the Department of Geography at the University of Victoria. “Neoliberalising violence: of the
exceptional and the exemplary in coalescing moments”, Royal Geographical Society, Wiley Online) //RGDM
But what is not spoken in Klein's account, nor is it foregrounded in most treatments of neoliberalism in the literature, is that
neoliberalism has gone beyond the ‘boorish’ phase of our relationship. It has become so entrenched and
comfortable in its place at the head of the table that neoliberalism has now turned abusive (Bumiller 2008).
Abuse is a form of violence that involves the mistreatment of another (an ‘Other’), leading to
physical or emotional injury. It is utilised to exclusively benefit the interests of the abuser, and is not
at all about serving the interests of victims. Put differently, abuse is related to exercising dominance, which is a
course of action that explicitly jettisons any sort of biopolitical logic concerned with cultivating life.
This is precisely how neoliberalism operates in a disciplinary capacity, employing a variety of regulatory,
surveillance and policing mechanisms to ensure neoliberal reforms are instituted and ‘locked in’, in spite of what the populace might
desire (Gill 1995). Our silence on this unfolding violent matrimony is what allows this abuser to
become more and more sure in the application of its domination, and increasingly brazen in the
execution of what has become and overtly ‘necropolitical’ agenda (Mbembe 2003). To continue to
embrace the maligned doctrine of neoliberalism and the malevolence it unleashes is to stay the course
of battery, exploitation and assault, and to abandon those most embattled by its exclusions, and
most scarred by its exceptional violence (i.e. the poor, people of colour, the unemployed,
women, the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community, ethnic minorities, the young and
old, disabled peoples, the homeless etc.) to the full fury of its wrath. Thankfully geographers have been
vocal in their calls for the indictment of neoliberal ideas (England and Ward 2007; Peck 2010; Smith et al. 2008), but we are
not yet at a point where we can declare a distinct qualitative break from the past. Even though the
legitimacy of neoliberalism has come under intensifying scrutiny since the onset of the most recent financial crisis in late 2008,
and neoliberalism may be ‘dead’ inasmuch as it has run out of politically viable ideas (Smith
2008), it nonetheless remains ‘animated by technocratic forms of muscle memory, deep instincts of
self-preservation, and spasmodic bursts of social violence’ (Peck et al. 2010, 105). The continuing implications and
exclusions of neoliberalism should call us to action, it should provoke us to intervene and
invigorate our collective strength with a desire to make right such terrible wrongs . But beyond this
imperative for compassion, a politics of affinity that never takes for granted our shared humanity, lies the danger of complacency,
the shadow of indifference and the menace of detachment among those of us who have not yet been subjected to our homes being
forcibly taken by armed bandits known as police, to our children's curiosity languishing because a basic education is an expense we
cannot shoulder, or to our spouses dying in our arms having been denied adequate health care.3 What those of us still on the
winning side of neoliberalism do not account for or anticipate – and let there be no mistake that this is a system that most assuredly
creates winners and losers – is that in this abandonment of ‘Others’, we produce a relation of inclusive-exclusion. It is the
ascendency of such neoliberal abuse that aligns it with sovereign power, a configuration that
allows us to conceptualise neoliberalism as a strategy that facilitates the very structure of ‘the
ban’ in the particular sense outlined by Agamben (1998 2005). An understanding of the functioning of this relation of the ban is
imperative to undoing the abusive moment we currently find ourselves in, precisely because it forces us to recognize that
everyone (including myself and other academic geographers) is implicated in the perpetuation of
neoliberalised violence.
Neolib perpetuates structural violence towards the lower class
Khan Professor in Sociology 2015 (Professor Mohammed Adil Khan, Policy Manager of the UN,
Masters in Economics and Social Planning Development at U of Queensland, “Putting ‘Good Society’ Ahead of the Economy:
Overcoming Neoliberalism’s Growth Trap and it’s costly consequences” Sustainable Development Vol: 23 Issue: 1, published
February 23, 2015, pg. 58, Yung Jung)
Neoliberalism’s corporation-induced grow015th strategy, which that is often pursued through state patronage,
relies heavily on maximization of profit, mostly through cost minimization, and this is frequently achieved
through payment of low salaries to workers, poor provisioning of worker safety and security and
also neglect and/or outright abuse of environmental standards. In this regard, the case of Bangladesh is quite
instructive – the textile sector that provides 80% of its export dollars and supply clothing to major western designer outlets
encounters worst cases of labour rights abuses, manifested through obscenely low salary and substandard and/or non-existent work
place safety and security arrangements (Ahamed, 2013). Some also argue that there
is a correlation between
neoliberalism, conspicuous consumption especially by the rich and the privileged and the
worldwide rise in the incidence of crime, in the sense that ‘the act of consumption and the display of opulence drive
home the reality of social and economic inequality within a community’, which contributes to crime, corruption,
drug abuse, social exclusion and erosion of virtues of empathy, contributing to tensions and
fracturing of societies (Richardson, 1994; Hoadley, 2011; Hicks and Hicks, 2012). In this regard, Mycoo (2006) points out
that the reason for the recent rise in gated communities of upper and middle income classes in major cities worldwide is ‘directly
traced to the failure of governments to close the growing divide between rich and poor and to solve the accompanying wave of crime
and fear of violence’ (Mycoo, 2006, p. 1).
Neoliberalism exacerbates racism and the dichotomy between the
“good” bodies and “bad” ones
Kubota PhD 2014 (Ryuko Kubota, PhD in Education, Professor of Language and Literacy
Education at U of British Columbia, “The Multi/Plural Turn, Postcolonial Theory, and
Neoliberal Multiculturalism: Complicities and Implications for Applied Linguistics”, Applied
Linguistics, published August 14, 2014, Yung Jung)
Neoliberal multiculturalism in the context of the United States inherited previous racial liberalism, which
sutured the anti-racism of the civil rights movement to Cold War nationalism for establishing the legitimacy of the United States as a
global power of democracy, human rights, and transnational capitalism (Melamed 2006). Replacing socialist ideology, neoliberal
multiculturalism also underscores individual accountability to legitimate the distinction
between the privileged and the stigmatized. In post-racial discourse, racism is given a label of pastness in light of the
success of Barack Obama and other minorities. In this color-blindness, individuals are to enjoy their freedom and
opportunities but are ultimately responsible for their own socioeconomic standings regardless of
their background, which leads to ‘privatizing racism’ (Lentin and Titley 2011: 168). This meritocratic
justification legitimates racial and other inequalities. Not only does neoliberal multiculturalism
legitimate the difference between the privileged and the stigmatized, it also distinguishes the
forms of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ diversity as in the case of banning the headscarf worn by Muslim
women (Lentin and Titley 2011: 176). This indicates that ‘monoculturalism becomes a category of stigma’,
recreating ‘ “multicultural” and “monocultural” as new privileged and stigmatized racial
formations’ (Melamed 2006: 16). Furthermore, ‘good’ and ‘bad’ diversity among immigrants is
distinguished along the class line under neoliberalism. In the case of Australia, desirable immigrants are those
from middle-class backgrounds who will make economic contributions, whereas undesirable immigrants are from lower
socioeconomic backgrounds in need of social services, causing a burden for the neoliberal state (Shiobara 2010). We can see that
although neoliberal multiculturalism promotes respect for diversity, sensitivity to difference, official antiracism, open societies, and
individual (economic) freedom, it reproduces the existing racial, gender, and class hierarchies of power.
Neoliberal regimes heighten racism and sexism.
Giroux, PhD, 2005
(Henry A., College Literature, Volume 32, No. 1, p. 5)
Within the discourse of neoliberalism, democracy becomes synonymous with free markets, while issues
of equality, racial justice, and freedom are stripped of any substantive meaning
and used to disparage those who suffer systemic deprivation and chronic
punishment. Individual misfortune, like democracy itself, is now viewed as either excessive or in need of radical con
tainment. The media, largely consolidated through corporate power, routine ly provide a platform for high profile right-wing pundits
and politicians to remind us either of how degenerate the poor have become or to reinforce the central neoliberal tenet that all
problems are private rather than social in nature. Conservative columnist Ann Coulter captures the latter sentiment with her
comment that "[i]nstead of poor people with hope and possibility, we now have a permanent underclass of aspiring criminals knifing
one another between having illegitimate children and collecting welfare checks" (qtd. in Bean 2003, para.3). Radio talk show
host Michael Savage, too, exemplifies
the unabashed racism and fanaticism that emerge
under a neoliberal regime in which ethics and justice appear beside the point. For
instance, Savage routinely refers to non-white countries as "turd world nations," homosexuality as a "perversion" and young children
who are vic tims of gunfire as "ghetto slime" (qtd. in Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting 2003,para.2, 6, 5). As Fredric Jameson has
argued in The Seeds of Time, it has now become easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism (1994, xii). The
breathless rhetoric of the global victory of free-market rationality spewed forth by
the mass media, right-wing intellectuals, and governments alike has found its
material expression both in an all-out attack on demo cratic values and in the
growth of a range of social problems including: vir ulent and persistent poverty,
joblessness, inadequate health care, apartheid in the inner cities, and increasing
inequalities between the rich and the poor.
Capitalism causes the marginalization and extinction of groups it
deems lesser
Graham Author of the end of capitalism 13
J.K. Gibson, http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/08935696.2014.857847
In an essay on our new book, geographer Jeff Popke (forthcoming) commented that TBTE contained tools “for rescuing those
economic practices that are ‘threatened with extinction’ by the calculative rationalities of capitalism.” I had never thought in such a
light about the technologies we had developed for inventorying diverse economies and revealing the ethical interdependencies from
which community economies might be built. Discursive extinction is, of course, what mainstream
economics enacts for those economic relations that are not waged and salaried
labor, market transactions, capitalist enterprise, for-profit finance, and private
property. But the work of Gibson-Graham and the Community Economies Collective has been to show that the invisibility of a
heterogeneous economic landscape in theory and policy is a representational artifact and that, if we dive beneath the waterline of the
economic iceberg, we can see a very different “more-than-capitalist” world—one populated by a plethora of noncapitalist (and
differently capitalist) economic practices. The phrase “threatened by extinction” is taken from Michel Callon (2007), who has done
so much to show that there is more to the dominance of capitalist relations than performative economic discourse. He and others in
the “material semiotics” school identify the assemblages or agencements that generate the durability and vulnerability of capitalist
economic practice. In this approach, assemblages are seen to be “simultaneously human and nonhuman, social and technical,
textual and material” (Mackenzie, Muniesa, and Sui 2007, 15). To highlight this more materially inflected version of the concept of
performativity, Callon (2007, 140) uses the term “performation” to refer to the collective activity that springs from these
arrangements. His particular object of critique has been market framing, which
“constitutes powerful mechanisms of exclusion, for to frame means to select …
[C]ertain worlds, with their goods, agents and attachments, are chosen above
others which are consequently threatened with extinction” (15). In parallel to Gibson-Graham’s
work on deconstructing capitalocentric discourse and unraveling the essentialist dynamics of capitalist development, Callon and
others have been working to question the “pre-given ontological status” of the market and the “supposition that it operates by causal
necessity” (Butler 2010, 148; Caliskan and Callon 2010). This Latourian-inspired approach to the performation of economics aligns
with the work of Gibson-Graham, but in contrast to our focus on promoting the performative effects of new discourses and
subjectivities, this work directs attention to the performative materiality of the economy as expressed in technologies, metrics,
infrastructures, institutions, and calculative agencies. Under the influence of science and technology studies, the work of these
material semioticians has been to emphasize “the importance of material elements and the set of scholarly and lay knowledge
(especially economic) that contributes to formatting market exchanges” (Callon,
forthcoming). Research has focused on the active engineering of sociotechnical
assemblages that allow markets to perform as they do. In this approach, economic
discourse and human subjectivity are but two members of complex sociotechnical
assemblages that make markets. This does not negate the kinds of interventions
that Gibson-Graham have advocated in making other worlds possible, but it is a
salutary reminder of what we are up against.
Terrorism
The creation of a surveillance state from neoliberalism creates
widespread crime, terrorism, and threat discourse which turns the aff
with instability
Fuchs 12 (Christian, “Societal and ideological impacts of deep packet inspection internet
surveillance”, Information, Communication, and Society Volume 16, Issue 8, 13; Fuchs is a
Professor of Social Media at the University of Westminster, Communication and Media
Research Institute, Acc. 6/27/15 // yZ)
Contemporary discourses about terrorism and security constitute a moral panic: Western
governments, the police, intelligence agencies, the military, the media, and businesses tend to
present a Muslim terrorist threat. The terror- ism discourse is ever-present in Western political discussions since 9/11.
Although there were actual attacks in Western countries (New York, London, Madrid), the discourse seems to imply
that the threat is so present that every Muslim is a potential terrorist and that we require a law
and order state that uses harsh sentences, long-term imprisonment, the death penalty, preventive policing, a three strikes rule,
mandatory sentencing, and that limits probation possibilities. The intensification of surveillance is the ideological
reaction to the terrorist panic. The very discourse about Muslim terrorism and increased warfare
can result in a spiral that amplifies terrorism itself because Arab people feel unfairly and in a racist manner
signified by Western discourses to which they can react with radicalization. Moral panics often make use of signification spirals (Hall
et al. 1978, p. 223). After 9/11, the terrorism threat discourse emerged. The focus was on terrorists and potential
terrorists, hardly on the causes of terrorism. The complex phenom- enon was much simplified
and reduced to its immediate dimension – the act of violence – by abstracting from the structures that produce
terrorist potentials. A signification spiral set in, in which politics, law enforcement, military, intelli- gence and the media painted the
picture of omnipresent terrorism and called for war and surveillance, which were presented as means that bring ‘security’. The
Internet as a relatively new medium of information, communication and collaboration (Fuchs
2008) is inserted into contemporary moral panics in a differ- ent way than the mainstream
media that simply tend to act as ideological control institutions. The Internet acts as arena of ideological
projections of fears and hopes that are associated with moral panics – some argue that it is a dangerous space that is used by
terrorists and criminals, and therefore, needs to be policed with the help of Internet surveillance, whereas others argue that the
Internet is a new space of political hope that is at the heart of demonstrations, rebellions, protests and revo- lutions that struggle for
more democracy. What both discourses share is a strong belief in the power of technology
independently of society, they mistake societal phenomena (crime, terror, crises, political transformations) to
be caused and con- trollable by technology. But societal phenomena merely express themselves in communicative
and technological spaces, they are not caused by them. Technologi- cal determinism inscribes power into technology, it reduces
power to a technologi- cally manageable phenomenon and thereby neglects the interaction of
technology 27 and society. The Internet is not like the mainstream mass media, an ideological actor, but rather an object of
ideological signification in moral panics and moral euphoria. The analysis of security companies’ ideologies
presented in Section 5 shows that a variety of ideological strategies tends to be employed:
Discussing negative dimensions of DPI was either avoided or circumvented by only stressing
positive aspects of DPI or the companies’ business behaviour. The need for DPI was emphasized with the help
of a combination of a conservative ideology that stres- ses threats of crime and terrorism and a techno-fetishistic ideology that
claimed that there was the power of technology to prevent crime and terror. The major problem is that security companies that sell
surveillance technologies make profits with technologies that can harm democracy, freedom and human rights and can foster the
advancement of totalitarianism and a fascist surveillance society. There are no easy solutions to this problem, except for the
recommen- dation that stakeholders see that societal problems do not have easy technological fixes and that crime and terrorism can
only be overcome by tackling their root causes, such as inequality, poverty, discrimination, and power asymmetries. The
combination of a capitalist surveillance industry and law and order politics by the state has created a dangerous
political economy that puts society at high risks. A paradigm shift is needed from the
conservative ideology of crime and terror and the fetishism of crime fighting by technology
towards a realist view of crime that focuses on causes that are grounded in society and the lived
realities of humans and power structures and that overcoming problems in society requires changes that address the causes of
societal problems (Young 1992/2002; Matthews & Young 1992/2009; Young 2002; DeKeseredy et al. 2006; Friedrichs 2009; Matthews 2009; Friedrichs 2010; DeKeseredy 2011).
Neoliberalism is the root cause of terror impacts- it forces the
impoverished to resort to violence- France proves
Neilson, PhD, 15 (James, “The neoliberal body-snatchers”, Buenos Aires Herals, March 12, 2015, http://www.buenosairesherald.com/article/186538/theneoliberal-bodysnatchers)
Decent progressives everywhere, but especially those who live in Latin America and France, agree that
“neoliberalism” is a horrible creed that is threatening much of mankind. To their mind, it is
just as bad as the full-blooded Islamism being preached by scimitar-wielding holy warriors who, when you think about it, are
victims of capitalism’s many excesses. Luckily for Argentines, Cristina and her house intellectuals are constantly on the lookout for neoliberal
infiltrators who, if given half a chance, would deprive honest hardworking folk of the little they have managed to acquire and leave them to starve. Whenever they spot one, they
advise their compatriots to treat him or her with the contempt he or she deserves. Kirchnerites are not the only people performing this valuable public service; other Peronists,
Radicals, and progressive activists also warn us that millions of bright young European and North Americans
are without jobs because neoliberals have thrown them on the scrapheap. According to the US
State Department’s spokeswoman, Marie Harf, that is why thousands are joining ISIS to earn an honest living
chopping off heads. Who are these vile neoliberal creatures? It usually turns out that they
include the local president or prime minister plus whoever is unfortunate enough to be economy
minister. Apparently David Cameron is a neoliberal, as is Spain’s Mariano Rajoy, while France’s socialist president
François Hollande is currently undergoing a painful mutation. After getting elected by
swearing he was not a neoliberal, Hollande is gradually turning into one, as did an earlier
socialist French president, François Mitterand. Though these politicians and others similarly afflicted strenuously deny
having anything to do with neoliberalism, their critics know they are just pretending to be
humanitarians who feel obliged by circumstances to okay nasty budget cuts. And who are the
economists and political philosophers who feed neoliberals their evil thoughts ? That is a mystery. Perhaps the
late Milton Friedman was one for a while, but since his departure likeminded gurus have been thin on the ground; ambitious academics understand that their career prospects
It would seem
that they are a bit like the “body-snatchers” of the film, things from somewhere else who take over apparently
normal men and women and make them behave like aliens. Though Cristina and her friends have managed to avoid such a
fate, in other parts of the world almost every politician who reaches power quickly morphs into a neoliberal.
Neoliberals try to blend in but they give themselves away when they use words like “austerity”
without assuring whoever happens to be within earshot that they are dead against
any policy thus designated. It is true that in masochistic countries such as Germany and the UK there are some people who think that on occasion
will be better served if they declare themselves Marxists. There are no card-carrying neoliberals because there are no neoliberal political parties.
cheese-paring can be virtuous, but in most others just about everyone who matters knows perfectly well that it is always worse than useless. Hardly a day goes by without clever
Nobel Prize-winning economists and kindly politicians reminding us that austerity measures are invariably counterproductive. Apparently all they do is shovel yet more money
sceptics must suspect
that neoliberalism, if it means anything, is a code word for harsh economic reality. It was not for nothing that
Thomas Carlyle deemed economics “the dismal science”; there is never enough money or stuff
to keep everybody happy. In the bleak neoliberal scheme of things, when a government runs
short of cash it has little choice but to spend less than it would no doubt prefer. That is what flinty
Germans and, in a more conciliatory, suitably ladylike fashion, the IMF’s Christine Lagarde keep telling the Greeks, whose
current leaders reply by pointing out that only an unrepentant neoliberal would say something
like that. As far as populist politicians, Pope Francis and leftist intellectuals who are fond of making out that scarcity is something invented by plutocrats determined to
into the pockets of insatiably greedy bankers, financiers and gamblers who pile up incredible fortunes playing the market. By now,
keep the plebs in their proper place are concerned, being realistic about such things shows that one lacks imagination. .
War, Genocide, Etc.
Neoliberalism normalizes war, exploitation, and racism
Giroux ’14
(Henry A. Giroux, “Beyond Orwellian nightmares and neoliberal authoritarianism, Published October 21, 2014
http://philosophersforchange.org/2014/10/21/orwell1/, Yung Jung)
Power in its most repressive forms is now deployed not only by the police and other forces of repression such as the 17 US
intelligence agencies, but also through a predatory and commodified culture that turns violence into entertainment, foreign
aggression into a video game and domestic violence into goose-stepping celebration of masculinity and the mad values of militarism.
Meanwhile, the real violence used by the state against poor people of color, women, immigrants and
low-income youth barely gets mentioned, except when it is so spectacularly visible that it cannot be ignored, as in the
shooting death by a white police officer of the young black man, Michael Brown. The “deep state” empties politics of all
vestiges of democratic rule while attempting, on the one hand, to make its machinery of power
invisible and, on the other, to legitimate neoliberal ideology as a matter of common sense. The
decisions that shape all aspects of the commanding institutions of society are made largely in private, behind closed doors by the
anonymous financial elite, corporate CEOs, rich bankers, the unassailable leaders of the military-industrial complex, and other
kingpins of the neoliberal state. At the same time, the cultural apparatuses of casino capitalism wage an aggressive pedagogical
assault on reason, thoughtfulness, critical dialogue and all vestiges of the public good. Valuable resources and wealth are extracted
from the commons in order to maximize the profits of the rich while the public is treated to a range of distractions and diversions
that extend from “military shock and awe overseas” to the banalities of a commodified culture industry and celebrity-obsessed
culture that short-circuits thought and infantilizes everything it touches. Underlying the rise of the authoritarian state and the forces
that hide in the shadows is a hidden politics indebted to promoting the fog of historical and social amnesia. The new
authoritarianism is strongly indebted to what Orwell once called a “protective stupidity” that corrupts political life
and divests language of its critical content.[6] Neoliberal authoritarianism has changed the
language of politics and everyday life through a poisonous public pedagogy that turns reason on
its head and normalizes a culture of fear, war and exploitation. Even as markets unravel and neoliberalism
causes increased misery, “the broader political and social consensus remains in place,” suggesting that the economic crisis needs to
be matched by a similar crisis in consciousness, ideas, language and values.[7]
Neoliberalism leads to genocide, increases unemployment and
terrorist recruitment
Robert J. Calleja Jr, “Neoliberalism and Genocide The Desensitization of Global Politics”
by. April 2013
(http://repository.asu.edu/attachments/110537/content/Calleja_asu_0010N_12955.pdf)
Siswo Pramono (2003) crafts a compelling argument, that if genocide is a policy that leads to the destruction of a particular group,
prompting the collapse of a whole society, then it is worth discussing how neoliberalism might possess a genocidal
mentality. Pramono (2003) is concerned with the working class and argues that: “Neoliberalism is by nature
genocidal (and suicidal) because in order to survive, it has to eat its own tail. In other words, by
'killing' the working class, capitalism is digging its own grave. When the working class is dying,
society is dying, which at the end will lead to the death of capitalism itself” (p. 121). The significance is
that neoliberalism not only impairs the global economy, but it can potentially undermine human
society as values and the free market is determined through the lenses of neoliberalism. “Thus,
human society is transformed into a market society based on laissez-faire capitalism…resulting in the corrosion of the
value of work and worker as an integral part of social structure” (Pramono, 2003, p. 122). Pramono’s
argument revolves around the importance of employment for maintaining an orderly society. Employment imposes social
control on people as work creates order by addressing the individual self-interest of earning wages, 59 keeps them busy and
contributing something of worth to society. Unemployment removes societal control over people
and leads to disorganization, potentially transforming the industrious working class into a violent mob or law-breakers.
As Robert Prasch (2012) warns, the public might actually engage in civil disobedience or rebellion if they feel abandoned by the
state. The loss of employment also leads to distress and intensifies as the quality of life declines due
to the loss of wages, particularly in developing countries. “Neoliberal global politics incite anger,
rage, and the motive for retaliation and harm doing” (Staub, 1989; see also Pramono 2003, p. 129), as frustration
builds over the suffering experienced by the unemployed. Conflict and violence can arise as the unemployed
turn their frustration towards those who they feel are responsible for their bleak outlook . “Negative
growth shocks make it easier for armed militia groups – which are often major combatants in Africa’s civil wars – to recruit fighters
from an expanding pool of underemployed youths” (Miguel, Satyanath, & Sregenti, 2004, p. 728).
This offers groups
challenging state power, or blaming the state for suffering, a potential pool of youths to recruit.
Darfur Proves- Neoliberalism ensures a future of genocide
Robert J. Calleja Jr, “Neoliberalism and Genocide The Desensitization of Global Politics”
by. April 2013
(http://repository.asu.edu/attachments/110537/content/Calleja_asu_0010N_12955.pdf)
The dehumanization of othered bodies and the laissez-faire (do nothing) beliefs has led to an increase of the amount of suffering that
is tolerated by those in power, especially when the targets are perceived deviants, and a tendency of non-response so that conflicts
will resolve themselves naturally. The Darfur genocide was used as a case study to examine how neoliberalism influenced
the conflict in Sudan and the genocide in Darfur. The primary findings were the stances taken by Russia and China
to maintain a policy of non-intervention in Sudan for their benefit. The United States resisted naming events s
genocide because they had interests in Sudan that directly affected US national security and
recognition of genocide would go against those interests. Social Externalization Theory was developed during
the study as a theory for explaining the collective violence of a superior group towards an inferior group and how the superiors build
solidarity with the third parties while othering the inferior group. It has been sixty-five years since the adoption of the UN Genocide
Convention, yet the atrocities continue. Neoliberalism has introduced a level of desensitization that delays
the response of the international community to genocide when it occurs. It is necessary for the
United Nations to address the deficiencies in the current Genocide Convention and it is equally
important that true intervention capabilities and procedures are established to prevent future
genocide.
Neoliberal economic policies result in a laundry of impacts.
Loomba, PhD, 15
(Ania, Colonialism/Postcolonialism, 3rd Edition)
In what ways are patriarchal oppression and colonial domination conceptually
and historically connected to one another? What is the relationship between
capitalism and colonialism? Is racial difference produced by colonialist
domination, or did colonialism generate racism? [...] These are precisely the things the world needs
right now. (Ferguson 2003: 54) Here Ferguson justifies British colonialism by comparing it to
the work of the IMF and World Bank, and to the ideology of free trade and
neoliberal reforms, all elements of what is loosely referred to as globalization. This
brings us to the second reason why the world seemed so dramatically changed between 1998 and 2005—a process that was
celebrated as ‘globalization’. Whereas Ferguson compares this new globalization to earlier
imperial histories, until very recently globalization tended to be spoken of (and taught in universities) as something
radically new and different. Innumerable scholars suggested that the supposedly benign and pacific forms of late twentieth-century
globalization had rendered obsolete critical and analytical perspectives which took as their focal point the history and legacy of
European colonialism. Globalization, they argued, cannot be analysed using concepts like margins and centres that were so central
to postcolonial studies. Contemporary economies, politics, cultures and identities are all better described in terms of transnational
networks, regional and international flows and the dissolution of geographic and cultural borders, paradigms which are familiar to
postcolonial critics but which were now invoked to suggest a radical break with the narratives of colonization and decolonisation.
Significantly, the book that most famously made this case did so by describing the
contemporary global formation as imperial. Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri’s
Empire argued that the new global order should still in fact be called ‘Empire,’ but
that its contemporary dynamics should be understood in contrast to those of
European empires: In contrast to imperialism, Empire establishes no territorial
centre of power and does not rely on fixed boundaries or barriers. It is a decentred
and deterritorializing apparatus of rule that progressively incorporates the entire
global realm within its open, expanding frontiers. Empire manages hybrid identities, flexible
hierarchies, and plural INTRODUCTION 9 exchanges through modulating networks of command. The distinct national colours of
the imperial map of the world have merged and blended in the imperial global rainbow. (Hardt and Negri 2000: xii–xiii) Whereas
the old imperial world was marked by competition between different European powers, the new order is
characterised by a ‘single power that overdetermines them all, structures them in
a unitary way, and treats them under one common notion of right that is decidedly
postcolonialist and postimperialist’ (9). Hardt and Negri do not identify the United States as this new power,
although they do argue that ‘Empire is born through the global expansion of the internal US
constitutional project’, a project which sought to include and incorporate minorities into the mainstream rather than
simply expel or exclude them (182). Likewise, they argue that contemporary Empire is ‘imperial and not imperialist’ because it does
not consist of powerful nations that aim to ‘invade, destroy and subsume subject countries within its sovereignty’ as the old powers
did but rather to absorb them into new international network (182). Hence, despite the importance of the United States within it,
Empire can only be conceived of as a universal republic, a network of powers and counterpowers structured in a boundless and
inclusive architecture. This imperial expansion has nothing to do with imperialism, nor with those state organisms designed for
conquest, pillage, genocide, colonization, and slavery. Against such imperialisms, Empire expands and consolidates the model of
network power. Certainly … the expansive moments of Empire have been bathed in tears and blood, but this ignoble history does not
negate the difference between the two concepts. (Hardt and Negri 2000: 167) Hardt and Negri suggest that the new Empire is better
compared to the Roman Empire rather than to modern European colonialism, since imperial Rome also loosely incorporated its
subject states rather than controlled them directly. 10 INTRODUCTION This thesis received enormous attention, and generated
vigorous discussion about the dynamics of contemporary global power and how best to challenge it. Vilashini Cooppan argued that
the analogy with imperial Rome makes it difficult to accurately analyse US imperialism and its place in the contemporary world
(Cooppan 2005). But Susie O’Brien and Imre Szeman wrote that ‘characterizing US political and cultural power as a global dominant
detracts from a more thorough examination of sites and modalities of power in the global era’; accordingly, they celebrated Empire
as ‘exceptionally helpful in advancing our capacity to think past the reinscription of globalization as a centre/ periphery dynamic
that produces resistant margins and hegemonic cores’. In their view it is this model of margin and cores which has prevented
postcolonial studies from being able to analyse the operations of contemporary power (2001: 608). Other critics warn that geopolitical centres and margins have not simply evaporated and that globalization has intensified pre-existing global asymmetries,
particularly those that were produced by modern colonialism. Tim Brennan observes that Empire ‘has almost nothing to say about
the actual peoples and histories the empires left behind … the authors barely nod in the direction of guest worker systems,
uncapitalized agriculture, and the archipelago of maquiladoras at the heart of globalization’s gulag … the colonized of today are given
little place in the book’s sprawling thesis about multitudes, biopolitical control, and the creation of alternative values’ (2003: 337).
The controversy about Empire was thus shaped by wider and ongoing debates about the nature and effects of globalization. Hardt
and Negri’s post-Foucauldian emphasis, and indeed their suggestion that global networks have not only changed the nature of
repression but will in fact facilitate resistance by the global ‘multitude’ from diverse locations all over the world, resonates in
disturbing ways with the claims of globalization’s neoliberal advocates who argue that the global
mobility of capital, industry, workers, goods and consumers dissolves earlier
hierarchies and inequities, democratises nations and the relations between
nations, and creates new opportunities which percolate down in some form or
another to every section of society. These claims are also echoed by many cultural critics; for example, Arjun
INTRODUCTION 11 Appadurai’s Modernity at Large offers catalogues of ‘multiple locations’ and new hybridities, new forms of
communication, new foods, new clothes and new patterns of consumption as evidence for both the newness and the benefits of
globalization. Simon Gikandi astutely observes that despite the fact that globalization is so often seen to have made redundant the
terms of postcolonial critique, the radical novelty of globalization is in fact asserted by appropriating the key terms of postcolonial
studies such as ‘hybridity’ and ‘difference’, terms which were shunned by an earlier generation of social scientists. As he also points
out, ‘it is premature to argue that the images and narratives that denote the new global culture are connected to a global structure or
that they are disconnected from earlier or older forms of identity. In other words, there is no reason to suppose that the global flow
in images has a homological connection to transformation in social or cultural relationships’ (Gikandi 2001:5; emphasis added). Key
to Hardt and Negri’s understanding of the new Empire was that themobility of people within it would dissolve older ideologies of
difference; they made this suggestion by citing Etienne Balibar’s important work on neo-racism which points out that a biological
understanding of race has given way to a more culture-based understanding of difference (Hardt and Negri 2000: 191–92). No
longer are the differences between, say, Europeans and Africans seen to be genetic in origin; rather they are understood as the
products of disparate cultures. But whereas Hardt and Negri claim that these new ideologies of difference are more flexible, Balibar
actually suggests the opposite. They write: ‘Fixed and biological notions of peoples thus tend to dissolve into a fluid and amorphous
multitude, which is of course shot through with lines of conflict and antagonism, but none that appear as fixed and eternal
boundaries’ (195). For Balibar, the new racial ideologies are not less rigid simply because they invoke culture instead of nature;
rather, he writes, we see today that ‘culture can also function like a nature’ and can be equally pernicious (Balibar 1991a: 22). For
instance, phobia about Arabs today ‘carries with it an image of Islam as a
“conception of the world” which is incompatible with Europeanness’ (24). Thus
Muslims are regarded as people who can never successfully assimilate into
Western societies, or who 12 INTRODUCTION are culturally conditioned to be
violent, ideas that dominated the media coverage of Islam after the attacks on the
World Trade Center and the Pentagon in the United States on September 11, 2001.
Culturalist views of difference, moreover, are far from being entirely new products
of globalization. Balibar himself connects neo-racism to the anti-Semitism of the
Renaissance. More recently, Lisa Lampert suggests a congruence between Samuel Huntington’s rhetoric about the ‘clash of
civilizations’ and medieval anti-Semitism and Islamophobia (Lampert 2004). Early modern European views of Muslims and Jews
are also important in reminding us that ‘culture’ and ‘biology’ have in fact never been neatly separable categories, and that strategies
of inclusion and exclusion have always worked hand in hand. Thus, it was the mass conversion of Jews and Moors after they were
officially expelled from Catholic Spain in 1492 that intensified anxieties about Christian identity. It was then that the Inquisition
formulated the ‘pure blood’ laws which engendered pseudo-biological ideologies of difference (see Friedman 1987, Loomba 2002).
On the other hand, in the heyday of imperialism racial ideologies did not work through the ideology of exclusion alone but always
strategically appropriated and included many of its others. Finally, contemporary views of cultural difference mirror past and
present geo-political tensions and rivalries. Thus it is no accident that it is Muslims who are
regarded as barbaric and given to acts of violence and Asians who are seen as
diligent but overly attached to their own rules of business and family, both modes
of being which are seen as differently incommensurate with the Western world.
These views not only reverberate with older colonial views about Muslims as
despotic and intractable, and Asians as inscrutable and insular, but speak to
contemporary global economic and political rivalries. Critics of globalization do not deny its reality
or its transformatory powers, or the many ways in which it marks a departure from the old world order. But they contest its
supposedly democratising effects or egalitarian potential, and point out that if we treat contemporary globalization as if it did not
have a history, we obscure the inequities it cements. There is no doubt that globalization has made information and technology more
widely INTRODUCTION 13 available, and has brought economic prosperity to new sections of the world. However, the
extreme mobility of capital, P. Sainath observes, far from fostering ideological openness,
has resulted in its own fundamentalism, which then catalyses others in reaction:
Market fundamentalism destroys more human lives than any other simply because
it cuts across all national, cultural, geographic, religious and other boundaries. It’s
as much at home inMoscow as inMumbai or Minnesota. A South Africa —whose
advances in the early 1990s thrilled the world —moved swiftly from apartheid to
neoliberalism. It sits as easily in Hindu, Islamic or Christian societies. And it contributes angry, despairing recruits to the
armies of all religious fundamentalisms. Based on the premise that the market is the solution to
all the problems of the human race, it is, too, a very religious fundamentalism. It has
its own Gospel: The Gospel of St. Growth, of St. Choice. (Sainath 2001: n.p.) Joseph E. Stiglitz, Nobel laureate and once Chief
Economist at the World Bank, also used the phrase ‘market fundamentalism’ in his critique of globalization as it is has been imposed
upon the world by institutions like the World Bank and the IMF: The international financial institutions
have pushed a particular ideology—market fundamentalism—that is both bad
economics and bad politics; it is based on premises concerning how markets work
that do not hold even for developed countries, much less for developing countries.
The IMF has pushed these economics policies without a broader vision of society or the role of economics within society. And it
has pushed these policies in ways that have undermined emerging democracies.
More generally, globalization itself has been governed in ways that are undemocratic and have been disadvantageous to developing
countries, especially the poor within those countries. (Stiglitz 2002: n.p) Stiglitz connects these developments
to colonialism, suggesting that ‘the IMF’s approach to developing countries has the feel of a colonial ruler’, and that
developing countries dealing with the IMF 14 INTRODUCTION have been forced to ask ‘a very disturbing question: Had
things really changed since the “official” ending of colonialism a half century ago?’
(2003: 40–41). Of course, even as mainstream media celebrated globalization and its
supposed facilitation of cosmopolitian exchange, its dissolution of national
boundaries, and the free flow of capital, there was plenty of serious work
documenting that the very opposite was occuring. In 2003, an Indian research
group argued that The great range of actual measures carried on under the label of
globalization … were not those of integration and development. Rather they were
the processes of imposition, disintegration, underdevelopement and
appropriation. They were of continued extraction of debt servicing payments of the third world; depression of the prices of
raw materials exported by the same countries; removal of tariff protection for their vulnerable productive sectors; removal of
restraints on foreign direct investment, allowing giant foreign corporations to grab larger sectors
of the third world’s economies; removal of restraints on the entry and exit of massive flows of speculative
international capital, allowing their movements to dictate economic life; reduction of State
spending on productive activity, development and welfare; privatization of
activities, assets and natural resources, sharp increases in the cost of essential
services and goods such as electricity, fuel, health care, education, transport, and
food (accompanied by the harsher depression of women’s consumption within each family’s declining consumption); withdrawal
of subsidized credit earlier directed to starved sectors; dismantling of workers’ security of employment;
reduction of the share of wages in the social product; suppression of domestic
industry in the third world and closures of manufacturing firms on a massive scale;
ruination of independent small industries; ruination of the handicrafts/ handloom sector; replacement of subsistence crops with
cash crops; destruction of food security … (Research Unit for Political Economy 2003: n.p.) The report concluded
that ‘far from becoming more integrated and prosperous, the world economy is today even more starkly divided’. Even World Bank
statistics concede that ‘the number of the poor INTRODUCTION 15 worldwide has grown during the 1990s. A third of the world’s
labour force is unemployed or underemployed’. If the earlier period of colonial globalization simultaneously integrated the world
into a single economic system, and divided it more sharply into the haves and the have-nots, the new empire both
facilitates global connections and creates new opportunities, as well as entrenches
disparities and creates new divisions. In the conclusion to the second edition of this book, I argued that
postcolonial studies cannot be simply replaced by something called globalization studies. If it is to be equal to the task of analysing
our contemporary world and visualising how it can be changed, globalization studies will have to incorporate some of the key
insights of postcolonial studies, especially its historical awareness of past forms of empire and the structural connections between
colonialism and neo-colonialism. Only then will it be able to trace global inequities in the often-confusing landscape of
contemporary economics, politics and culture. Today, it seems that much of globalization’s shine has worn off. The report of the
research group cited above will not shock too many people within the academy and outside it. Over the last decade, it has become
evident that the new global order does not work against but is facilitated by nation-
states and nationalist ideologies, leading to new alliances and conflicts. It is also
clearer than ever before that nationalism and national interests, particularly those
of the United States, remain at least as important as the interests of particular
multinational corporations in shaping conflicts around the globe. As I write this, the US and
the EU have refused to co-operate in the process of formulating a UN treaty seeking to prevent human rights abuses by transnational
corporations; they did this in spite of a majority of UN memberstates voting for such a treaty (Inter Press Service 2014). The
United States has started to bomb parts of Iraq, in order to forestall the newly
consolidating Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, whose militants are also ranged
against Kurdish nationalists seeking to form a national entity of their own. But at the
same time, the heart of the new Empire has been beset with enormous problems of its own. There has been dissent on the streets,
targetting not just US policies abroad, but the crisis within; the Occupy 16 INTRODUCTION Wall Street (OWS)
movement was an important landmark in underlining the deep economic
disparities that fracture the nation. While some commentators on OWS argued that the ongoing economic crisis
should be separated from politics, both grass-roots activists and more astute analysts explained why it cannot be divorced from
racial disparities, issues of immigration, and indeed, US actions across the globe (see Byrne 2012 for examples of both views) What
does this new juncture—marked by escalating and naked inquality as well as an increasing proliferation of both US hegemony and
other muscular nationalisms—spell for postcolonial studies? Are the insights and perspectives that emerge from our engagements
with colonial histories, nationalist and anticolonial movements and the dynamics of a postcolonial world helpful in registering and
understanding the present-day shape of global inequalities, as well as of contemporary forms of resistance? Are they of any use in
understanding questions posed by climate change and the environmental disasters that threaten our globe? Conversely, can we use
these newer concerns to productively re-examine the past and the terms in which we have understood its relation to the present?
These are the issues that I will consider in the Conclusion, where I also review recent writing that challenges, and lends continuing
substance and relevance to, postcolonial studies.
Neoliberalism causes poverty, social exclusion, societal
disintegration, violence and environmental destruction—threatens
humanity
De La Barra ‘9
(Ximena, Political activist, international consultant and former UNICEF Latin America Public Policy Advisor “THE DUAL DEBT OF
NEOLIBERALISM”, 9/1/09) //RGDM
The currently prevailing neoliberal development model has brought with it various technological
advances and economic
and commercial growth. However, these results ultimately benefit fewer and
fewer people while augmenting social inequality, injustices, and promoting serious social and
ethical setbacks. It is definitely not eradicating poverty On the contrary, it creates conditions for a
growing tendency towards political, economic and social exclusion for the majority of the
world’s population. The model exacerbates poverty, social disparities, ecological degradation,
violence and social disintegration. Loss of governability flows from its systematic logic of
emphasising an ever cheaper labour force, the reduction of social benefits, the disarticulation
and destruction of labour organisations, and the elimination of labour and ecological regulation
(de la Barra 1997). In this way, it consolidates a kind of cannibalism known as social dumping that seeks
to lower costs below the value of social reproduction rather than organising a process of
progressive social accumulation. For most of Latin America and the Caribbean, the present minimum wage levels only
allow for a portion of the basic consumption package 0needed by working people (Bossio 2002).At present, the global income gap
between the 10% poorest portion of the world’s population and the wealthiest 10% has grown to be 1 to 103 (UNDP2005). According
to this same source, around 2.5 billion people, almost half of humanity, lives on less than US$ 2. per day (considered the poverty
level),while 1.2 billion of these people live on less than US$ 1. per day (considered the level of extreme poverty).Given its neoliberal
character, globalisation failed to produce the benefits that were touted. Indeed, the process has
greatly harmed the most vulnerable social sectors produced by the previous phase of capitalist
development. The lack of social and ethical objectives in the current globalisation process has resulted in benefits only in those
countries where a robust physical and human infrastructure exists, where redistributive social policies are the norm, and where fair
access to markets and strong regulatory entities are in place. Where such conditions do not exist, globalisation has led to
stagnation and marginalisation, with declining health and educational levels of its children,
especially among the poor.
Neoliberalism incites psychological violence and global insurgency,
leading to massive genocides
Pramono Ambassador 3
(Siswo, “The Genocidal Global Politics and Neoliberalism”, Journal of Economic & Social
Research. 2003, Vol. 5 Issue 1, p115-138. 24p. Pramono is the Deputy Chief of Mission for the
Republic of Indonesia and is the Ambassador for the Republic of Indonesia for the Federal
Republic of Germany. Acc. 6/26/15 // yZ)
The neoliberal global politics can also incite to the desire to protect the psychological self such as
identity and self-esteem (Staub, 1989). Protection against who? A protection against the
perceived hegemon, for one, can give rise to the desire for harm doing as suggested in the
previous point. But, worse, often "it employs such 'internal', psychological means as scapegoating or devaluation of others, which eventually provides a basis for violence against them"
(Staub, 1989: 39). Those who attempt to protect the psychological self can arbitrarily determine
the "others", which might include minority and unwanted groups, which have nothing to do with
the provoking hegemon. Thus, for instance, facing the mounting US military threat at the end of
2001, the anti-American sentiment within the Taliban regime was directed against the nonPhustun Afganis such as Hazaris, Tajiks and Uzbeks. And in the 1991 Gulf War, the antiAmerican sentiment within the Iraqi regime was directed against the Kurd minority. The next
instigating factor to observe is the question of (in)justice. A sense of injustice can incite
resentment, anger, and violence (Staub, 1989). For instance, following the political reform in
1998, Indonesia is becoming more democratic but poor. Yet, it is the democratisation —more
than the simplistically alleged radicalism— which gives rise to the anti-American sentiment.
More and more Indonesians dare to challenge, although with little success, the practice of US
neoliberal global politics. Why should Indonesians who work for an American leading
sportswear company in Indonesia be paid less than US$ 2.00 per day for a product worth US$
45 - US 80 in American market? (McKinley, 2001). Aside from the question of (in)justice, the
rising anti-American sentiment in Indonesia, and in the third world in general, which has
sometimes led to violence, should be viewed as a result of frustration, acute deprivation, and
sense of powerlessness. Such psychological conditions will motivate peoples to regain a sense of
personal efficacy and personal power. If people feel vulnerable to diseases, poverty, the constant
threat of military pre-emptive strikes and weapons of mass-destruction, and, ultimately, death,
then killing (eg, homicide, genocide) "may give the killer a feeling of invulnerability and power
over [the] death" itself (Staub, 1989: 41). Such killings elusively help improve a sense of personal
power. And this personal power is a psychological tool to help survive the increasing
uncertainty, anarchy or chaos. "Chaos, disorder and sudden profound changes, especially when
accompanied by frustration, threat, and attack," for Staub (1989: 41), "invalidate the
conceptions of self and world that serve as guides by which new experience acquires meaning
and life gains coherence." As such, chaotic changes from a society based on the value of work to
a workless society, as discussed in the previous section, would trigger moral panic until the
arrival (or the acceptance) of a 'new' ideology that is perceived as able to provide a renewed
comprehension. If you were deprived from material gain, why would you not embrace
something against (or destroy) all kinds of material gain? (eg, the case of Taliban antimodernisation policy in Afghanistan) If you were deprived of a better life (and in no way can
attain this) why would not you embrace a sub-culture that destroys all kinds of lives (eg, the case
of terrorist ideology). In either case, albeit suicidal genocidal, you were no longer a loser. Thus,
the neoliberal global politics help the appeal of such destructive (and murderous) ideology in the
decaying society. The point is that not only is the neoliberal theory-as-practice genocidal, as
depicted in the previous sections, but also it inflicts difficult life conditions that increase the
severity of the existing global genocide. Most big cases of genocide happened in the backdrop of
difficult life conditions. Turkey committed genocide against the Armenians after years of
humiliation —losses of territory, power, and global political status— before and during the
World War I. Difficult life condition following the defeat of Germany in World War I helped
Hitler's rise to power. And the Holocaust was committed in the years when Germany was losing
World War II. In Cambodia, the Polpot regime committed genocide in 1970s after years of civil
war, starvation, and misery. In Argentina, severe economic problems preceded genocide (Staub,
1989). In Rwanda, the collapse of the coffee industry, the country's main national earning,
preceded genocide. And in Indonesia, symptoms of genocidal society have been apparent since
the collapse of the national economy following the Asian economic meltdown in 1997. With the
neoliberal theory-as-practice, genocidal global politics is materialised and intensified.
Warming
Capitalism Causes warming, which is the greatest threat to
civilization
Clarke PhD 14
Renfrey Climate change is evidence of the death-wish of capitalism
https://revolucionalimentaria.wordpress.com/2014/05/01/climate-change-is-evidence-of-thedeath-wish-of-capitalism/
If modern industrial capitalism were a person, he or she would be on suicide watch. The system that has brought
us quantum physics and reality television, modern medicine and the columns of Andrew Bolt is set on a course which, by all the best
reckoning, points directly to its doing itself in. If capitalism goes on — everything goes. Climate,
coastlines, most living species, food supplies, the great bulk of humanity. And certainly, the
preconditions for advanced civilisation, perhaps forever. Moreover, we’re not just talking risk, in the sense of an
off-chance. These are the most likely outcomes for capitalism’s current policies and performance in the area of climate change. As far
back as 2010 the famed US paleoclimatologist Lonnie Thompson told a gathering of scientists in Phoenix, Arizona: “Climatologists,
like other scientists, tend to be a stolid group … Why then are climatologists speaking out about the dangers of global warming? The
answer is that virtually all of us are now convinced that global warming poses a clear and present danger to civilization.” Rulers
in the capitalist world are not remotely contemplating action on the scale needed to contain the
crisis. In recent years, the Climate Action Tracker, a scientific partnership that includes Germany’s high-powered Potsdam
Institute for Climate Impact Research, has issued an annual report detailing the climate commitments of governments around the
world, and spelling out the implications for global warming. The most recent report, from last November, concludes: “Weak
government action on climate change will lead to a projected 3.7°C of warming by 2100.” Almost
certainly, though, the warming that will result if action is limited to current promises will be much greater than this. Like the reports
issued in recent months by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the Climate Action Tracker
figures do not take account of so-called “slow feedbacks”. These are factors, such as the melting of polar ice and releases of
greenhouse gases from melting permafrost, that cut in only on a time-frame of decades to centuries. THE WORLD AT 4°C
Supposing, however, that the temperature rise late in the century was a mere 4°C, what would the resulting world be like? In 2010,
climatologist Rachel Warren, of Britain’s Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, made this prediction: “In such a 4°C world,
the limits for human adaptation are likely to be exceeded in many parts of the world, while the
limits for adaptation for natural systems would largely be exceeded throughout the world. Hence,
the ecosystem services upon which human livelihoods depend would not be preserved.” If the limits for adaptation of natural
systems are crossed, the ecosystems must soon collapse. Without the services provided by these ecosystems,
human beings will not survive in large numbers. Largely responsible for this “population crash”
would be a collapse of food supplies. In a four-degree world, weather would be far more erratic,
veering between mega-floods and severe, extended droughts. Key food-bowl regions would on
average be markedly drier, while fertile coastal lowlands would be affected by sea-level rise.
Following the extinction of countless species, the remnant ecosystems would be chaotically unstable, further restricting agriculture.
One of the recent IPCC summaries predicts declining crop yields from about 2030. An analysis of 1700 datasets for wheat, rice and
maize, performed by researchers at the University of Leeds, points to widespread reductions in yields of 25% later in the century.
These reductions, however, would be multiplied by the effects of extreme social crisis.¶ Clarke Continues¶ The answer lies in the fact
that while an unaddressed climate crisis will be lethal to capitalism, the solutions to the crisis also
promise to bring the system down — and sooner. The capitalists’ dilemma becomes clearer if we list some of the key
measures required: · At least two-thirds of proven fossil fuel reserves need to be left in the ground.
That is billions of dollars effectively written off. · Material and financial resources need to be reoriented, in a
concerted way, from the pursuit of maximum profit toward achieving rapid declines in greenhouse gas emissions. · This
reorientation of the economy will need to include a large element of direct state spending,
structured around long-term planning and backed by tightening regulation. Schemes such as carbon
pricing cannot play more than a limited, subsidiary role. · To keep mass living standards at the highest levels consistent with these
measures, and ensure popular support, the main costs of the reorientation need to be levied on the wealthy. Can anyone imagine the
world’s capitalist elites agreeing to such measures, except perhaps under the most extreme popular pressure?
Violence
We must reflect on the social, economic, and cultural location of the
theories that make the 1AC make sense. Privileging US economic
globalization sanctions systematic violence.
Eduardo MENDIETA Philosophy @ Stony Brook ‘5 RE-MAPPING LATIN AMERICAN STUDIES: POSTCOLONIALISM, SUBALTERN
STUDIES,POSTOCCIDENTALISM AND GLOBALIZATION THEORY Dispositio 25 (52) p. 184-187
The Space of Theory I briefly looked at a very insightful and critical approach to the crisis of the social sciences. Yet, I find it inadequate not just because
it is bereft of any constructive suggestions, but also because it fails to give an account of its own theoretical position that does not presuppose what it is
ultimately criticizing, namely the epistemological primacy of an ontology of history, or what we generally call a triumphalist teleology of the West.
Pletsch pre—supposes the historical soil of theory when he criticizes the conceptual matrix of 20th century social science, that is, he is able to criticize
what stands before his eyes because he stands at the most forward moment in the historical continuum he seeks to criticize. But, in what way can I
engage in a criticism of a conceptual apparatus without at some level presupposing the very elements that constitute the normativity of that very
apparatus? I want to suggest that in order to be aware of our own blind spot, or, in other words, in
order to be able to justify our
criticism without occluding the place from which we enunciate that criticism, we have to engage
in a doubling operation. We observe ourselves in the act of observing. If we cannot see the place
from which we observe, we could at least observe what it is that we observe and how it is that we
observe it. The language is that of systems analysis, or complex systems, but the intent is different, as we will see. The goal is to make sense of the
plethora of theories that are available now in the marketplace of ideas. I am interested in making sense of this theoretical cacophony, not because I
think that theoretical diversity is a sign of the decay or obsolescence of theory. The opposite is more true: the plurality of theoretical wares in the
marketplace of ideas reflects the very level of theory commodification that is necessary for the health of the exchange of ideas as the exchange of a
cultural semantics that imposes a certain type of social semantics. I
am interested in how theories operate in the
circulation of cultural wealth, and how they grease the wheels of a global market in which what
is traded is a product whose use value is as important as its exchange value, where cultural and
theoretical capital stand on the same level as commercial and technological capital. But, at the
same time, I am interested in how, in this uncircumventable situation of extreme commodification and reification of
the theoretical, of its coagulation into theory, we might nonetheless discover a place of criticism. I will begin be laying out a
criteria for the development of a typology of theories. Thus, in contrast to Pletsch, who wanted the conceptual matrix of social theory writ large, I am
interested in the ways in which, in a saturated theoretical market, we
might begin to differentiate between theories and
their effects. First criteria: we have to determine what is the epistemograph or ontograph that is
inscribed by a group of theories or theory. This is the lan—guage of Spivak (1999), but it is a terminology that one can claim descends also
from Henri Lefebvre and David Harvey. But by ontograph or epistemograph I mean the following: every theory,
whether consciously or unconsciously, is determined by spatial imaginary. This spatial imaginary
operates at both macro and micro-levels. The classic example is Hegel and his idea that Europe is the privileged center for the substantialization of
reason. Another example would be how in Kant, as Spivak and LeDouff have shown, the categories
of cognition are inscribed
within a particular geography of the imagination. In Dussel's language, every philosophy participates in a geo-political
locus, not only in the sense that philosophy is determined by its place of enunciation, but also in the sense that philosophy also projects a
certain image of the planet, the ecumene, and the polis as the space of what is civilized, or the place of civilization,
which may or may not be besieged by the barbarians. Philosophy enacts an act of spatialization at the very same time that it is spatialized by its locus of
enunciation. Every philosophy, again, inscribes an ontos or epistemograph. Second criteria: we
have to make explicit the locus
theory offers one or a group of structures and social processes
that are the privileged locus for the substantialization of reason or logos. In other words, reason materializes in certain social
of the instantiation of the social. Every
structures in a form, and some might claim, in a normative way. It is for this reason, for instance, that Hegel could undertake a phenomenology of the
spirit as an analysis of sociality, or society. Clearly, this relation between reason and social structure is what allows someone like Habermas to speak of
modernity as the process of the rationalization of systems and the life world. A
theory of rationality in turn becomes a theory
of social differentiation, which in turn becomes a theory about the modernity (read rationality)
of certain forms of society that results in a differential hierarchy in which some societies are
primitive, and others pre-modern, and still others modern. Conversely, in this view there are social
spheres that have not been rationalized, or have been insufficiently rationalized. For this criterion the central question is:
what is the institutional focus of a group of theories or theory? Third criteria: this one refers to what is taken to be the
normative criteria or criteria or evaluation that allows one to adjudicate whether a society has achieved
what is putatively taken to be the actualization of reason in the social world. In other words: what is normative for each group of
theories or theory? Let me illustrate by stating that in some theories of modernity the criteria for determining whether societies are modern or not is
dependent on whether a society has obtained a high level of bureaucratization, formalization, institutionalization of abstract universality, selfreflexivity, or even contextual un-coupling (as one can say that both Giddens and Habermas argue). Another example: what
is the operating
evaluative norm when one says that societies are globalized or have been globalized, or that they should be
globalized? Is
it that a society has accepted the austere policies of the World Bank, and that national
economies have been liberalized and are open to the onslaught of trans-nationals? Fourth criteria:
what are the political consequences of an epistemological project, or to put it differently, in what ways does a
certain onto—graph or epistemograph turn into an actual political project? Put differently, every theory has a political impact, or
rather, contributes towards sanctioning, legitimating, and normalizing certain forms of social
violence. Or, conversely, a theory or group of theories contribute to the de-mystification of the
supposed naturalness of certain social processes, and, in this way, can call into question the
impact of certain forms of social violence that are tolerated and neglected because they had been
naturalized. The question that is important with respect to this criterion is: which political projects are sanctioned when certain processes, loci of
materialization of reason, epistemograph or ontographs are theoretically defended and articulated? The Fifth and final criteria is that this whole
form of articulating criteria could be stylized and formalized by asking: who is the subject who thinks what object, and, more acutely still, where is this
subject and how does it project and localize its object of knowledge? A different way of saying this would be: wh o
speaks for whom and
who speaks over or about whom? This is a way of asking questions about the production of theory, and the position of theoretical
agents, the agents that produce theory. It is a form of looking at the production of theory that makes explicit
how there are subjects who are authorized to make theoretical pronouncements while there are
other "subjects" that are merely spectators and who are relegated to being mere objects of
knowledge. Some subjects are credible epistemic and theoretical witnesses, while others are
from the outset suspect and illegitimate subjects of credible theoretical reflection. This all
concerns the practices of partitioning, parceling, or, as one may say in Mexico, of fraccionamientos , and what we in the US might call
theoretical gerrymandering or gentrifícation. Who speaks, or who is authorized to speak about,
and for others, occupies a privileged epistemological place. This place, in turn, is made available by the
theories and epistemological practices that are used by theorists. There is what Walter Mignolo calls a locus of enunciation and a practice of enactment
(Mignolo 1994, 2000). Theorizing, or philosophizing is a habitus that is always accompanied, or framed by a configuration of both social and imaginary
space (all space is imaginary and social, and the social is always conditioned by a certain imaginary). To think our locus of epistemological privilege, or
to think the place of our epistemological scorn and segregation, this is what Raymond Pannikar has called a plurotopic hermeneutic.
A2 Not Root Cause
Critique should focus on diverse forms of violence created by
neoliberalism—not root cause is an apology for the massive violence
neolib does cause
Springer, Dept of Geography Univ of Otago, 2012
(Simon, Area (2012) 44.2, 136–143 , p. 136-7 )
Human geographers have recognised the potential for violence within neoliberal reforms and their resultant political environments and institutional
landscapes (Chatterjee 2009; Harvey 2005; Hugill and Brogan 2011). Beyond geography there is a small body of literature that attempts to make such
connections more explicit, where violence
is foregrounded as the locus of critique against neoliberalism
have attempted to demonstrate an
urgent need to build conceptual linkages between the violence occurring in multiple sites
undergoing neoliberalisation, and to identify threads of commonality within these diverse spaces so that an emancipatory
agenda of transnational scope may potentially begin to emerge. It is, in short, problematic to assume
uniformity across the various constellations of violent geographies that are occurring in
neoliberalising contexts. Such an approach reinforces the authority of neoliberal discourse by
continuing to circulate the idea that neoliberalism as a particular model of statecraft is inevitable (Springer 2010b),
a criticism Gibson-Graham (1996) make more generally with regard to capitalism. Nevertheless, understanding the resonances of
violence within the now orthodox political economic model of neoliberalism – however
disparate, protean and variegated – is of critical importance to a human geography rooted in social justice
(Springer 2011a). The point of our critiques should not be to temper neoliberalism with concessions and niceties, as
capitalism of any sort is doomed to fail. The logics of creative destruction, uneven development and
unlimited expansion – which stoke the fires of conflict and contradict the finite limitations of the earth – are capitalism’s
undoing regardless of the form it takes (Harvey 2007). Hence, what instead needs to be occurring in our
scholarship on neoliberalism is a more thorough radicalisation of our agenda, where the purpose
becomes to consign neoliberalism and all other forms of capitalism to the waste bin of history,
so that the ‘exceptional’ and ‘exemplary’ violence of this maligned chapter of human existence become
disturbing abominations from our past, not enduring realities of our present, or conceded
inevitabilities of our future. What I mean by exceptional violence is that violence which appears to fall outside of the
rule, usually by being so profound in its manifestation. Exceptional violence forces those who bear witness to its implications
(Auyero 2000; Goldstein 2005; Marchand 2004).Within my own work (Springer 2008 2011b) I
to recognise its malevolence precisely because of the sheer shock and horror that is unleashed. Consequently, exceptional violence is jarring and elicits
a deep emotional response. Yet, exceptional violence is only exceptional in the reaction it provokes and, as the proverb ‘the exception proves the rule’
hints, exceptional violence is not beyond the bounds of the normative, but instead actually always exists in a co-constitutive relationship with
exemplary violence, or that violence which forms the rule. In
conceptualising violence, we must consider both its
objectivity and its subjectivity, and the extraordinary diversity this encourages as ‘violence’ is applied to an exceedingly broad range of
phenomena. There is no avoiding this dialectic approach, which renders violence a remarkably slippery concept. Any theorised divorce
between objective and subjective violence ‘threatens to paralyze or subvert the analysis, and to
make any action designed to respond to the challenge of violence delicate, or even counterproductive’ (Wieviorka 2009, 3). An objective definition speaks to the factuality of violence, which in its most
fundamental form entails pain, dismemberment and death. This is where violence departs from power inasmuch as power is an
ongoing circuitous negotiation between variously situated actors (Foucault 1980), while violence is not intended to be negotiable, its intention is control
and its functioning coercive. But people do not avoid or engage in violence merely because of its tangible consequences. Violence
as a mere
fact is meaningless without subjective content, or the ways in which it is experienced, lived,
represented, desired, refused or endured by individuals, groups and societies. The idea of ‘violence’ is open to significant spatio-temporal
variation that depends upon the individuals and groups concerned. That is, violence acquires meaning through its affective
and emotional content, where it becomes literally felt as meaningful (Nordstrom 2004). Focusing
exclusively on the physical dimension of violence transforms its analysis into a clinical exercise
stripped of moral content (Scheper-Hughes and Bourgois 2004), and so the conceptualisation of violence employed here considers
violence in its broadest sense. I understand violence as the directly observable manifestation of a physical
force that intends to do harm, the more diffuse implications of coercion that result from our political and
economic systems as ‘structural violence’ (Galtung 1969), and as the discursive production of a system of
domination wherein the subjugated are prevented from producing for themselves the categories
that would allow them to recognise their own subordination, which Bourdieu (2001) calls ‘symbolic violence’.
Neoliberal dogma is propogated through construction of ideological "common
sense"- this means the field of discursive resistance is uniquely important. Failings
of traditional politics aren't inherent to the system, they are a product of
neoliberal corruption- failure to analyze the economic root cause makes their
politics suspect
Giroux , PhD, 14
(Henry A., 11-24 http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/11/24/neoliberal-violence-in-the-age-of-orwellian-nightmares/
The shadow of Orwell’s nightmarish vision of a totalitarian society with its all-embracing reach of surveillance and repression now
works its way through American politics like a lethal virus. Orwell’s dystopian apparition of a totalitarian society
with its all-encompassing reach of surveillance and repression has come to fruition, reshaping the
American body politic in the guise of a poorly orchestrated Reality TV show. As Orwell rightly predicted, one of the more significant
characteristics of an authoritarian society is its willingness to distort the truth while simultaneously suppressing dissent. But Orwell
was only partly right. Today, rather than just aggressively instill a sense of fear, dread and isolation, contemporary
totalitarian commitment also wins over large number of individuals through appeals to our most
debased instincts projected on to hapless others. Our lurid fascination with others’ humiliation
and pain is often disguised even to ourselves as entertainment and humor, if perhaps admittedly a little perverse.
Under the new authoritarianism fear mixes with the endless production of neoliberal commonsense and a
deadening coma-inducing form of celebrity culture. Huxley’s Soma now joins hands with Orwell’s surveillance
state. State terrorism works best when it masks the effects of its power while aggressively
producing neoliberal commonsense through diverse cultural apparatuses in order to normalize
the values and conditions that legitimate its reign of terror. For instance, Umberto Eco argues that one
element of authoritarianism is the rise of an Orwellian version of newspeak, or what he labels as the
language of “eternal fascism,” whose purpose is to produce “an impoverished vocabulary, and an
elementary syntax [whose consequence is] to limit the instruments for complex and critical reasoning.”
Dwight Macdonald, writing in the aftermath of World War II and the horrors of the Nazi Holocaust, argues that as more and
more people are excluded from the experience of political agency and exhibit “less and less control over the
policies” of their governments, ethics is reduced to the status of mere platitudes and politics becomes banal. What
has become clear to many Americans is that the electoral system is bankrupt. As the political process becomes more
privatized, outsourced, and overrun with money from corporations and billionaires, a wounded republic is on its death bed, gasping
for life. In addition, as the state becomes more tightly controlled, organized, and rationalized by the financial
elite, politics and morality are deprived of any substance and relevance, thus making it difficult for
people to either care about the obligations of critical citizenship or to participate in the broader landscape of
politics and power. Far easier to wax ironic or cynical. For Orwell, the state was organized through traditional forms of
authoritarian political power. What Orwell could not have imagined was the reconfiguration of the state under a form of corporate
sovereignty in which corporations, the financial elite, and the ultra-rich completely controlled the state and its modes of governance.
Hyper-capitalism was no longer merely protected by the state, it has become the state. As is well known, the fossil
fuel companies, megabanks, and defense industries such as Boeing, General dynamics Northrop Grumman, and
Lockheed Martin now control the major seats of political power and the commanding institutions necessary to insure
that the deeply anti-democratic state rule in the interests of the few while exploiting and repressing the many. This was recently
made clear by a Princeton University scientific study that analyzed policies passed by the U.S. government from 1981 to 2002 and
discovered that vast majority of such policies had nothing to do with the needs and voiced interests of the American people. As the
authors pointed out, “the preferences of the average American appear to have only a minuscule, near-zero, statistically nonsignificant impact upon public policy.”[1] Put bluntly, the study made clear that the opinions of the public per se simply do not
count. The study concluded that rather than being a democracy the United States had become an
oligarchy where power is effectively wielded by “the rich, the well connected and the politically powerful, as
well as particularly well placed individuals in institutions like banking and finance or the military.”[2] As a result of this
mode of governance, individual and social agency are in crisis and are disappearing in a society in
which 99 percent of the public, especially young people and minorities of class and color are considered disposable. At a time
when politics is nation-based and power is global, the rulers of the Orwellian state no longer
care about the social contract and make no compromises in their ruthless pursuits of power and
profits. The social contract, especially in the United States, is on life support as social provisions are cut, pensions are decimated,
and the certainty of a once secure job disappears. The new free-floating global elite are unrestrained by the old rules of politics and
not only refuse to make any political concessions, they also no longer believe in long-term social investments and are more than
willing to condemn those populations now considered disposable to a savage form of casino capitalism. Isolation,
privatization, and the cold logic of a mad version of neoliberal rationality have created new
social formations and a social order in which it becomes difficult to form communal bonds, deep
connections, a sense of intimacy, and long term commitments. In the manner of Huxley’s cautionary
forewarning, people now participate willingly in their own oppression. Neoliberalism has created a society of ruling brutes for whom
pain and suffering are now viewed as entertainment, warfare a permanent state of existence, and militarism as the most powerful
force shaping masculinity. Politics has taken an exit from ethics and thus the issue of [3]social costs is divorced from any form of
intervention in the world. This is the ideological script of political zombies who, as Alain Badiou points out,
now control a lifeless version of democracy. Atomization, emotional self-management, and the ideology of self-
interests are the curse of both neoliberal societies and democracy itself. Terror now takes the form of the atomization of individual
agency and the politics of a moral coma.[4] Poverty, joblessness, low wage work, and the threat of state
sanctioned violence produce among many Americans the ongoing fear of a life of perpetual
misery and an ongoing struggle simply to survive. Collective paralysis now governs American society, reinforced
by a fixed hedonism. Risk taking is individualized through a shameless appeal to resilience.[5] Insecurity coupled with a
climate of fear and surveillance dampens dissent and promotes a kind of ethical tranquilization
fed daily by the mobilization of endless moral panics, whether they reference immigrants allegedly storming
American borders or foreign terrorists blowing up shopping centers. Such conditions more often than not produce
withdrawal, insecurity, paranoia, and cynicism rather than rebellion among the American populace.
Americans now live under a form of casino capitalism that revels in deception,
kills the radical imagination, depoliticizes the public, and promulgates what might
be called an all-embracing punishing state. Idealism and hope for a better future has been replaced by a
repressive disciplining machine and a surveillance state that turns every space into a war zone, criminalizes social problems, and
legitimates state violence as the most important practice for addressing important social issues. The carceral state and the
surveillance state now work together to trump security over freedom and justice while
solidifying the rule of the financial elite and the reigning financial services such as banks, investment houses, and
hedge funds, all of which profit from the expanding reach of the punishing state. Americans now live in what Robert
Jay Lifton once described as a “death-saturated age”[6] as political authority and power have
been transformed into a savage form of corporate governance and rule. The United States has
moved from a market economy to a market society in which all vestiges of the public good and
social contract are viewed with disdain and aggressively eliminated. The basic elements of casino
capitalism and its death wish for democracy are now well known: government should only exists to protect the ruling elite; selfinterest is the only organizing principle of agency, risk is privatize; consumption is the only obligation of citizenship; sovereignty is
market-driven; deregulation, privatization, and commodification are legitimate elements of the corporate state; market ideology is
the template for governing all of social life, exchange values are the only values that matter, and the yardstick of profit is the only
viable measure of the good life and advanced society. With the return of the new Gilded Age, not only are democratic values and
social protections at risk, but the civic and formative cultures that make such values and protections central to democratic life are
being eviscerated. At the heart of neoliberalism in its diverse forms is the common thread of breeding
corporate and political monsters, widespread violence, the decimation of political life, and the
the collapse of public life into the private realm. We are witnessing the emergence of new forms of repression that
echo the warnings of Aldous Huxley and reach deeply into the individual and collective psyches of the populace. Extending Huxley’s
analysis, I want to argue that under regimes of neoliberalism, material violence is matched by symbolic violence through the
proliferation of what I call disimagination machines. Borrowing from Georges Didi-Huberman’s use of the term, “disimagination
machine,” I extend its meaning to refer to images, along with institutions, discourses, and other modes of representation that
americas-ed-deficit-300x449undermine the capacity of individuals to bear witness to a different and critical sense of remembering,
agency, ethics, and collective resistance.[7] The “disimagination machine” is both a set of cultural apparatuses extending from
schools and mainstream media to an idiotic celebrity culture and advertising apparatus that functions primarily to undermine the
ability of individuals to think critically, imagine the unimaginable, and engage in thoughtful and critical dialogue. Put simply, to
become critically informed citizens of the world. Neoliberalism’s disimagination machines, extending from schools to print, audio,
and screen cultures, are now used to serve the forces of ethical tranquilization as they produce and legitimate endless degrading and
humiliating images of the poor, youthful protesters, and others considered disposable. The public pedagogy and
market-driven values of neoliberalism constitute a war zone that suppresses any vestige of
critical thought while creating the conditions and policies for expanding the boundaries of
terminal exclusion. Viewed as unworthy of civic inclusion, immigrants, youth, protesters and others deemed alien or hostile
to the mechanizations of privatization, consumption, and commodification are erased from any viable historical and political
context. Such groups now fill the landscape of neoliberalism’s dream world. Vast numbers of the American public are now subject to
repressive modes of power that criminalize their behavior and relegates them to those public spaces that accelerate their invisibility
while exposing them to the harsh machinery of social death. The neoliberal politics of disposability with its
expanding machineries of civic and social death, terminal exclusion, and zones of abandonment
constitute a new historical conjuncture and must be addressed within the emergence of a
ruthless form of casino capitalism, which is constituted not only as an economic system but also
a pedagogical force rewriting the meaning of common sense, agency, desire, and politics itself.
The capitalist dream machine is back with huge profits for the ultra-rich, hedge fund managers, and major players in the financial
service industries. In these new landscapes of wealth, exclusion, and fraud, the commanding institutions of a savage and fanatical
capitalism promote a winner-take-all ethos and aggressively undermine the welfare state while waging a counter revolution against
the principles of social citizenship and democracy. Politics and power are now on the side of lawlessness as is evident in the state’s
endless violations of civil liberties, freedom of speech, and the most constitutional rights, mostly done in the name of national
security. Lawlessness wraps itself in repressive government policies such as the Patriot Act, the National Defense Authorization Act,
Military Commissions, and a host of other legal illegalities. These would include the “right of the president “to order the
assassination of any citizen whom he considers allied with terrorists,”[8] use secret evidence to detain individuals indefinitely,
develop a massive surveillance panoptican to monitor every communication used by citizens who have not committed a crime,
employ state torture against those considered enemy combatants, and block the courts from prosecuting those officials who commit
such heinous crimes.[9] The ruling corporate elites have made terror rational and fear the modus operandi of politics. Power in
its most repressive forms is now deployed not only by the police and other forces of repression
such as the 17 American intelligence agencies but also through a predatory and commodified
culture that turns violence into entertainment, foreign aggression into a video game, and
domestic violence into goose-stepping celebration of masculinity and the mad values of
militarism. The mediaeval turn to embracing forms of punishment that inflict pain on the psyches and the bodies of young
people, poor minorities, and immigrants, in particular, is part of a larger immersion of society in public spectacles of violence.
Under the neo-Darwinian ethos of survival of the fittest, the ultimate form of entertainment
becomes the pain and humiliation of others, especially those considered disposable and
powerless, who are no longer an object of compassion, but of ridicule and amusement. Pleasure loses its emancipatory
possibilities and degenerates into a pathology in which misery is celebrated as a source of fun. High octane violence and human
suffering are now considered consumer entertainment products designed to raise the collective pleasure quotient. Brute force
and savage killing replayed over and over in the culture now function as part of an anti-immune
system that turns the economy of genuine pleasure into a mode of sadism that saps democracy
of any political substance and moral vitality, even as the body politic appears engaged in a
process of cannibalizing its own youth. It gets worse. The visibility of extreme violence in films such as John Wick
(2014) and The Equalizer (2014) offer one of the few spaces amid the vacuity of a consumer culture where Americans can feel
anything anymore. Needless to say, extreme violence is more than a spectacle for upping the pleasure quotient of those disengaged
from politics; it is also part of a punishing machine that spends more on putting poor minorities in jail than educating them. As
American society becomes more militarized and “civil society organizes itself for the production
of violence,”[10] the capillaries of militarization feed on and shape social institutions extending
from the schools to local police forces. The police, in particular, have been turned into soldiers who
view the neighbourhoods in which they operate as war zones. Outfitted with full riot gear, submachine guns,
armoured vehicles, and other lethal weapons imported from the battlefields of Iraq and Iran, their mission is to assume battle-ready
behaviour. Is it any wonder that violence rather than painstaking neighbourhood police work and
community outreach and engagement becomes the norm for dealing with alleged ‘criminals’,
especially at a time when more and more behaviours are being criminalised? Is it any wonder that the impact of the rapid
militarization of local police forces on poor black communities is nothing short of terrifying and symptomatic of the violence that
takes place in advanced genocidal states? For instance, according to a recent report produced by the Malcolm X Grassroots
Movement entitled Operation Ghetto Storm, “police officers, security guards, or self-appointed vigilantes extra judicially killed at
least 313 African-Americans in 2012…This means a black person was killed by a security officer every 28 hours.” The report suggests
that ‘the real number could be much higher’.[11] Michelle Alexander adds to the racist nature of the punishing state by pointing out
that “There are more African American adults under correctional control today — in prison or jail, on probation or parole — than
were enslaved in 1850, a decade before the Civil War began.”[12] Meanwhile the real violence used by the state
against poor minorities of color, women, immigrants, and low income adults barely gets
mentioned, except when it is so spectacularly visible and cruel that it cannot be ignored as in the case of Eric Garner who was
choked him to death by a New York City policeman after he was confronted for illegally selling untaxed cigarettes. The authoritarian
state empties politics of all vestiges of democracy given that the decisions that shape all aspects of the commanding institutions of
society are now made largely in private, behind closed doors by the anonymous financial elite, corporate CEOs, rich bankers, the
unassailable leaders of the military-industrial complex, and other kingpins of the neoliberal state. At the same time, valuable
resources and wealth are extracted from the commons in order to maximize the profits of the rich while the public is treated to a
range of distractions and diversions that extend from “military shock and awe overseas” to the banalities of a commodified culture
industry and celebrity obsessed culture that short-circuits thought and infantilizes everything it touches. In the end, as Chomsky
points out this amounts to an attempt by a massive public relations industry and various mainstream cultural apparatuses “to
undermine democracy by trying to get uninformed people to make irrational choices.”[13] Neoliberal
authoritarianism has changed the language of politics and everyday life through a
poisonous public pedagogy that turns reason on its head and normalizes a culture
of fear, war, and exploitation. Even as markets unravel and neoliberalism causes increased
misery, “the broader political and social consensus remains in place” suggesting that the
economic crisis is not matched by a similar crisis in consciousness, ideas, language, and values.[14]
Underlying the rise of the authoritarian state and the forces that hide in the shadows is a hidden politics indebted to promoting
crippling forms of historical and social amnesia. The new authoritarianism is strongly indebted to what Orwell once called a
“protective stupidity” that corrupts political life and divest language of its critical content.[15] Yet, even as the claims and
promises of a neoliberal utopia have been transformed into a Dickensian nightmare as the United
States, and increasingly Canada, succumb to the pathologies of political corruption, the redistribution of
wealth upward into the hands of the 1 percent, the rise of the surveillance state, and the use of
the criminal justice system as a way of dealing with social problems, Orwell’s dark fantasy of a
fascist future continues without massive opposition. Domestic terrorism now functions to punish young people
whenever they exercise the right of dissent, protesting peacefully, or just being targeted because they are minorities of class and
color and considered a threat and in some cases disposable, as was recently evident in the killing by a white policemen of Michael
Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. The emergence of the warrior cop and the surveillance state go hand in hand and are indicative not
only of state-sanctioned racism but also of the rise of the authoritarian state and the dismantling of civil liberties. Brutality mixed
with attacks on freedom of dissent and peaceful protest prompts memories of past savage regimes such as the dictatorships in Latin
America in the 1970s and 1980s. The events in Ferguson speak to a history of violence in United States that Americans have chosen
to forget at their own risk. Historical amnesia takes a toll. For instance, amid the growing intensity of state terrorism, violence
becomes the DNA of a society that not only has a history of forgetting, but also refuses to deal with larger structural issues such as
massive inequality in wealth and power, a government that now unapologetically serves the rich and powerful corporate interests,
the growing militarization of everyday life, while elevating the power of money to an organising principle of governance.[16] What
all of this suggests is a dismantling of what Hannah Arendt called “the prime importance of the
political.”[17] Underlying the carnage caused by neoliberal capitalism is a free market ideology in which individuals are cut off
from the common good along with any sense of compassion for the other.[18] Economic Darwinism individualizes the
social by shredding social bonds that are not commodified and in doing so depoliticizes,
atomizes, and infantilizes the broader public. All problems are now defined as a problem of faulty character and a
lack of individual resilience and responsibility. At the same time, freedom is reduced to consumerism and a modern day version of
narcissism becomes the only guiding principle for living one’s life. Only under such circumstances can a book titled Selfish written
by the vacuous Kim Kardashian and filled with 2000 selfies be published and celebrated in the mainstream media, mirroring a
deeply disturbing principle of the larger society. What is crucial to recognize is that the central issues of
power and politics can lead to cynicism and despair if casino capitalism is not addressed as a
system of social relations that diminishes—through its cultural politics, modes of commodification, and market
pedagogies—the capacities and possibilities of individuals and groups to move beyond the
vicissitudes of necessity and survival in order to fully participate in exercising some control over
the myriad forces that shape their daily lives. What exists in the United States today and increasingly in
Canada is fundamentally a new mode of politics, one wedded to a notion of power removed
from accountability of any kind, and this poses a dangerous and calamitous threat to democracy
itself, because such power is difficult to understand, analyze, and counter. The collapse of the
public into the private, the depoliticization of the citizenry in the face of an egregious celebrity culture, and the
disabling of education as a critical public sphere makes it easier for neoliberal capital with its hatred of
democracy and celebration of the market to render its ideologies, values, and practices as
a matter of common sense, removed from critical inquiry and dissent. With privatization
comes a kind of collective amnesia about the potential democratic role of government, the importance of the social contract, and the
importance of public values. For instance, war, intelligence operations, prisons, schools, transportation systems,
and a range of other operations once considered public have been outsourced or simply handed
over to private contractors who are removed from any sense of civic and political accountability.
The social contract and the institutions that give it meaning have been transformed into entitlements administered and colonized by
largely the corporate interests and the financial elite. Policy is no longer being written by politicians
accountable to the American public. Instead, policies concerning the defense budget, deregulation,
health care, public transportation, job training programs, and a host of other crucial areas are
now largely written by lobbyists who represent mega corporations. How else to explain the weak
deregulation policies following the economic crisis of 2007 or the lack of a public option in Obama’s health care policies? Or, for that
matter, the more serious retreat from any viable notion of the political imagination that “requires long-term organizing—e.g., singlepayer health care, universally free public higher education and public transportation, federal guarantees of housing and income
security.”[19] The liberal center has moved to the right on these issues while the left has become largely absent and ineffective. Yet
the fight for developing a radical democracy must continue on a domestic and global scale.
Democracy is not compatible with capitalism but is congruent with a version of democratic
socialism in which the wealth, resources, and benefits of a social order are shared in an equitable
and just manner. Democracy as a promise means that society can never be just enough and that the self-reflection and
struggles that enable all members of the community to participate in the decisions and institutions that shape their lives must be
continually debated, safeguarded, and preserved at all costs. The rebuilding of a radical democracy must be accompanied with
placing a high priority on renewing the social contract, embracing the demands of the commons, encouraging social investments,
and the regeneration of the social contract. These are only a few of the issues that should be a central goal for the development of a
broad-based radical social movement. I want to emphasize that I am not suggesting that developing a new understanding of politics
as a call to reclaim a radical democracy be understood as simply a pragmatic adjustment of the institutions of liberal democracy or a
return to the social democracy of the New Deal and Great Society. On the contrary, any rethinking of the political
can only be comprehended as part of a radical break from liberalism and
formalistic politics if there is to be any move towards a genuine democracy in
which matters of equality, power, and justice are central to what can be called a
radical democratic politics. Such a task necessitates a politics and pedagogy that not only
expands critical awareness and promotes critical modes of inquiry but also sustains public
spheres, builds new modes of solidarity and connections and promotes strategies and
organizations that create not simply ruptures such as massive demonstrations but real changes
that are systemic and long standing. If such a politics is to make any difference, it must be worldly; that is, it must
incorporate a critical public pedagogy and an understanding of cultural politics that not only contemplates social problems but also
addresses the conditions for new forms of democratic political exchange and enables new forms of agency, power, and collective
struggle. The collapse of the United States into neoliberal authoritarianism signals not simply a crisis of politics and democracy, but
a crisis of ideas, values, and agency itself. Hence, calling for a revival of the educative nature of politics and the radical imagination is
more than a simply call to find ways to change consciousness; it is first and foremost an attempt to understand that education is at
the center of a struggle over what kinds of agency will be created in the interest of legitimating the present and producing a
particular kind of future. This is an imminently educative, moral, and political task and it is only through such recognition that
initial steps can be taken to challenge the powerful ideological and affective spaces through which neoliberalism produces the
desires, identities, and values that bind people to its forms of predatory governance. The moral, political, and
economic violence of neoliberalism must be made visible, its institutional
structures dismantled, and the elite interests it serves exposed. The fog of historical,
social and political amnesia must be eliminated through the development of educational
programs, pedagogical practices, ideological interventions, and public narratives that provide the critical and
analytical tools to enable the public to analyze both underlying ideologies and institutions of
neoliberal capitalism as well as the intellectual and economic resources needed to provide
meaningful alternatives to the corporate authoritarianism that passes itself off as an updated
mode of democracy. What is important here is that the struggle against neoliberalism focus on those forms of domination
that pose a threat to those public spheres essential to developing the critical formative cultures that nourish modes of thinking,
analysis, and social formations necessary for a radical democracy. In addition, the left has to do more than chart out the mechanisms
through which neoliberal authoritarianism sustains itself. And for too many on the left this means simply understanding the
economic forces that drive neoliberal global capitalism. While this structural logic is important, it does not go far enough. As Stuart
Hall has insisted “There’s no politics without identification. People have to invest something of themselves, something that they
recognize is meaningful to them, or speaks to their condition and without that moment of recognition” any effort to change the way
people inhabit social relations of domination will fail.[20] Pierre Bourdieu takes this logic further in arguing that left has often
failed to recognize “that the most important forms of domination are not only economic but also
intellectual and pedagogical, and lie on the side of belief and persuasion”[21] He insists, rightly, that it is
crucial for the left and other progressives to recognize that intellectuals bear an enormous responsibility
for challenging this form of domination by developing tactics “that lie on the side
of the symbolic and pedagogical dimensions of struggle.”[22] If neoliberal
authoritarianism is to be challenged and overcome, it is crucial that intellectuals, unions, workers,
young people, and various social movements unite to reclaim democracy as a central element in
fashioning a radical imagination that foregrounds the necessity for drastically altering the
material and symbolic forces that hide behind a counterfeit claim to participatory democracy.
This means imagining a radical democracy that can provide a living wage, decent health care, public works, and massive investments
in education, child care, housing for the poor, along with a range of other crucial social provisions that can make a difference
between living and dying for those who have been cast into the ranks of the disposable. There are new signs indicating that
the search for a new understanding of politics and the refashioning of a radical imagination are emerging,
especially in Greece, Germany, Spain, and Denmark, where expressions of new political formations can be found in political groups
such as Podemos, Die Linke, Syriza, and the Red-Green Alliance. While these political formations have
differences, what they share is a rejection of stale reformism that has marked liberal politics for
the last 40 years. These new political formations are offering alternatives to a new kind of social
order in which capitalism does not equal democracy. But more importantly, they are not tied merely to unions
and older political factions and are uniting with social movements under a broad and comprehensive vision of politics and change
that goes beyond identity politics and organizes for the long haul. Moreover, as Juan Pablo Ferrero points out, these parties not only
take seriously the need for economic change but also the need for new cultural formations and modes of change.[23] The
struggle against neoliberal common sense is as important as the struggle against
those institutions and material modes of capital that are the foundation of
traditional politics of resistance. Language, communication, and pedagogy are
crucial to these movements as part of their attempt to construct a new kind of
informed and critical political agent, one freed from the orbits of neoliberal
privatization and the all-embracing reach of a commodified and militarized
society. What Podemos, Syriza, and other new political movements on the left make clear is that the fight against neoliberalism
and the related anti-democratic tendencies that inform it must not settle for simply reforming the existing parameters of the social
order. Neoliberalism has created an economic, cultural, and social system and social order that is not only as broken as it is
dangerous, but also pathological in the violence and misery it produces. Any viable struggle must acknowledge that if the current
modes of domination are to change, a newly developed emphasis must be placed on creating the formative culture that inspires and
energizes young people, educators, artists, and others to organize and struggle for the promise of a substantive democracy. At the
same time, particular injustices must be understood through the specificity of the conditions in
which they develop and take hold and also in relation to the whole of the social order. This
means developing modes of analyses capable of connecting isolated and
individualized issues to more generalized notions of freedom, and developing
theoretical frameworks in which it becomes possible to translate private troubles
into broader more systemic conditions. At the very least, a new political imaginary suggests developing
modes of analyses that connects the dots. This is a particularly important goal given that the fragmentation
of the left has been partly responsible for its inability to develop a wide political and ideological
umbrella to address a range of problems extending from extreme poverty, the assault on the
environment, the emergence of the permanent warfare state, the abolition of voting rights, the
assault on public servants, women’s rights, and social provisions, and a range of other issues
that erode the possibilities for a radical democracy. Neoliberalism stands for the death of democracy and the
commodification and repression of any movement that is going to successfully challenge it. One of the most serious challenges facing
progressives is the task of developing a discourse of both critique and possibility. This means insisting that democracy begins to fail
and political life becomes impoverished in the absence of those vital public spheres such as higher education in which civic values,
public scholarship, and social engagement allow for a more imaginative grasp of a future that takes seriously the demands of justice,
equity, and civic courage. Such a challenge demands not only confronting symptoms as a way of
decreasing the misery and human suffering that people experience on a daily basis, but most
importantly addressing the root causes that produce the despotism and culture of
cruelty that marks the current period. The time has come to develop a political language in which civic
values, social responsibility, and the institutions that support them become central to invigorating and fortifying a new era of civic
imagination, and a renewed sense of social agency. A revitalized politics for imagining a radical democracy must promote an
impassioned international social movement with a vision, organization, and set of strategies to challenge the neoliberal nightmare
engulfing the planet. The dystopian worlds of Orwell and Huxley are sutured in fear, atomization, and a paralyzing anxiety.
Unfortunately, these dystopian visions are no longer works of fiction. The task ahead is to relegate them to the realm of dystopian
fiction so they can remind us that a radical democracy is not simply a political project, but a way of life that has to be struggled over
endlessly.
***Alternatives***
Academic Discourse
1NC
The alternative is to critique neoliberal rhetoric in academia--specifically the debate space.
Giroux, PhD, 2005
(Henry A., College Literature, Volume 32, No. 1, p. 10)
Such efforts must be understood as part of a broader attempt not only to collectively struggle
against domination, but also to defend all those social advances that strengthen democratic
public spheres and services, demand new rights, establish modes of power sharing, and create
notions of social justice adequate to imagining and sustaining democracy on a global level.
Consider, for example, the anti-corporate globalization movements slogan "Another World is Possible!" which demands, as Alex
Callinicos insightfully points out, a different kind of social logic, a powerful sense of unity and solidarity. Another world?that is, a world based on
different social logic, run accord ing to different priorities from those that prevail today. It is easy enough to specify what the desiderata of such an
alternative social logic would be?social justice, economic efficiency, environmental sustainability, and democracy?but much harder to spell out how a
reproducible social sys tem embodying these requirements could be built. And then there is the question of how to achieve it. Both these questions?
What is the alternative to capitalism? What strategy can get us there??can be answered in dif ferent ways. One thing the anti-
capitalist movement is going to have to learn is how to argue through the differences that exist and will probably develop around such issues without
undermining the very powerful sense of unity that has been one of the movement's most attractive qualities. (Callinicos 2003, 147) Callinicos's insight
suggests that any viable struggle against neoliberal capitalism will have to rethink "the entire project of politics within the changed conditions of a
global public sphere, and to do this democratically, as people who speak different political languages, but whose goals are nonetheless the same: global
peace, economic justice, legal equality, demo cratic participation, individual freedom, mutual respect" (Buck-Morss 2003, 4-5). One
of the
most central tasks facing intellectuals, activists, educators, and others who believe in an
inclusive and substantive democracy is the need to use theory to rethink the language and
possibilities of politics as a way to imagine a future outside the powerful grip of neoliberalism
and the impending authoritarianism that has a different story to tell about the future, one that
reinvents the past in the image of the crude exercise of power and the unleashing of
unimaginable human suffering. Critical reflection and social action in this discourse must
acknowledge how the category of the global public sphere extends the space of politics beyond
the boundaries of local resistance. Evidence of such actions can be found in the World Social Forums that took place in 2003 in
Porto Alegre, Brazil and in Hyderabad, India in 2004. Successful forms of global dissent can also be observed in the interna tional campaign to make
AIDS drugs affordable for poor countries as well as in the international demonstrations against multinational corporations in cities from Melbourne
and Seattle to Genoa and New York City. New
alliances among intellectuals, students, labor unions, and environmentalists
are taking place in the streets of Argentina, the West Bank, and in many other places fighting globalization from
above. At the same time, a new language of agency and resistance is emerging among many activists
and is being translated into new approaches to what it means to make the pedagogical more
political as part of a global justice movement. Politics can no longer exclude matters of social and
cultural learning and reproduction in the context of globalization or ignore the ways in which, as
Imre Szeman asserts, globalization itself constitutes "a problem of and for pedagogy" (2002, 4). The
slogan, "Another World is Possible!" reinforces the important political insight that one cannot act otherwise unless one can think otherwise, but acting
oth erwise demands a new politics in which it is recognized that global problems need global solutions along with global institutions, global modes of
dissent, global intellectual collaboration, and global social movements.
2NC
The alternative is to reject the 1AC and align with the popular front
that contests neoliberalism in academia. Only by ridding the
educational sphere of corporatization can we contest the regime.
Giroux, PhD, 2005
(Henry A., College Literature, Volume 32, No. 1, p. 1-3)
Just as the world has seen a more virulent and brutal form of market capitalism, generally
referred to as neoliberalism, develop over the last thirty years, it has also seen "a new wave of
political activism [which] has coalesced around the simple idea that capitalism has gone too far"
(Harding 2001, para.28). Wedded to the belief that the market should be the organizing principle for all political, social, and
economic decisions, neoliberalism wages an incessant attack on democracy, public goods, and non-
commodified values. Under neoliberalism everything either is for sale or is plundered for profit. Public lands are looted by
logging companies and corporate ranch ers; politicians willingly hand the public's airwaves over to powerful broad casters and large
corporate interests without a dime going into the public trust; Halliburton gives war profiteering a new meaning as it is granted
corporate contracts without any competitive bidding and then bills the U.S. government for millions; the environment is polluted
and despoiled in the name of profit-making just as the government passes legislation to make it easier for corporations to do so;
public services are gutted in order to lower the taxes of major corporations; schools more closely resemble either malls or jails, and
teachers, forced to get revenue for their school by adopting market values, increasingly function as circus barkers hawking
everything from hamburgers to pizza parties? That is, when they are not reduced to prepping students to take standardized tests. As
markets are touted as the driving force of everyday life, big government is disparaged as either
incompetent or threatening to individual freedom, suggesting that power should reside in
markets and corporations rather than in governments (except for their support for corporate
interests and national security) and citizens. Citizenship has increasingly become a function of consumerism and
politics has been restructured as "corporations have been increasingly freed from social control through deregulation, privatization,
and other neoliberal measures" (Tabb 2003, 153). Corporations more and more design not only the economic
sphere but also shape legislation and policy affecting all levels of government, and with limited
opposition. As corporate power lays siege to the political process, the benefits flow to the rich
and the powerful. Included in such benefits are reform policies that shift the burden of taxes from the rich to the middle class,
the working poor, and state governments as can be seen in the shift from taxes on wealth (capital gains, dividends, and estate taxes)
to a tax on work, principally in the form of a regressive payroll tax (Collins, Hartman, Kraut, and Mota 2004). During the 20022004 fiscal years, tax cuts delivered $197.3 billion in tax breaks to the wealthiest 1% of Americans (i.e., house This content
downloaded from 35.2.242.178 on Sun, 28 Jun 2015 20:14:00 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Henry A . Giroux
3 holds making more than $337,000 a year) while state governments increased taxes to fill a $200 billion budget deficit (Gonsalves
2004). Equally alarming, a recent Congressional study revealed that 63% of all corporations in 2000 paid no taxes while "[s]ix in ten
corporations reported no tax liabili ty for the five years from 1996 through 2000, even though corporate prof its were growing at
record-breaking levels during that period" (Woodard 2004, para. 11). Fortunately, the corporate capitalist fairytale
of neoliberalism has been challenged all over the globe by students, labor organizers,
intellectuals, community activists, and a host of individuals and groups unwilling to allow
democracy to be bought and sold by multinational corporations, corporate swindlers,
international political institutions, and those government politicians who willingly align
themselves with multinational, corporate interests and rapacious profits. From Seattle to Genoa,
people engaged in popular resistance are collectively taking up the challenge of neoliberalism
and reviving both the meaning of resistance and the sites where it takes place. Political culture is
now global and resistance is amorphous, connecting students with workers, schoolteachers with
parents, and intellectuals with artists. Groups protesting the attack on farmers in India whose
land is being destroyed by the government in order to build dams now find themselves in
alliance with young people resisting sweatshop labor in New York City. Environmental activists
are joining up with key sections of organized labor as well as groups protesting Third World
debt. The collapse of the neoliberal showcase, Argentina, along with numerous corporate
bankruptcies and scandals (notably including Enron), reveals the cracks in neoliberal hegemony
and domination. In addition, the multiple forms of resistance against neoliberal capitalism are
not limited by a version of identity politics focused exclusively on particularized rights and
interests. On the contrary, identity politics is affirmed within a broader crisis of political culture and democracy that connects the
militarization of public life with the collapse of the welfare state and the attack on civil liberties. Central to these new
movements is the notion that neoliberalism has to be understood within a larger crisis of vision,
meaning, education, and political agency. Democracy in this view is not limited to the struggle
over economic resources and power; indeed, it also includes the creation of public spheres
where individuals can be educated as political agents equipped with the skills, capacities, and
knowledge they need to perform as autonomous political agents. I want to expand the reaches of this debate
by arguing that any struggle against neoliberalism must address the discourse of political
agency, civic education, and cultural politics as part of a broader struggle over the relationship between democratization
This content downloaded from 35.2.242.178 on Sun, 28 Jun 2015 20:14:00 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 4
CollegLei terat3u2r.e1 [ Wint2e0r0 5] (the ongoing struggle for a substantive and inclusive democracy) and the global public sphere.
We live at a time when the conflation of private interests, empire building, and evangelical fundamentalism brings into question the
very nature, if not the existence, of the democratic process. Under the reign of neoliberalism, capital and wealth have been largely
distributed upwards, while civic virtue has been undermined by a slavish celebration of the free market as the model for organizing
all facets of everyday life (Henwood 2003).
Community
1NC
The first step to combating neoliberalism is building smaller
communities that are self-sustainable to avoid corporations taking
over the public’s rights.
Henderson, PhD, 14
Joesph, Economics and Education for Human Flourishing: Wendell Berry and
the Oikonomic Alternative to Neoliberalism, Educational Studies: A Journal of the American
Educational Studies Association, Vol. 50 issue 2, p. 181-182
Contesting neoliberalism and supplanting it with more sustainable modes of existence would
then involve resisting this sense of aloneness. Rejecting neoliberalism's atomism implies
building new and different educational, economic and environmental relationships. Recent
research in sustainable governance (Dietz, Ostrom, and Stern 2003; Ostrom 1990, 2009) shows
that smaller communities are able to achieve sustainability when the rules governing resource
use are tied to local conditions and local citizens have ownership in their creation and
maintenance over time. These innovations are often stifled because current markets are
artificially propped up to favor politically powerful corporations and institutions. Rolling back
their structural advantages would restore a more egalitarian level of competition to markets and
would work to stimulate the growth of locally sustainable communities. Further, it would cripple
neoliberal capture on policy-making and return governance responsibilities to those who
actually live in the communities.Emphasizing less complex markets that empower rather than
dominate individuals, we can begin to think about policies that reorient local economies within
the larger global economic structure. When contrasted against the current neoliberal project,
such an undertaking would be a fundamentally conservative endeavor, for it would reorient
individuals back toward the traditions that once shaped their communities. Such change would
be resisted, for it directly threatens established neoliberal power structures. Reformers and
educators working within these alternative models need to be aware of this reality and consider
the implications. Regardless, the failure of neoliberal policies on a number of fronts will
continue apace. Changing society via constructing alternative models in the face of such failures
is necessary if we are to sustain resources and communities for future generations.
2NC
Social transformations are the only way to solve problems in the
current system, embracing Cooperativism is key to solving the
capitalist political economy.
Rater, PhD. In Cultural psychology, 09
Carl, Cooperativism: A Social, Economic, and Political Alternative to Capitalism, Capitalism
Nature Socialis, Vol. 20, Issue 2, p. 44 54-58
Social systems may be likened to scientific paradigms. They become consolidated and extended;
they are weakened by fundamental flaws; these are patched up in awkward, inadequate ways by
authorities who have a vested interest in maintaining the paradigm or system; the weaknesses
intensify and drive the paradigm or system into collapse; and eventually critics develop new
systems or paradigms to replace failed ones. Social transformations are as necessary and as
justified as scientific revolutions are. They are the only way to solve the accumulating morass of
problems that invalidate the existing system (as the American Declaration of Independence
states).American capitalism is now collapsing to the point where it can no longer be patched up,
and its fundamental principles must be critiqued and replaced by a new system of social,
economic, political, and ecological principles. Recommendations for social reform rest upon a
host of assumptions about the structure and causes of the problems, ideals and possibilities for a
better society, and even human nature itself. Recommendations for social change are futile and
unconvincing unless they address these broader, deeper issues.I suggest that the myriad
problems we face today—economic instability; inadequate health care; the declining quality and
accessability of education; the worsening ecological crisis; deterioration of the water and food
supplies; escalating rates of mental illness; a rise in international conflicts, ethnic conflicts, and
crime; the stupefication of the arts and entertainment; and the corruption of news, politics, and
medical research—have a common basis in capitalist political economy. This is why they exist
together and can only be solved together by transforming their common basis from a capitalist
political economy into a cooperative political economy.My analysis of the content of our current
problems and the content of their resolution is thus linked to an analysis of their structure, i.e.,
their organization and interrelationship. It is because social problems are interrelated and have
a common basis in political economy that the content of multiple social problems has a common
content that reflects the political economy. Cooperativism is best understood as a goal that is
reached through successive approximations. I shall enumerate three levels in order to explicate
a telos or logic of cooperativism from minimal to maximal. This gives more of a sense of what
cooperativism is than trying to describe it in a single definition. Cooperativism begins when
individuals start to give up their separateness, privacy, and self-interest and contribute
(integrate) their wealth, possessions, and rewards to a democratically run group in which they
collectively decide how the resources will be used to benefit the members together. Group
members develop group projects, identity, feelings, needs, motives, interests, and
responsibilities. This group praxis results in social solidarity and support for the members. It
also results in an active role for individual members in shaping the activities of the group, and
this affects their behavior. Cooperativism at Level I is a significant advance over commoditymediated market interactions. It is an advance over mutual aid, buying clubs, and other groups
that are composed of a sum of independent individuals. However, Level I remains primitive,
because it only bestows the advantages of cooperativism on a small portion of the farmer's
socioeconomic life. Outside the small contribution to the group, individual farmers remain
independent, self-interested, alone, insecure, and unsupported. They purchase and own their
farm, equipment, and supplies. They grow their crops by themselves and for themselves and
transport their goods to market. They compete with other farmers and become jealous at their
success. These activities reflect and also promote isolation from others and impede fuller
cooperativism and the benefits it provides to individuals.In Level II cooperativism, individual
farmers remain independent. They retain their own farm, grow their own crops, and receive an
output commensurate with this input. Level II continues to favor the strong and disfavor the
weak, which keeps people divided, self-interested, and not fully socially-minded.Maximum
cooperativism is achieved if farmers collectivize their entire farms (maintaining a small parcel
for themselves) and manage them through democratic bodies—not by autocratic political
leaders as in Soviet-style collectivization. Collectivizing property objectifies and strengthens
collective social relations, because forms of property are social relations.In collective ownership
of property, what I do for you simultaneously benefits me, and vice versa. When I produce a
product or a service, you also own it—intrinsically, without having to exchange anything for it—
and what you make with it is also automatically mine. When you use the tractor that I have
helped build, you use it for a common good—to plow communal land—which includes me.
Cooperativism retains the personal relation of producer and product through the communal
social relation of producer and consumer. Consumers will have a direct relation to the products
they purchase, because they are directly linked to the producers through the collective plan that
they are all involved in. Collective ownership means that the producer is producing for the
community that owns the means of production and makes up the production plan. Collective
ownership embodies and ensures collective participation. It is built into the form of collective
ownership and is not something that people have to petition for and beg the (independent)
producer to listen to. Consumers will have knowledge of the work of the individual producers
and how they are following the community plan, and this will deepen their appreciation of the
products far beyond the physical styling of products that we are now limited to because we are
alienated from those who produce them.
The alternative is to confront neoliberalism, this confrontation is key
post-neoliberal politics.
Michael Lowy, Research director of sociology at the national research center in Paris, March 4,
2015, Latin American Perspectives, http://lap.sagepub.com/content/42/4/51.full
Katz’s brilliant article about the current economic and social situation in Latin America is not an
economic study in strict academic terms but an original and broadly documented analysis of the
economic, social, and political dynamics of the continent. The central thesis is that Latin
America is crossed by two distinct and opposing projects: the commodities consensus, which is
dominant in Mexico, Colombia, Chile, Peru, and various other countries, and the alternative
post-neoliberal project, which has its principal axis in the ALBA countries (Venezuela, Bolivia,
Cuba, and others). Other countries, such as Brazil and Argentina, are in the middle of the road,
and projects of integration such as Mercosur and the UNASUR are crossed by the conflict
between the two models. The neoliberal model is based on agro-exports and mining, resulting in
industrial regression, in close association with North American imperial interests. The postneoliberal project seeks an anti-imperialist unity and advance of grassroots conquests, but it has
still not achieved independence from extractivism. The Latin American process cannot be
understood apart from the victorious insurrections against neoliberal governments that took
place in the early twenty-first century in Venezuela, Bolivia, Argentina, and Ecuador. Katz
concludes that the ALBA governments can reach their progressive objectives only if they
confront the ruling classes and overcome the primary-export model. The duality of the continent
cannot last forever; ultimately capitalist oppression or a socialist alternative will predominate.
This essay is a major contribution to understanding the complex transformation that Latin
America is experiencing, and its appearance in Latin American Perspectives is most welcome.
Conscience
Confrontation
Capitalism
The alternative is to adopt a mode of conscience capitalism.
Governments can provide a stable foundation to solve social problems
through market strategies
Farell, Prof Media @Bournemouth University, 14
Nathan Farrell (2015) ‘Conscience Capitalism’ and the Neoliberalisation of the Non-Profit
Sector, New Political Economy, 20:2, 254-272,
However, the new type of market environment/integrative CSR that Strong and Mackey call for
might not, in itself, be all that new. In 1999, John Boatright, in an address to the Society for
Business Ethics, questioned the drive to incorporate ethics into managerial decision-making, or
graft it on, and made similar rec- ommendations for the construction of markets that produce
ethical outcomes; what he termed the Moral Market Model (Boatright 1999). That Boatright
cites Adam Smith’s ‘invisible hand’ metaphor, a stalwart of the neoliberal canon of arguments
against regulation, points to the heritage of conscience capitalism in the perceived moral
foundations of liberal capitalist ideas – to which, perhaps, Costa was alluding. Many variants of
conscience capitalism seem to walk a waver- ing line between an interpretation of Smith’s selfinterested individual found in The Wealth of Nations and an interpretation of the type of
altruistic individual found in Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments (Mackey, in Cato Institute
2013). While debates may ensue about the different interpretations of human nature found in
these texts – a debate to which I am not contributing – both interpret- ations place an emphasis
on individual agency. Taken as a whole, conscience capi- talists appeal to altruism underpinned
by self-interest in their endeavours to align capitalism with conscience; combining the
integrative and instrumental approaches outlined by Garriga and Mele ́ (2004: 52). Frequently,
this is done with assumption that business is the key sector (sometimes the only sector) that can
enact positive social change. A higher authority, in the form of the state, is not required when
‘the invisible hand’ or ‘impartial spectator’ is present. That said, in Strong’s and Mackey’s
version of conscience capitalism, there is still an important role for government: ‘to ensure a
sound infrastructure, enact and enforce sensible laws and regulations, provide for safety and
security, and provide a reasonable safety net’ (Ashoka 2013). Government must, in other words,
facilitate the markets for the new types of business efforts being called for, and this proposed
role for government aligns this type of conscience capital- ism with what Peck defined as
neoliberalism’s key goal of ‘the capture and reuse of the state, in the interests of shaping a procorporate, freer-trading “market order”’ (Peck 2010: 9).
Education
Breaking from Neoliberal Education 1NC
The alternative is a break from the neoliberal university
Giroux PhD 13
Henry A Public Intellectuals against the neoliberal university
http://philosophersforchange.org/2013/11/12/public-intellectuals-against-the-neoliberaluniversity/¶ Reclaiming higher education as a democratic public sphere begins with the crucial recognition that education is not
solely about job training and the production of ethically challenged entrepreneurial subjects, but also about matters of civic
engagement, critical thinking, civic literacy and the capacity for democratic agency, action and change. It is also inextricably
connected to the related issues of power, inclusion, and social responsibility.[29] For example, Martin Luther King, Jr. recognized
clearly that when matters of social responsibility are removed from matters of agency and politics, democracy itself is diminished.
He writes: “When an individual is no longer a true participant, when he no longer feels a sense of responsibility to his society, the
content of democracy is emptied. When culture is degraded and vulgarity enthroned, when the social system does not build security
but induces peril, inexorably the individual is impelled to pull away from a soulless society.”[30]¶ If young people are to
develop a deep respect for others, a keen sense of social responsibility, as well as an informed
notion of civic engagement, pedagogy must be viewed as the cultural, political and moral force
that provides the knowledge, values and social relations to make such democratic practices
possible. Central to such a challenge is the need to position intellectual practice “as part of an
intricate web of morality, rigor and responsibility” that enables academics to speak with
conviction, enter the public sphere to address important social problems, and demonstrate
alternative models for bridging the gap between higher education and the broader society.[31]
Connective ties are crucial in that it is essential to develop intellectual practices that are collegial rather than competitive, refuse the
instrumentality and privileged isolation of the academy, link critical thought to a profound impatience with the status quo, and
connect human agency to the idea of social responsibility and the politics of possibility.¶ Increasingly, as universities are shaped by
an audit culture, the call to be objective and impartial, whatever one’s intentions, can easily echo what George Orwell called the
official truth or the establishment point of view. Lacking a self-consciously democratic political focus, teachers are often reduced, or
reduce themselves, to the role of a technician or functionary engaged in formalistic rituals, unconcerned with the disturbing and
urgent problems that confront the larger society or the consequences of one’s pedagogical practices and research undertakings.
Hiding behind appeals to balance and objectivity, too many scholars refuse to recognize that being committed to something does not
cancel out what C. Wright Mills once called hard thinking. Teaching needs to be rigorous, self-reflective, and committed not to the
dead zone of instrumental rationality but to the practice of freedom, to a critical sensibility capable of advancing the parameters of
knowledge, addressing crucial social issues, and connecting private troubles and public issues.¶ In opposition to the instrumental
model of teaching, with its conceit of political neutrality and its fetishization of measurement, I argue that academics should
combine the mutually interdependent roles of critical educator and active citizen. This requires finding ways to connect the practice
of classroom teaching with important social problems and the operation of power in the larger society while providing the conditions
for students to view themselves as critical agents capable of making those who exercise authority and power answerable for their
actions.¶ Higher education cannot be decoupled from what Jacques Derrida calls a democracy to come, that is, a democracy that
must always “be open to the possibility of being contested, of contesting itself, of criticizing and indefinitely improving itself.”[32]
Within this project of possibility and impossibility, critical pedagogy must be understood as a
deliberately informed and purposeful political and moral practice, as opposed to one that is
either doctrinaire, instrumentalized or both. Moreover, a critical pedagogy should also gain part
of its momentum in higher education among students who will go back to the schools, churches,
synagogues and workplaces to produce new ideas, concepts and critical ways of understanding
the world in which young people and adults live. This is a notion of intellectual practice and
responsibility that refuses the professional neutrality and privileged isolation of the academy. It
also affirms a broader vision of learning that links knowledge to the power of self-definition and
to the capacities of students to expand the scope of democratic freedoms, particularly those that
address the crisis of education, politics, and the social as part and parcel of the crisis of
democracy itself.¶ In order for critical pedagogy, dialogue and thought to have real effects, they
must advocate that all citizens, old and young, are equally entitled, if not equally empowered, to
shape the society in which they live. This is a commitment we heard articulated by the brave
students who fought tuition hikes and the destruction of civil liberties and social provisions in
Quebec and to a lesser degree in the Occupy Wall Street movement. If educators are to function
as public intellectuals, they need to listen to young people who are producing a new language in
order to talk about inequality and power relations, attempting to create alternative democratic
public spaces, rethinking the very nature of politics, and asking serious questions about what
democracy is and why it no longer exists in many neoliberal societies. These young people who
are protesting the 1% recognize that they have been written out of the discourses of justice,
equality and democracy and are not only resisting how neoliberalism has made them
expendable, they are arguing for a collective future very different from the one that is on display
in the current political and economic systems in which they feel trapped. These brave youth are
insisting that the relationship between knowledge and power can be emancipatory, that their
histories and experiences matter, and that what they say and do counts in their struggle to
unlearn dominating privileges, productively reconstruct their relations with others, and
transform, when necessary, the world around them.
Full dissent of neoliberalist education is critical to solve
Reed, Political Scientist, 14
(Adolph Reed Jr., professor of political science at the University of Pennsylvania, specializing in
race and American politics. He has taught at Yale, Northwestern, and the New School for Social
Research and he has written on racial and economic inequality. He is a founding member of the
U.S. Labor Party and a frequent contributor to The Progressive and The Nation “Nothing LeftThe Long, Slow Surrender of American Liberals”, Essay, March 2014 issue of Harper’s
Magazine, accessed at the University of Michigan)
The sources of this narrowing of social vision are complex. But its most
conspicuous expression is subordination to the agenda of a Democratic Party
whose center has moved steadily rightward since Ronald Reagan's presidency.
Although it is typically defended in a language of political practicality and sophistication, this
shift requires, as the historian Russell Jacoby notes, giving up "a belief that the future could
fundamentally surpass the present," which traditionally has been an essential foundation of
leftist thought and practice. "Instead of championing a radical idea of a new society,"
Jacoby observes in The End of Utopia, "the left ineluctably retreats to smaller ideas,
seeking to expand the options within the existing society." The atrophy of political
imagination shows up in approaches to strategy as well. In the absence of goals
that require long-term organizing — e.g., single-payer health care, universally free public
higher education and public transportation, federal guarantees of housing and income security
— the election cycle has come to exhaust the time horizon of political action.
Objectives that cannot be met within one or two election cycles seem fanciful, as do
any that do not comport with the Democratic agenda. Even those who consider
themselves to the Democrats' left are infected with electoralitis. Each election now becomes a
moment of life-or-death urgency that precludes dissent or even reflection. For liberals, there is
only one option in an election year, and that is to elect, at whatever cost, whichever Democrat is
running. This modus operandi has tethered what remains of the left to a Democratic
Party that has long since renounced its commitment to any sort of redistributive
vision and imposes a willed amnesia on political debate. True, the last Democrat was
really unsatisfying, but this one is better; true, the last Republican didn't bring destruction on
the universe, but this one certainly will. And, of course, each of the "pivotal" Supreme Court
justices is four years older than he or she was the last time. Why does this tailing behind an
increasingly right-of-center Democratic Party persist in the absence of any
apparent payoff? There has nearly always been a qualifying excuse: Republicans
control the White House; they control Congress; they're strong enough to block
progressive initiatives even if they don't control either the executive or the
legislative branch. Thus have the faithful been able to take comfort in the circular
self-evidence of their conviction. Each undesirable act by a Republican
administration is eo ipso evidence that if the Democratic candidate had won,
things would have been much better. When Democrats have been in office, the
imagined omnipresent threat from the Republican bugbear remains a fatal
constraint on action and a pretext for suppressing criticism from the left.
Exaggerating the differences between Democratic and Republican candidates,
moreover, encourages the retrospective sanitizing of previous Democratic
candidates and administrations. If only Al Gore had been inaugurated after the 2000
election, the story goes, we might well not have had the September 11 attacks and certainly
would not have had the Iraq War — as if it were unimaginable that the Republican reaction to
the attacks could have goaded him into precisely such an act. And considering his bellicose stand
on Iraq during the 2000 campaign, he well might not have needed goading. The stale
proclamations of urgency are piled on top of the standard jeremiads about the Supreme Court
and Roe v. Wade. The "filibuster-proof Senate majority" was the gimmick that spruced up the
2008 election cycle, conveniently suggesting strategic preparation for large policy initiatives
while deferring discussion of what precisely those initiatives might be. It was an ideal diversion
that gave wonks, would-be wonks, and people who just watch too much cable-television news
something to chatter about and a rhetorical basis for feeling "informed." It was, however, built
on the bogus premise that Democrat = liberal. Most telling, though, is the reinvention of
the Clinton Administration as a halcyon time of progressive success. Bill Clinton's
record demonstrates, if anything, the extent of Reaganism's victory in defining the terms of
political debate and the limits of political practice. A recap of some of his administration's
greatest hits should suffice to break through the social amnesia. Clinton ran partly on a pledge of
"ending welfare as we know it"; in office he both presided over the termination of the federal
government's sixty-year commitment to provide income support for the poor and effectively
ended direct federal provision of low-income housing. In both cases his approach was to transfer
federal subsidies — when not simply eliminating them — from impoverished people to
employers of low-wage labor, real estate developers, and landlords. He signed into law
repressive crime bills that increased the number of federal capital offenses, flooded the prisons,
and upheld unjustified and racially discriminatory sentencing disparities for crack and powder
cocaine. He pushed NAFTA through over strenuous objections from labor and many
congressional Democrats. He temporized on his campaign pledge to pursue labor-law reform
that would tilt the playing field back toward workers, until the Republican takeover of Congress
in 1995 gave him an excuse not to pursue it at all. He undertook the privatization of Sallie Mae,
the Student Loan Marketing Association, thereby fueling the student-debt crisis.
Notwithstanding his administration's Orwellian folderol about "reinventing
government," his commitment to deficit reduction led to, among other things,
extending privatization of the federal meat-inspection program, which shifted
responsibility to the meat industry — a reinvention that must have pleased his
former Arkansas patron, Tyson Foods, and arguably has left its legacy in the
sporadic outbreaks and recalls that suggest deeper, endemic problems of food
safety in the United States. His approach to health-care reform, like Barack Obama's,
was built around placating the insurance and pharmaceutical industries, and its
failure only intensified the blitzkrieg of for-profit medicine.
Breaking from Neoliberalist Education – 2NC
A. The only way to solve is to have the academics of society reposition
themselves as activists and have them spread discourse of dissent
Shore and Davidson, Professors at The University of Auckland, 15
Shore, Cris, and Miri Davidson. "Beyond Collusion and Resistance: Academic–management
Relations within the Neoliberal University." Learning and Teaching Learn Teach 7.1 (2014): 1228. Web. 28 June 2015., pg16-18
How then could academics resist the forms of power associated with
contemporary universities? We accept Anderson’s argument that there is a place for
the individual, hidden acts of resistance that she and other authors document. Further,
we also believe that neoliberal practices and discourses should be resisted in a
multiplicity of ways and that there are concrete benefits to adopting strategies that are
collaborative and overt. Acknowledging the diversity of contexts in which we might
resist or construct alternatives, and the many strategies academics could deploy holds
promise for counteracting the discouragement and despair that has been documented
by many of the authors whose work we have considered.
We propose that academics conceptualise themselves as activists: advocates
and actors for a political cause. Moreover, to be effective, we argue that
academic activism should refuse the discourses central to the operation of
neoliberal power. In particular, since individualism, competition and the
centralisation of market models and goals form key neoliberal discourses, we propose
them as discourses we might seek, in particular, to resist.
In articulating a vision of academics as activists, we draw on the tradition of
academics as having unique social responsibilities in accordance with the
university’s role as ‘critic and conscience’ of society.81 Gina Anderson has
identified academics’ deployment of traditional academic culture and traditional
understandings of the university as generating alternative subject positions
from which to critique the impact of neoliberalism,82 and this project is one
form resistance might take. Edward Said goes further, with his characterisation of an
academic as ‘somebody whose place it is publicly to raise embarrassing questions, to
confront orthodoxy and dogma (rather than to produce them) [and] to be someone who
cannot easily be co-opted by governments or corporations.’83 Said argued further that
when necessary an academic should be prepared to be ‘embarrassing, contrary, even
unpleasant.’84
B. This discourse counteracts neoliberalism
Shore and Davidson, Professors at The University of Auckland, 15
Shore, Cris, and Miri Davidson. "Beyond Collusion and Resistance: Academic–management
Relations within the Neoliberal University." Learning and Teaching Learn Teach 7.1 (2014):
12-28. Web. 28 June 2015., pg16-18
If neoliberalism is not only an economic structure, but also a set of discursive
strategies,91 it follows that we can resist it at the level of our engagements with
these discourses and at the level of the construction of our subjectivities. If
discourse is a ‘a series of discontinuous segments whose tactical function is neither
uniform nor stable’,92 discourse is an instrument and an effect of power, but
also a potential hindrance, a point of resistance, and a starting point for
opposing strategies. Our efforts to resist should be recognised and could be
consciously undertaken as forms of activism. If they were understood in this way,
perhaps the evidence of academic resistance to neoliberalism would look quite different.
We therefore wish to highlight some discourses for resistance that respond at the level
of subjectivity, motivation and our values.93
We have argued that individualism, competition and the adoption of market metaphors
and processes as appropriate for all dimensions of life form key dimensions of
neoliberalism. Individualism operates to isolate academics and predispose us to adopt
understandings of the neoliberal university in which the difficulties we face are
constructed as individual rather than structural or institutional. It is seen to follow that
solutions must be found though individual effort and that our colleagues should be seen
as our competitors. We propose the adoption of strategies which refuse
individualism. Rather, we advocate that academics build relationships with
one another and work collaboratively toward mutually agreed goals.
For example we can participate in the wider conversation about student wellbeing that
has grown up in response to research and advocacy on law student depression.94 In
doing so, we should contest conceptualisations of the problem and potential
solutions which strengthen, rather than undermine, neoliberalism. A focus
on student wellbeing offers multiple possibilities for conceptualising students as human
beings rather than as potential sources of profit, and for critique and politicisation of the
practices of the legal profession and the law school. Rather than treating students as
problem-bearers or individual victims of mental illness, we can draw on responses
which, instead of asking what students have done to make themselves sick, seek to ask
how the law school, the university and the profession might be having this impact and
how we can respond.95 These responses can offer our students paths toward
critical engagements with the legal profession as well as offering strategies
and tools for teachers who are seeking to support student wellbeing. We
can participate in wider discussions about the health and wellbeing impacts
of a profession and workplaces that treat our graduates as a means for
profit making at the expense of their wellbeing and their participation in
their families and communities. We can be part of discussions questioning
why the professions for which we are preparing our students have high
rates of alcoholism, (mis)use of other drugs, anxiety, depression and
suicide.96 Indeed, where we see these phenomena in our own lives and
workplaces we might consider inquiring into, and politicising, their causes
there.97 Rather than allowing these conversations to be drawn relentlessly down to the
level of individualising and medicalising the problem, we can be looking to the causes of
ill health and misery in our institutions and in the professions. The US literature on
humanising the law school forms another example of thinking about students and the
profession from the perspective of thriving, with a focus on community service, ethical
obligations, and turning critical thinking toward the practices of law schools and the
profession.98 In the Australian context, the national Threshold Learning Outcomes99 and
degree objectives related to criticalthinkingskillsandsocialcontext100
mayofferfurtheroptions
Pluralist Perspectives – 1NC
The alternative is to defeat neoliberalism in education by emphasizing
the plural perspectives of other species
Kopnina, PhD, 15
(Kopnina, H. Dr. Kopnina, Helen (PhD. Cambridge University, 2002) is currently employed at The Hague
University of Applied Science in The Netherlands. She is a coordinator of Sustainable Business program, and a
researcher in the fields of environmental education and environmental social sciences. Kopnina is the author of
over thirty peer reviewed articles and (co)author and (co)editor of nine books, including Sustainable Business:
Key Issues (Routledge 2014) and Sustainability: Key issues (Routledge 2015). “Neoliberalism, pluralism and
environmental education: The call for radical re-orientation.” Environmental Development (2015),
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.envdev.2015.03.005)
7. Reflection¶ Critical of totalitarian and homogenizing tendencies of neoliberalism, EE/ESD scholars might have thrown the baby
out with the bathwater by arguing against all instrumentalism in education. The challenge of sustainability requires
that we move from doubt to action as the responsibility for unsustainability lies in much broader
segments of the established order – from political and corporate elites to consumers. The role of expert teaching from
the point of view of different sustainability frameworks cannot be underestimated. While pluralism is helpful, as
sustainability issue is complex and in order to distinguish between better and worse models we need to be critical of
established hegemonies and help students see various framings of the issues; pluralism for the sake of pluralism fails
to deconstruct neoliberalism as an agency of hidden authority. One can be critical of the
arguments against the proponents of climate change, or opponents of climate change; one can be
critical of sexism, or racism, or critical of opponents to both. A constrained, ‘brainwashed’ anthropocentric
pluralism that, while superficially critical of abstractly defined ‘hegemonies’, is not radical
enough to make a real difference in the status quo. If the future generations and non-humans
are to be taken into account, the risk that the students will learn to perpetuate unsustainable
practices is a bigger problem than what would appear to be a violation of the democratic
principle of compulsory education.¶ Pluralism offers yet another unique opportunity that is currently under-utilized.
Potentially, pluralism can support inclusive democracy, or earth democracy (Shiva, 2005) involving
the non- human species through human representatives (Dobson, 2003; Baxter, 2005). As discussed in
Kopnina (2014a), if the prospect of education for sustainability appears threatening, perhaps educators need a deeper reflection
upon their own tacit assumptions on what is ‘good’ or ‘bad’. There are other values we might be
forgetting – such as respect for all planetary citizens. This respect may need to be as strongly
emphasized as that of social equality movements. This requires more and not less moral engagement, courage of conviction, and
aim-oriented teaching.¶ Plural perspectives that include all planetary citizens, not just members of
one species, would necessitate recognition of ecological justice as ethical
imperative in education, and involve the well- informed eco-advocates as
lecturers. This might be a far cry from the commonly perceived educational practice in much of EE and ESD, and yet a form of
‘affirmative action’ in which – by proxy – non-human interests are represented in a classroom, which might be necessary to move
beyond the anthropocentric power hegemonies. These guest lecturers can be drawn from non-governmental
organizations concerned with conservation, animal rights and welfare advocates, and other
individuals that have proven themselves – outside of formal academic contexts – deeply involved in the
task of environmental protection. These possibilities are also discussed by Andrew Dobson in a more general reflection
on the working of inclusive pluralism, by Vandana Shiva in relation to ‘earth democracy’ and by Richard Kahn and other critical
pedagogy scholars in relation to environmental education.¶ Eco-advocates can be invited as guest lecturers, or
hopefully involved
more closely within the established pedagogical practices. Less controversially, the
sustainability specialists in the fields involving circular economy, Cradle to Cradle and steady
state economy models need to be drawn in to share their expertise. The values that these engaged
lecturers teach are not limited to sustainability but also support values that encourage selfdetermination in the face of established power hegemonies. As an example, critical pedagogy
supports the kind of education that seizes the power of environmental activists and supports the
‘earth democracy’ (Shiva, 2005). In order to create meaningful EE/ESD programs, the goals and
priorities of these educators need to be clearly defined and they need to be well-versed within
the focal areas of sustainability. Realizing these common objectives, as stressed in Kopnina (2014a) and Kahn (2005),
educators can close ranks realizing that each has valuable strengths that can help in the reconstruction of education. Otherwise, this
pluralist debate becomes “little more than an historical footnote to transnational capitalism's zoöcidal excesses” (Kahn, 2005: 204).¶
In the face of expanding zoocide (as in ‘genocide of non-humans’ formulated by Crist), to think that incorporation of non-human interests in educational practice could occur
without widespread rebellion and, ultimately, revolution, seems naïve (Kahn, 2010: 137). Perhaps I am being naïve, and unrealistically idealistic in thinking that we could
collectively realize the injustice of this particularly virulent strand of anthropocentrism, human supremacy (Crist, 2012). Neither socialism, nor nationalism, nor ESD debates
allow us to see the forest for the (palm oil-generating) trees.¶ What I am missing in Stefan's paper is the statement of his own ethical position. What I am against, for example, is
the anthropocentric bias that permeates much of SD rhetoric as well as our own research. What I am for is teaching care for ethics and environment, progressing from Kant's
Critique of Pure Reason to Leopold's Land Ethic (1949) and Naess' (1973) long-range ecology movement.¶ Like ESD scholars, I support SD's quest for environmental justice, but
I also call for inclusive democratic education. This calls for the recognition of the mutually constitutive processes that compose people and environments, both in teaching and in
research, enabling a bioethical position encompassing the needs of other species and things, and giving, if not entirely equal, at least simultaneous consideration to justice for
put, I call for the type of commitment that
has condemned practices that discriminate against any group of human beings (and has, at
least, partially, succeeded). I propose a form of post- colonial engagement and inclusive
pluralism that embrace development and chances for a brighter future for all species. While this
might sound revolutionary, I do not believe the transition is possible without a radical break with existing
paradigm. Realistically, students can be taught that anthropocentrism is just as intolerable as
racism, sexism, and colonialism. As an anthropologist, I do not necessarily believe that the social equality
values that we currently embrace – and I whole- heartedly support – are innate, nor are they morally absolute, but
learned. Indeed, discrimination against human groups has – and still does, both in ‘developed’ and in
‘developing’ countries – a long history, including the ideational and material dislocations of nonhumans, or
“savages” and “primitive” peoples into the fringes of earthly landscapes and human mindscapes alike. The
term “subhuman” was common among colonialists, and has been applied to both animals (especially
primates) and indigenous people as a catch-all derogatory concept that has, in different contexts, targeted
nonhumans and human beings (Crist and Kopnina, 2014: 388). Does the treatment of ‘under- developed’
communities, or the treatment of humans ‘like animals’, and animals like commodities not
deserve a similar degree of moral scrutiny? And if we have learned not to denigrate others, and
education has helped in this noble task, why should we not assume that education can help us
morally progress even further? Therefore I assume that respect for non-humans can be learned, even
more so because biophilia, although not shared by all individuals, judging from cross-cultural
and historical record, actually does seem to be universal (e.g. Wilson, 1984).¶ Yet, I also realize that this
transition will not be easy as we will need to teach students how to address uncomfortable questions
about human population and consumption, and about their own positioning, as consumers, as
citizens, and as those that will be remembered by future generations. The transition will also
involve an honest admission – especially in the case of ‘aspiring’ developing nations, that they should not
blindly follow the Western way of ‘development’. For education for sustainability to succeed, the
focus of EE and ESD should be environment, and the focus of education for sustainable
development should be development in a broader sense – development of human understanding
and appreciation of our common future on this planet.¶
human and non-humans alike (Strang, 2013; Shoreman- Ouimet and Kopnina, 2015).¶ Simply
Pluralist Perspectives – 2NC
The alternative is to defeat neoliberalism in education by rejecting
anthropocentric pluralism
Kopnina, PhD, 15
(Kopnina, H. Dr. Kopnina, Helen (PhD. Cambridge University, 2002) is currently employed at The Hague
University of Applied Science in The Netherlands. She is a coordinator of Sustainable Business program, and a
researcher in the fields of environmental education and environmental social sciences. Kopnina is the author of
over thirty peer reviewed articles and (co)author and (co)editor of nine books, including Sustainable Business:
Key Issues (Routledge 2014) and Sustainability: Key issues (Routledge 2015). “Neoliberalism, pluralism and
environmental education: The call for radical re-orientation.” Environmental Development (2015),
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.envdev.2015.03.005)
5. Educating for sustainability¶ The greatest emphasis of EE/ESD scholars' criticism of education for
sustainability is that the expert-led technocratic education is at odds with the democratic
tradition of education. The warning against indoctrination has spread to warning against any
instrumentalism that would supposedly espouse not just neoliberal values but – horror of horrors – an
‘eco-totalitarianism' (Wals and Jickling, 2002: 225).¶ It is hard to imagine how an environmentally
sustainable world can have a negative effect on human societies. The future generations that will
inherit ecologically devastated world, and the ‘happiness’ for non-human beings are highly
dependent on our ability to solve environmental problems. By equating environmentalism with
‘eco-totalitarianism’ and placing sustainability on one side and ‘happiness’ and freedom on the
other side (Wals and Jickling, 2002), such warning against pro-environmental teaching sounds
suspiciously close to the neoliberalism that subverts any efforts to confront it.¶ Ironically, scholars
who variously associate pluralism with ‘democracy’, ‘participation’, ‘emancipation’, ‘reflection’, and
‘critical thought’ (Jickling, 2005; Jickling and Wals, 2013) rarely realize that the call for more open
education is also a form of indoctrination. Realistically all educational practice has elements of
indoctrination (Hattingh, 2002) as values in education are unavoidable (Fromm, 1956; Illich, 1971). Fromm
(1956) believed that education makes learners internalize alienation inherent in capitalist society and increases uncritical adherence
to dominant values espoused in these societies. In order to oppose uncritical adherence to dominant ideology
an educator is required “to stick to one's convictions even though they are unpopular” (p. 127). To
do what was right, one had to call forth “the courage to judge certain values as of ultimate
concern – and to take the jump and stake everything on these values” (Fromm, 1956: 126). In his
controversial Deschooling Society, Illich (1971) discussed the ineffectual nature of institutionalized education. Illich is wary of the
elites supporting the over- production systems, which are linked themselves with the de-personalizing educational institutions. This
indoctrination comes from the fact that no educational practice – or for that matter societal
process – is power-free or independent of existing hegemonies, internalized through groupthink ideology. Following Foucault (1992), all education is limiting and needs to be interrogated. According
to Foucault (1992: 194) ‘the individual is no doubt the fictitious atom of an ‘ideological’ representation
of society; but he is also a reality fabricated by this specific technology of power’.¶ The danger of
neoliberal pluralism is that it does not necessarily instruct us about the real alternatives. As Bansel
(2007: 284) reflected, iterations of education as an open and pluralistic enterprise that emphasize
personal development and self-advancement through democratic learning ignore (and perpetuate)
the practices through which subjects are constituted relationally within the market. Democratic
and pluralistic approaches to education assume that the students are ‘rational, self-managing, selfpromoting’ agents able to ‘make informed choices and manifest endless possibilities’, assuming that
all subjects are ‘equally positioned to recognize, mobilize and consolidate productive or
successful choices’ (Bansel, 2007: 298). Ironically, at the same time as the concepts of ‘individual choice’
and ‘democracy’ within the ‘free world’ have been used to distinguish the character of industrial
life, individuality is simultaneously being dissolved into bureaucratic, governmental, and
corporate structures (Kidner, 2015). Essentially, such assumptions about rationality of students leave
economically centered, anthropocentric hegemony intact.¶ This leads us to the question of ‘democracy’ in
education and in relation to sustainability. In discussing environmental justice (equal distribution of environmental
risks and benefits, including to the non-human species) and democracy, Dobson (2003: 26) emphasizes that ‘if harm is
being done, then more justice rather than more talking is the first requirement’. In fact, ‘more
talking’ seems to occur through ‘open’ educational practices, obscuring injustice done to the
natural world. There is a technology of consciousness within industrial society that influences what is remembered and what is
forgotten, raising question about the degree of agency that is actually allowable within supposedly ‘democratic' societies (Kidner,
2015). A ‘democratic’ voting between wolves and sheep on who will be served for dinner is likely to have a predictable outcome. The
purported heterogeneity of sustainability discourses creates the cacophony of impenetrable ‘noise’ in which the immensity of moral
injustice in relation to environment becomes mute. Neoliberalism both competes with other discourses in such
a way that it appears more desirable, or more innocent than it is (Davies and Bansel, 2007). Thus, put
under close scrutiny, neoliberal pluralism is only open to select possibilities.¶ EE/ESD scholars
do not always acknowledge the instrumentality of their own promotion of ‘openness’, appearing
to support all positions indiscriminately. It is assumed (often tacitly) that teaching tolerance,
equality, and general democratic values is ‘good’. Teaching support of slavery, racism, and
sexism are not acceptable even as one can argue that they are expressions of differing opinion.
Yet, when it comes to teaching that discrimination against (and extermination of) other species is
wrong, the fear of indoctrination and totalitarianism emerges. Thus, such anthropocentric
pluralism applies a double standard in the case of social and environment-related issues.¶
The alternative is to teach ourselves to reject the notion of Earth as a
backdrop for human consumption
Kopnina, PhD, 15
(Kopnina, H. Dr. Kopnina, Helen (PhD. Cambridge University, 2002) is currently employed at The Hague
University of Applied Science in The Netherlands. She is a coordinator of Sustainable Business program, and a
researcher in the fields of environmental education and environmental social sciences. Kopnina is the author of
over thirty peer reviewed articles and (co)author and (co)editor of nine books, including Sustainable Business:
Key Issues (Routledge 2014) and Sustainability: Key issues (Routledge 2015). “Neoliberalism, pluralism and
environmental education: The call for radical re-orientation.” Environmental Development (2015),
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.envdev.2015.03.005)
3. Alternatives¶ By contrast the ‘land ethics’ (Leopold, 1987) and deep ecology (Naess, 1973) perspectives
require a clear standpoint in order to protect the environment. Both perspectives , in essence, reject
the ‘man- in-environment image in favor of the relational, total-field image’, and integrity of the
‘land’ (environment) as a whole.¶ Attending to the meaning of nature, environment and ecology convene into a
maelstrom with a long, profound and varied history in different cultures that used to contain the long-standing alternatives to
industrialism and neoliberalism (Kopnina, 2012b, 2013b, 2014a, 2014b). Bargh and Otter (2009) suggest that spaces of
neoliberalism are embedded in discourses of colonization, and that neoliberalism continues to
dominate ‘weaker’ discourses of post-colonial nations. The documentary film Schooling the World (Black, 2010)
reflects on how Western-style education negatively affects developing countries' culture and values,
undermining traditional knowledge of environment and notions of sustainability.¶ 4. Pluralism and
sustainability¶ Supporters of pluralism in education have rightly noted that the students that have
been informed about sustainability might be less inclined to engage in action than those whose
ideas have been reached by peer interaction and reflection born of social and participatory
approaches. The students can hardly be democratically engaged and proactive and critical if we
do not trust them to reach sound conclusions in common decision-making processes in school
and if the educational process does not involve open discussions where different opinions are
contested and discussed. In fact, pluralism offers a teaching tool that informs about alternatives to
mainstream neoliberal models, as well as a unique opportunity to critically examine and discuss
these models.¶ Yet, critical scholars doubt whether neoliberalism's purported openness to all
positions is adequate in addressing social and environmental challenges. First, while superficially
neoliberalism seems open to all ideas and appears to be democratic, its openness is most
prominent in the global markets (Bansel, 2007). Crouch (2011) reflected on neoliberalism's resistance to alternative
movements, implying that neoliberal pluralism is not able or willing to challenge the power hegemonies.¶ In fact, neoliberalism
tends to homogenize alternative discourses that challenge the economic imperatives, preferring
monocultures to cultural and biological diversity (Black, 2010). Hursh and Henderson (2011) reflected that the
dominance of neoliberalism is supported by the power elites who benefit from homogenizing
policies and who have gained control over both public debate and policy- making.¶ Kahn (2010)
reflected that “academic freedom”, in which all sides of academic issues must be represented in
classrooms, departments, and educational events, results in repressive tolerance. While appearing open and
democratic, neoliberalism needs the broad social consensus to maintain the conflict-free and
constantly growing markets.¶ On the surface of it, economic equality appears noble and as such widely
accepted as one of the most explicit aims of sustainable development. Yet, its implication for the
spread of consumer culture and unsustainable practices to all corners of the globe calls for
consideration of alternative sustainability models, rather than retreat into greater doubt about
what sustainability is under the guise of pluralism (Washington, 2013).¶ A more positive direction is
support of the type of pluralism in which learners are indeed ‘ultimately capable of better
responding to emerging environmental issues’ and in which teachers help students become
‘action competent citizens, who actively and critically participate in problem solving and
decision making’ (Wals and Jickling, 2002: 225). Many societal improvements have been reached in a
democratic manner, and, as we shall see in the following sections, plural or democratic education does not
have to be incompatible with education for sustainability.¶
The alternative is to advocate education that examines different
sustainability frameworks
Kopnina, PhD, 15
(Kopnina, H. Dr. Kopnina, Helen (PhD. Cambridge University, 2002) is currently employed at The Hague
University of Applied Science in The Netherlands. She is a coordinator of Sustainable Business program, and a
researcher in the fields of environmental education and environmental social sciences. Kopnina is the author of
over thirty peer reviewed articles and (co)author and (co)editor of nine books, including Sustainable Business:
Key Issues (Routledge 2014) and Sustainability: Key issues (Routledge 2015). “Neoliberalism, pluralism and
environmental education: The call for radical re-orientation.” Environmental Development (2015),
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.envdev.2015.03.005)
6. Constructive frameworks¶ One of the well-placed warnings of pluralist supporters is the unreflective reliance on technological
innovation based on expert-led scientifically informed educational faculty. Indeed, narrow technical solutions to environmental
problems have often backfired (as demonstrated by many empirical cases of purported universal technological solutions, from
nuclear energy to asbestos). Yet, pluralistic learning without specified ends is not sufficient. The ecological principles are not likely to
follow from the democratic openness alone, as long as this democratic openness remains slave to dominant hegemonies.¶
Education for sustainability needs to engage with progressive and critical models, such as the
circular economy and Cradle to Cradle frameworks (McDonough and Braungart, 2002; Webster, 2007; Huckle,
2012) and the steady state economy (e.g. Daly, 1994; Washington, 2015). These models address
unsustainable consumption and resource depletion, and require concrete sustainability
solutions. Fundamentally, these frameworks are critical of much of the currently conceived
sustainability – particularly, the idea of eco-efficiency and reducing damage, as they argue that
damage – in the form of pollution, unproductive waste, and depletion, should not exist in the
first place.¶ These frameworks are based on the idea that rather than resort to compromise, as in
the case of recycling (which is essentially a form of downcycling as original materials are reduced to lesser quantity and
quality), we should conceive of products and materials that do not require this sacrifice – rather,
the products that can be fully and continuously re-used. To illustrate this, Cradle to Cradle and
circular economy frameworks draw on the understanding and appreciation of the natural
systems. By putting an accent on natural cycles in which biological materials are used for creation of new materials
(or formation of earth through composting and technological materials are made in such way that they can be disassembled in ways
that all of the materials can be reused), these frameworks propose a radical re-evaluation of the
methods of production, and the re-orientation toward a waste- free system. The
steady state economy perspective also calls for the recognition of twin forces of population and
consumption growth and the need to address difficult questions in relation to moral
responsibility of humans to the natural world (Daly, 1994; Washington, 2013, 2015). Particularly important, these
frameworks critically reflect upon realistic possibilities of decoupling economic growth from
environmental degradation.¶ Translated into educational practice, this means putting an emphasis on
perspectives ranging from the so-called earth democracy (Shiva, 2005) to deep ecology, land ethics,
to animal rights and animal welfare animal rights (Gorski, 2009; Bonnett, 2012; Kopnina, 2013a, 2014a) as
well as ecologically benign models of production and consumption (e.g. McDonough and Braungart, 2002;
Webster, 2007; Huckle, 2012; Kopnina 2013c). Teaching students to distinguish between more helpful
sustainability frameworks (in terms of their ability to avoid environmental harm) includes both
plural perspective and expert instruction. In a broader sense, this type of education can foster
nothing less than a progressive transition to the world less constrained by the sustainability
challenges of its own making, and toward a different ideational and physical decentering of our
own and our students' world-view.¶ Following from this, pro-environmental education is not
advocating a closed authoritative approach as Wals and Jickling (2002) suggested, but in fact encouraging a
more meaningful type of pluralism that supports ecological justice and engages with constructive
sustainability frameworks. In this sense, pro-environmental education is compatible with democratic
education as it opens up possibilities for examining different sustainability frameworks,
supporting the main characteristics of democratic education, emancipation and criticism.¶ This
goal presents an opportunity for EE/ESD researchers and practitioners to enabling informed
action (Manteaw, 2008; Blewitt, 2015). This requires greater emphasis of teacher training in moving beyond mere recognition of
diversity of sustainability perspectives towards the emphasis on the frameworks that offer the most ecologically benign sustainability
solutions.¶
The historical and critical reflection of neoliberalism is necessary to
restore radical democracy. We must question and expose neoliberal
rhetoric in the 1AC and move towards collective movements against
corporate hegemony.
Harvey PhD, 2007 (David Harvey, Distinguished Professor of Anthropology and Geography PhD in Geography.
Researches Marxism and Capitalism. “Neoliberalism as Creative Destruction”, The ANNALS of the American
Academy of Political and Social Science published March 2007, vol. 610 no. 1 pages 42-43, Yung Jung)
Analysis also points up exploitable contradictions within the neoliberal agenda. The gap
between rhetoric (for the benefit of all) and realization (for the benefit of a small ruling class)
increases over space and time, and social movements have done much to focus on that gap. The
idea that the market is about fair competition is increasingly negated by the facts of
extraordinary monopoly, centralization, and internationalization on the part of corporate and
financial powers. The startling increase in class and regional inequalities both within states (such as China, Russia, India,
Mexico, and in Southern Africa) as well as internationally poses a serious political problem that can no longer be swept under the
rug as something transitional on the way to a perfected neoliberal world. The neoliberal emphasis upon individual rights and the
increasingly authoritarian use of state power to sustain the system become a flashpoint of contentiousness. The more
neoliberalism is recognized as a failed if not disingenuous and utopian project masking the
restoration of class power, the more it lays the basis for a resurgence of mass movements voicing
egalitarian political demands, seeking economic justice, fair trade, and greater economic
security and democratization. But it is the profoundly antidemocratic nature of neoliberalism that should surely be the
main focus of political struggle. Institutions with enormous leverage, like the Federal Reserve, are outside any democratic control.
Internationally, the lack of elementary accountability let alone democratic control over institutions such as the IMF, the WTO, and
the World Bank, to say nothing of the great private power of financial institutions, makes a mockery of any credible concern about
democratization. To bring back demands for democratic governance and for economic, political, and
cultural equality and justice is not to suggest some return to a golden past since the meanings in
each instance have to be reinvented to deal with contemporary conditions and potentialities . The
meaning of democracy in ancient Athens has little to do with the meanings we must invest it with today in circumstances as diverse
as Sao Paulo, Johannesburg, Shanghai, Manila, San Francisco, Leeds, Stockholm, and Lagos. But right across the globe, from China,
Brazil, Argentina, Taiwan, and Korea to South Africa, Iran, India, and Egypt, and beyond the struggling nations of Eastern Europe
into the heartlands of contemporary capitalism, groups and social movements are rallying to reforms
expressive of democratic values. That is a key point of many of the struggles now emerging. The
more clearly oppositional movements recognize that their central objective must be to confront
the class power that has been so effectively restored under neoliberalization, the more they will
be likely to cohere. Tearing aside the neoliberal mask and exposing its seductive rhetoric, used so
aptly to justify and legitimate the restoration of that power, has a significant role to play in
contemporary struggles. It took neoliberals many years to set up and accomplish their march through the institutions of
contemporary capitalism. We can expect no less of a struggle when pushing in the opposite direction.
Historical Reflection
Socialism
Generic
Socialism is possible and solves neoliberalism interrogated
Charles Masquelier and Matt Dawson, Sociology professors at the University of Surrey
and University of Glasgow (respectively), June 11, 2015, "Beyond capitalism and liberal
democracy: On the relevance of GDH Cole’s sociological critique and alternative," No
Publication, http://csi.sagepub.com/content/early/2015/06/10/0011392115588354.full
Cole’s remedy to the ills of capitalism assumes the form of a libertarian socialist alternative
which aims to reorganize society in such a way as to ‘afford the greatest possible opportunity for
individual and collective self-expression to all its members’ (Cole, 1980: 13). Voluntary, open,
inclusive and democratic associations are here the chosen form of social organization, for in
them individuals are thought to be in the best position to ‘agree … together upon certain
methods of procedure, and lay … down, in however rudimentary a form, rules for common
action’ (Cole, 1920: 37). The democratic and generally cooperative character of practices
flourishing within such associations are treated by Cole as ideal conditions for the development
of a ‘communal spirit’ (Cole, 1980: 46) and the elimination of the various ‘hindrances’ to selfexpression such as inequality, bureaucratic managerialism and the division of labour. Thus, by
virtue of their capacity to give full scope to horizontal decision-making processes, democratic
associations play a central part in Cole’s attempt to ‘offer the means to resolve the familiar
tensions between political power and individual development’ (Eisenberg, 1995: 5).9 This, in
fact, partly explains its appeal to political theorists as a Third Way when shorn of its anticapitalist elements.
Various additional conditions for emancipation were laid down by Cole. First, he believed that
the realization of such conditions was predicated upon ‘self-government on the smallest natural
units of control’ (Cole, 1980: 101). The close interpersonal proximity these ‘small units’ tend to
confer would facilitate the development of values of ‘cheerfulness, comradeliness, cooperativeness, consideration, kindness’ (Cole, 1950: 7). By ‘natural’ Cole meant ‘[m]en’s easiest
ways of grouping’ and, as such, refer to units such as ‘the places they live in and the places they
work in’ (Cole, 1950: 107). Both the size and locality of associations are therefore treated as
important factors by Cole, for these conditions are instrumental in shaping the spirit of
fellowship and facilitating the representation of the plurality of interests making up social life. In
a complex and differentiated neoliberal world, whereby ‘differences pile up one upon the other’
(Bauman, 1997: 13), Cole’s associations would not only provide means for the institutional
recognition of plurality, but would also serve to alleviate the ‘overwhelming sensation of
insecurity’ (Bauman, 1997: 204) accompanying it. For Cole, this reorganization of social life
could only be achieved through a reorganization of economic life.
Ecosocialism
The alternative is Ecosocialism, it’s a legitimate and feasible
alternative to capitalism
Jason Schulman, Investment manager and partner of Long Ridge Partners,4-1-2015,
"S.O.S.: Alternatives to Capitalism," Taylor & Francis,
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/07393148.2015.1022965#.
Swift’s central argument is bold and forceful: capitalism is destroying our world, witnessed
through spiraling inequality and ecological devastation. We must act, and act quickly if we are to
have a chance “of saving our sad and beautiful world” (p. 164). In order to do this we must
explore utopian alternatives. The future, Swift tells us, “will not be some bounteous utopia
where all significant human problems disappear but rather a world that builds upon our better
natures” (p. 163). Both state socialism and social democracy are dead ends; the former is far too
authoritarian and inefficient; the latter is not an actual alternative to capitalism, but merely a
softer, friendlier version thereof. Both are over-reliant on the state—a recurring “blind spot” of
the Left (p. 41)—and so both are insufficiently bottom-up and democratic. While there is no one
right answer, Swift’s sympathies lie with ecosocialism and degrowth, the key components of
which include localism, decentralized democracy, reduced working hours, socialization of
finance, and the introduction of a universal basic income.
Time for global coalitions against neoliberalism is now- large scale
resistance is crucial to avoid extinction
Ross , MA, 15
(Alexander Reid, 3-8 http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/03/06/toward-a-coalition-of-the-radical-left-in-the-us/)
It is climate change that is causing this death, just as climate change induced drought have
led to
the wars in Syria and Mali. It is killing our young; the entire planet is in grave peril. Something must be
done. But what? The political party in power in Greece is called Syriza, an acronym meaning Synaspismós Rizospastikís
Aristerás (Συνασπισμός Ριζοσπαστικής Αριστεράς) or “coalition of the radical left.” Their organization is not what one could possibly
call a conventional political party; it is more of a work of rethinking politics and its relationship to the state. They formed in 2004 as
an anti-establishment party, and surfed into power on the waves of riotous discontent incumbent on austerity programs and police
repression. Although they have found turbulent times amidst negotiations with global financial institutions, Syriza has
shown the North Atlantic the possibility of taking hegemony from the core
economic and political powers of neoliberalism. In the US, we are way behind the times.
Would it have been possible to formulate an organized political response to neoliberalism during the antiwar movement that surged
into existence during 2003? Instead, the tangled ball of anti-war sentiment unraveled in sectarian
provocations. A friend of mine who joined some anarchist black bloc protests during that era recently recalled an example that
illustrates this reality. We talked about a panel where an audience member asked, “Why did the anarchists continually co-opt the
anti-war protests?” The audience member went on to site a specific protest, to which my friend replied, “We were one of the groups
that organized that protest.” Anarchists are often attacked as the destabilizing force of left politics par excellence, yet when we
approach politics from an anarchist perspective, we see these to be misconceptions. Anarchists bled and died for the eight-hour
workday in the 1880s. The Magónista Liberal Party raised the banner of “Tierra y Libertad” (Land and Liberty) in the fight for the
Mexican Revolution in the 1910s. The anarchist-syndicalist party, the National Confederation of Labor (CNT), joined the Spanish
Popular Front during the 1930s. Anarchists played a driving role in the 1960s antiwar movement, the alter-globalization movement,
and organized the Occupy Wall Street protests. Today, the Kurdish PYD in Rojava (Syria) is motivated by the formulation of ideas
condensed through the meeting of minds between Abdullah Öcalan and libertarian municipalists Murray Bookchin and Janet Biehl.
The goals remain the same: mutual aid, solidarity, justice. There is no reason why, today, the left cannot or
should not band together to form political institutions around these tenets to confront the
current global threats of climate change and the police state. In fact, there is every reason to
perform and encourage such an act through radical new organizations. Power bases are being built already. In Seattle, City Councilor
Kshama Sawant has taken her seat under the party Socialist Alternative (SA). SA is not a conventional political party, nor is Sawant a
typical candidate. An immigrant woman of color, she is the first socialist elected to City Council in Seattle since 1877. Her forward
momentum helped carry the $15 minimum wage into effect and inspire a like-minded organization called Right to the City in
Portland, Oregon. Convening around issues of climate change and economic justice, Right to the City is one of several groups
developing out of the Occupy movement that gets a sense of purpose from articulating a transformation of the relationships between
private property and urban spaces. The group will be supporting independent candidates in the coming city council elections with
Coalitions
the platform of increasing the minimum wage, shutting down industrial polluters, and promoting free access to safer and more
diverse public institutions. The creative application of alternative networks and spaces is emerging with
a new way of thinking labor policy in the US. In the Pacific Northwest, the climate movement and labor movement
have joined together to shut down the Port of Vancouver and the Port of Longview in light of proposed fossil fuels terminals.
Climate and labor activists are currently joining on the picket lines against refineries in the
Pacific Northwest, as well. The oil train derailments are rising at breakneck speed. On Thursday, an oil
train derailed near the Mississippi River in Illinois, adding to the several other derailments already this year. Because we are all in
the blast zone, nature is in the blast zone, the environmental group Rising Tide posted an average of a blockade per month of fossil
fuel infrastructure in the Pacific Northwest for the last half of 2014, and there is more to come. Today in Pacheco, California, the
IWW is joining with union workers at the Golden Eagle refinery to protest fossil fuel expansion.
This confluence marks one of many ways that people are moving forward in defiance of
conventional politics, bringing remarkable energy toward rethinking education, food
distribution and production, energy and power. While productivity has increased, there has been a decline in
median income since 2000, and rents are rising across the country. The poverty rate for African-Americans is
nearly triple that of whites, and the environmental injustices related to real estate and
inadequate health care mean that people of color are more likely to die of cancer than white
people. The fact that more than two-thirds of African Americans live closer than thirty miles to a coal-fired power plant translates
to heart diseases, birth defects, and asthma. To enforce de facto segregation, overwhelmingly white police
departments are commissioned to disproportionately incarcerate and kill people of color. Although
data is often sketchy, USA Today disclosed that between 2006 and 2012 a white police officer shot and killed an African-American
every three and a half days. That is saying nothing of the black sites maintained by the Chicago Police Department, for example,
under the watch of the Democratic Party machine. This is nothing new, and it only scratches the surface of the
economic hardships experienced in the US. Being denied the meeting of basic needs , Native
peoples continue to be dispossessed by land grabs from Peabody Coal in Black Mesa to Resolution Copper in Oak
Flats. Latino/a farm workers are exposed to the terrible crisis of industrial farming , from chemical
fertilizers and poisonous pesticides to disproportionately low wages. With climate change-induced droughts, many will be forced to
flee the Central Valley and Central Coast area of California, perhaps heading north to the Pacific Northwest. Something will have to
compensate if a collapse in agriculture continues apace in California’s once fertile valley. According to the UN, sustainable
compensation of food production can only come from local family and community farming. We will need to reformat the coding
system and transform relations between urban and rural, farm and market in order to produce enough food for everyone—but it can
be done. The enormity of the problem is, perhaps, dispiriting, and manifests one reason left
movements spin out into sectarian and fracture—after all, one lesson of left politics is that much can be
done on a grassroots, local basis. But what if the groups organizing on a local basis joined together to form
a Coalition of the Radical Left to confront these major dilemmas on a horizontal basis ? A primary
place for such an entity to enter into existence would be the Pacific Northwest, as Portland and Seattle are both among the fastest
growing and fastest gentrifying cities with climate refugees to come in the future. This is how we rise up. It is how
we return to our reason for being on this planet in order to overcome the despair,
take and share power, and stop the die-offs. Because when you look the cyclone of famine
and drought in the eye, it looks like our own young will be the next to wash up starving on the
shores of politics if we don’t seize the moments, the opportunities to stand for our right to live
on this earth—a right that we won’t have if we don’t live up to the hard demands of liberation and dignity. In direct
opposition to the neoliberal agenda of the corporate political parties that brought
about the financial collapse, a horizon of creative, local activism can be cultivated.
This coalition, bringing together ideas of groups like Right to the City and Socialist Alternative, would have an eye
to global relations, stopping free trade agreements that have proven to make the
rich richer and the poor poorer, but it would also maintain accountability to
grassroots activity for social and ecological justice on a local level—from switching
agricultural production to a local level, as insisted upon by the UN, to transforming the daily relations
of patriarchal and racist power associated with the police state and its capitalist
agenda. The Coalition of the Radical Left, or what might be called CORAL, would be able to dispose of
the cancerous institutions of climate change and their power mongers on a regional level,
replacing the dialectics of the city with ecologically sustainable and resilient regional networks.
Through this horizontal organization emerging out of the union of Occupy and Black Lives
Matter, among other movements, the left could break down the sinister land and water politics that are
exterminating native species and exhausting aquifers, acidifying oceans and choking the skies.
We could galvanize opposition to capitalism, and generate power to be shared by
all people. Warming oceans, rising sea levels (4 inches in two years, according to recent studies on the Atlantic seaboard),
catastrophic droughts. They are destroying the complex diversity that the web of life requires to
maintain an integral balance. The coral reefs are an excellent metaphor for what is happening. Based on a diverse
amalgam of life and calcium carbonate ecosystems built by groups of animals, the coral reefs have for a long time symbolized the
dreamland of Aboriginal life. Australia’s Indigenous peoples for centuries have mapped out their knowledge of the reef’s systems
through the composition of intricate artworks and musics that translate the vitality of those systems into a lived reality. As climate
change bleaches and destroys those ecosystems, the dreamscapes of the world’s peoples are obliterated. Scientists have begun
working with Aboriginal peoples to restore the coral, because that collaboration is the only way to re-establish a sense of the place.
CORAL would have to work as a solidarity movement with Indigenous partnerships along with communities of color. Coming
together, we can rediscover how to understand and appreciate both biodiversity and human
diversity, how to live together amongst both Indigenous and migrant populations, and how to
embrace both the new and the ancient forms of reconciliation and resilience. It is not an easy
path, but integrity and respect never is. It requires self-discipline and practicing our ideas in
good faith, passing along the wisdom of life. That is how we spin the fabric of dreams into our
realities and celebrate what makes us human.
Timing is ripe for alternative economics- stranglehold of neoclassical theory is
cracking
Matthaei ,PhD Yale, 15
(Julie, has 3 cats, UM Grad, http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2015/3/the-time-for-a-new-economics-is-at-hand.html)
One of the biggest weaknesses of U.S. economists and economics these days is the inability to think
creatively. Almost all introductory economics classes taught in the United States — and core theory courses
for economics majors and PhD. students — teach a school of economic theory that historians of economic
thought call neoclassical economics (opposed to the earlier, classical economics of Adam Smith, David Ricardo and Karl Marx).
Neoclassical economists take the capitalist market economy as a given and focus on its
allocation of scarce resources among competing individuals. They build models based on assumptions
of narrowly self-interested, materialistic utility maximization by consumers and
profit maximization by firms. Sharing this foundation, their liberal and conservative camps disagree about the type and extent of government
intervention required to respond to market failures. Neoclassical economics provides a wealth of insights into capitalist market economies. The problem is that it
represents itself as economics, per se. The important insights of other forms of economics —
which tend to bemore historical, critical and visionary — are thereby banished. For example, radical and Marxist
economics, which focus on the class inequality and power, bring crucial warnings about
economic injustice and the corruption of political power by the wealthy and large corporations as well as
visions of possible superior economic systems. And feminist economics, by foregrounding
gender difference and inequality, elucidates the problems resulting from the nonpayment of
reproductive labor and the banishment of feminine caring values from the goals of capitalist
firms. These and other heterodox specialties exist in professional associations and journals, but they are almost never
mentioned, let alone represented, in core economics classes at the undergraduate or graduate level. Students who
question the narrowness of neoclassical assumptions and models are told to think like an
economist —i.e., a neoclassical economist —or else. This narrowness of perspective is
reproduced when students who were taught only neoclassical economicsbecome professorswho teach
only it. The rise of neoliberalism Thehegemony of neoclassical economics and the relative power of its left
(interventionist) and right (free market) wings have varied with the political economicclimate of the country and the
world.In the U.S. by the late 1960s, popular and student activist movements for civil rights,
labor, feminism and environmentalism had reconnected to and revitalized the Marxist theories
that had been suppressed during the McCarthy era. Students like me were drawn to economics because
of their concern with the pressing economic problems of poverty, inequality, racism, gender
inequality and environmental destruction and found that heterodox theoretical frameworks —
which foregrounded power, class inequality and the role of economic institutions and culture in reproducing
them — were more amenable to the kind of critical analysis they were looking for. In
this way, the radical social movements of the 1960s were able to gain a foothold in the economics
profession. They revived and transformed theoretical traditions more critical of capitalism
than neoclassicism. They formed an active left wing of the profession and engaged in healthy
dialogue and alliances with left-leaning, Keynesian neoclassical economists who were convinced of the necessity of
government spending to counteract unemployment and of other forms of market interventions such as anti-poverty programs, environmental regulation and anti-trust laws.
Economists played a key role in creating the climate within which President Richard Nixon proposed the
Environmental Protection Agency to Congress in 1970 and President Jimmy Carter signed the Full Employment and Balanced Growth
Act in 1978. With capitalism beset by multiple interconnected crises, the hegemony of neoliberalism
appears to have peaked. The 1980s saw what can only be described as a counterreaction, both in
the political economy and in academia. Building on the earlier work of conservative, Chicago
School economists such as Milton Friedman and funding by conservative think tanks such as the American Enterprise
Institute, new theories and fields expounding the ineffectiveness of government regulation rose to
prominence and came to be known by heterodox economists and other outsiders as neoliberalism or free market fundamentalism. Prescribing deregulation, the
weakening of the social safety net, free trade, privatization and tax cuts for the wealthy, they quickly gained political ascendancy, thanks
to President Ronald Reagan and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Neoliberalism has maintained the upper
hand in policymaking ever since, contributing directly to the 2008 financial crisis through its
disastrous undoing of post-Depression financial reforms and to the prevalence of budget-cutting austerity programs in the U.S. and Europe. As neoliberalism
gained ascendency, the center of gravity of mainstream, neoclassical economics moved
to the right. Meanwhile, discrimination against Marxists and other critics has increased. We are
ignored, ridiculed and told we’re not economists. There are very few job openings for us, mostly at liberal arts colleges
rather than at universities with PhD. programs. This is the climate within which an interesting and sobering new form
of McCarthyism occurred last spring. Six hundred liberal economists, including seven Nobel laureates,
were red-baitedbythe Employment Policy Institute, a shady think tank funded by the restaurant
industry, in a full-page New York Times advertisement because the letter they sent to President Barack Obama supporting increases in the minimum wage was also
signed by eight radical/Marxist economists (including me). New economics But now, finally, economic change is afoot. With
capitalism beset by multiple interconnected crises, the hegemony ofneoliberalism appears
to have peaked. The looming climate crisis and the power of the petroleum industry to corrupt
governments and prevent a shift to a sustainable, carbon-free path reveal the oligarchic nature
of unregulated free market capitalism. The intractable problem of poverty amid ill-gotten,
empowered wealth, which sparked Occupy Wall Street, continues to draw attention, undermining
neoclassical claims of the efficiency of labor markets. Last spring Pope Francis spoke
forcefully for the “[rejection] of the absolute autonomy of markets and financial speculation” and for structural solutions
to poverty and inequality. In January the Dalai Lama proclaimed that because of Marx’s focus on the alleviating
the gap between the rich and the poor, “as far as social-economic theory is concerned, I am still
a Marxist.”January also saw the widespread public outcry against the crippling austerity
programs usher the leftist Syriza party, with Marxist Finance Minister YanisVaroufakis, into power in Greece. The Spanish antiausterity Podemos party looks as though it will follow in Syriza’s footsteps. Change is also
bubbling in the profession.One sign is the attention given to French economist Thomas Piketty’s bestseller “Capital in the 21st Century” at the American Economics Association meeting, including a webcast session in which Harvard conservative
economist Greg Mankiw commented and Piketty responded. While Pikettyis not a Marxist, he focuses on the unequal distribution of wealth (i.e., class) and chides
mainstream economists for their “childish passion for mathematics and for purely theoretical
and often highly ideological speculation, at the expense of historical research and collaboration
with the other social sciences,” as he puts it in his book. Another sign of change is that three of the 10 most
influential economists, as ranked by The Economist, are vocal critics of
neoclassical economics, neoliberal capitalism or both: Paul Krugman (No. 2), Thomas Piketty (No. 5) and Joseph Stiglitz (No. 9). It is time
for the economics profession in the U.S. to open itself to thenew thinking that the current
systemic economic crisis requires. We don’t need to start from scratch. There is a wealth of
Marxist and heterodox ideas, Piketty’s among them, that can be drawn on to create healthy dialogue about
the blind spots of neoclassical theory and about the failings of the capitalist system
in its current form.Varoufakis has put forward a “radical pan-European green New Deal,” which includes “centralized funding for large-scale green energy
research projects with decentralized assistance to small cooperatives that create local, sustainable development in cities and rural areas.” A growing body of
solidarity economy research identifies, evaluates and advocates for existing economic practices
and institutions animated by postcapitalist values — social responsibility, cooperation, equity in
all dimensions, community and sustainability. Cooperatives of all types figure prominently as well as social entrepreneurship, the sharing
economy, the commons and economic human rights. The time for a new economics is at hand. The field must seek
out and welcome a diversity of views and engender substantive debate about economic theory
and the solutions to the crises we are facing. It’s not a moment too soon.
The alternative is to promote climate change efforts that are aware of
and actively prevent neoliberalism hijacking the movement
Parr, PhD, 2015 (Adrian Parr, Taft Research Center, UNESCO co-chair of water, Associate Professor Department of Sociology & School of Architecture and
Interior Design at The University of Cincinnati (PhD, Monash University). She happens to also be qualified in Deleuzian literature, explaining her job in the architecture school,
as Deleuze is an influence in the field. Geoforum (journal), “The Wrath of Capital: Neoliberalism and Climate Change Politics – Reflections”, 4-20-2015 (ha),
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0016718515000767)
Stoekl goes on to inquire what
kind of government, ‘elected by whom, and with what (and whose)
money’ could successfully realize a sustainable project (Stoekl, 2013: 4). His query echoes a similar question
raised by Rebecca Pearse who writes, ‘How to turn a sense of humanity’s complicity with violence of capital into political practice is
less clear.’ (Pearse, 2014: 133). Likewise Ryder W. Miller recognizes the book’s call to ‘carry on’, yet without present- ing ‘many new
options or ideas’ (Miller (2013): 1). I do outline an alternative approach to governance, recognizing that often this issue is
presented as having either a vertical orientation (State or corporate governance) or one that is
constituted as a horizontal mass movement (grassroots organization, local initiatives). I suggest a
more collaborative and equitable governance structure might emerge from a transversal
operation, whereby the horizontal and vertical dialectically engage each other.¶ Whilst I acknowledge
the importance of presenting concrete solutions that governments, people, and entrepreneurs can implement, the point I make is
that if politics remains at the level of neoliberal outcomes this presumes solutions to the problems
climate change poses are properly the province of capital accumulation. In my view, this is not a
solution it is an act of bad faith. Under such circumstances climate change politics is neutralized and
is even reduced to a mere banality, because it is stripped of its transformative potential. Solving
the climate change puzzle cannot be achieved under the rubric of neoliberalism because this
occurs at the expense of an emancipatory project. Life will never be sustain- able if the structural
violence of capital accumulation continues unchecked. This distinction is ultimately an
intellectual problem concerning understanding.¶ What I set out to do is expand the reader’s understanding of how
neoliberalism has become the standard against which all social, economic, cultural, and political responses to climate change are
measured. Solutions are constructions and currently these primarily take place within a neoliberal frame. In
my view this is lazy thinking and it has
produced a narrow, even ignorant view of what opportunity
consists of. The opportunity climate change presents is primarily valued as an instrument of
privatization, individualism, consumption, commodification, and capital accumulation. The Wrath of Capital critiques this
kind of reductive thinking explaining it arises when the practices of climate change politics are
disaggregated from gender, racism, class relations, speciesism, and sexuality. If we widen the
lens of climate change analysis to include the forces of exploitation, oppression, and inequity
then we allow deeper ontological problems to surface. Thinking about these issues within the
context of climate change discourse is a political strategy because it shifts the priorities away
from capital accumulation and onto advancing the social good.¶ All in all The Wrath of Capital identifies the
myriad ways in which climate change politics has gained traction, however, I go on to consider how the logic of
neoliberalism infects the potential political opportunity climate change presents. As
neoliberalism enters the arenas of climate change discourse, policy, debate, and solutions – economic growth,
population growth, food and water scarcity, spectacle – the transformative political opportunity is hollowed
out. So yes, I do end with a desperate plea announcing all roads currently lead us through the gates of
capitalist heaven. However, this is only true if our politics ignores the emancipatory promise of
political change and continues on its current neoliberal trajectory. Under this schema the opportunity in
question merely constructs passive subjectivities that are circumscribed by the inevitability of a neoliberal future. I maintain this is
only inevitable as long as the neoliberal inscription of all spaces for all times remain closed to critique.¶
The alternative is the inclusion of worker’s groups in the discussion of
surveillance
Selwyn , PhD, 14
(Ben, http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/12/10/neoliberalism-is-alive-and-well/)
because economic growth rates since the introduction of neoliberal policies onwards have
been lower, unemployment higher, and economic crises more prevalent than they were before, many
However,
Warming
Workers
Overhaul
conclude that it represents a failed economic model. But if neoliberalism is so crisis ridden
and such an ineffective system of economic management, why is it still with us? Why should intelligent individuals in
banks, in state treasuries, throughout governments and across the media, continue supporting an obviously defective
system?The critics of neoliberalism have a hard time answering this question. They assume that if only policy-makers
would see sense, they would change course.The problem for these commentators is that their
economic analysis takes as its starting point the national economy, rather than class
relations. From this vantage pointstate economic policy should be about generating economic
growth and spreading it as widely as possible across the national population. Can it be said that neoliberalism is a success? And why are
commentators
crises and austerity policies part of this success? One clue was provided by Andy Haldane, chief economist at the Bank of England, in a speech in early October 2014 where he
noted how real wages in the UK are around 10% lower than in 2007. In his film Inequality for All, Robert Reich, who was Bill Clinton’s labour secretary between 1993 and 1997,
documents the collapse of US wages over the last four decades. In the late 1970s the typical male US worker was earning $48,000 a year (inflation adjusted). By 2010, the
average wage had fallen to $33,000 a year. Over the same period the average annual income of someone in the top 1% of US society rose from $390,000 to $1,100,000.
Neoliberal policies aim to reduce wages to the bare minimum and to maximize the returns to
capital and management. They also aim to demobilise workers’ organisationsand reduce workers
to carriers of labour power — a commodity to be bought and sold on the market for its lowest price.
Neoliberalism is about re-shaping society so that there is no input by workers’
organisations into democratic or economic decision-making. Crises and austerity may
not be intentionally sought by most state leaders and central bank governors, but they do contribute
significantly towards pursuing such ends. Consequently, these politicians and leaders of the economy do not
strive to put in place new structures or policies that will reduce the recurrence of crisis.
Economic recessions and crises push firms to ‘rationalise’ their costs, through sacking workers
and reducing their wages. They raise unemployment and increase competition between workers for increasing scarce work. They push trade
unions to accept, and sometimes even bargain for pay cuts to protect their members’ jobs. They
provide government’s with the rationale to make ‘tough choices’ about cutting back on welfare.
This in turn increases worker’s dependency upon wages, as opposed to benefits, to meet their
basic requirements. In 2013 Lord Young, then David Cameron’s economic advisor on enterprise, let slip the benefits of economic crisis for businesses: “… a
recession can be an excellent time to start a business…. Factors of production such as premises and labour can be cheaper and higher quality, meaning that return on investment
The rising levels of inequality associated
with neoliberal policies are often decried by critics as weakening social ties and generating social
conflict. But this is exactly what neoliberal policies are designed to do — to break apart
social organisations such as trade unions, transform worker’s into individuals at the mercy of
firms’ hiring and firing strategies, and transfer resources from workers to owners and managers
of capital. In this regard neoliberalism uses crisis and austerity to great effect. There is one downside for proponents of
neoliberal policies however. Because they generate socio-economic crisis they erode public confidence in
politics and economic policy. It is here that progressive political organisations can
highlight the class basis of neoliberalism and propose a realistic alternative that
favours the majority of the world’s population, not the minorityu
can be greater.” Young was forced to resign from his advisory position, but was then quietly reinstated.
Aff
2AC Worthy
The world is getting better despite pessimism- less crime, war,
genocide and more ingenuity
Wyne, MA contributing analyst at Wikistrat and a Global Fellow at PS21, 2015 (Ali, “The World Is Becoming Safer, Wealthier and
Healthier”, Huffington Post, March 16, 2015, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ali-wyne/the-world-is-becoming-saf_b_6878664.html)
There are plenty of reasons to despair about the state of the world: ISIL's depredations in the Middle East, Boko Haram's atrocities
in Nigeria, and Russia's slow-drip incursion into Ukraine are just a few. These phenomena are more distressing when one considers
that they're occurring against the backdrop of an eroding postwar order. Contrary to the oftheard refrain, though, that the world is becoming more dangerous -- or, according to some observers, has never been more dangerous -- it
has actually never been safer. Steven Pinker and Andrew Mack recently documented the declines in
global rates of homicide, violence against women, genocide, and war, among other
categories. We're also becoming more prosperous. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, real global GDP more
than tripled between 1970 and 2010, and real global GDP per capita nearly doubled. Last month the
Economist reported that the percent of the world's population living in "abject poverty" fell from
36 in 1990 to 18 in 2010 (translating to about 900 million people who escaped that
condition). Finally, we're living longer, better lives. The University of Washington's
Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation found that "global life expectancy increased by 5.8
years for men and 6.6 years for women" between 1990 and 2013. According to the United Nations, moreover, the
mortality rate for children under five fell from 90 per thousand births to 46 during that same
period, while the percent of the world's population that is "clinically malnourished" fell more than seven points. It's no accident the world is becoming
safer, wealthier and healthier: there are extraordinary people around the world who're trying to
make it better. Too often, though, their names remain unknown; their contributions, unacknowledged. "What's Working" is a crucial platform for spotlighting them. When the news of the day
feels overwhelming, I take comfort in three facts. First, the ingenuity of our minds has always scaled with the
magnitude of our calling. There's no reason to believe it won't continue doing so. Second, we're
pushing forward the frontiers of possibility every second, far more rapidly than we can comprehend. Before coming to MIT, I believed certain
problems were simply too hard for human beings to address. In retrospect, though, my skepticism simply reflected my failure of imagination. I now assume that once a problem has been identified, folks will
eventually solve it or find a way to manage it. The tipping point for me came six years ago, when MIT News ran an article discussing a new project Professor Angela Belcher and a few of her colleagues had
MIT researchers have shown they can genetically engineer viruses to build
both the positively and negatively charged ends of a lithium-ion battery." If we can figure out
how to make batteries from viruses -- I never imagined I'd see those two words in the same sentence, and I still can't get my head around the idea -- what
can't we do? Third, no matter what problem keeps you up at night, there are brilliant,
passionate people around the world who're working on it. You may not hear about them amid the daily barrage of depressing headlines, but
they're easy to find if you want to find them. Among the extraordinary individuals I've met, spoken to over e-mail, or reconnected with in recent months: Ruzwana Bashir, the cofounder and CEO of Peek,
who's using her own experience of sexual abuse to help other victims find their voices; Pardis Sabeti, a professor of
organismic and evolutionary biology at Harvard, who's developing treatments to fight Ebola; Donald Sadoway, a professor of materials chemistry at
MIT, whose work on liquid-metal batteries could revolutionize electricity storage; Shiza Shahid, the cofounder
of the Malala Fund, who's working to give young women around the world a chance at an education; and Wes
Moore, author of The Other Wes Moore and The Work, who cofounded BridgeEdU to help at-risk youth in Baltimore graduate from college. There's an enormous amount of
work to be done -- slowing the course of climate change, feeding a growing
population and resettling tens of millions of refugees, to name but a few challenges -- but
dwelling on everything that's wrong and fretting about everything that could go wrong won't help. Let's spend less time lamenting the state of the
world and more time supporting those who're making it better.
undertaken. "For the first time," it explained, "
Capitalist solutions to environmental problems are more feasible
than the alternative- ignore negative doom and gloom
Shireman , Eco activist and CEO Future 500, 2-19-15
(Bill, http://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2015/feb/19/realistic-optimists-postcarbon-economy-nature-environment-business)
When it comes to stories about the fate of the earth, headlines are usually dominated by tales of
gloom and doom. And there’s certainly a great deal to be depressed about: global temperatures hit their highest levels ever last
year, oceans are growing so warm and acidic that fisheries could be lost, and food and water systems are in decline. A big reason for
focusing on the negative is that bad news tends to drive action. According to research by my organization, sustainable
business nonprofit Future 500, negative
messages typically yield two and a half times as much
fundraising and five times as much media attention as positive ones. But as effective as the doom-andgloom storyline is, there’s another important environmental narrative that’s waiting to be told.
Following the work of environmental pioneers like William McDonough, Paul Hawken, Amory Lovins and other eco-designers, it’s
clear that there’s an audience – and a desperate need – for a new generation of realistic optimists to help us
envision a genuinely prosperous post-carbon economy. There is much to be optimistic about. In
its 2013 report The 3% Solution, wildlife nonprofit World Wildlife Fund says that the key challenge facing developed countries
is the need to reduce carbon emissions by roughly 3% a year. The McKinsey Global Institute says that’s
not only doable, but it’s exactly what the economy needs to grow sustainably and
overcome its economic deficits. Specifically, it says, the US needs to squeeze a third more value out of the energy
it uses in the next decade, and improve that efficiency by 3% a year or more thereafter, to avoid painful economic and environmental
consequences. The quest for that 3% solution may prove challenging, but it will also open up a wide
range of business opportunities. Here are some of the biggest potential opportunities and the companies trying to tap
them: Creating living farms, oceans and forests The industrial agriculture system treats land like a machine. It’s based
on the assumption that, if farmers feed the earth the right fuel and keep out contaminants, the engine will run smoothly and
generate massive agricultural output. That can be true, but nature offers a much more productive and sustainable model: life.
Farms, forests and oceans have the capacity to create more value than they consume, something that
machines can’t do. What’s more, they’re inherently sustainable. One
step that large-scale agriculture could take
towards adopting the nature-based model would be to shift to carbon-reducing agriculture. Fertile
soil is a complex system with millions of carbon-sequestering microorganisms per square inch. Tilling, a common agricultural
practice, burns fuel, releases poisonous exhaust gasses and strips the soil. The standard solution – pumping in pesticides, herbicides
and nitrogen – only adds to the problem by contaminating groundwater and polluting oceans with runoff. Studies have shown that
more natural soil amendments, like compost, manure and charcoal products, like those produced by the Biochar Company, can
reduce atmospheric carbon and keep soils highly productive. In terms of water usage, treatment alternatives
developed by companies like Algae Systems purify water at low cost, while generating carbonnegative fuels and fertilizers that are chemically identical to petroleum-based products. On the
retail end, Whole Foods is driving mainstream consumer demand for approaches like these. At
the same time, organic, slow and local food movements are also continuing to gain momentum. For
further-reaching substantive change, however, major food companies and manufacturers will need to get involved in order to make
any broader systemic changes mainstream. The sustainable seafood movement could offer a useful model
for businesses and activists looking to change the agriculture system. Increasingly, careful fisheries
management and the support of retailers like Walmart and Safeway are making sustainable seafood more commonplace. At the
same time, groups like Environmental Defense Fund are continuing to push the needle forward. Admittedly, the aquaculture battle
is still raging and oceans are still in crisis. Carbon emissions are making them warmer, more acidic and less productive, and resource
competition is driving fishing well beyond sustainable yields. So how can a living agriculture approach further benefit the seas?
One way is to end the race for fish through “catch shares,” a market based system that sets aside
a secure share of fish for individual fishermen, communities or fishing associations. Forestry is
another industry that could potentially offer a useful agricultural model. On the market end,
brands like Nestle and Staples are helping to shift the market towards more sustainable forest
practices. In this case, too, the problem is far from over, and activist groups are continuing to ramp up pressure on customers of
companies like April and a host of other palm oil and paper producers. The “zero deforestation” effort, championed by Greenpeace
and others, has driven attention and engagement to a critical international issue. Prosperity, not consumption, by design Another
business opportunity lies in the shift from excessive consumption to impressive design. Traditional business models are
moored in consumption. The industrial economy, for example, propelled consumption by
accelerating the speed of extraction. Natural systems, on the other hand, develop value through
efficient, smart design. AT&T, Advanced Micro Devices and Cisco are already putting this lesson
to work, bringing productivity leaps to the non-digital economy. The internet of things is
connecting computing devices and the Internet in factories, farms, buildings and homes. To put this in context, while industrial
companies find it difficult to achieve 25% productivity gains, AMD expects a 2,500% gain in energy productivity for its computer
processors by 2020. New technologies are also following nature’s lead when it comes to design. Rather than following the
traditional model of extracting complex raw materials from the earth, AMD is producing
microchips and solar cells that take plentiful raw materials like silica and inscribe on them a
value-creating design, building value up. That’s why – as Future 500 has documented – innovations in microchips,
telecommunications, and the Internet often yield productivity gains of 1000% or more. If producers and consumers can use these
innovations wisely – admittedly, a big “if” – it will be possible for the economy to harness nature’s value-creating strategy. The
sharing economy is another step forward. When digital technologies come into contact with consumptive industrial-era practices,
the result can be positively disruptive. How many fewer hotels, rental cars, and taxis do we need, now that
AirBNB, Zipcar and Uber enable consumers to share what they already have? Putting a price on
carbon The third strategy also applies a core principle of nature: feedback and adaptation. While
Congress delays on overarching federal climate policy, hundreds of companies are acting on
their own, supporting an internal carbon price that drives down energy costs and carbon
emissions simultaneously. Carbon taxes in British Columbia and Sweden, for example,
outperform regulations and emission trading systems combined. Critics argue that a carbon tax can’t
happen broadly, but environmental groups have more carbon-pricing allies than they think. Even oil company ExxonMobil, a major
carbon producer, is a genuine supporter – a fact that many simply can’t comprehend. But Exxon Mobil’s data tells it that,
in the long term, it’s smart policy to insure that carbon pays its way. Adopting a carbon tax shift
is one systemic way to put a price on an atmospherically dangerous byproduct. And while the
quest for that 3% solution will be difficult, it will open up a wide range of opportunities as well.
So let’s begin to think outside the standard gloom-and-doom mentality to make
systemic, positive environmental changes that benefit multiple interests. When we do, we
might very well discover that the technological, corporate, and political support
needed to save the planet is well within our reach.
Pragmatic action o/w radical critique- timeframe
Wolfenstein, Phd and Psychoanalyst, 00 (Eugene, Inside/Outside Nietzsche: Psychoanalytic Explorations)
As to the matter of political aims, we have no choice but to live with the disjunction between the potential for realizing the project of human emancipation and
the recognition that this potential is not going to be realized any time soon . In the foreseeable future, we are
not going to be able to go beyond capitalism. We cannot hope for the emergence of a
society in which the free development of each individual is a condition for the free development
of all. Capitalism is a system of structurally determined inequality; its normal and necessary operations preclude genuine social democracy. This is the sobering premise of
contemporary enmancipatory politics. Yet from its inception, capitalism has combined emnancipatory and
oppressive tendencies. We must resist the temptation of one-dimensionalizing it one way or the other. Putting
the point pragmatically, we can hope and work for the realization of progressive policy aims so long as these
do not (unduly?) inhibit the process of capital accumulation or threaten the power relationships that maintain them. This
defines a substantial field for political action, one in which outcomes are contingent and not determinable in advance. It is an
abnegation of political responsibility not to take advantage of these potentialities, even if
social injustices and metabolic imbalances cannot be altogether eliminated . To carry the argument a hit further, the realization of
progressive political aims depends on collective action, ultimately at national or even international levels. Local action, vital as it may be, just is
not enough. We--critical theorists-must be prepared for a war on two fronts: against the
hegemonic power of capitalist ruling classes, on the one side, and against sometimes diffuse, sometimes
organizationally embodied, ur-fascistic tendencies, on the other. The fissiparous tendency in leftist politics, sometimes
celebrated in postmodern discourse, puts us at a terrible strategic and tactical disadvantage. The dangers of a dissent-stiffling leftist hegemony, although not a mere phantasy,
are far less pressing than the risks of selffragmentation and political incoherence. In this regard, the more things change, the more they stay the same: resistance politics must be
both dialectically self-unifying and perspectivally self-differentiating. (235-6)
They have made their alternative artificially negative to avoid
permutations- this ruins its potential to be transformative
Sayer, PhD, 95
(Andrew, Radical
Political Economy: A Critique)
SAYER Reader in Political Economy @ Lancaster ’95 Radical Political Economy: A Critique p. 236-237
It should he abundantly clear that the more or less implicit belief of critical social sciences, such as radical political
economy, that contradictions and dilemmas could be successively eliminated without creating new ones,
is untenable: it is a modernist myth. There are always going to be trade-offs, though not necessarily zero-sum
Andrew
games, and gloomy though this may sound, we stand more chance of success being aware of this than we do imagining that they don't exist. But there is a further problem with
critical social science's confident view of emancipation. This
is its assumption that emancipation comes about solely or largely
through removal of obstacles - be they illusions held by people which help perpetuate oppressive social practices, relations of domination or material
deprivation. Apparently, once we have eliminated these and people can relate to one another freely and as equals, people will be emancipated. There are several
problems with this. Firstly, as we saw in the analysis of markets, good and bad features of social practices
may be interdependent rather than separable. Secondly, it is a peculiarly lopsided view of the good society
which only considers it in terms of freedom from obstacles and ignores the question of
responsibilities, or even renders responsibilities in wholly negative terms as inevitably, rather than contingently, oppressive. In this respect, critical social science is
ironically complicit in one of the most fundamental problems of modern society - the concept of emancipation as- escape from responsibilities. The more
libertarian philosophies, with their celebration of the free, unencumbered, implicitly male
individual tend to imply this. Marxism emphasizes and applauds the social individual, but its silence regarding responsibilities and norms, coupled with the
popular negative associations of responsibilities as burdens, means that it fails to oppose the notion of emancipation as freedom from responsibility for others. Of course, there
are good grounds for the negative associations. Talk of responsibilities should arouse suspicion: whose responsibilities do we mean? Support for the idea of responsibilities is
often associated with conservative discourse, as a covert way of endorsing the currently unequal distribution of responsibilities, especially in relation to gender. But the
acceptance of the concept of responsibilities does not have to have this conservative subtext, in fact it is a precondition for removing the inequalities relating to responsibilities.
Respoisibilities can't he eliminated without inducing social breakdown and they wont he borne more equally until
they are taken seriously as a subject of moral and political discourse. Thirdly, as a generalization of this last problem, critical social science gives the
impression of the good society as a space cleared of illusions and oppressive relations, in which
individuals or groups will naturally find liberation. This implicit view of emancipation is ironically reminiscent
of the libertarian concept of negative freedom, i.e. as freedom from interference from others or from the state. But a
positive conception of the social good is also needed. Even if the obstacles and relations of
domination were removed there are many different forms which an alternative society could
take, and there is little incentive for changing from our present society if we have no idea what
an alternative society could be like. Moreover, in the event of the removal of existing oppressive relations and practices, specific structures and
mechanisms are likely to be needed to prevent the re-emergence of various tyrannies and injustices. The removal of domination, illusions,
obstacles and problems is not enough; alternative frameworks are needed. In Hahermas's ideal speech situation,
social relations are characterized by undistorted communication, power is equalized and the only force is the force of the better argument (Habermas, 1972). Aside from the
problem of deciding what constitutes the latter, this still supports the image of the good society as an empty space in which people collectively and freely negotiate a just social
as if such a situation would be proof against tyranny. The naivety of this reminds one of the
graffiti: 'Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth - provided that's alriglit with
everyone else.' Instead of addressing the inevitable opacity and crosspurposes of a catallaxy, and the advantages of impersonal social coordination via markets, it
order,
gives the impression that society - presumably an advanced one - could and should be made transparent and subject to ex ante control (Holton and Turner, 1989, p. 6). While
Habermas criticizes Marxism's reduction of action to labour and its disregard of communicative interaction, he implicitly endorses its modernist, constructivist project of
making the social world a product of design. (236-7)
Reject their lens of neoliberalism. Starting with “neoliberalism”
encourages fake radicalism, oversimplification, and greater levels of
cooptation than positive and pragmatic politics.
-Ad hoc policies of neoliberalism also originate from Leftist movements for greater autonomy
-Sustainability politics also emerged during this time, but the neolib K ignores those and lumps
them all together
-Ignores positive action that doesn’t conform to a romantic view of rebellion (i.e. the plan)
Clive BARNETT Faculty of the Social Sciences @ Open University (UK) ‘5 [“The
Consolations of ‘Neoliberalism’” Geoforum 36 (1) p. Science Direct]
3. There is no such thing as neoliberalism! The blind-spot in theories of neoliberalism—whether neo-Marxist and
Foucauldian—comes with trying to account for how top-down initiatives ‘take’ in everyday
situations. So perhaps the best thing to do is to stop thinking of “neoliberalism” as a
coherent “hegemonic” project altogether. For all its apparent critical force, the vocabulary
of “neoliberalism” and “neoliberalization” in fact provides a double consolation for leftist academics: it
supplies us with plentiful opportunities for unveiling the real workings of hegemonic ideologies
in a characteristic gesture of revelation; and in so doing, it invites us to align our own professional roles with
the activities of various actors “out there”, who are always framed as engaging in
resistance or contestation. The conceptualization of “neoliberalism” as a “hegemonic” project does not need refining by adding
a splash of Foucault. Perhaps we should try to do without the concept of “neoliberalism” altogether, because it might actually
compound rather than aid in the task of figuring out how the world works and how it changes. One reason for this is that ,
between an overly economistic derivation of political economy and an overly statist rendition of
governmentality, stories about “neoliberalism” manage to reduce the understanding of social
relations to a residual effect of hegemonic projects and/or governmental programmes of rule (see
Clarke, 2004a). Stories about “neoliberalism” pay little attention to the pro-active role of sociocultural processes in provoking changes in modes of governance, policy, and regulation. Consider the example
of the restructuring of public services such as health care, education, and criminal justice in the UK over the last two or three
decades. This can easily be thought of in terms of a “hegemonic” project of “neoliberalization”, and certainly one dimension of this
process has been a form of anti-statism that has rhetorically contrasted market provision against the rigidities of the state. But in
fact these ongoing changes in the terms of public-policy debate involve a combination of different
factors that add up to a much more dispersed populist reorientation in policy, politics, and
culture. These factors include changing consumer expectations, involving shifts in expectations towards public entitlements which
follow from the generalization of consumerism; the decline of deference, involving shifts in conventions and hierarchies of taste,
trust, access, and expertise; and the refusals of the subordinated, referring to the emergence of anti-paternalist attitudes found in,
for example, women’s health movements or anti-psychiatry movements. They include also the development of the politics of
difference, involving the emergence of discourses of institutional discrimination based on gender, sexuality, race, and disability. This
has disrupted the ways in which welfare agencies think about inequality, helping to generate the emergence of contested inequalities,
in which policies aimed at addressing inequalities of class and income develop an ever more expansive dynamic of expectation that
public services should address other kinds of inequality as well (see Clarke, 2004b J. Clark, Dissolving the public realm? The logics
and limits of neo-liberalism, Journal of Social Policy 33 (2004), pp. 27–48.Clarke, 2004b). None of these populist tendencies is
simply an expression of a singular “hegemonic” project of “neoliberalization”. They are effects of much longer rhythms of sociocultural change that emanate from the bottom-up. It seems just as plausible to suppose that what we have come to
recognise as “hegemonic neoliberalism” is a muddled set of ad hoc, opportunistic
accommodations to these unstable dynamics of social change as it is to think of it as the outcome of highly
coherent political-ideological projects. Processes of privatization, market liberalization, and deregulation have often followed an ironic pattern in so far as they have been triggered by
citizens’ movements arguing from the left of the political spectrum against the
rigidities of statist forms of social policy and welfare provision in the name of greater
autonomy, equality, and participation (e.g. Horwitz, 1989). The political re-alignments of the last
three or four decades cannot therefore be adequately understood in terms of a straightforward
shift from the left to the right, from values of collectivism to values of individualism, or as a re-
imposition of class power. The emergence and generalization of this populist ethos has much longer, deeper, and wider roots than
those ascribed to “hegemonic neoliberalism”. And it also points towards the extent to which easily the most widely resonant political
rationality in the world today is not right-wing market liberalism at all, but is, rather, the polyvalent discourse of “democracy” (see
Barnett and Low, 2004). Recent theories of “neoliberalism” have retreated from the appreciation of the
long-term rhythms of socio-cultural change, which Stuart Hall once developed in his influential account of
Thatcherism as a variant of authoritarian populism. Instead, they favour elite-focused analyses of state
bureaucracies, policy networks, and the like. One consequence of the residualization of the social is that theories of
“neoliberalism” have great difficulty accounting for, or indeed even in recognizing, new forms of
“individualized collective-action” (Marchetti, 2003) that have emerged in tandem with the apparent
ascendancy of “neoliberal hegemony”: environmental politics and the politics of
sustainability; new forms of consumer activism oriented by an ethics of assistance and global solidarity;
the identity politics of sexuality related to demands for changes in modes of health care provision, and so on (see Norris,
2002). All of these might be thought of as variants of what we might want to call bottom-up governmentality. This refers to the
notion that non-state and non-corporate actors are also engaged in trying to govern various fields of activity, both by acting on the
conduct and contexts of ordinary everyday life, but also by acting on the conduct of state and corporate actors as well. Rose (1999,
pp. 281–284) hints at the outlines of such an analysis, at the very end of his paradigmatic account of governmentality, but
investigation of this phenomenon is poorly developed at present. Instead, the trouble-free amalgamation of
Foucault’s ideas into the Marxist narrative of “neoliberalism” sets up a simplistic image of the
world divided between the forces of hegemony and the spirits of subversion (see Sedgwick, 2003, pp.
11–12). And clinging to this image only makes it all the more difficult to acknowledge
the possibility of positive political action that does not conform to a romanticized
picture of rebellion, contestation, or protest against domination (see Touraine, 2001). Theories of “neoliberalism” are
unable to recognize the emergence of new and innovative forms of individualized collective action because their critical imagination
turns on a simple evaluative opposition between individualism and collectivism, the private and the public. The radical
academic discourse of “neoliberalism” frames the relationship between collective action and
individualism simplistically as an opposition between the good and the bad. In confirming a
narrow account of liberalism, understood primarily as an economic doctrine of free markets and
individual choice, there is a peculiar convergence between the radical academic left and the
right-wing interpretation of liberal thought exemplified by Hayekian conservatism. By obliterating the political
origins of modern liberalism—understood as answering the problem of how to live freely in societies divided by interminable
conflicts of value, interest, and faith—the discourse of “neoliberalism” reiterates a longer problem for
radical academic theory of being unable to account for its own normative priorities in a
compelling way. And by denigrating the value of individualism as just an ideological ploy by the
right, the pejorative vocabulary of “neoliberalism” invites us to take solace in an image of
collective decision-making as a practically and normatively unproblematic procedure. The recurrent
problem for theories of “neoliberalism” and “neoliberalization” is their two-dimensional view of both political power and of
geographical space. They can only account for the relationship between top-down initiatives and bottom-up developments by
recourse to the language of centres, peripheries, diffusion, and contingent realizations; and by displacing the conceptualization of
social relations with a flurry of implied subject-effects. The turn to an overly systematized theory of
governmentality, derived from Foucault, only compounds the theoretical limitations of
economistic conceptualizations of “neoliberalism”. The task for social theory today remains a quite classical one,
namely to try to specify “the recurrent causal processes that govern the intersections between abstract, centrally promoted plans and
social life on the small scale” (Tilly, 2003, p. 345). Neither neoliberalism-as-hegemony nor neoliberalism-as-governmentality is
really able to help in this task, not least because both invest in a deeply embedded picture of subject-formation as a process of
“getting-at” ordinary people in order to make them believe in things against their best interests. With respect to the problem of
accounting for how “hegemonic” projects of “neoliberalism” win wider consensual legitimacy, Foucault’s ideas on governmentality
seem to promise an account of how people come to acquire what Ivison (1997) calls the “freedom to be formed and normed”. Over
time, Foucault’s own work moved steadily away from an emphasis on the forming-and-norming end of this formulation towards an
emphasis on the freedom end. This shift was itself a reflection of the realization that the circularities of poststructuralist theories of
subjectivity can only be broken by developing an account of the active receptivity of people to being directed. But, in the last
instance, neither the story of neoliberalism-as-hegemony or of neoliberalism-as-governmentality can account for the forms of
receptivity, pro-activity, and generativity that might help to explain how the rhythms of the everyday are able to produce effects on
macro-scale processes, and vice versa. So, rather than finding convenient synergies between what are already closely related
theoretical traditions, perhaps it is better to keep open those tiresome debates about the degree of coherence between them, at the
same time as trying to broaden the horizons of our theoretical curiosity a little more widely.
Critics of capitalism use deficient scholarship- their offense is
epistemologically flawed
Carden, 4 – graduate student in economics at Washington University in St. Louis
(Art, June, The Free Market, The Mises Institute Monthly, "Mistaken Identity," vol. 24, no. 6,
www.mises.org/freemarket_detail.asp?control=497&sortorder=articledate)
It is always the fashion among many intellectuals to blame society’s ills on the free market. One college
newspaper recently argued that the market is "The God That Sucked." The course summaries in my university’s catalog, the themes
of the lecture series, and the editorial content of the student newspapers suggest that many students and faculty would agree.
Popular contempt for the market is distressing. Few
institutions are so universally reviled, and perhaps fewer
universally misunderstood. This misunderstanding can be dangerous: the
radicals who protest so vehemently against the workings of the free market rarely understand
that they advocate strangling the goose that lays the golden eggs. To borrow from Robert Frost,
we should consider how the heavens go before we try to change the world. In other words, we must consider what is
before we talk about what ought to be. Many disagreements have their genesis in misunderstanding and equivocation.
institutions are so
So let’s define the term "free market." Dictionary.com defines a "market" as "an opportunity to buy or sell" and a "free market" as
"an economic market in which supply and demand are not regulated or are regulated with only minor restrictions." "Free markets"
and "capitalism" are practically synonymous, and George Reisman defines capitalism eloquently: "Capitalism is a social system
based on private ownership of the means of production. It is characterized by the pursuit of material self-interest under freedom and
it rests on a foundation of the cultural influence of reason. Based on its foundations and essential nature, capitalism is further
characterized by saving and capital accumulation, exchange and money, financial self-interest and the profit motive, the freedoms of
economic competition and economic inequality, the price system, economic progress, and a harmony of the material self-interests of
all the individuals who participate in it." Thus, we can define a "free market" as a social system based on the voluntary exchange of
property rights. And yet the "free market" is almost universally reviled within the academy. Many popular criticisms of the market
are so common as to warrant the charge of cliché (critics of capitalism might say "axiom"). They can be distilled into a few broad
propositions, which we consider here. They are: the
market is antisocial; the market tramples human rights;
the market is the enemy of the environment; and the market is the weapon of the rich against the poor. Let’s
consider each in turn. One of the more popular myths about the market economy is that it necessarily entails a
Hobbesian "war of all against all," a man-eat-man world in which we all compete in a zero-sum scramble for resources.
A recent op-ed in the Washington University Student Life posited that the "apocryphal idea of [the market’s] reality . . . may
lead the entire species to self destruction." That’s scary stuff. It follows, then, that the market must be warlike:
But conflict and war
are the very antithesis of free-market principles. The essence of market exchange is
cooperation: two parties exchange goods and services, and both are enriched as a result. You pay Wal-Mart for a necktie. Walif resources are finite and everyone lives to consume, conflict—and war—must be the natural result.
Mart buys the necktie from the manufacturer. The manufacturer pays for the labor and capital necessary to produce the necktie.
Everybody wins. The reader should also note that people never start wars of subjugation to extend the
voluntary exchange of goods and services. In fact, many wars occur for fundamentally
anticapitalist reasons: namely, trade disputes. We would do well to consider the wisdom of Frédéric Bastiat, who noted
that when goods don’t cross borders, armies will. Another popular criticism of the free market is that it tramples
human rights. Slavery, racism, sexism, and "sweatshops" are the children of capitalism ; therefore, the
market economy should be overthrown post haste. First, slavery is anti-market by definition: free markets are
guided by the principle of voluntarism. Second, racism and sexism are difficult to sustain in
competitive markets: no matter how much a certain employer hates blacks, women, Jews, homosexuals, etc.,
consumers are rarely willing to pay the price premium that would be necessary to
allow them to indulge their taste for discrimination. The market has been profoundly benevolent to
even the most oppressed minorities. In his masterful Competition and Coercion: Blacks in the American Economy 1865–1914,
Robert Higgs chronicled the spectacular gains the sons and daughters of slaves made when they were allowed to participate in the
market economy. Third, we have to ask two questions when we consider the plight of "sweatshop" laborers. First, why are working
conditions so wretched? Second, what are these workers’ next best alternatives? Working
conditions in the third world
are wretched precisely because many third-world countries have only recently begun to adopt
the institutions that characterize the market economies of the west. Workers’ next best alternatives are
often appalling: many children leave lives of crime, prostitution, and starvation to work in sweatshops. If we close the
sweatshops, they will likely return to crime, prostitution, and starvation. It is also popular to
charge that the market is the enemy of the environment. This is also untrue; environmental degradation
occurs when property rights are poorly specified or enforced. If anyone or anything has failed in this respect,
it is the state. There is ample evidence for this in former communist countries: many lakes
and streams in the former Soviet Union are so polluted as to be unusable. The market economy is also
accused of being the ultimate weapon of rich against poor. Capitalist "meritocracy" is responsible for widespread poverty,
rampant inequality, and Big Business’ choke-hold on the world. While these challenges to capitalist institutions make for
intriguing rhetoric, they are also false. Today’s poor countries were poor long before modern
liberal market economies developed in Europe and North America; therefore, we cannot blame
capitalism for poverty. Many critics also point to the unequal distribution of wealth in the United States as evidence of
capitalism’s evils, but this overlooks two crucial points. The first is income mobility: someone born into poverty in the US stands a
very good chance of moving up in the world. Second, while the distribution of money incomes is relatively unequal, the distribution
of access to goods of similar technological composition has narrowed considerably. For most of world history, the difference between
rich and poor was the difference between who ate and who starved. In today’s market econ-omies, the difference between the superrich and the poor is the difference between who drives a Dodge Viper and who drives an ‘87 Chevy Cavalier. The reader should note
that the
power of "big business" is overstated. A unique feature of capitalism is that the greatest
rewards go to those who cater to the common man. Consider Wal-Mart, a favorite whipping boy among left-wing
intellectuals: Wal-Mart’s clientele consists almost exclusively of the middle- and lower-class. Capitalism generates fantastic wealth,
and the benefits accrue almost entirely to the least of these among us. Ludwig von Mises put it succinctly in a series of lectures
which were published posthumously as Economic Policy: Thoughts for Today and Tomorrow. He notes that "this is the fundamental
principle of capitalism as it exists today in all those countries in which there is a highly developed system of mass production: Big
business . . . produces almost exclusively to satisfy the wants of the masses." The "power relationship" of which Marxists are so fond
is precisely the opposite of that which is most often supposed: consumers, not producers, are the masters of the dance. Nonetheless,
enemies of the market argue that the only reason people put up with market economies is because they are forced to. The evidence of
twentieth-century immigration doesn’t support the hypothesis. Thousands died trying to cross into free West Germany and South
Korea, and there was very little traffic in the opposite direction. Similarly, thousands of Cubans have risked life and limb to come to
America. Few—if any—have braved the ocean on a homemade raft to seek a better way of life in Cuba. Finally, it
is deficient
scholarship to merely point out the litany of crimes that the market (supposedly) commits and
suggest that it has "failed" in any meaningful way. One must propose a superior
alternative. In this case, both theory and history are firmly on the side of the free market. Mises
and Hayek demonstrated that rational calculation is impossible without private ownership of the means of
production. This isn’t to say that a "socialist economy" is inefficient—it is quite literally an
oxymoron. Our experience with radical revolutions and planned economies in the twentieth
century is hardly encouraging: in the name of "the people," Che Guevara killed thousands, Hitler
millions, Stalin and Mao tens of millions. It may be fashionable to blame the market economy for
all of society’s ills, but this blame is undeserved and many scholars’ faith in alternatives to the
market is misplaced. No socialist regime has ever held a free election, and no free market has
ever produced a death camp. Popular academic opinions to the contrary, the market works.
And we can take that to the bank.
Market systems are sustainable – institutions and freedoms allow
cultural reforms
Strain 14, resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute (Michael R., “Responsible Politics Can Cure Capitalism’s Ills”,
New York Times, March 30, 2014, http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2014/03/30/was-marx-right/responsible-politics-cancure-capitalisms-ills)
Though it is not hard to see why Marx believed that the free enterprise system required the
exploitation of workers, it is hard to see why anyone would believe that today. In 1970, 26.8 percent
of the world's population lived on less than one dollar per day. In 2006, only 5.4 percent did —
an 80 percent drop in this extreme poverty measure in less than four decades. What economic
system was responsible for this accomplishment? It wasn't "from each according to his ability, to each according to
his needs." It was free enterprise. Far from exploiting workers, free enterprise
liberated them from deep poverty. Marx was a brilliant thinker and writer, but economists
who have meticulously studied his writings easily find its flaws. An obvious one is central to his theory,
that the value of an object is determined by the labor required to produce it. This is obviously false: I
could spend hundreds of hours writing a song; Bruce Springsteen could write one in 15 minutes
worth far more than mine. Q.E.D. But as devastatingly wrong as Marx was about the most important questions he tried to
tackle (see also: "Union, Soviet"), Marx was right about quite a bit. There is an inherent instability in capitalism —
cycles of boom and bust lead to human misery. Capitalism does create income and wealth
inequality. Our tough times now heighten our sensitivity to asymmetries, making Marx's observations particularly poignant.
Wages are stagnant, while corporate profits are high. Millions knock on doors looking for jobs
with no success, while the economy's superstars take home seven-figure salaries. Political candidates
debate the marginal tax rate on the highest earners while ignoring the unemployed. But these problems don't
mean capitalism will inevitably unravel, as Marx thought. First, many of today's problems are
temporary results of the Great Recession. And on a deeper level, Marx erred significantly in believing that social
relations and social institutions are founded upon economics. We are not slaves to changes in the way
goods and services are produced and exchanged. Likewise, the flipside of communism is
mistaken: The economy is not a holy, untouchable, object. In fact, both Marxism and pure laissezfaire elevate the economy above its proper station, ignoring the ability (Marxism) and the duty (laissez-faire) of
culture, and through it politics, to soften the rough edges of the free enterprise system. The social safety net for the truly
needy is the example of how culture and politics can correct the excesses of the free enterprise
system. We let the free enterprise system create wealth and give people the freedom
to pursue their dreams and to flourish, while letting culture direct the fruits of the
market to proper social ends. Finding the right balance is the hard work of
responsible politics.
Markets solves the environment – developing countries are the most
polluting by self-checks and technology will be able to solve the
impact
Bailey, award-winning science correspondent, 10-31 (Ronald, “Is Capitalism
Environmentally Unsustainable?”, Reason, Oct 31, 2014,
http://reason.com/archives/2014/10/31/is-capitalismunsustainable?n_play=54547667e4b0dcc26e7944fe)
Human activity is remaking the face of the Earth: transforming and polluting the landscape, warming the
atmosphere and oceans, and causing species to go extinct. The orthodox view among ecologists is that human liberty—
more specifically economic activity and free markets—is to blame. For example, the prominent biologistactivists Paul and Anne Ehrlich of Stanford University recently argued in a British science journal that the environmental problems
we face are driven by "overpopulation, overconsumption of natural resources and the use of unnecessarily environmentally
damaging technologies and socio-economic-political arrangements to service Homo sapiens' aggregate consumption." The Ehrlichs
urge the "reduction of the worship of 'free' markets that infests the discipline" of economics. But the notion that economic
activity and free markets are antithetical to the flourishing of the natural world is complicated
by the fact that the countries with the biggest environmental problems today, and the least means and
apparent interest in addressing them, are not the liberalized ones with advanced capitalist
economies but the ones with weak or nonexistent democracies and still-developing
economies. So is it really the case that liberty and the environment are simply opposed? Does the good of one come only at
the expense of the other? Or can liberty and a flourishing natural environment reinforce one another, the good of one encouraging
the good of the other? Can economic activity under a system of liberty be environmentally sustainable in the long run? ... Many of
these academics—though not all—acknowledge that market economies on the whole have greatly
improved the lot of humanity over the past few centuries, leading to better standards of living,
higher levels of education, and more civil and political rights. But they argue that the system of liberty
produces accumulating externalities that will eventually drive civilization to self-destruction. Either human beings start
restructuring civilization soon, the Ehrlichs warn, or "nature will restructure civilization for us." The Lockean response to these
academics' worries is that free-market capitalism is as much about growing inward as outward —about
learning to derive progressively more value from a finite supply of natural resources, so that we need
not consume ever more of those resources. On this understanding, there need be no contradiction between meeting human material
needs and preserving a large portion of the natural environment. So we have two broad views of the sustainability of
the system of liberty, and they could hardly be more opposed: one of steady growth and selfreinforcing gains in the efficient use of natural resources, and one in which this growth may be maintained for a
deceptively bountiful period of human history before it collapses in on itself. ... We can now begin to see the shape of
an answer to our initial question of whether liberty and the natural environment must necessarily be opposed. In
early stages of modern economic development, as liberty is unleashed in open-access orders, people
convert relatively plentiful but unproductive nature into more productive but
relatively scarcer human labor—that is, higher population—and manufactured
capital. In those early stages, liberty and the environment function as what economists call
"substitute goods," with more liberty resulting in less demand for the environment in its
natural state. In such societies, fertility rates remain high and environmental amenities and quality continue to deteriorate.
But at later stages of economic development, human and manufactured capital become so
effective, thanks especially to technological progress, that the environment can be returned to
a more natural state. And since such societies are more prosperous, they can better afford the
costs of environmental regulations, even inefficient ones. ... Free markets are the most
robust mechanism ever devised by humanity for delivering rapid feedback on how decisions
turn out. Profits and losses discipline people to learn quickly from and fix their
mistakes. By contrast, top-down bureaucratization tends to stall innovation and to make it more
difficult for people and societies to adapt rapidly to changing conditions, economic and
ecological. Centrally planned economies fail; centrally planning the world's ecology will fail
as well. Our aim must be to find ways for liberty and the environment to flourish together, not
to sacrifice one in the vain hope of protecting the other.
Inequality– Market systems are the most ethical – creations of
opportunity and freedom prove
Wolf 03 Masters in Economics @ Oxford, a British journalist, widely considered to be one of the world’s most influential writers on economics.
He is the associate editor and chief economics commentator at the Financial Times [Martin, “The Morality of the Market”, Foreign Policy, Sept 1, 2003,
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2003/09/01/the_morality_of_the_market%5D///WNM
A sophisticated market economy works better than any other economic arrangement that has
ever existed. After two centuries of unprecedented economic advance, and especially since the collapse of the Soviet Union and China’s
transition to capitalism, it is hard to argue anything else. Yet the victory of the market model is detested almost everywhere. Critics grudgingly concede
that capitalism may work better than any plausible alternative, but they insist it remains a wicked system, one that rewards immoral behavior — greed,
ruthlessness, and indifference to the fate of others — and produces immoral outcomes, namely widening inequality. This view is most stridently
expressed by the anti-globalization left. But a similar, if more subtle, critique has emerged among economists themselves, some of whom even decry
capitalism as inherently inhumane and in need of a “human face.” It is easy to agree that a market economy requires a supporting system of laws and
regulations. It is also easy to accept the desirability of government-sponsored programs of social welfare, provided these are kept within manageable
bounds. But the
claim that the market economy is immoral is nonsense. The market economy rests
on and encourages valuable moral qualities; provides unprecedented opportunities for people to
engage in altruistic activities; underpins individual freedom and democracy; and has created
societies that are, in all significant respects, less unequal than the traditional hierarchies that
preceded them. In short, capitalism is the most inherently just economic system that humankind
has ever devised. It is true that market economies neither create, nor reward, saints. But consider the virtuous behavior
that capitalism fosters: trustworthiness, reliability, individual initiative, civility, self-reliance,
and self-restraint. These qualities are, critics correctly note, placed in the service of self-interest. Since people are, with few exceptions, selfinterested, that should be neither surprising nor shocking. Yet people are also not completely self-interested. Prosperous
market economies generate a vast number of attractive opportunities for those who are not
motivated by wealth alone. People can seek employment with non-governmental organizations or charities. They can work in the public
sector, as doctors, teachers, or police officers. They can teach the iniquities of capitalism in schools and universities. Those who make a great deal of
money can use it for any purpose they wish. They can give it away, for example. Quite a few have. In
the advanced market
economies, people care deeply about eliminating pain and injustice and ensuring the welfare of
fellow humans and, more recently, animals. This concern exists because a rich, liberal society places enormous emphasis on
the health and well-being of the individual. Life is no longer nasty, brutish, and short; rather, it is gentle, kind, and long, and more precious than before.
The savage punishments and casual indignities of two centuries ago are no longer acceptable to
civilized people. Nor are slavery and serfdom, both of which were rendered obsolete and
immoral under the capitalist system. Militarists, extreme nationalists, communists, and fascists
— the anti-liberals — brought these horrors back, if only temporarily. And it is no accident that
the creeds that brought them back were fiercely anti-individualistic and anti-market. Yet another
example of changed sensibilities is environmentalism. The environmental catastrophes caused by supposedly
benevolent state socialist economies are well documented. The market economy has largely
avoided such disasters. That is because prosperous people tend to care more about the
environment in which they live than those who are condemned to squalor. Moreover, only liberal democracy makes it
possible for concerns about the environment to be routinely aired and addressed. It affords
environmentalists the right to pursue their agendas and to raise money in support of their goals. It segregates the public and private sectors, which
enables government to regulate business. And because
information is widely disseminated in a free society,
companies must adhere to environmental standards if they hope to maintain their reputations.
Branding Dissent One of the more insidious charges now leveled against the market economy is that it undermines individual liberty and subverts
democracy. In her book No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies, acclaimed anti-globalization campaigner Naomi Klein lapses into paranoia and
delusion when she writes of “corporate space as a fascist state where we all salute the logo and have little opportunity for criticism because our
newspapers, television stations, Internet servers, streets and retail spaces are all controlled by multinational corporate interests.” In reality, a
competitive market economy is a necessary condition for democracy. The bedrock of a market economy is, as the 17th-century philosopher John Locke
argued, the right of individuals to own and use property freely, subject to reasonable legal constraints. In turn, the right to own and use property freely
gave rise to ideas about political liberty and the rule of law. Secure property rights require stable, durable governments interested in the long-term
health of their countries. As the late economist Mancur Olson observed, “The only societies where individual rights to property and contract are
confidently expected to last across generations are the securely democratic societies.” But sustained democracy requires the rule of law: The system can
only endure if those in power accept free speech and political competition and abide by the results of elections. The
rule of law came
about as a means of facilitating commerce; in this sense, capitalism provides the basis for
democracy, not vice versa. A planned economy, by contrast, will always go hand-in-hand with
tyranny. Vaclav Havel, erstwhile dissident and later president of the Czech Republic, has pointed out that a government that
controls the economy will inevitably also control the civic life of a nation. True, some countries have proved
the reverse: They have market economies but not democracy nor civil and human rights. But even if all nations with market economies are not (yet)
democratic, all democracies have market economies. As the distinguished Hungarian economist Janos Kornai notes, “There has been no country with a
democratic political sphere, past or present, whose economy has not been dominated by private ownership and market coordination.” The market
supports democracy in another way — through growth. When per capita output rises, a society’s condition can be described as “positive sum” — every
person in that society can become better off. This outcome makes politics relatively easy to manage. In a static society, however, a “zero-sum” condition
prevails: If anyone is to receive more, someone else must receive less. It is a safe bet that if environmentalists imposed a zero-economic growth agenda
on a country, that country would swiftly become authoritarian. And far from stifling democracy, as Klein and her cohorts contend, the market economy
manufactures political dissent with unparalleled efficiency. As the Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter argued in Capitalism, Socialism, and
Democracy, liberal democracies are the only societies that create their own opposition. Only in a market economy would the wealthy give large sums of
money to universities, despite the contempt that many professors and students express for capitalism and the affluent. Only
in a market
economy could books and newspaper articles condemning the rich and powerful be published
and promoted with such success. Indeed, for all her jeremiads against capitalism,
multinationals, and global brands, Klein appears to have done quite well by the market
economy. Under no other system could her book have become such an international sensation.
Her complaints about media conglomeration ring somewhat hollow considering what a media darling she has become. It could even be said that No
Logo is now a brand of its own. The market economy does not merely support its critics; it embraces them. The Great Leveler Inequality is considered
the scourge of capitalism. Yes, the rewards in market economies are far from equally distributed. However, all complex societies with elaborate
divisions of labor are unequal. Those countries with market economies are not only the least unequal, but the inequality they generate is the least
harmful. In agrarian kingdoms and feudal societies, kings and lords could seize at will the labor, possessions, and even the lives of subjects, serfs, and
slaves. Perhaps the most unequal societies of all were the state-socialist and national-socialist regimes of the 20th century. When, on a whim, Chinese
leader Mao Zedong initiated the Great Leap Forward in the late 1950s, some 20 million people died. The irony is that such tyranny was justified by the
alleged depredations of capitalism. To eliminate market-driven inequality, all power was concentrated in the hands of the state; the result was an
infinitely more unjust distribution of wealth that benefited those who controlled the economy. It is fashionable now to claim that the market economy
has produced staggering global inequality. Disparity in the global distribution of household incomes did increase progressively from the early 19th
century to around 1965. But this trend must be properly understood. The
proportion of the world’s population living on
the margins of subsistence — that is, on an income of $1 per day — has actually decreased from more than 80
percent in 1820 to around 20 percent today, despite a roughly six-fold increase in world
population. Moreover, the rise in global inequality was not caused by increased inequality within
countries but increased inequality among them. This gap reflects the success of those countries
that embraced capitalism and the failure of those that did not. Likewise, the reduction in global
inequality that has apparently occurred in the past two decades reflects the successful
introduction of dynamic market economies in China and, to a lesser extent, in India. In all that matters-the ability to
define one’s aspirations and to enjoy the full rights and protections of citizenship-modern liberal democracies are uniquely equal. Wealthy people have
more influence in a democracy than the working class. But compared to the power wielded by the affluent in traditional, hierarchical societies, the
influence of today’s wealthy is tightly circumscribed. No millionaire or corporation can flout the law, as a number of scoundrels discovered in 2002.
Even Microsoft’s Bill Gates, the world’s wealthiest person according to Forbes, discovered he could not ignore the low-paid lawyers of the Department
of Justice when they went after Microsoft’s monopolistic abuses. In a competitive market economy subject to the rule of law, Gates can support
politicians but not coerce them; cajole customers but not compel them; and control the destiny of his company but not the lives of the people he
employs. Gates is neither a tyrant nor an overlord. He is simply a citizen, entrepreneur, investor, and philanthropist. The liberal market economy is
morally imperfect, not least because it reflects the tastes, desires, and motivations of imperfect human beings. A market economy satisfies the desires of
the majority more than the tastes of a refined minority. It rewards the hustler more than the sage. It rests on the power of self-interest more than
universal benevolence. The relentless tirades against capitalism come from dreamers who compare it with an ideal system that has never existed and
from intellectuals who resent their modest status in a society where wealth and prestige are gained by satisfying the wants of ordinary people. It is not
the market that is immoral but the sloppy and self-indulgent arguments and attitudes of its critics.
Markets solves war – promotes interdependence which creates
market signaling which de-esclates war and makes it costly
Dafoe, Assistant Professor in Political Science @ Yale, and Kelsey, Research
Associate in International Economics @ Berkeley, 2014 (Allan and Nina, “Observing the
capitalist peace: Examining market-mediated signaling and other mechanisms”, Journal of
Peace Research 2014, 1–15)
Countries with liberal political and economic systems rarely use military force against each
other. This anomalous peace has been most prominently attributed to the ‘democratic peace’ – the
apparent tendency for democratic countries to avoid militarized conflict with each other (Maoz & Russett, 1993; Ray, 1995; Dafoe,
Oneal & Russett, 2013).More recently, however, scholars have proposed that the liberal peace could be partly
(Russett & Oneal, 2001) or primarily (Gartzke, 2007; but see Dafoe, 2011) attributed
to liberal economic
factors, such as commercial and financial interdependence. In particular, Erik Gartzke, Quan Li
& Charles Boehmer (2001), henceforth referred to as GLB, have demonstrated that measures of capital openness have
a substantial and statistically significant association with peaceful dyadic relations.
Gartzke (2007) confirms that this association is robust to a large variety of model specifications. To
explain this correlation, GLB propose that countries with open capital markets are more able to credibly signal
their resolve through the bearing of greater economic costs prior to the outbreak of
militarized conflict. This explanation is novel and plausible, and resonates with the rationalist view of asymmetric
information as a cause of conflict (Fearon, 1995). Moreover, it implies clear testable predictions on evidential domains different from
those examined by GLB. In this article we exploit this opportunity by constructing a confirmatory test of
GLB’s theory of market-mediated signaling. We first develop an innovative quantitative
case selection technique to identify crucial cases where the mechanism of market-mediated
signaling should be most easily observed. Specifically, we employ quantitative data and the statistical models used to
support the theory we are probing to create an impartial and transparentmeans of selecting cases in which the theory – as specified
by the theory’s creators –makes its most confident predictions.We implement three different case selection rules to select cases that
optimize on two criteria: (1) maximizing the inferential leverage of our cases, and (2) minimizing selection bias. We examine these
cases for a necessary implication of market-mediated signaling: that key participants drew a connection between conflictual events
and adverse market movements. Such an inference is a necessary step in the process by which market-mediated costs can signal
resolve. For evidence of this we examine news media, government documents, memoirs, historical works, and other sources. We
additionally examine other sources, such as market data, for evidence that economic costs were caused by escalatory events. Based
on this analysis, we assess the evidence for GLB’s theory of market mediated costly signaling. Our article then considers a more
complex heterogeneous effects version of market-mediated signaling in which unspecified scope conditions are required for the
mechanism to operate. Our design has the feature of selecting cases in which scope conditions are most likely to be absent. This
allows us to perform an exploratory analysis of these cases, looking for possible scope conditions. We also consider alternative
potential mechanisms. Our cases are reviewed in more detail in the online appendix.1 To summarize our results, our
confirmatory test finds that while market-mediated signaling may be operative in the
most serious disputes, it was largely absent in the less serious disputes that
characterize most of the sample of militarized interstate disputes (MIDs). This suggests either that
other mechanisms account for the correlation between capital openness and peace, or that the
scope conditions for market-mediated signaling are restrictive. Of the signals that we observed,
strategicmarket-mediated signals were relatively more important than automatic
market-mediated signals in the most serious conflicts. We identify a number of potential scope
conditions, such as that (1) the conflict must be driven by bargaining failure arising from uncertainty
and (2) the economic costs need to escalate gradually and need to be substantial, but less than
the expected military costs of conflict. Finally, there were a number of other explanations that seemed present in the
cases we examined and could account for the capitalist peace: capital openness is associated with greater
anticipated economic costs of conflict; capital openness leads third parties to have a
greater stake in the conflict and therefore be more willing to intervene; a dyadic acceptance of the status
quo could promote both peace and capital openness; and countries seeking to institutionalize a regional peace might instrumentally
harness the pacifying effects of liberal markets. The correlation: Open capital markets and peace The empirical puzzle at the core of
this article is the significant and robust correlation noted by GLB between high levels of capital openness in both members of a dyad
and the infrequent incidence of militarized interstate disputes (MIDs) and wars between the members of this dyad (Gartzke, Li &
Boehmer, 2001). The index of capital openness (CAPOPEN) is intended to capture the ‘difficulty states face in seeking to impose
restrictions on capital flows (the degree of lost policy autonomy due to globalization)’ (Gartzke & Li, 2003: 575). CAPOPEN is
constructed from data drawn from the widely used IMF’s Annual Reports on Exchange Arrangements and Exchange Controls; it is a
combination of eight binary variables that measure different types of government restrictions on capital and currency flow (Gartzke,
Li & Boehmer, 2001: 407). The measure of CAPOPEN starts in 1966 and is defined for many countries (increasingly more over
time). Most of the countries that do not have a measure of CAPOPEN are communist.2 GLB implement this variable in a dyadic
framework by creating a new variable, CAPOPENL, which is the smaller of the two dyadic values of CAPOPEN. This
operationalization is sometimes referred to as the ‘weak-link’ specification since the functional form is consonant with a model of
war in which the ‘weakest link’ in a dyad determines the probability of war. CAPOPENL has a negative monotonic association with
the incidence of MIDs, fatal MIDs, and wars (see Figure 1).3 The strength of the estimated empirical association between peace and
CAPOPENL, using a modified version of the dataset and model from Gartzke (2007), is comparable to that between peace and,
respectively, joint democracy, log of distance, or the GDP of a contiguous dyad (Gartzke, 2007: 179; Gartzke, Li & Boehmer, 2001:
412). In summary, CAPOPENL seems to be an important and robust correlate of peace. The question of why specifically this
correlation exists, however, remains to be answered. The mechanism: Market-mediated signaling? Gartzke, Li & Boehmer (2001)
argue that the classic liberal account for the pacific effect of economic interdependence – that interdependence increases the
expected costs of war – is not consistent with the bargaining theory of war (see also Morrow, 1999). GLB argue that ‘conventional
descriptions of interdependence see war as less likely because states face additional opportunity costs for fighting. The problem with
such an account is that it ignores incentives to capitalize on an opponent’s reticence to fight’ (Gartzke, Li & Boehmer, 2001: 400.)4
Instead, GLB (see also Gartzke, 2003; Gartzke & Li, 2003) argue that financial interdependence could promote
peace by facilitating the sending of costly signals. As the probability of militarized conflict
increases, states incur a variety of automatic and strategically imposed economic costs as a
consequence of escalation toward conflict. Those states that persist in a dispute despite these
costs will reveal their willingness to tolerate them, and hence signal resolve. The greater the
degree of economic interdependence, the more a resolved country could demonstrate its
willingness to suffer costs ex ante to militarized conflict. Gartzke, Li & Boehmer’s mechanism implies a
commonly perceived costly signal before militarized conflict breaks out or escalates: if market-mediated signaling is to account for
the correlation between CAPOPENL and the absence of MIDs, then visible market-mediated costs should occur prior to or during
periods of real or potential conflict (Gartzke, Li & Boehmer, 2001). Thus, the proposed mechanism should leave many visible
footprints in the historical record. This theory predicts that these visible signals must arise in any
escalating conflict, involving countries with high capital openness, in which this mechanism is
operative Clarifying the signaling mechanism Gartzke, Li & Boehmer’s signaling mechanism is mostly conceptualized on an
abstract, game-theoretic level (Gartzke, Li & Boehmer, 2001). In order to elucidate the types of observations that could inform this
theory’s validity, we discuss with greater specificity the possible ways in which such signaling might occur. A conceptual
classification of costly signals The term signaling connotes an intentional communicative act by
one party directed towards another. Because the term signaling thus suggests a willful act, and a signal of
resolve is only credible if it is costly, scholars have sometimes concluded that states
involved in bargaining under incomplete information could advance their interests by imposing
costs on themselves and thereby signaling their resolve (e.g. Lektzian & Sprecher, 2007). However, the gametheoretic concept of signaling refers more generally to any situation in which an actor’s behavior reveals information about her
private information. In fact, states frequently adopt sanctions with low costs to themselves and high
costs to their rivals because doing so is often a rational bargaining tactic on other grounds: they
are trying to coerce their rival to concede the issue. Bargaining encounters of this type can be
conceptualized as a type of war-of-attrition game in which each actor attempts to coerce the
other through the imposition of escalating costs. Such encounters also provide the
opportunity for signaling: when states resist the costs imposed by their rivals, they ‘signal’
their resolve. If at some point one party perceives the conflict to have become too costly and steps back, that party ‘signals’ a
lack of resolve. Thus, this kind of signaling arises as a by-product of another’s coercive attempts. In other
words, costly signals come in two forms: self-inflicted (information about a leader arising from a leader’s intentional or incidental
infliction of costs on himself) or imposed (information about a leader that arises from a leader’s response to a rival’s imposition of
costs). Additionally, costs may arise as an automatic byproduct of escalation towards military conflict
or may be a tool of statecraft that is strategically employed during a conflict. The automatic mechanism
stipulates that as the probability of conflict increases, various economic assets will lose value due to the
risk of conflict and investor flight. However, the occurrence of these costs may also be intentional outcomes of
specific escalatory decisions of the states, as in the case of deliberate sanctions; in this case they are strategic. Finally, at a
practical level, we identify three different potential kinds of economic costs of militarized
conflict that may be mediated by open capital markets: capital costs from political risk, monetary
coercion, and business sanctions. T
Framework
Debate Good—Political Deliberation
Political criticism is key to paradigm shifts
Bunker Masters 11 – Masters at the Department of Communication University of Utah (“THE THEORY AND
PRACTICE OF DELIBERATIVE CRITICISM: RHETORIC, DIGITAL ARCHIVES, NEW MEDIA, AND PUBLIC POLICY
DELIBERATION”, 08/2011, http://www.jamescbunker.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/JamesCBunkerDissertationFinal-7-1520111.pdf)//Vinaik
The ability for critics to engage in politically motivated criticism is the result of a paradigm shift
in rhetorical studies. Starting in the 1970s, critics questioned the legitimacy of confining rhetorical
critique to traditional approaches like Neo- Aristotelianism. Debates emerged in the field that explored
both the objective nature of criticism, as well as what constituted proper rhetorical criticism. This
section explores those debates and their significance for critics interested in political criticism. It also places those debates in context
and discusses how they provided the foundation for the ideological turn in rhetorical studies and politically active types of criticism.
The ideological turn’s historical foundation rests in the Forbes Hill/Kathryn Kohrs Campbell debate (1972) over the analysis of
Nixon’s Vietnam address of 1969 and extended to include the appropriateness of modes for rhetorical criticism.4 Nixon’s speech
raised three theoretical questions important for the emergence of ideological criticism and thus provided the foundation for
expanding rhetoric’s focus beyond Neo- Aristotelian approaches. First, could critics appreciate the way in which a
rhetor adapted his message to a target audience, while at the same time ignoring other audiences?
Second, is the critic warranted in excluding moral judgments about the speaker or excluding issues that raise the question of
morality when producing criticism? Finally, were critics warranted in not addressing the truth of a discourse or set of discourses as
an aspect of critique? Forbes Hill, in his defense of Neo-Aristotelianism, replied yes to all three questions, believing that
critics should focus on the means by which a rhetor developed a text and not concern themselves with its ends or results. Kathryn
Kohrs Campbell argued the opposite, that rhetoric needed to: expand its notion of audience past
target audiences; broaden rhetorical analysis to encompass other perspectives beyond NeoAristotelianism; and include issues of morality and truth within the legitimate scope of the rhetorical
critic. The Hill/Campbell debate represented the changing nature of rhetorical studies, and complemented the argument for the
plurality of methods advocated by Edwin Black and others at the time.5 The theoretical issues raised by Hill and Campbell were
expanded upon by other rhetoricians, forever changing the role of the critic and politicizing the act of criticism. Debates over
objectivity, for instance, opened up new doors for politically motivated forms of criticism and
reconceptualized the role of the critic in rhetorical studies. Philip Wander and Steven Jenkins
challenged the idea that critique, as historically conceived by rhetoricians, was objective.6 The two critics
challenged Neo- Aristotelian textual orthodoxy and raised questions about what constituted good criticism; issues that scholars
would expand upon a decade later. The significance of their argument for political criticism is that, like Campbell, they challenged
the validity of value neutral criticism. Wander and Jenkins advocated that criticism should expand past confining limitations of texts
as conceived by Neo-Aristotelians and believed that the “ultimate test of criticism is not whether it is true or false, but whether it is
adequate or inadequate, useful or useless, misleading or helpful for you or us.”7 In other words, the primary driver of
criticism was whether it provided a practical benefit and whether it had the opportunity to both
educate and inform its audience. In this sense, they argued, criticism is political and “at its best, is
informed talk about matters of importance.”8 Critically informed talk about the pressing political
issues of the day represented a paradigm shift from the belief that criticism could be value
neutral. It signified not only that critics were political, but that it was also within their scope to
engage and comment on public policy.
Deliberative criticism is critical to civic engagement and activism
Bunker Masters 11 – Masters at the Department of Communication University of Utah (“THE THEORY AND
PRACTICE OF DELIBERATIVE CRITICISM: RHETORIC, DIGITAL ARCHIVES, NEW MEDIA, AND PUBLIC POLICY
DELIBERATION”, 08/2011, http://www.jamescbunker.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/JamesCBunkerDissertationFinal-7-1520111.pdf)//Vinaik
This purpose of this dissertation is to provide critics with an answer to the information quality deficit
dilemma that impedes civic discourse. Political deliberation in the wake of September 11 demonstrates the severity of
this purpose. The theory of deliberative criticism proposed in this dissertation provides a theoretical
foundation for critics interested in facilitating the credibility of public policy for a
public audience. It arises from the rich tradition of democratic political theory and its vital
relationship to civic discourse. Deliberative criticism responds to a disciplinary need
for rhetorical critics to provide theoretical and methodological frameworks that
can be incorporated by other disciplines interested in political deliberation. By
rehabilitating the activist turn in rhetorical theory, it also affirms
the importance of history and its immediate
relevance to contemporary political policy. Developing a method for engaging digital archives is the proposed
solution to the problem of how academics can respond to the information quality deficit dilemma. Reincorporating the deliberative
function of the archive through an exploration of new media technologies provides critics with the opportunity to achieve
involvement, influence, and immediacy within civic discourse. Deliberative criticism of digital archives and its
application of thematic analysis, rhetorical contextualization, and precautions for determining source credibility achieve this
purpose. Enacting deliberative criticism as an analytical tool for engaging digital archives improves the credibility of
information made available in public policy deliberation. The dissertation’s case study focuses on the U.S.-
Afghan policy debate, which is the biggest foreign policy problem that President Obama’s 2009-2012 administration faces, to show
the application and effectiveness of deliberative criticism. It illustrates this point, while also illustrating how the deliberative
criticism of U.S. foreign policy knowledge construction can be used to identify and discuss
political arguments and textual silences the American public needs to be aware of in 2011’s present
and most pressing military engagement. This example of deliberative criticism provides the reader with an up-to-date
credible policy analysis regarding U.S.-Afghan policy, as well as the historical factors that provided the impetus for U.S. involvement.
Academic deliberation and criticism provides a framework that
influences public policy
Bunker Masters 11 – Masters at the Department of Communication University of Utah (“THE THEORY AND
PRACTICE OF DELIBERATIVE CRITICISM: RHETORIC, DIGITAL ARCHIVES, NEW MEDIA, AND PUBLIC POLICY
DELIBERATION”, 08/2011, http://www.jamescbunker.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/JamesCBunkerDissertationFinal-7-1520111.pdf)//Vinaik
Critics can respond to the information quality deficit dilemma in civic discourse by becoming
more involved in public deliberation. Critics, by virtue of their expertise, have the ability to facilitate
public understanding of political issues, as well as influence future public policy. Scholars in
political science and science studies refer to this process as the policy turn and it provides the opportunity
to bring both knowledge and expertise into the public decision-making process.1 This
democratization of scholarly expertise requires that new methodological and theoretical
frameworks be developed to help the public decipher the nuances of public policy discourse and
how it might impact them now and in the future. 2 The theory of deliberative criticism proposed in
this chapter responds to this call, connecting deliberation, democratic political theory, public policy
studies, and rhetorical criticism by providing a theoretical framework to facilitate public
understanding of policy. Specifically, it provides an answer for how critics can enter into the arena
and aid the public in comprehension of complex political debates. Politically motivated criticism
has a strong history in rhetorical studies.3 Deliberative criticism grows out of that tradition and its connection to
public policy studies. To establish deliberative criticism as a legitimate mode of rhetorical critique, this chapter proceeds in four
steps. First, it examines the ideological turn’s influence on rhetorical studies and the critique of value-neutral criticism by exploring
several different versions of political criticism and the debates over rhetoric’s material consequences. Second, it explores the
theoretical and methodological issues that face scholars whose interests’ rest in the relationship between rhetoric and public policy,
particularly the need to connect rhetorical approaches to public policy with scholars interested in political deliberation from other
disciplines. Third, this chapter explores why Aristotle’s theory of civic discourse and deliberative democracy
provide a wealth of information for scholars interested in critiquing public policy, due to their
emphasis on political deliberation. Finally, it introduces a theoretical framework based on democratic
political theory for scholars interested in engaging in deliberative criticism.
Policy analysis and criticism is key to deliberative democracy and
decisionmaking
Bunker Masters 11 – Masters at the Department of Communication University of Utah (“THE THEORY AND
PRACTICE OF DELIBERATIVE CRITICISM: RHETORIC, DIGITAL ARCHIVES, NEW MEDIA, AND PUBLIC POLICY
DELIBERATION”, 08/2011, http://www.jamescbunker.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/JamesCBunkerDissertationFinal-7-1520111.pdf)//Vinaik
The study and analysis of public policy is an integral part of political criticism within rhetorical
studies. Public policy as an academic endeavor broadly construed concerns itself with the end
result of political policy, the decision-making process, and the analysis of governmental
decisions. Due to its emphasis on deliberation, rhetorical critics interested in deliberative democracy have
increasingly turned their attention to public policy because of its focus on matters of political
importance. Fontana Benedetto, Cary Nederman, and Gary Remer referred to this as deliberative
democracy’s rhetorical turn.48 The significance of this turn from a discursive standpoint is that it
recognized “the centrality of rhetoric to the processes of deliberative democracy” a claim that
rhetoricians interested in public policy are well aware of.49 A 2010 special issue in Rhetoric and Public Affairs explored the
theoretical implications of the rhetorical turn for public policy studies. Specifically, these scholars focused on the
relationship between rhetoric and public policy, the place of rhetoric in the policy domain, and the rhetorical study
of policy. Contributors were asked to respond to two questions: (1) What is the role of rhetoric in policymaking; and
(2) How should rhetorical scholars approach public policy? Several themes emerged that warrant discussion due
to their relationship to political criticism, as well as the development of a deliberative criticism theory. These critics
articulated the importance of studying public policy from a rhetorical perspective, the role of
debate, the critic’s role in this process, and several theoretical and methodological concerns that
need to be addressed within future rhetorical approaches to public policy studies . 50 One benefit
of a rhetorical approach to public policy is that it connects the critic’s expertise with the public’s
desire to receive quality information. Trevor Parry-Giles believed that the rhetorical analysis of public
policy provided the public with both a more advanced “deliberative arsenal” but also “frees
citizens from the burden of extensive public-policy knowledge and expertise.”51 The public, from
this perspective, has the advantage of receiving critically evaluated policy decisions without having to
labor through elaborate technocratic arguments common to think-tanks and scholars of public policy.
Rhetorical criticism of public policy discourse therefore not only provides a public service, it also provides the
foundation for critics to communicate their expertise on important political topics to improve
the quality of deliberation. The study of public policy requires critics to become familiar with and
readdress the traditional topics of war and peace. Political topics or topoi are the resting place of
the texts that critics choose to access, define, and analyze. Therefore, their familiarity is crucial to
public policy studies from a rhetorical perspective. G. Thomas Goodnight summarized Aristotle’s topics, outlined
their implications, and showed where to find them in public policy discourse.52 Accessible in historical documents and collective
memory, topoi are embedded in the practices of expert advisors, elected officials, and publics. Advocates work to (1)
justify policy from a politically supportable standpoint; (2) assess material limitations to
intelligence, planning, tactics, and strategy, (3) compare the present range of threats, duties, and
opportunities as similar to those past or emergent and novel, and (4) find the means of public
translation of doctrinal, technical, historic, and strategic discourses internal to think-tanks,
public institutions, and other specialized communities.53 Goodnight recognized that for the critics to
understand the rhetorical implications of policy, they must first locate where political debate takes place, the actors and advocates
involved, and the strategies employed to justify them. Debate is the forum for public policy analysis and it often
takes place within elite policymaking circles, both in historical and contemporary form. It is within these
arenas that critics find topics for the study and analysis of public policy. Accordingly, Goodnight focused
on rhetorically analyzing the 2002 Congressional debate over Iraq, which he read as an intertextual extension of administration
rhetoric that highlighted fear appeals over pragmatic policy questions.54 Exploration of public policy debate from
rhetorical perspective is not new but the argumentative turn offers substantial benefits for
public comprehension of public policy.
a
Both theory and policy are important–Engagement with policy action
is necessary for theories to be relevant
Mearsheimer Professor of Political Science 2006
(John, Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago, International Security, vol 20 no 2)
In the 25 years since I received my PhD, the Political Science profession in the United States has gone to great lengths to distance
itself from the real world. Any scholar who is seriously interested in engaging with the policy world or speaking to a wide public
audience is viewed with suspicion, if not hostility, by his or her colleagues. Heaven forbid that one should appear on television or
write an op-ed for a major newspaper. Political scientists have developed a self-enclosed world where they
talk mainly to each other and their students, and dismiss those who have any inclination to be a
public intellectual. In effect, the profession is engaged in selfmarginalization. This has been less
true of IR scholars than other political scientists, especially those who study American politics.
But even students of IR are now succumbing in large numbers to the cult of irrelevance. I think
that this is a travesty. For the purpose of developing sound theories, which is the essence of our
enterprise, we need to be deeply engaged with the real world, and to be constantly thinking
about how well our theories explain what is happening in the world around us. Many welleducated Americans seem to believe that there is a clear separation between theory and policy.
Those immersed in the policy world tend to think that academics do theory and they do policy,
while academics tend to think that they do theory and people in Washington do policy. And
never do the two meet. This strikes me as a fundamentally flawed way of thinking about how
academics and policymakers approach the world around them. None of us could make sense of
the world without the theories we have in our head, and we develop and refine those theories by
constantly observing what is going on around us. This way of doing business applies to
policymakers as well as academics. Madeleine Albright and Donald Rumsfeld think about
American foreign policy in terms of particular theories, and their theories are virtually the same
ones employed by academics when they think about US policy. Albright, for example, frequently
talks about international politics in terms of the three liberal theories that are at the centre of
academic discourse: democratic peace theory, institutionalism and economic interdependence.
Rumsfeld sometimes sounds like a hard-core realist when he speaks about world politics.
Academics, on the other hand, have no choice but to pay attention to events in the policy world,
at least if they are interested in developing powerful theories. After all, the best academic work
has real-world relevance. In short, I think that theory and policy go together for both academics
and policymakers
Perm Do both- State controlled opt in action solves their impacts
Farell, Prof Media @Bournemouth University, 14
Nathan Farrell (2015) ‘Conscience Capitalism’ and the Neoliberalisation of the Non-Profit
Sector, New Political Economy, 20:2, 254-272,
Advocates of bringing conscience to capitalism do not deviate from their faith in the market as the
most effective tool for human development. For some, this is dependent on the discrediting of
state-centred initiatives. For instance, Strong (2009), in promoting his own brand of ‘conscious capitalism’, states (without
citing examples) that, although ‘well-intentioned people have tried to solve these [social and
environmental] problems directly, by means of proposed govern- ment solutions . . . they have
often [in the process] caused other problems’ (22). According to Strong (2011), the key to solving the
world’s problems will emerge from industry self-regulation, as opposed to state-imposed
regulation: ‘opt-in, rather than coercive, regulation’ (115). As a long-time educator, Strong has worked in
numerous schools in deprived regions of the USA, before founding private schools of his own. He describes his conversion from anticorporate, pro- state left-liberal to libertarian as the ‘consequence of new intellectual understand- ings’ (Strong n.d.). His move
towards a form of libertarianism underpins an increasing ideological attachment to the concept of the entrepreneur. Along with
individuals such as John Mackey – CEO of Wholefoods – Strong founded the non-profit organisation Freedom Lights Our World
(FLOW). FLOW works to promote ‘conscious capitalism’ and entrepreneurialism. While ostensibly a non-profit and non-political
organisation, it advocates a form of economic freedom as the foundation of all other freedoms, in a manner which is reminiscent of
Hayek (1946) and aligns conscious capitalism with some of neoliberalism’s foundational texts.
Governmental surveillance subjects internet discussion of
neoliberalism to criminalization, plan solves
Simon Springer, PhD, 17-10-2014, "The Handbook of Neoliberalism," ResearchGate,
http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Simon_Springer/publication/263373133_The_Handbook
_of_Neoliberalism/links/544142890cf2e6f0c0f60834.pdf.
Neoliberalism (along with its multiple contestations) defines the current global conjuncture, but
so too does the emergence of a highly elaborated and complex convergent media environment
marked by rapid technological development, digitalization, miniaturization and mobilization.
Perm Do Both
This chapter will explore the clash between top-down and bottom-up forces within this complex
conjunctural moment. Citizens, activists and conventionally marginalized populations are
forging new modes of media consumption/production and devising more democratic ways to
communicate, express their views and challenge hegemonic and neoliberal structures of power.
For example, media “prosumers” use Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, blogs, Internet forums and
crowd-sourced and volunteered geographic information to respond to political events,
government policies, for-profit corporations and mainstream media texts. In many cases,
government agencies, corporations and mainstream media are forced to respond to this bottomup media activity. Within what Mark Andrejevic calls the “digital enclosure,” our participatory
media activities are however being appropriated by states and corporations in the form of “big
data” that can be harnessed toward the advancement of neoliberal agendas. While corporations
strive to ever more precisely chart consumer profiles and preferences by exhaustively mining
social media sites, the NSA and other agencies subject citizen activists to extensive surveillance
and criminalization. Thus, although the Internet empowers us with access to once unimaginable
volumes of information and forms of connectivity, it simultaneously renders us vulnerable to
algorithmic control exerted by the forces of commodification and securitization
Critique of abstract neoliberalism is disempowering
Griffith, Prof.
School of social science, University of East London , 8-13-14
(Jon, http://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/aug/13/neoliberalism-myth-disempowers-us)
When I was growing up, “consumerism” was the bogey. Later, it was “individualism”.
Now it’s
“neoliberalism” (George Monbiot, 6 August). But these ideas mask the truth: if I move my mortgage or
my savings from one bank to another to get a fractionally improved rate of interest, then I, too, am screwing the economy,
and, ultimately, the planet; and, uncomfortably for Guardian readers, it’s the hundreds of millions of people like us,
worldwide, who do most of the damage – not the super-rich. We’re not neoliberals, nor selfish, nor acquisitive,
just ordinary people, doing our best to eat, live, and pay the salary of whoever sold us the cover we took out, so
we don’t have to pay a week’s wages to get the boiler fixed. Widespread belief in the neoliberalism myth, like
others before it, leads to widespread disempowerment: the larger and vaguer the
abstraction, the less able we feel (and are) to take effective action. We can change our
habits, influence others and reform institutions (radically as well as incrementally), whether alone or jointly, in
response to specific wrongs, abuses and injustices, but the idea of neoliberalism does not help.
And Monbiot himself acknowledges a further problem: if the neoliberal condition actually exists nowhere – and
not even its alleged advocates believe in it, or want it – then it cannot be the enemy we have so collusively and
easily settled on. He is right about the pervasive bureaucratic juggernaut, but neoliberalism does
not explain it: we need a better theory.
Increases in surveillance are done utilizing a neoliberal
rationalization
Wood Prof of sociology at Queens university at kingston 12
David The Globalization of surveillance
https://www.academia.edu/1580596/Globalization_of_Surveillance
Secondly, many of these surveillance trends are no longer always tied to a particular state
agenda, and certainly not simply American (or any other) imperialism. They are the products of
an orientation shared more or less, by almost all liberal democratic governments, and have their
roots instead in the, as yet uneven, transformation of capitalism into a new neoliberal, global
and technologically-dependent form. This produces, indeed demands, what might be termed a
technocratic global surveillant governmentality to support it. Some of what I have discussed may
not be recognized as ‘surveillance’. However I am not trying to extend ‘surveillance’ to mean
every kind of governmental or capitalist process. I began by observing that surveillance is both
A2 Link
being globalized and at the same time is a mode of ordering which is being used to help ensure a
particular series of other globalizations. There is a common purpose in controlling the flow and
behavior of both people and things, particularly the free movement of goods, commodities and
the new global entrepreneurial class, and to limit others, particularly the free movement of more
‘risky’ people who do not fit the model of who is allowed to compete. This means that the
capacity for surveillance is being reconstructed at many different scales. The same processes of
data collection, categorization, classification and action operate here for companies and whole
countries as for the surveillance processes involving individuals and groups with which we are
more familiar.
The aff weakens neoliberalism, its intrinsically tied to surveillance
Price, professor of anthropology at st.martins university 14
David The new surveillance normal, pg 1https://monthlyreview.org/2014/07/01/the-newsurveillance-normal/
This is an age of converging state and corporate surveillance. Like other features of the political
economy, these shifts develop with apparent independence of institutional motivations, yet
corporate and spy agencies' practices share common appetites for metadata. Snowden's
revelations of the NSA's global surveillance programs raises the possibility that the state
intelligence apparatus is used for industrial espionage in ways that could unite governmental
intelligence and corporate interests-for which there appears to be historical precedent. The
convergence of the interests, incentives, and methods of U.S. intelligence agencies, and the
corporate powers they serve, raise questions about the ways that the NSA and CIA fulfill their
roles, which have been described by former CIA agent Philip Agee as: "the secret police of U.S.
capitalism, plugging up leaks in the political dam night and day so that shareholders of U.S.
companies operating in poor countries can continue enjoying the rip-off."1
Surveillance serves to enhance class distinctions any reduction is a
reason we don’t link to the K, since actual reductions outweigh
discourse
Wood Prof of sociology at Queens university at kingston 12
David The Globalization of surveillance
https://www.academia.edu/1580596/Globalization_of_Surveillance
Surveillance is used to enforce economic globalization and the norms of neoliberal global
economic governance. Stephen Gill describes the use of surveillance in international
government as the insitutionalization of panoptic practices and using this simple framework,
produces a critique the discourse of international ‘transparency’ demanded of LDCs by
organizations like the IMF. These nations are required to be maximally open to scrutiny and
“provide effective accounting techniques and data about fiscal and other economic policies
partly as a means of ensuring that they finance their debts and obligations to foreign investors”
(Gill 2008, 185). What is clear here is that, in a global neo-liberal economy, it is the combination
of the provision of credit and the subsequent monitoring of almost all aspect of a state’s
economy in order to facilitate not just repayment, but the continued compliance of the state with
the norms of neoliberal competition, that provides the control mechanism. This is not just
analogous to, but simply an identical but rescaled form of the relationship of power/knowledge
as operates between individuals and banks and other financial institutions. The same kinds of
dataveillance and profiling operations take place on the ‘virtual nation’ as on the ‘virtual body’ of
the consumer: both public and private information companies collect, collate and perform
algorithmic operations on data relating to nation-states and profile these countries to assess
their credit-worthiness, and relative place in global markets. And, as at the personal level, this
surveillance is increasingly dominated by private companies. In addition to the IMF, the
Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and other supranational
governmental institutions, there are three major private global credit-ratings agencies, Standard
& Poor’s , Moody’s and Fitch Ratings , which derive their peculiar status from US Securities and
Exchange Commission selecting them as Nationally Recognized Statistical Rating Organizations
(NRSROs) in 1975. For these bodies, nation-states hold no special status, they are simply a form
of investment guarantee like any other guarantor of finance capital, and the economic
surveillance of nation states is as a service for investors as much interested in ‘sovereign creditworthiness’ as they are in the credit-worthiness of companies or investment funds. Recent work
on global surveillance, even that accommodating or concentrating on the ‘Global South’ does not
deal with this form or scale of surveillance at all, concentrating instead on security at various
scales as the defining feature of the current neo-liberal era (Mattelart, 2008) or on the urban
scale within nation-states (Arteaga Botello, 2009). But this process most certainly is surveillance
as conventionally understood within Surveillance Studies and it is perhaps the single most
important form of surveillance operating in the world today at the global level. The reason lies in
the outcomes of such profiles and ratings. If individual credit-scoring (re)produces comparative
(dis)advantage and embeds poverty and class distinctions, then credit-scoring at the global scale
can condemn whole national populations to economic marginality and set an inescapably
negative context for individual and collective life chances. This is especially the case for those
sections of national populations whose jobs, incomes and livelihoods are still tied into the
national economy, as opposed to members of the increasingly footloose transnational ruling
class. These ratings systems so effect economic decision making that even minor changes to the
credit scores of governments can effectively undermine national government policy, making
states that have any substantial international debt – and that is almost every state in the world –
ultimately responsible not to their electorates but to the demands of the rules of competition in
finance capitalism.
A2 Link - Drones
No Link: Neoliberalism was on its way to collapse, drone usage
signaled its shift to logic capitalism in an effort to still stay alive.
Curtailing surveillance restrains neoliberalism
Mudede, has written for the New York Times, Cinema Scope, Ars
Electronica, C Theory, and academic journals. He also wrote the liner
notes for Best of Del Tha Funkee Homosapien: Elektra Years, 13
Mudede, Charles. "Drones and the Logic of Post-Neoliberalism." Slog. The Stranger, n.d. Web.
24 June 2015.
The second Iraq war was neoliberalism's abandonment of the New Economy
narrative and, in the face of deepening economic crises, its turn to Keynesian
militarism (rather than a reversion to its economics—the program it began replacing in 1973)
as a way to survive the collapse of its legitimacy, which eventually happened in 2008. But the
war failed because, one, it never stopped being a war (the persistence of
insurgents) and, two, it also lost legitimacy (no WMDs). Drones can be seen as
capitalism's response to the collapse of the 30-year neoliberal project and the decline
of Keynesian militarism (which began with the end of history—1989). Drones present power
with a form of control that's difficult for the institutions established by mass
society (institutions that were key to the formation of state military power—which comes down
not to governing a massive population but increasing the speed that it can be transformed into a
massive army) to check or disrupt. Because they can operate outside of politics,
drones connect with the logic capitalism. But it's precisely by this connection that
this form of crisis management has access to and pervades all of the spheres of our
market-oriented social production.
Link Turns
General Link Turn
Surveillance is used to keep people in line with neoliberal economics.
Simon Springer, PhD, August 2010, "Neoliberalism and Geography: Expansions,
Variegations, Formations," http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.17498198.2010.00358.x/full Volume 4, Issue 8.
Neoliberalism in the sense of governmentality then is an assemblage of rationalities, strategies,
technologies, and techniques concerning the mentality of rule that facilitate ‘governance at a
distance’ (Barry et al. 1996). Governmentality occurs by delineating a discursive field in which
the exercise of power is ‘rationalized’ (Lemke 2001), thereby encouraging both institutions and
individuals to conform to the norms of the market. Accordingly, neoliberal politics exhibit bias
in their orientation towards certain constituencies, such as businesspeople and white-collar
professionals, over and even at the expense of others such as trade unions and the homeless.
Heterogeneity is discouraged, and individuals are either to be remade in the image of ‘neoliberal
proper personhood’ (Kingfisher 2007), or ‘managed’ through a trenchant security regime and its
revanchist practices of surveillance (Coleman 2004; Monahan 2006), policing (Herbet