Capitalism Kritik
DUDA 2014-2015
JV Division
Capitalism Kritik – Table of Contents (1/2)
Summary ....................................................................................................................................... 3
Glossary......................................................................................................................................... 4
1NC Shell:
Capitalism Kritik 1NC .................................................................................................................. 5-7
Links:
Link – Renewable Energy Incentives ............................................................................................. 8
Link – Aquaculture ......................................................................................................................... 9
Link – Arctic Oil ............................................................................................................................ 10
Link – “Green” Technology .......................................................................................................... 11
Link – Climate Change................................................................................................................. 12
Link – Preventing Environmental Disaster ................................................................................... 13
Link – Energy Poverty .................................................................................................................. 14
Link – Food Security .................................................................................................................... 15
Link – Jobs/Unemployment.......................................................................................................... 16
Link – Ports/Shipping ................................................................................................................... 17
Impacts:
Impact – No Value to Life............................................................................................................. 18
Impact – Environmental Collapse ................................................................................................ 19
Impact – Economic Collapse ....................................................................................................... 20
Impact – Global Poverty............................................................................................................... 21
Impact – War ............................................................................................................................... 22
Alternative:
Alternative Solves – Overcomes Capitalism ................................................................................ 23
Alternative Solves – Climate Change .......................................................................................... 24
Alternative Solves – Environmental Collapse .............................................................................. 25
Answers to Affirmative Answers:
ANSWERS TO: Permutation – Mutually Exclusive ...................................................................... 26
ANSWERS TO: Permutation – Total Rejection Key .................................................................... 27
ANSWERS TO: Perm – “Green” Capitalism Fails ................................................................... 28-29
ANSWERS TO: No Alternative to Capitalism ............................................................................... 30
ANSWERS TO: Capitalism is Human Nature .............................................................................. 31
ANSWERS TO: Capitalism is Sustainable ................................................................................... 32
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Capitalism Kritik
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Capitalism Kritik – Table of Contents (2/2)
Affirmative Answers:
Permutation – “Green Capitalism” ............................................................................................... 33
ANSWERS TO: “Green” Capitalism Fails .................................................................................... 34
Alternative Fails – No Alternative to Capitalism ........................................................................... 35
Alternative Fails – Capitalism is Human Nature ........................................................................... 36
Alternative Fails – Capitalism is Sustainable ............................................................................... 37
Alternative Fails – Can’t Overcome Capitalism ............................................................................ 38
Alternative Fails – Can’t Solve Climate Change .......................................................................... 39
Capitalism Good – Environment .................................................................................................. 40
Capitalism Good – Economic Growth .......................................................................................... 41
Capitalism Good – Global Poverty ............................................................................................... 42
Capitalism Good – War ................................................................................................................ 43
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Capitalism Kritik
DUDA 2014-2015
JV Division
Summary
This argument claims that the fundamental goal of ocean exploration or development is to find
ways to more effectively turn the ocean into a resource that can be exploited for profit.
Whether by exploring it to find new resources to exploit, or developing already existing
resources into commodities, this economic paradigm (called “capitalism”) ultimately depends
on a form of thought that treats the world around us as nothing more than a potential
opportunity to make a profit.
Because this economic system is concerned first and foremost with economic growth and
human benefit, it will arguably sacrifice long-term environmental well-being for short-term
profits. At its worst, capitalism potentially also causes wars as countries attempt to secure
resources – and also devalues human beings because they are valued only in terms of their
economic potential.
The alternative to this paradigm would reject exploration and development for the purpose of
adding value to the economy, and instead promote a form of existence that was more
concerned with the long-term sustainability of the environmental resources that make life
possible.
At the end of this file, you will also find affirmative answers to this argument – for example,
you can argue that: capitalism is an inevitable system of economic exchange, capitalism helps
the environment because we have a vested interest in protecting our resources if we own
them, or that technological advances made possible by capitalism help reduce the impact that
humans have on the environment.
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Capitalism Kritik
DUDA 2014-2015
JV Division
Glossary
Capitalism – an economic system in which the means of production is privately owned and
operated for profit. In other words, goods are produced by privately owned companies (not
the government) for the sake of making money.
Neoliberalism – the name given to an economic ideology that promotes the reduction of the
public sector and the expansion of private sector.
Economic rationality – a framework for understanding social and economic behavior, which is
typically associated with the pursuit of profits.
Sustainability – able to be maintained over the long term – in this context, it describes whether
or not economic growth fueled by the consumption of ocean resources can be sustained for
long periods of time.
“Green” technology – technology developed to protect the environment. Efficient heating and
cooling systems, electric cars, or offshore wind turbines could arguably be called “green”
technologies.
“Green” capitalism – an offshoot of capitalism that believes environmental problems can be
remedied with free market mechanisms and economic growth.
“No value to life” – a concept that refers to what happens when we stop treating people as if
they have inherent value and start thinking of them as tools towards a specific end – for
example, we think of someone as useful only as long as they can make money.
Permutation – a term used in debate to argue that a negative counterplan or alternative can be
implemented alongside the affirmative plan. For example, an affirmative team might argue that
we can reject capitalism while developing renewable energy sources.
Human nature – a concept that refers to an inherent trait of humankind. For example, if you
said “all humans are competitive,” you are arguing that human nature is competitive.
Commons – refers to a “common” resource – a resource that is not privately owned, but
shared by all people. The open ocean is a “commons,” because no nation or individual can
claim it for themselves.
“Tragedy of the Commons” – a concept that refers to disasters that happen when individuals
consume a resource in a way that hurts everyone. For example: 5 companies harvest fish from
the open ocean to make money until there aren’t enough for everyone to eat.
Commodify – is a verb that describes the act of reducing something (a person, an animal, a
resource like trees) to its economic value.
Renewable energy – a form of energy that can be replenished / can’t be exhausted. For
example: oil is NOT a renewable form of energy because it is a finite resource.
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Capitalism Kritik
DUDA 2014-2015
JV Division
Capitalism Kritik 1NC (1/3)
A. LINK: The affirmative commodifies the ocean by framing it as a resource that can be
exploited for self-interested gain and economic growth
Mansfield, Professor of Geography at Oklahoma State University, 2004
(Becky, “Neoliberalism in the oceans,” Geoforum, 35:3, May, SCIENCEDIRECT)
Examining the ways that past policy orientations toward fisheries have influenced the development of
neoliberal approaches to ocean governance, I contend that neoliberalism in the oceans centers
specifically around concerns about property and the use of privatization to create markets for
governing access to and use of ocean resources. Within the Euro – American tradition that has
shaped international law of the sea, the oceans (including the water column, seabed, and living and
mineral resources) were long treated as common property––the “common heritage of mankind”
(Pardo, 1967)––open to all comers with the means to create and exploit oceanic opportunities.
Although historically there has also been continual tension between this openness of access and
desire for territorialization (especially of coastal waters), treating the oceans as a commons is
consistent with the idea that oceans are spaces of movement and transportation, which have
facilitated mercantilism, exploration, colonial expansion, and cold war military maneuvering
(Steinberg, 2001).1 Oceans have also long been sites for resource extraction, yet it has not been
until recent decades that new economic desires and environmental contradictions have contributed to
a pronounced move away from open access and freedom of the seas. New technologies for
resource extraction combined with regional overexploitation have contributed to conflicts
over resources, to which representatives from academia, politics, and business have
responded by calling for enclosing the oceans within carefully delimited regimes of property
rights, be those regimes of state, individual, or collective control. At the center of this new
political economy of oceans, as it has evolved over the past 50 years, has been concern about “the
commons,” and the extent to which common and open access property regimes contribute to
economic and environmental crises, which include overfishing and overcapitalization. As
such, the question of the commons has been at the center of numerous, seemingly contradictory
approaches to ocean governance and fisheries regulation. Thus, the first argument of the paper is
that neoliberal approaches in fisheries cannot be treated simply as derivative of a larger neoliberal
movement that became entrenched starting in the 1980s. Instead, examining trajectories of
neoliberalism in fisheries over the past half century reveals that the emphasis on property and the
commons has contributed to a more specific dynamic of neoliberalism operating in ocean fisheries
and, therefore, to distinctive forms of neoliberalism. To be clear, it is not the emphasis on property in
itself that ties this history into neoliberalism, but rather the particular perspective that links property
specifically to market rationality. The underlying assumption of all the approaches to property
discussed in this paper is that market rationality (i.e. profit maximization) is natural. Given this,
property rights harness this rationality to the greater good, while a lack of property rights
inevitably leads to economic and environmental problems. It is this set of assumptions that
underlies the neoliberal emphasis on privatization and marketization.
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Capitalism Kritik
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Capitalism Kritik 1NC (2/3)
B. IMPACT: This drive to exploit natural resources for economic gain underlies a pattern of
environmental destruction which will result in ecological collapse and extinction.
Clark & Clausen, professors of sociology at North Carolina State & Fort Lewis College, 2008
(Brett and Rebecca, “The Oceanic Crisis: Capitalism and the Degradation of Marine Ecosystem,”
Monthly Review, 60:3, July, Online: http://monthlyreview.org/2008/07/01/the-oceanic-crisis-capitalismand-the-degradation-of-marine-ecosystem/)
The world is at a crossroads in regard to the ecological crisis. Ecological degradation under global
capitalism extends to the entire biosphere. Oceans that were teeming with abundance are being
decimated by the continual intrusion of exploitive economic operations. At the same time that
scientists are documenting the complexity and interdependency of marine species, we are
witnessing an oceanic crisis as natural conditions, ecological processes, and nutrient cycles
are being undermined through overfishing and transformed due to global warming. The
expansion of the accumulation system, along with technological advances in fishing, have
intensified the exploitation of the world ocean; facilitated the enormous capture of fishes
(both target and bycatch); extended the spatial reach of fishing operations; broadened the
species deemed valuable on the market; and disrupted metabolic and reproductive processes
of the ocean. The quick-fix solution of aquaculture enhances capital’s control over production without
resolving ecological contradictions. It is wise to recognize, as Paul Burkett has stated, that “short of
human extinction, there is no sense in which capitalism can be relied upon to permanently
‘break down’ under the weight of its depletion and degradation of natural wealth.”44 Capital is
driven by the competition for the accumulation of wealth, and short-term profits provide the
immediate pulse of capitalism. It cannot operate under conditions that require reinvestment in
the reproduction of nature, which may entail time scales of a hundred or more years. Such
requirements stand opposed to the immediate interests of profit. The qualitative relation
between humans and nature is subsumed under the drive to accumulate capital on an ever-larger
scale. Marx lamented that to capital, “Time is everything, man is nothing; he is at the most, time’s
carcase. Quality no longer matters. Quantity alone decides everything.”45 Productive relations are
concerned with production time, labor costs, and the circulation of capital—not the diminishing
conditions of existence. Capital subjects natural cycles and processes (via controlled feeding and the
use of growth hormones) to its economic cycle. The maintenance of natural conditions is not a
concern. The bounty of nature is taken for granted and appropriated as a free gift. As a result, the
system is inherently caught in a fundamental crisis arising from the transformation and
destruction of nature. István Mészáros elaborates this point, stating: For today it is impossible to
think of anything at all concerning the elementary conditions of social metabolic reproduction which is
not lethally threatened by the way in which capital relates to them—the only way in which it can. This
is true not only of humanity’s energy requirements, or of the management of the planet’s mineral
resources and chemical potentials, but of every facet of the global agriculture, including the
devastation caused by large scale de-forestation, and even the most irresponsible way of dealing with
the element without which no human being can survive: water itself….In the absence of miraculous
solutions, capital’s arbitrarily self-asserting attitude to the objective determinations of causality and
time in the end inevitably brings a bitter harvest, at the expense of humanity [and nature itself].
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Capitalism Kritik
DUDA 2014-2015
JV Division
Capitalism Kritik 1NC (3/3)
C. ALTERNATIVE: Our alternative is to reject the market logic underlying the affirmative.
Rejecting market competition is an act of economic imagination that can create real
alternatives to capitalism.
White & Williams, professors of economic geography & public policy at Sheffield University,
2012
(Richard and Cohn, Escaping Capitalist Hegemony: Rereading Western Economies in the
Accumulation of Freedom, pg. 131-32)
The American anarchist Howard Ehrlich argued, "We must act as if the future is today." What we
have hoped to demonstrate here is that non-capitalist spaces are present and evident in
contemporary societies. We do not need to imagine and create from scratch new economic
alternatives that will successfully confront the capitalist hegemony thesis, or more properly the
capitalist hegemony myth. Rather than capitalism being the all powerful, all conquering, economic
juggernaut, the greater truth is that the "other" non-capitalist spaces have grown in proportion relative
in size to the capitalism realm. This should give many of us great comfort and hope in moving forward
purposefully for, as Chomsky observed: "[a]lternatives have to be constructed within the existing
economy, and within the minds of working people and communities."' In this regard, the roots of
the heterodox economic futures that we desire do exist in the present. Far from shutting down
future economic possibilities, a more accurate reading of "the economic" (which decenters
capitalism), coupled with the global crisis that capitalism finds itself in, should give us
additional courage and resolve to unleash our economic imaginations, embrace the challenge
of creating "fully engaged" economies. These must also take greater account of the disastrous
social and environmental costs of capitalism and its inherent ethic of competition. As Kropotkin wrote:
Don't compete!-competition is always injurious to the species, and you have plenty of resources
to avoid it! Therefore combine-practice mutual aid! That is the surest means for giving to each and
all to the greatest safety, the best guarantee of existence and progress, bodily, intellectual, and
moral…That is what Nature teaches us; and that is what all those animals which have attained the
highest position in the respective classes have done. That is also what man [ski-the most primitive
man-has been doing; and that is why man has reached the position upon which we stand now." A
more detailed and considered discussion of the futures of work, however, is beyond the scope of this
chapter. What we have hoped to demonstrate is that in reimagining the economic, and recognizing
and valuing the non-capitalist economic practices that are already here, we might spark renewed
enthusiasm, optimism, insight, and critical discussion within and among anarchist communities. The
ambition here is similar to that of Gibson-Graham, in arguing that: The objective is not to produce a
finished and coherent template that maps the economy "as it really is" and presents... a ready
made "alternative economy." Rather, our hope is to disarm and dislocate the naturalized
dominance of the capitalist economy and make a space for new economic beeomings-ones
that we will need to work to produce. If we can recognize a diverse economy, we can begin to
imagine and create diverse organizations and practices as powerful constituents of an
enlivened noncapitalist policies of place.
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DUDA 2014-2015
JV Division
Link – Renewable Energy Incentives
[
] Relying on market mechanisms to facilitate the transition to green energy will make
warming, international competition, structural violence and war inevitable.
Abramsky, fellow at the Institute of Advanced Studies in Science, Technology & Society, 2010
(Koyla, “Racing to "Save" the Economy and the Planet: Capitalist or Post capitalist Transition to a
Post-petrol World?,” in Sparking A Worldwide Energy Revolution, ed. Koyla Abramsky, pg. 26-7)
The fact that coal and oil are finite resources means that there is a long-term tendency in the direction
of their phase-out, regardless of what intentional short-term interventions are carried out or not. Many
proponents of renewable energy simply advocate leaving this phase-6ut process to the market. It is
hoped that rising oil and coal prices will make these fuels increasingly less attractive. Efforts are
focused on developing a renewable energy sector that is able to compete, rather than directly
confronting, suppressing, and ultimately dismantling the coal and oil industries. However,
leaving the phase-out of oil and coal to the market has at least three crucial implications. First, such a
phase-out is likely to actually prolong the use of fossil fuels. As long as these energy sources are
profitable to extract and to use, they will be. Down to the last remaining drops of oil or lumps of coal.
Although resources are finite, they are still relatively abundant Even those analysts who give the most
pessimistic (though realistic) perspectives on resource availability, such as those included in this
book, do not predict a complete exhaustion of resources in the very near future. And, from the
perspective of climate change, a prolongation of fossil fuel use is the exact opposite of what needs to
happen, phase-out must be sped up, not prolonged. Linked to this, the second consequence of a
market-based phase-out of oil and coal will mean that the remaining oil and coal resources are
frittered away for immediate profit rather than to build the infrastructure for a transition
process. Given that building a new energy system will require massive amounts of energy
inputs in a very concentrated period of time, this is a recipe for disaster. The third important
consequence is that leaving the transition process to the market is likely to be increasingly
coercive and conductive if competition is left to determine who controls the last of these
resources and for what purposes they are used. This means competition between workers
globally, competition between firnis, and competition between states. This translates to massive
inequalities, hierarchies, and austerity measures being imposed on labor (both in and outside
the energy sectan); massive bankruptcies of smaller firms and concentration and centralization
of capital; and last, but not least, military conflicts between states. Accepting a market-based
phase out of oil and coal is accepting in advance that the rising price of energy and a
transition away from coal and oil is paid by labor and not capital, when in actual fact the
question of who pays still remains to be determined. The answer will only come through a process of
collective global struggle, which occurs along class lines within the world-economy. It is important to
correctly identify these lines of struggle at the outset, otherwise it will be a struggle lost before the
fight even begins. Collectively planning energy use and fossil fuel phase-out is proving to be an
enormously difficult social process, but it is likely to be far less socially regressive if based on
cooperation, solidarity, and collectively-defined social needs, rather than if it is based around
competition and profit.
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Link – Aquaculture
[
] Aquaculture is a superficial solution to a complex problem – it involves subjecting
nature to further exploitation and will exclusively benefit large corporations while
environmental destruction and global hunger get worse.
Clark & Clausen, professors of sociology at North Carolina State & Fort Lewis College, 2008
(Brett and Rebecca, “The Oceanic Crisis: Capitalism and the Degradation of Marine Ecosystem,”
Monthly Review, 60:3, July, Online: http://monthlyreview.org/2008/07/01/the-oceanic-crisis-capitalismand-the-degradation-of-marine-ecosystem/)
The immense problems associated with the overharvest of industrial capture fisheries has led
some optimistically to offer aquaculture as an ecological solution. However, capitalist
aquaculture fails to reverse the process of ecological degradation. Rather, it continues to
sever the social and ecological relations between humans and the ocean. Aquaculture: The
Blue Revolution? The massive decline in fish stocks has led capitalist development to turn to a new
way of increasing profits—intensified production of fishes. Capitalist aquaculture represents not
only a quantitative change in the intensification and concentration of production; it also
places organisms’ life cycles under the complete control of private for-profit ownership.31
This new industry, it is claimed, is “the fastest-growing form of agriculture in the world.” It boasts of
having ownership from “egg to plate” and substantially alters the ecological and human dimensions of
a fishery.32 Aquaculture (sometimes also referred to as aquabusiness) involves subjecting nature
to the logic of capital. Capital attempts to overcome natural and social barriers through its
constant innovations. In this, enterprises attempt to commodify, invest in, and develop new
elements of nature that previously existed outside the political-economic competitive sphere: As
Edward Carr wrote in the Economist, the sea “is a resource that must be preserved and
harvested….To enhance its uses, the water must become ever more like the land, with owners, laws
and limits. Fishermen must behave more like ranchers than hunters.”33 As worldwide commercial fish
stocks decline due to overharvest and other anthropogenic causes, aquaculture is witnessing a rapid
expansion in the global economy. Aquaculture’s contribution to global supplies of fish increased from
3.9 percent of total worldwide production by weight in 1970 to 27.3 percent in 2000. In 2004,
aquaculture and capture fisheries produced 106 million tons of fish and “aquaculture accounted for 43
percent.”34 According to Food and Agriculture Organization statistics, aquaculture is growing more
rapidly than all other animal food producing sectors. Hailed as the “Blue Revolution,” aquaculture is
frequently compared to agriculture’s Green Revolution as a way to achieve food security and
economic growth among the poor and in the third world. The cultivation of farmed salmon as a highvalue, carnivorous species destined for market in core nations has emerged as one of the more
lucrative (and controversial) endeavors in aquaculture production.35 Much like the Green Revolution,
the Blue Revolution may produce temporary increases in yields, but it does not usher in a
solution to food security (or environmental problems). Food security is tied to issues of
distribution. Given that the Blue Revolution is driven by the pursuit of profit, the desire for
monetary gain trumps the distribution of food to those in need.36 Industrial aquaculture
intensifies fish production by transforming the natural life histories of wild fish stocks into a combined
animal feedlot. Like monoculture agriculture, aquaculture furthers the capitalistic division of
nature, only its realm of operation is the marine world. In order to maximize return on investment,
aquaculture must raise thousands of fish in a confined net-pen. Fish are separated from the
natural environment and the various relations of exchange found in a food web and
ecosystem. The fish’s reproductive life cycle is altered so that it can be propagated and raised until
the optimum time for mechanical harvest.
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DUDA 2014-2015
JV Division
Link – Arctic Oil
[
] Arctic development sidesteps drastically needed changes in energy production and
locks us into carbon fuel consumption – this makes climate change and environmental
destruction inevitable.
Cole, Editor at A World To Win, 2013
(Penny, “Capitalism's Arctic plan,” A World to Win, July 26, Online:
http://www.aworldtowin.net/blog/capitalisms-arctic-plan-get-oil-destroy.html)
Once you say that of course you are really saying "anytime" because emissions of all greenhouse
gases continue to rise and no effort is being made to halt or slow them. A feedback effect could
kick in at any moment. A slowing of the rise in temperatures over the last few years provided a
breathing space. But instead of using this to take urgent action to halt the growth in emissions, it was
simply exploited by climate change deniers to say there is no global warming. Now we know that
much of the heat was being absorbed into the deep oceans and as they lose their capacity to soak up
more, warming will take off again. Indeed, the overall upward trend has never halted, with all the
hottest summers on record taking place during this disputed period. Corporations and governments
may be greedily eyeing the Arctic, but alongside the process already in train, this scenario would
result in the worst possible conditions for agriculture. The worst effects would be in Africa,
Asia and South America, but no country is immune as farmers from Europe and America can
testify. But the opposite of action to halt emissions is happening; Lloyds of London estimates more
than $100bn will be invested in extraction and shipping in the Arctic in the next five years. Writing
these blogs, one begins to feel a bit like the Trojan prophetess Cassandra who was locked up as a
madwoman by fellow citizens for warning them the war with the Greeks could only end in disaster.
But so be it – the truth can always bear repeating, which is that without system change we cannot
begin to start to slow and then reverse climate change. If the corporations are permitted to start
operating in the Arctic, the consequences are unthinkable. Solutions are tantalisingly within
reach – from permaculture, perennial grains, recycling of waste products to support organic farming,
to abandoning fossil fuels in favour of locally-planned renewable energy strategies, and, in the case
of the Arctic, leaving the fossil fuels and minerals in the ground! But capitalism cannot permit
this approach. As Bolivian climate strategist Pablo Solon puts it: In this race to the top, capital
needs to colonize territories and natural resources, decrease the cost of human labour, develop
new technologies and promote new financial, investment and trade rules that allow capital to have
more and more profit. As a result, capitalism has already, in Solon’s words, "reached and
surpassed the limits of the Earth system". To redress the damage, and to have a future for
humanity, we must move to a model where humans work in harmony with nature and that
means that the absolute supremacy of growth and profit must be overthrown.
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Link – “Green” Technology
[
] A shift to green technology won’t alter the dynamics of capitalist oppression – 3rd
world countries will still be subjected to mass violence and exploitation for the sake of profit.
White, fellow of Cultural and Innovation Studies at the University of East London, 2002
(Damian, “A Green Industrial Revolution? Sustainable Technological Innovation in a Global Age,”
Environmental Politics, Vo1.II. No.2, Summer, pp. 1-26)
The first point is essentially negative. Notably, it draws attention to the fact that even if all the
obstacles to a green industrial revolution posed by the structuring of the current political economy
are addressed - ifthere are notforces to make things differently - the type of eco-technological and
ecoindustrial reorganisation that triumphs could simply serve and reinforce the patterns of
interest of dominant groups. A neo-liberal version of the 'green industrial revolution' could
simply give rise to eco-technologies and forms of industrial reorganisation that arc perfectly
compatible with extending social control, military power, worker surveillance and the broader
repressive capacities of dominant groups and institutions. It might even be that a corporate
dominated green industrial revolution would simply ensure that employers have 'smart' buildings
which not only give energy back to the national grid but allow for new 'solar powered' employee
surveillance technologies. What of a sustainable military-industrial complex that uses green
warfare technologies that kill human beings without destroying ecosystems? To what extent
might a 'nonhero' dominated green industrial revolution simply ensure that the South receives
ecotechnologies that primarily express Northern interests (for example, embedding relations of
dependency rather than of self management and autonomy?). In short then, a green industrial
revolution could simply give rise to new forms of 'green governmentality' [Dorier et aI., 1999].
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Link – Climate Change
[
] Centering on climate change trades off with a focus on the neoliberal social forces
driving it – this displaces non-warming environmental crises and makes warming inevitable.
Crist, professor of Science and Technology in Society at Virginia Tech, 2006
(Eileen, “Beyond the Climate Crisis: a Critique of Climate Change Discourse,” Telos, Winter, pg. 2955, Online)
Yet the deepening realization of the threat of climate change, virtually in the wake of
stratospheric ozone depletion, also suggests that dealing with global problems treaty-by-treaty is
no solution to the planet’s predicament. Just as the risks of unanticipated ozone depletion have
been followed by the dangers of a long underappreciated climate crisis, so it would be naïve not to
anticipate another (perhaps even entirely unforeseeable) catastrophe arising after the (hoped-for)
resolution of the above two. Furthermore, if greenhouse gases were restricted successfully by
means of technological shifts and innovations, the root cause of the ecological crisis as a
whole would remain unaddressed. The destructive patterns of production, trade, extraction,
land-use, waste proliferation, and consumption, coupled with population growth, would go
unchallenged, continuing to run down the integrity, beauty, and biological richness of the Earth.
Industrial-consumer civilization has entrenched a form of life that admits virtually no limits to
its expansiveness within, and perceived entitlement to, the entire planet.19 But questioning this
civilization is by and large sidestepped in climate-change discourse, with its single-minded
quest for a global-warming techno-fix.20 Instead of confronting the forms of social
organization that are causing the climate crisis—among numerous other catastrophes—climatechange literature often focuses on how global warming is endangering the culprit, and
agonizes over what technological means can save it from impending tipping points.21 The dominant
frame of climate change funnels cognitive and pragmatic work toward specifically addressing
global warming, while muting a host of equally monumental issues. Climate change looms so
huge on the environmental and political agenda today that it has contributed to downplaying
other facets of the ecological crisis: mass extinction of species, the devastation of the oceans
by industrial fishing, continued old-growth deforestation, topsoil losses and desertification,
endocrine disruption, incessant development, and so on, are made to appear secondary and
more forgiving by comparison with “dangerous anthropogenic interference” with the climate
system. In what follows, I will focus specifically on how climate-change discourse encourages the
continued marginalization of the biodiversity crisis—a crisis that has been soberly described as a
holocaust,22 and which despite decades of scientific and environmentalist pleas remains a virtual
non-topic in society, the mass media, and humanistic and other academic literatures. Several works
on climate change (though by no means all) extensively examine the consequences of global
warming for biodiversity, 23 but rarely is it mentioned that biodepletion predates dangerous
greenhouse-gas buildup by decades, centuries, or longer, and will not be stopped by a
technological resolution of global warming. Climate change is poised to exacerbate species and
ecosystem losses—indeed, is doing so already. But while technologically preempting the worst of
climate change may temporarily avert some of those losses, such a resolution of the climate
quandary will not put an end to—will barely address—the ongoing destruction of life on Earth.
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Link – Preventing Environmental Disaster
[
] The rhetoric of environmental protection is easily twisted to silence criticism – it
justifies destructive consumptive practices under the guise of “green consumerism.”
Brockington and Duffy, professors of development at the Universities of Manchester and
London, 2010
(Dan and Rosaleen, "Capitalism and conservation: the production and reproduction of biodiversity
conservation," Antipode 42:3, pgs: 469-484)
One of the central themes of this collection is that conservation is proving instrumental to
capitalism’s growth and reproduction. It provides an “environmental fix” (as Harvey might put
it). As Igoe and colleagues observe (this issue), where Green Marxists have predicted
environmental impediments that would threaten capitalism’s prosperity (O’Connor 1988), in fact
these very impediments are the source of new forms of accumulation. Consumers thrive on
scarcity, anxiety, fear (all help create demand), so perhaps the flourishing of capitalism in
conservation, which deals in similar currency, should not be such a surprise. It is still important,
however, to understand how this union is being achieved. Tackling that question is one of the main
achievements of the essay by Igoe and colleagues. Following Sklair and others they propose the
existence of hegemonic “mainstream conservation” interests composed of an alliance of corporate,
philanthropic and NGO interests (Sklair 2001). Mainstream conservation (one part of Sklair’s
“sustainable development historic bloc”) proposes resolutions to environmental problems that
hinge on heightened commodity production and consumption, particularly of newly commodified
ecosystem services. Their views are promulgated through a mutually reinforcing collection of
spectacularmedia productions circulated in advertisements and on the web. The power of these
productions lies not in their robustness, logic or rigour, but rather because they are presented and
consumed within societies dominated by spectacle (Debord 1995 [1967]). That is, these are
societies where representations of, and connection to, places, people and causes have long
been mediated through commodified images. In consuming these images people are given “the
romantic illusion that they are adventurously saving the world” (p 502) while the deleterious
ecological impacts of these very purchases, and the lifestyles they require, are neatly erased.
By focusing consumers’ attention on distant and exotic locales, the spectacular productions . . .
conceal the complex and proximate connections of people’s daily lives to environmental problems,
while suggesting that the solutions to environmental problems lay in the consumption of the
kinds of commodities that helped produce them in the first place (p 504).]
Pg. 13
Capitalism Kritik
DUDA 2014-2015
JV Division
Link – Energy Poverty
[
] Focusing on price reduction as a solution to energy poverty disengages debates from
the root causes of poverty – this makes it impossible to address economic inequality.
Chester, professor of political economy at the University of Sydney, 2013
(Lynne, “Energy impoverishment: Addressing capitalism’s new driver of inequality,” Online:
https://www.aeaweb.org/aea/2014conference/program/retrieve.php?pdfid=460)
The growing numbers of energy impoverished have not been stemmed and the impacts are
becoming more embedded (Heffner and Campbell 2011). Policy measures, like social policy more
generally and poverty-related programs, resemble ‘retrospective compensation’. There is no
welfare safety net as there is for income-related poverty. Policy responses focus on a particular
overt sign of the problem. This approach fails to treat the overall manifestation of the problem.
It also is not preventative because the causes are not addressed, that is, the conjunction of
rising energy prices, low income and poor housing energy efficiency. Despite the role of price,
electricity pricing debates are not engaging with this phenomenon and its consequences. Nor is
energy impoverishment forming part of more general debates about income-related poverty,
deprivation and social exclusion despite the growing body of evidence. In the electricity
pricing discourse, the social consequences are treated as the realm of social not economic
policy. Pricing debates are structured around the recovery of the costs of electricity
generation transmission, distribution and retailing. A pricing regulator may note the distributional
impacts of a price increase and even advocate social policy solutions but these matters are not an
integral part of the structure of electricity prices. The formation of electricity prices needs to be
reframed to engage with the issue of energy impoverishment given the critical role that regulated
prices for network services has played in the generation of energy impoverishment. The social
inequalities discourse is skewed towards either the social structures which generate social
inequalities or alternatively, the reduction of inequalities through tax and welfare redistributive
mechanisms. The discourse about effective policy measures to address and eliminate energy
impoverishment needs to identify the institutional solutions – price formation - to deal with the
root causes of energy impoverishment not its manifestation (e.g. electricity bill arrears,
disconnections) or consequences (e.g. deprivation, social exclusion). Second, solutions should
not be sought within the confines of the welfare state. Policy measures to eliminate and prevent a
reoccurrence of energy impoverishment need to be developed without embodying welfare. Finally,
energy debates are framed around a conception of the consumer as a buyer underpinned by
assumptions about behaviour and energy use with shifts in electricity prices. Poverty,
deprivation and social exclusion debates are framed around the impoverished as social
beings within a broader living standards and participation framework. These two disconnected
debates need to intersect and only then will effective policy measures be developed to ensure the
energy consumer, as a social being, does not experience energy impoverishment.
Pg. 14
Capitalism Kritik
DUDA 2014-2015
JV Division
Link – Food Security
[
] Relying on large-scale aquaculture to produce fish will worsen global hunger – food
production must start from an ethic of social responsibility to be effective.
Hannah, professor of philosophy at Kwantlen Polytechnic University, 2008
(Bill, “Food Insecurity, Aquaculture, and the Nature of Technology,” University of Alberta Health Law
Review, 16:4, Online: http://www.hli.ualberta.ca/HealthLawJournals/~/media/hli/Publications/HLR/164-hannah.pdf)
Although aquaculture has a long history, there is a modern version of aquaculture that, in
places, is still undergoing instrumentalization15 This modern version, again, hopes to increase
production, increase access to food, create jobs, etc. There remain crucial points of
ambivalence where aquaculture can be conditioned and will subsequently condition the
development of its surroundings. This development will head either toward socially
responsible versions of production, consumption, etc. or it will lead further down the path that
has lead to widespread food insecurity. If the choice is made to build the capacity to farm
highly valuable species the [primary instrumentalization] will involve a lot of inputs—building
a facility, acquiring feed, labour, water etc. These aspects become part of the technique. The SI of
this will include a change in the surrounding market, access to trade, a larger environmental
impact, and so on. These changes also become part of the technique. The impacts of this
particular choice on food insecurity are most likely negative in the long run. High value fish will
be too expensive for local people to purchase. The kind of facility required will only be able to
be maintained by those who already have access to land and the ability to obtain and keep the
permits required, and so on. If, on the other hand, those involved choose to build the capacity
to farm less valuable, though nutritious, species the primary and secondary instrumentalization
begins to take on a different character. This character will condition the ends differently. Aquaculture’s
primary design in this case could involve integrated inputs from farmers (feed and fertilizer), a simple
pond, and rainwater input. These techniques become a part of a different trajectory. The SI in this
case could involve a stabilization of local markets, an integration of farmers, and a more
positive ecological impact. In the end, the impact of this version of aquaculture on food security is
more positive. The instrument itself, aquaculture, is conditioned in such a way as to create
inexpensive fish, with little input of water, feed, etc. This story shows the ambivalence of aquaculture.
It is unlike the story offered by the ‘neutral tool’, technophilic outlook because it recognizes the
substantive features of the ‘technology’. “Aquaculture” in this sense is not an abstract,
ahistorical technology, but a located technique, one that is influential and changeable. The
story differs from the technophobic view because it shows that there are choices within the design
of technology that determine the path, the ends, of that technology. More importantly, the
story shows that it is at least possible for technology to head toward socially responsible
ends, rather than always, or necessarily driving us toward domination, efficiency, or profit.
Pg. 15
Capitalism Kritik
DUDA 2014-2015
JV Division
Link – Jobs/Unemployment
[
] Focusing on a lack of jobs in the United States whitewashes the massive, hopeless
unemployment outside of the 1st World – we need to account for the global scope of worker
exploitation to fix economic inequality.
Zizek, Director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities, 2012
(Slavoj, CAPITALISM CAN NO LONGER AFFORD FREEDOM, ABC.au, May 25, Online:
http://www.abc.net.au/religion/articles/2012/05/25/3511327.htm)
In his recent re-reading of Marx's Capital, Fredric Jameson identifies the inherent contradiction of the
world market: that it is the very success of capitalism (higher productivity, and so forth) which
produces unemployment (renders more and more workers useless), and thus that what should
be a blessing (less hard labour required) becomes a curse. As Jameson puts it, the world market
is thus "a space in which everyone has once been a productive laborer, and in which labor has
everywhere begun to price itself out of the system." That is to say, in the ongoing process of
capitalist globalization, the category of the unemployed acquires a new dimension beyond the
classic notion of the "reserve army of labor," and should now include "those massive
populations around the world who have, as it were, 'dropped out of history', who have been
deliberately excluded from the modernizing projects of First World capitalism and written off
as hopeless or terminal cases." We should thus include among the unemployed those so-called
"failed states" (like Congo and Somalia), victims of famine or ecological disasters, those
trapped in pseudo-archaic "ethnic hatreds," objects of philanthropy or (often the same people)
of the "war on terror." The category of the unemployed should thus be expanded to
encompass a wide range of the global population, from the temporary unemployed, through the
no-longer employable and permanently unemployed, up to people living in slums and other types of
ghettos (that is, all those often dismissed by Marx himself as "lumpen-proletarians") and, finally, all
those areas, populations or states excluded from the global capitalist process, like blank spaces in
ancient maps. Does not this extension of the circle of the "unemployed" point to the fact that
what once lay in the inert background of History becomes a potential agent of emancipatory
struggle? Just recall Marx's dismissive characterization of the French peasants in his Eighteenth
Brumaire: "the great mass of the French nation is formed by the simple addition of homologous
magnitudes, much as potatoes in a sack form a sack of potatoes ... Insofar as there is merely a local
interconnection among these small-holding peasants, and the identity of their interests forms no
community, no national bond, and no political organization among them, they do not constitute a
class. They are therefore incapable of asserting their class interest in their own name, whether
through a parliament or a convention. They cannot represent themselves, they must be represented."
In the great twentieth-century revolutionary mobilizations of peasants (from China to Bolivia),
these "sacks of potatoes" excluded from the historical process began actively to represent
themselves. But Jameson then makes the crucial observation that this new category of the
"unemployed" is itself a form of capitalist exploitation - the exploited are not only workers
producing surplus-value appropriated by capital, they also include those structurally prevented
from getting caught up in the capitalist vortex of exploited wage labour, including entire
geographical zones and even nation states.
Pg. 16
Capitalism Kritik
DUDA 2014-2015
JV Division
Link – Ports/Shipping
[
] Modern port development works to further distance us from the terrifying scale of
capitalist production – shipping commodities through the Arctic keeps them “out of sight, out
of mind.”
Steinberg, professor of geography at the University of London, 2010
(Philip E., Sekula, Allan and Noël Burch, The Forgotten Space, reviewed by Philip E. Steinberg
Online: http://societyandspace.com/reviews/film-reviews/sekula/)
In Allan Sekula and Noël Burch’s The Forgotten Space, the key vehicle for obscuring the
underlying workings of capitalism is not the commodity but the shipping container in which
the commodity is transported. Like the commodity analyzed by Marx, the shipping container is
visible, but only for what it hides. Analysis therefore requires one to peel off layers of obfuscation.
Just as Marx’s project of uncovering the ‘secret’ social relations of production that are hidden
behind the commodity became ultimately a multifaceted study of capitalism, Sekula and Burch’s
study of the seemingly humble shipping container expands into a study of containerization. And
containerization, it is revealed, represents and enables a series of technological and structural
transformations that have added a new dimension to capitalist globalization by enhancing the
speed and efficiency of transportation through new levels of abstraction. An outer shell of
corrugated steel is placed around the commodity, and this new, impenetrable cloak further
obscures the social relations of production by which commodities, spaces, and indeed the
means of human existence are reproduced. Sekula and Burch’s aim is to bring these forgotten
spaces of containerization out into the open, and, in the process, to reveal their secrets.
Notwithstanding the singular title, the film’s power lies in the way it depicts a range of spaces that
are ‘forgotten’ amidst the mobilities of global capitalism. The port, formerly at the centre of the
maritime city, is relocated to a peripheral, cordoned off warehouse complex staffed by a
skeleton crew that has little to no physical contact with the container, let alone the
commodity. Thus the port is forgotten by urban residents. Transportation inland from the port
is channelled into dedicated high-speed freight corridors in which, to quote the driver of a train on
one such corridor in The Netherlands, ‘it’s like a long tunnel’. These transit corridors would be
forgotten as well, were it not for the noise of the speeding train permeating through open cuts in
the countryside. The commodity itself is all but forgotten within the sterile space of the
container. Workers in the shipping industry often have no idea what they are transporting. The
sea, which formerly had provided a counter-narrative of freedom and unpredictability amidst
the regimentation of the capitalist organization of space is forgotten by the crews of factorylike containerships that read computer screens instead of feeling the rhythm of the waves and the
gusts of the winds. And, although little is made of this point in the film, it goes without saying that
all of these spaces—the port, the ship, the train, the truck, the sea, and the internal space
of the container—are forgotten by consumers. When a commodity arrives at one’s door, or
is picked off a shelf, its underlying processes of transportation, like its underlying processes
of production, are obscured and abstracted, as are the social relations and labour
arrangements that enable these processes to function. As Sekula argues in his 1995 book
(and photo exhibition) Fish Story, the modern intermodal transport industry represents a
particularly advanced form of the capitalist processes of abstraction—and, one could add,
‘forgetting’— identified by Marx (Sekula 1995).
Pg. 17
Capitalism Kritik
DUDA 2014-2015
JV Division
Impact – No Value to Life
[
] The imposed value system of development paradigms reduces all life to commodity
for exchange – this facilitates mass violence and exclusion.
Shiva, ecologist, activist, editor, and author of many books, 2003
(Vandana, ZNet Daily Commentaries, Globalisation and Its Fallout, April 2, Online:
http://www.zmag.org/sustainers/content/2003-04/02shiva.cfm)
The first is the market fundamentalism of globalization itself. This fundamentalism redefines life
as commodity, society as economy, and the market as the means and end of the human
enterprise. The market is being made the organizing principle for the provisioning of food,
water, health, education and other basic needs, it is being made the organizing principle for
governance, it is being made the measure of our humanity. Our being human is no longer
predicated on the fundamental human rights enshrined in all constitutions and in the U.N. declaration
of human rights. It is now conditional on our ability to "buy" our needs on the global
marketplace in which the conditions of life -- food, water, health, knowledge have become the
ultimate commodities controlled by a handful of corporations. In the market fundamentalism of
globalization, everything is a commodity, everything is for sale. Nothing is sacred, there are no
fundamental rights of citizens and no fundamental duties of governments. The market
fundamentalism of globalization and the economic exclusion inherent to it is giving rise to,
and being reinforced and supported by politics of exclusion emerging in the form of political
parties based on "religious fundamentalism"/xenophobia/ethnic cleansing and reinforcement
of patriarchies and castism. The culture of commodification has increased violence against
women, whether it is in the form of rising domestic violence, increasing cases of rape, an
epidemic of female foeticide, and increased trafficking in women.
Pg. 18
Capitalism Kritik
DUDA 2014-2015
JV Division
Impact – Environmental Collapse
[
] Capitalism’s commodification of the environment will destroy it in the name of profit.
Weiskel, Harvard Seminar on Environmental Values, 1997
(Timothy C., “Selling Pigeons in the Temple: The Danger of Market Metaphors in an Ecosystem,” July
6, Online: http://ecojustice.net/coffin/ops-008.htm)
Market metaphors truncate the range of policy options open to environmental leaders, and the
vocabulary and images these metaphors generate completely fail to capture what we humans
value most about our rich and complex world of everyday human experience. The insidious
thought control exercised by market metaphors in the public discourse needs to be squarely
confronted and firmly rejected. Only by stepping outside the make-believe world of these market
metaphors is it possible to see why they mystify rather than clarify our environmental circumstance.
Essentially, market metaphors are based on a logical fallacy that projects a fundamental falsification
of reality. Despite frequent appeals to the "real world," market advocates live in a selfcontained world of abstract modeling, statistical fantasies and paper currency that serves as a
proxy measure of wealth. In fact, the real world is quite a different place, consisting of the physical
parameters of all life forms that can be measured in terms of meters from sea-level, metric tons of
gas emissions and degrees of temperature variation. The human economy needs to be understood
as a subset of this physical ecosystem and not the other way around. Environmental policy based on
an inverted representation of reality cannot help but fail in the long run. It is for this reason that
economism -- the belief that principles of market economics can and should always be used to
resolve environmental public policy dilemmas -- represents such a palpable failure of political
leadership. Further, the attempt to substitute economism for meaningful public policy constitutes a
blatant abdication of the public trust. This tragic abdication of the public trust through the
relentless pursuit of economism has fueled the current righteous indignation of global
citizens sensitive to the environment and concerned about the prospect of human survival.
Politicians under the spell of economism fail to grasp what growing numbers of decent citizens sense
and seek to affirm from a very deep level of conviction, and that is simply this: biodiversity must be
saved for its intrinsic, expressive, and relational value -- not simply for the momentary
advantage it may yield in some economist's cost-benefit calculations. If global policy makers do
not free themselves from the trap of market mantras, their claim to leadership will be seen to be
vacuous and illegitimate in the long run. This will be so because misplaced market metaphors cannot
help but prove fatal in mediating human relationships with the environment. Taken together they
have the power to drive industrial civilization into the sad syndrome of "overshoot-andcollapse" so often characteristic of failed economies of accumulation throughout human
history. Unless radically different forms of valuation can be rediscovered, unless public
leaders can learn to embrace and articulate them, and unless these leaders can then proceed
to formulate effective public policy based on these new values to change collective human
behavior, we will witness the demise of industrial society as the unavoidable outcome of
"business as usual."
Pg. 19
Capitalism Kritik
DUDA 2014-2015
JV Division
Impact – Economic Collapse
[
] Capitalism cannot be stabilized – economic shocks are inevitable in a system that
prioritizes short-term profits over long-term sustainability.
Shannon, editor of the Routledge Journal of Contemporary Anarchist Studies, 2012
(Deric and Abby Volcano, “Capitalism in the 2000s” in The Accumulation of Freedom, pg. 87-88)
As Asimakopoulos explains in this collection, capitalism is prone to periodic "crises." This isn't
necessarily a new insight-a. system based on capital investments creates "bubbles" in expanding
industries (i.e., housing, the "dot corn boom," etc.) that cannot last, but that investors want to make a
quick buck off (or a few million, for that matter). When these bubbles "burst" (when they are no
longer profitable), investors stop raking in profits and this can lead to economic downturns-to
recessions or, in the case of the current crisis, depressions. But what do we mean with this
discourse of"crisis?" A quick look at the ultra-rich doesn't show a drastic reduction in comfort and
lifestyle. And while unemployment, poverty; precarity, and privation are affecting larger
sections of the world's population, those problems are business as usual for a significant
portion of the world. And yet we declare capitalism in "crisis" now, For children working in
sweatshops, for entire countries struggling with food insecurity and hunger, for continents
grappling with an AIDS crisis that disproportionately affects our most marginalized
populations, for trafficked women and children, for queer youth struggling to obtain basic
resources and kicked out of their homes by fundamentalist parents, for those people living
with the legacy of colonization and slavery-for the majority of the world's inhabitants
capitalism IS the crisis. But the discourse of "crisis" isn't employed until it starts hurting the
collective bottom line of the wealthy. 'This, in and of itself, can be used as an opportunity to discuss
the need for socialist alternatives. And the truth is that capitalism requires these "crises" to
function. People talk about events like the 1987 stock market crash, the Asian financial crisis of
1997, and the dot-corn and housing bubbles and bursts as though they are anomalies. These things
are regular features of capitalism. And those not at the top tiers of our global class system (about 95
percent of the world) are experiencing crisis every single day-a constant crisis of sorts. So the
discourse surrounding crises themselves seem to uphold that capitalism is more or less
functioning the rest of the time. More and more people are coming to the realization that this is not
the case-and we need to be pressing this point as we battle against austerity. If we want to avoid
"austerity," we need to smash capitalism to pieces. No amount of good-hearted reform or
Keynesian policy is going to substantively address the social crisis that is capitalism.
Pg. 20
Capitalism Kritik
DUDA 2014-2015
JV Division
Impact – Global Poverty
[
] Capitalism is responsible for global poverty – the destruction of natural resources and
exploitation of 3rd world labor is a silent war that kills millions every year.
Szentes Professor at the University of Budapest, 2008
(Tamás, “Globalisation and prospects of the world society”, 4/22, Online:
http://www.eadi.org/fileadmin/Documents/-Events/exco/Glob.___prospects_-_jav..pdf)
It’ s a common place that human society can survive and develop only in a lasting real peace. Without
peace countries cannot develop. Although since 1945 there has been no world war, but --numerous
local wars took place, --terrorism has spread all over the world, undermining security even in the most
developed and powerful countries, --arms race and militarisation have not ended with the collapse
of the Soviet bloc, but escalated and continued, extending also to weapons of mass destruction
and misusing enormous resources badly needed for development, --many “invisible wars” are
suffered by the poor and oppressed people, manifested in mass misery, poverty,
unemployment, homelessness, starvation and malnutrition, epidemics and poor health conditions,
exploitation and oppression, racial and other discrimination, physical terror, organised injustice,
disguised forms of violence, the denial or regular infringement of the democratic rights of citizens,
women, youth, ethnic or religious minorities, etc., and last but not least, in the degradation of
human environment, which means that --the “war against Nature”, i.e. the disturbance of
ecological balance, wasteful management of natural resources, and large-scale pollution of
our environment, is still going on, causing also losses and fatal dangers for human life.
Behind global terrorism and “invisible wars” we find striking international and intrasociety
inequities and distorted development patterns , which tend to generate social as well as
international tensions, thus paving the way for unrest and “visible” wars. It is a commonplace
now that peace is not merely the absence of war. The prerequisites of a lasting peace between
and within societies involve not only - though, of course, necessarily - demilitarisation, but also a
systematic and gradual elimination of the roots of violence, of the causes of “invisible wars”,
of the structural and institutional bases of large-scale international and intra-society
inequalities, exploitation and oppression. Peace requires a process of social and national
emancipation, a progressive, democratic transformation of societies and the world bringing about
equal rights and opportunities for all people, sovereign participation and mutually advantageous cooperation among nations. It further requires a pluralistic democracy on global level with an
appropriate system of proportional representation of the world society, articulation of diverse interests
and their peaceful reconciliation, by non-violent conflict management, and thus also a global
governance with a really global institutional system. Under the contemporary conditions of
accelerating globalisation and deepening global interdependencies in our world, peace is indivisible
in both time and space. It cannot exist if reduced to a period only after or before war, and cannot be
safeguarded in one part of the world when some others suffer visible or invisible wars. Thus,
peace requires, indeed, a new, demilitarised and democratic world order, which can provide equal
opportunities for sustainable development. “Sustainability of development” (both on national and
world level) is often interpreted as an issue of environmental protection only and reduced to
the need for preserving the ecological balance and delivering the next generations not a
destroyed Nature with overexhausted resources and polluted environment. However, no
ecological balance can be ensured, unless the deep international development gap and intrasociety inequalities are substantially reduced.
Pg. 21
Capitalism Kritik
DUDA 2014-2015
JV Division
Impact – War
[
] Capitalism is the driving force behind conflict – imperialist powers will inevitably go to
war to secure exclusive access to natural resources.
Barrigos, activist and author, 2007
(Rebecca, “War: Why capitalism is to blame,” July, Online:
http://www.sa.org.au/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1367&Itemid=1)
When burgeoning capitalist powers like the United States and Germany sought to expand their
influence, they came into unavoidable conflict with the empires of the more established
capitalist nations. The aspirations of US and German capitalism could only be achieved through
war, and it was this dynamic which plunged the world into the turmoil and barbarism of World War I,
and which led Lenin to conclude that the competition between powerful nations to dominate parts of
the world, imperialism, defines modern capitalism and makes war inevitable. The dynamic of
capitalist competition in the system is still alive and well today, and is precisely the factor driving the
recent wars in the Middle East. The Marxist understanding that capitalism breeds war cannot just be
reduced to the argument that every war is motivated by a grab for resources. After all, there were no
valuable resources in Vietnam. The US intervened there as part of their Cold War rivalry with the
Soviet Union for control of "spheres of influence". In this period, both powers were seeking
dominance of the world economy. They sought to contain each other's influence by forging alliances
with friendly regimes around the globe who would uphold their imperialist interests. And of course if
this didn't work, both superpowers were prepared to forcibly bring contested areas into their fold. So
the US invasion of Vietnam and the Soviet Union's invasion of Afghanistan were essentially
proxy wars in which each superpower was trying to weaken the other and limit its expansion.
Similarly today, US capitalism is not reliant on the oil reserves in the Middle East, but US control
of this strategically important and resource-rich part of the globe is crucial to maintaining their
status as the world's only superpower. Just as their real enemy in Vietnam was not the Viet Cong but
the Soviet Union, so today their real, if undeclared, enemies are their present-day economic rivals,
Europe and China. The latter in particular is seen as a medium to long term threat to US global
domination. The US emerged the victors in the Cold War, but American domination of the world
economy has been in decline since the mid-1970s. The US state has been forced to go to further
lengths to secure the profit rates for its capitalist class and to ensure that their influence is not
superseded by a rival power. So the "war on terror", which has seen up to a million people killed in
Iraq and tens of thousands more in Afghanistan, is a reflection of the continuing and ruthless
competition at capitalism's core. It had nothing to do with bringing "peace and democracy" to
the Middle East, nor was it just about oil, and even less about the crazed ambitions of Bush. In fact
to those at the top of society this war makes perfect sense, and fits in with the whole logic of a
system that places the pursuit of profits ahead of the lives of people everywhere. Of course
they don't tell us this. Because the capitalists rely on workers to carry out their wars for profit, they
never honestly declare their intentions at the outset of any war. Historically, the ruling class has
always sought to clothe their real rationale for wars in the rhetoric of "fighting for democracy".
So the "war on terror", with all its corresponding anti-Muslim racism, has provided the US with
the ideological cover for their imperialist interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Pg. 22
Capitalism Kritik
DUDA 2014-2015
JV Division
Alternative Solves – Overcomes Capitalism
[
] We should simply withdraw from activities that support capitalism – that alone is
enough to empty it of momentum.
Herod, faculty at the University of Massachusetts at Boston, 2007
(James, Getting Free, http://www.jamesherod.info/?sec=book&id=1)
It is time to try to describe, at first abstractly and later concretely, a strategy for destroying
capitalism. This strategy, at its most basic, calls for pulling time, energy, and resources out of
capitalist civilization and putting them into building a new civilization. The image then is one
of emptying out capitalist structures, hollowing them out, by draining wealth, power, and
meaning out of them until there is nothing left but shells. This is definitely an aggressive
strategy. It requires great militancy, and constitutes an attack on the existing order. The strategy
clearly recognizes that capitalism is the enemy and must be destroyed, but it is not a frontal attack
aimed at overthrowing the system, but an inside attack aimed at gutting it, while
simultaneously replacing it with something better, something we want. Thus capitalist
structures (corporations, governments, banks, schools, etc.) are not seized so much as simply
abandoned. Capitalist relations are not fought so much as they are simply rejected. We stop
participating in activities that support (finance, condone) the capitalist world and start
participating in activities that build a new world while simultaneously undermining the old. We
create a new pattern of social relations alongside capitalist relations and then we continually
build and strengthen our new pattern while doing every thing we can to weaken capitalist
relations. In this way our new democratic, non-hierarchical, non-commodified relations can
eventually overwhelm the capitalist relations and force them out of existence. This is how it has
to be done. This is a plausible, realistic strategy. To think that we could create a whole new world
of decent social arrangements overnight, in the midst of a crisis, during a so-called revolution,
or during the collapse of capitalism, is foolhardy. Our new social world must grow within the
old, and in opposition to it, until it is strong enough to dismantle and abolish capitalist
relations. Such a revolution will never happen automatically, blindly, determinably, because of the
inexorable, materialist laws of history. It will happen, and only happen, because we want it to, and
because we know what we’re doing and know how we want to live, and know what obstacles have to
be overcome before we can live that way, and know how to distinguish between our social patterns
and theirs. But we must not think that the capitalist world can simply be ignored, in a live and
let live attitude, while we try to build new lives elsewhere. (There is no elsewhere.) There is at
least one thing, wage-slavery, that we can’t simply stop participating in (but even here there are ways
we can chip away at it). Capitalism must be explicitly refused and replaced by something else. This
constitutes War, but it is not a war in the traditional sense of armies and tanks, but a war fought on a
daily basis, on the level of everyday life, by millions of people. It is a war nevertheless because the
accumulators of capital will use coercion, brutality, and murder, as they have always done in
the past, to try to block any rejection of the system. They have always had to force
compliance; they will not hesitate to continue doing so.
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Alternative Solves – Climate Change
[
] Only a shift away from capitalism can solve climate change.
Dawson, Professor of English at CUNY, 2010
(Ashley, “Climate Justice: The Emerging Movement Against Green Capitalism,” South Atlantic
Quarterly, Volume 109, Number 2)
Genuine solutions to the climate crisis cannot emerge from climate negotiations, whether on a
domestic or international level, unless significant pressure – pressure that outweighs that of
powerful corporate interests – is brought to bear by a globally linked, locally grounded group of
social movements mobilizing around the theme of climate justice. This will take genuine
organizing – a task that the Left in general and cultural studies in particular has been prone to shy
away from.15 Such organizing is a particularly urgent task on both a practical and a theoretical level
given the predominantly anarchist, anti-statist character of the global justice movement in the North.
Rather than abdicating engagement with the organs of state power, the crisis of our times
requires transformation of these organs through practices of radical democracy. In addition,
however, a movement for climate justice needs a theoretical grasp of the economic, political, and
ecological stakes at play in the new Green Capitalist order. As I have already indicated in brief, this
new order is characterized by significant greenwashing, ideological flim-flam around issues such
as offsets and carbon trading, that needs to be laid bare so that those affected by the
inequalities of Green Capitalism can mobilize in solidarity with rather than scapegoating the new
order’s victims. In what follows I sketch the recent birth of a climate justice movement. In the US,
this movement builds on the deep and powerful roots of the environmental justice movement, which
in turn draws on the organizing tactics, cultural forms, and ideological stance of the Civil Rights
movement. This emergent climate justice movement will, I argue, play a pivotal role in challenging
Green Capitalism, both in the US and internationally. We cannot expect such a challenge to come
from the mainstream environmental movement. As the comments of the Environmental Defense Fund
official quoted above suggest, many prominent conservation organizations have bought into the new
Green Capitalist order. In addition, although some of them have made significant strides of late, many
of these mainstream organizations have failed to incorporate the perspectives of communities worst
affected by the toxic byproducts of unregulated industrial growth. This failure stems not simply
from their closeness to pro-corporate interests, but also from a reifying epistemological stance
towards nature embodied in the wilderness ethic, one which sees the environment and human
beings and their social struggles in antithetical terms. Building on several decades of activism within
the environmental justice movement, the emerging movement for climate justice challenges the
wilderness ethic, and in so doing strives to center discussion and militancy around the climate crisis
in an engagement with issues of inequality and injustice. The stance of the climate justice movement
is, as a result, far more attuned to the issues that drive environmental activism throughout the global
South.16 The movement for climate justice thus promises to be a vehicle for mobilizing the
kind of transnational, grassroots alliances that will be decisive in the unfolding fight against
ecocide.
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Alternative Solves – Environmental Collapse
[
] Abandoning capitalism is key to solve the environment – even a switch to clean
energy would only accelerate numerous trends towards ecological collapse and extinction.
Smith, economic historian, 2014
(Richard, Green Capitalism: The God That Failed, Truth Out, January 9, Online: http://www.truthout.org/opinion/item/21060)
Stern asserted that "the world does not have to choose between averting climate change and
promoting growth and development."(40) But if the science is right that we need to keep emissions
below 400 ppm, or even get them back below 350 ppm, then more growth is out of the question.
Indeed, we would have to make radically deeper cuts in GDP than even the 7 percent reduction per
year that Stern calculates would be necessary just to get us down to 450 ppm. Because, under
capitalism, a contraction of economic output on anything like that scale would mean economic
collapse and depression, it is difficult to see how we can make the reductions in greenhouse
gases we have to make to avoid climate catastrophe unless we abandon capitalism. This is the
dilemma. So far most scientists have tended to avoid getting into the contentious economic side of
the question. But with respect to the issue of growth, the science is unequivocal: Never-ending growth
means the end of civilization, if not humanity itself - and in the not-so-distant future. For a summary of
the peer-reviewed science on this subject, read a few chapters of Mark Lynas' harrowing Six
Degrees.(41) Global warming is surely the most urgent threat we face, but it is far from the only
driver of global ecological collapse. For even if we switched to clean renewable electric power
tomorrow, this would not stop the overconsumption of forests, fish, minerals, fresh water. It
would not stop pollution or solve the garbage crisis or stop the changes in ocean chemistry.
Indeed, the advent of cheap, clean energy could even accelerate these trends.(42) Numerous
credible scientific and environmental researchers back up what the climate scientists have been
telling us, to demonstrate why perpetual growth is the road to collective social suicide. For example:
In 2005 the United Nations Millennium Ecosystem Assessment team of 1,300 scientists from 95
countries issued a landmark report on humanity's overconsumption of "nature's services." The
scientists reported that 60 percent (15 of 24) of the ecosystems examined that are critical for
human survival are being "degraded or used unsustainably," including fresh water, capture fisheries,
coral reefs, wetlands, drylands and forests. Around the world, many of these are deteriorating or on
the verge of collapse. Thus nature's ability to provide the resources for growing future populations is
very much in doubt unless radical steps are taken soon.
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ANSWERS TO: Permutation – Mutually Exclusive
[
]
[
] The permutation is impossible – the alternative is a refusal to exploit nature for
economic profit – this is not compatible with the plans commodification of nature.
Plastow, researcher at the University of Exeter, 2010
(Robert, “Neoliberalism in environmental governance: a paradoxical double movement” May 2010)
At its core neoliberalism believes in the unparalleled capability of the market in the
distribution and allocation of goods and services in meeting the diverse needs of people all
over the world, displaying a commitment to extending the competitive relations of the market as far
as possible, keeping state intervention to a minimum (Castree, 2008: 143; Holifield, 2004: 286).
When we direct this ideology towards the environment and neoliberalise nature, we confront a
potential paradox in that conserving nature is operated by commodifying it, balancing the
antithetical acts of destroying existing and creating new biophysical resources, (Castree, 2008:
150). For Polanyi, pricing nature in this way creates what he calls 'fictitious commodities' out of
things such as water and trees whose value is more than merely monetary or defined by their
use but of intrinsic, cultural, biological and social value which exceed any transaction price,
(Castree, 2008). Such commodification, Polanyi argues, is contradictory as these phenomena
are not 'true' commodities that can be managed purely by price signals and controlled by the
market, (Polanyi, 1944). This is because nature is not produced for sale, so when it is drawn
into the market to behave and be treated as a regular commodity, a social (re)production of
nature is created and proves problematic due to its unproduced character in truth, (McCarthy
and Prudham, 2004). It is contested that this leads to a 'double-movement' wherein attempts to
expand the market due to its popularity and success push it too far and create animosity with
populations resulting in resistance, placing limits on market rule, (Castree, 2008; Polanyi, 1944). This
has been evidenced in Bolivia where neoliberalisation met with locally organised resistance and
ultimately political change in the form of Evo Morales' unification of cocaleros, workers and
indigenous groups, which was made possible in many ways by the governmental decentralisation
resulting from the neoliberal policies that preceded it, (Geddes, 2010; Perrault, 2005). Resistance
groups also target the neoliberal global rule centres such as the World Trade Organisation, the
International Monetary Fund and the G8, not just to disrupt their business but also to highlight the
inequities and perversities that make up their rules as well as the organisations themselves, (Peck
and Tickell, 2005: 400). At the present moment, the impact of the credit crunch and global recession
also add serious challenges to the neoliberal agenda, so although it appears hegemonic and
monolithic, it is not without its weaknesses or criticism and has faltered many times, (Castree, 2009;
Geddes, 2010; McCarthy and Prudham, 2004).
It does still command great power; Robertson notes
that through the use of pricing mechanisms neoliberalism is the latest attempt by capital to
colonize and dominate the rationalities of other systems with which it articulates, notably the
political and ecological, and is successful,(Robertson, 2004: 371).
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ANSWERS TO: Permutation – Total Rejection Key
[
]
[
] The permutation fails – profit motives will always win in a vacuum – we must
wholeheartedly reject them to guarantee environmental survival.
Plastow, researcher at the University of Exeter, 2010
(Robert, “Neoliberalism in environmental governance: a paradoxical double movement” May 2010)
However, Benton sees a clash between economic and ecological rationalities in that it makes
good commercial sense for firms to externalise production costs, which is ecologically
irrational, (Benton, 1991; Castree, 2008). The externalities created by production, pass the
environmental costs onto society and the biophysical world, creating an ecological
contradiction that sees neoliberal capitalism gnawing away at the resource base that supports
it, (O'Connor, 1998; Pepper, 1993). Hence, it is argued, that without sufficient self-regulation by
firms or states, capitalist societies will continue to create ecological crises, (Castree, 2008;
O'Connor, 1998). However, by making firms internalise externalities, in other words making the
polluter pay, market- based instruments provide an incentive for innovation of new
technologies and are therefore more cost-effective than traditional regulation, (Jordan et al,
2003). It is hoped that “through efficiency gains and better management, private companies will be
able to lower prices, improve performance, and increase cost recovery, enabling systems to be
upgraded and expanded”, (Bakker, 2007: 437). By encoding the natural world as a form of the
economic world, cost-benefit analysis and market criteria can be applied to decision-making
processes, (Lemke, 2001), within the dominant, hegemonic discourse of neoliberal capitalism. This
commodification of nature, or its neoliberalisation (Castree, 2008), requires the creation of new
marketable property rights, “employing markets as allocation mechanisms, and incorporating
environmental externalities through pricing”, then, as a result of the economic-rationality of
neoliberalism: “environmental goods will be more efficiently allocated if treated as economic
goods—thereby simultaneously addressing concerns over environmental degradation and
inefficient use of resources”, (Bakker, 2007: 434). Government is also seen to benefit and make
political gains by using such new environmental policy instruments, as they cut public
expenditure for environmental management and open up trade and investment, (Jordan et al,
2003), which encourages the eternal quest for the political holy grail of economic growth.
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ANSWERS TO: Perm – “Green” Capitalism Fails
[
]
[
] Profit motive fails to solve environmental problems – increases in efficiency cause
increases in consumption and economic incentives for environmental degradation are greater
than for protection.
Ehrenfeld, Department of Ecology at Rutgers University, 2008
(David, “The Environmental Limits to Globalization”, Conservation Biology, Vol. 22 No. 5)
Bram Buscher’s (2008) critique of the neoliberalization of conservation is right on the mark. The
reduction of all conservation problems to economic terms is counter-productive and
dangerous. Trusting to market forces and the laws of supply and demand to correct inequities
and restore healthy equilibria does not work in economics and certainly does not work in
conservation. It has been known for many years that good economics will not necessarily promote
conservation. For example, Clark (1973) showed, with respect to whaling, that taking quick profits
by exploiting whales to extinction and then reinvesting the profits in growth industries was,
unfortunately, economically superior to reducing the whale harvest to a sustainable level. Even
earlier, in 1865, William Stanley Jevons (York 2006) demonstrated that, paradoxically, increases in
the efficiency of use of a resource often led to increases in the consumption of the resource.
More recently, Haitao et al. (2007) have described how turtle farming for profit and, allegedly, for
conservation, is driving endangered species of turtles in China to extinction. And Guo (2007)
and Morell (2007) have explained why commercial tiger farms in China are likely to have a
deleterious effect on populations of wild tigers. I discuss these and related issues at greater
length in my book Becoming Good Ancestors (Ehrenfeld 2009). Nor is the incessant harping on
ecosystem services, important as they are, likely to bring us viable and durable conservation.
As McCauley (2006) states, “We will make more progress in the long run by appealing to people’s
hearts rather than to their wallets. If we oversell the message that ecosystems are important
because they provide services, we will have effectively sold out on nature.” Some may argue this
view is naive. To the contrary, the naive view, as Buscher points out, is that the neoliberal
economic approach always leads to win–win solutions of our most intractable problems. Effective
conservation, like life itself, requires a delusion-free reconciliation of economic with moral concerns.
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ANSWERS TO: Perm – “Green” Capitalism Fails
[
]
[
] Technology doesn’t solve capitalist environmental destruction – too much
overconsumption.
Heinberg, writer for the International Forum on Globalization, 2009
(Richard, and Jerry Mander – writer for Post Carbon Institute, “Searching For a Miracle: Net Energy
Limits & the Fate of Industrial Society,” Post Carbon Press, 2009)
Even our once great hopes that world governments would rally to achieve positive collective
outcomes in some arenas; for example, at the United Nations climate change talks in Copenhagen,
as well as other venues, are proving sadly fatuous. But certain things are ever-more clear: Global
institutions, national governments, and even many environmental and social activists are
barking up the wrong trees. Individually and as groups, they have not faced the full gravity and
meaning of the global energy (and resource) conundrums. They continue to operate in most ways
out of the same set of assumptions that we’ve all had for the past century —that fundamental
systemic changes will not be required; that our complex of problems can be cured by human
innovation, ingenuity, and technical efficiency, together with a few smart changes in our
choices of energy systems. Most of all, the prevailing institutions continue to believe in the
primacy and efficacy of economic growth as the key indicator of systemic well-being, even in
light of ever-diminishing resources. It will not be necessary, according to this dogma, to come to
grips with the reality that ever-expanding economic growth is actually an absurdity in a finite
system, preposterous on its face, and will soon be over even if activists do nothing to oppose it.
Neither does the mainstream recognize that economic systems, notably capitalism, that require
such endless growth for their own viability may themselves be doomed in the not very long
run. In fact, they are already showing clear signs of collapse. As to any need for substantial
changes in personal lifestyles, or to control and limit material consumption habits? Quite the
opposite is being pushed—increased car sales, expanded “housing starts,” and increased
industrial production remain the focused goals of our economy, even under Mr. Obama, and
are still celebrated when/if they occur, without thought of environmental consequences. No
alterations in conceptual frameworks are encouraged to appreciate the now highly visible limits of
nature, which is both root source of all planetary benefits, and inevitable toxic sink for our excessive
habits.
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ANSWERS TO: No Alternative to Capitalism
[
]
[
] A stable roadmap for change isn’t necessary – raising awareness of capitalist injustice
is enough.
Kovel, Professor of Social Studies at Bard College, 2002
(Joel, THE ENEMY OF NATURE: THE END OF CAPITALISM OR THE END OF THE WORLD, p. 5)
However uncertain the end point, the first two steps on the path are clearly laid out, and are
within the reach of every conscientious person. These are that people ruthlessly criticize the
capitalist system ‘from top to bottom’, and that they include in this a consistent attack on the
widespread belief that there can be no alternative to it. If one believes that capital is not only
basically unjust but radically unsustainable as well, the prime obligation is to spread the
news, just as one should feel obliged to tell the inhabitants of a structurally unsound house
doomed to collapse of what awaits them unless they take drastic measures. To continue the
analogy, for the critique to matter it needs to be combined with an attack on the false idea that
we are, so to speak, trapped in this house, with no hope of fixing it or getting out. The belief
that there can be no alternative to capital is ubiquitous and no wonder, given how wonderfully
convenient the idea is to the ruling ideology.2 That, however, does not keep it from being
nonsense, and a failure of vision and political will. Whether or not the vision of ecosocialism
offered here has merit, the notion that there is no other way of organizing an advanced society
other than capital does not follow. Nothing lasts for ever, and what is humanly made can
theoretically be unmade. Of course it could be the case that the job of changing it is too hard and
capital is as far as humanity can go, in which instance we must simply accept our fate stoically and try
to palliate the results. But we don’t know this and cannot know this. There is no proving it one way or
the other, and only inertia, fear of change or opportunism can explain the belief in so shabby
an idea as that there can be no alternative to capital for organizing society.
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ANSWERS TO: Capitalism is Human Nature
[
]
[
] Human nature can be changed – it’s not set in advance and educational transformation
in spaces like debate can generate movement away from neoliberalism
Schor, professor of economics at Boston College, 2001
(Julie, Plenitude: The New Economics of True Wealth, pgs. 11-12)
And we don't have to. What's odd about the narrowness of the national economic conversation
is that it leaves out theoretical advances in economics and related fields that have begun to
change our basic understandings of what motivates and enriches people. The policy
conversation hasn't caught up to what's happening at the fore- front of the discipline. One of the
hallmarks of the standard economic model, which hails from the nineteenth century, is that people
are considered relatively unchanging. Basic preferences, likes and dislikes, are assumed to be
stable, and don't adjust as a result of the choices people make or the circumstances in which they
find themselves. People alter their behavior in response to changes in prices and incomes, to
be sure, and sometimes rapidly. But there are no feedback loops from today's choices to
tomorrow's desires. This accords with an old formulation of human nature as fixed, and this view
still dominates the policy conversation. However, there's a growing body of research that
attests to human adaptability. Newer thinking in behavioral economics, cultural evolution,
and social networking that has developed as a result of interdisciplinary work in psychology,
biology, and sociology yields a view of humans as far more malleable. It's the economic
analogue to recent findings in neuroscience that the brain is more plastic than previously
understood, or in biology that human evolution is happening on a time scale more compressed
than scientists originally thought. As economic actors, we can change, too. This has profound
implications for our ability to shift from one way of living to another, and to be better off in the
process. It's an important part of why we can both reduce ecological impact and improve wellbeing. As we transform our lifestyles, we transform ourselves. Patterns of consuming,
earning, or interacting that may seem unrealistic or even negative before starting down this road
become feasible and appealing. Moreover, when big changes are on the table, the narrow
trade-offs of the past can be superseded. If we can question consumerism, we're no longer
forced to make a mandatory choice between well-being and environment. If we can admit that fulltime jobs need not require so many hours, it'll be possible to slow down ecological degradation,
address unemployment, and make time for family and community. If we can think about knowledge
differently, we can expand social wealth far more rapidly. Stepping outside the "there is no
alternative to business-as-usual" thinking that has been a straitjacket for years puts creative
options into play. And it opens the doors to double and triple dividends: changes that yield
benefits on more than one front. Some of the most important economic research in recent years
shows that a single intervention-a community reclamation of a brownfield or planting on degraded
agriculture land-can solve three problems. It regenerates an ecosystem, provides income for the
restorers, and empowers people as civic actors. In dire straits on the economic and ecological
fronts, we have little choice but to find a way forward that addresses both. That’s what plenitude
offers.
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ANSWERS TO: Capitalism is Sustainable
[
]
[
] Poverty and international debt are increasing – growth can’t be sustained much
longer, financial crises are inevitable.
Li, professor of political economy at York University, 2004
(Minqi, “After Neoliberalism: Empire, Social Democracy, or Socialism?,” Online:
http://monthlyreview.org/2004/01/01/after-neoliberalism-empire-social-democracy-or-socialism)
According to United Nations’ Human Development Report, the world’s richest 1 percent receive as
much income as the poorest 57 percent. The income gap between the richest 20 percent and the
poorest 20 percent in the world rose from 30:1 in 1960, to 60:1 in 1990, and to 74:1 in 1999, and is
projected to reach 100:1 in 2015. In 1999–2000, 2.8 billion people lived on less than $2 a day,
840 million were undernourished, 2.4 billion did not have access to any form of improved sanitation
services, and one in every six children in the world of primary school age were not in school. About
50 percent of the global nonagricultural labor force is estimated to be either unemployed or
underemployed.1 In many countries, working people have suffered an absolute decline in living
standards. In the United States, the real weekly earnings of production and nonsupervisory
workers (in 1992 dollars) fell from $315 in 1973 to $264 in 1989. After a decade of economic
expansion, it reached $271 in 1999, which remained lower than the average real wage in 1962. In
Latin America, a continent that has suffered from neoliberal restructuring since the 1970s, about 200
million people, or 46 percent of the population, live in poverty. Between 1980 and the early 1990s
(1991–1994), real wages fell by 14 percent in Argentina, 21 percent in Uruguay, 53 percent in
Venezuela, 68 percent in Ecuador, and 73 percent in Bolivia.2 The advocates of neoliberalism
promised that the neoliberal “reforms” or “structural adjustments” would usher in an era of
unprecedented economic growth, technological progress, rising living standards, and material
prosperity. In fact, the world economy has slowed towards stagnation in the neoliberal era. The
average annual growth rate of world GDP declined from 4.9 percent between 1950 and 1973, to 3.0
percent between 1973 and 1992, and to 2.7 percent between 1990 and 2001. Between 1980 and
1998, half of all the “developing countries” (including the so-called “transition economies”)
suffered from falling real per capita GDP.3 The global economy has been kept afloat by the
debt-financed U.S. economy. Between 1995 and 2002, the U.S. economy accounted for 96 percent
of the cumulative growth in world GDP.4 The U.S. expansion has been financed by reducing
domestic savings, raising the private sector debts to historically unprecedented levels, and running
large and ever-rising current account deficits. The process is unsustainable. The enormous
imbalances have to be corrected one way or the other. If the United States cannot continue to
generate ever-rising current account deficits and none of the other large economies are capable of
functioning effectively as the autonomous driving force, the neoliberal global economy will be
under powerful downward pressures and exposed to the threat of increasingly frequent and
violent financial crises.
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Permutation – “Green Capitalism”
[
] Focusing on short-term environmental crises with feasible solution is important –
starting NOW with policy prescriptions is key to avoid collapse of the biosphere.
Schwartzman, Professor in the Department of Biology at Howard University, 2011
(David, Green New Deal: An Ecosocialist Perspective, Capitalism Nature Socialism, Volume
22, Issue 3, 18 Aug, pages 49-56)
Indeed, imposing such non-market limits is imperative, but the struggle to impose them must
begin in capitalist societies now, and not be posed simply as the policies of future socialism.
Yes, aggressive energy conservation is imperative, especially in the United States and other
countries of the global North. We can all live better with a sharp reduction of wasteful consumption,
breathe clean air, drink clean water, and eat organic food. Nevertheless, there needs to be a global
increase in the power capacity, employing clean energy and not fossil fuels or nuclear power, to
insure every child born on this planet has the material requirements for the highest quality of
life (Schwartzman and Schwartzman 2011). But should we anticipate that Green Capitalism, even
pushed to its limits by class struggle, could indefinitely postpone the final demise of global
capitalism and could actually replace the present unsustainable energy base with a renewable
power infrastructure fast enough to avoid catastrophic climate change (C3)? I submit this prospect
is highly unlikely. The legacy and political economy of real existing capitalism alone makes global
solar capitalism a delusion (Schwartzman2009). While the Pentagon pretends to go “green,” it
remains the servant of the imperial system protecting fossil fuel and strategic metals flowing into the
MIC, the Military Industrial (Fossil Fuel, Nuclear, State Terror) Complex. The immense power of the
MIC is the biggest obstacle to implementing an effective prevention program that has a plausible
chance of avoiding C3. The avoidance of C3 requires an end to coal and fossil fuel addiction, giving
up the nuclear option, and a rapid conversion to a high-efficiency solar energy infrastructure. To
summarize, the MIC is at present the biggest single obstacle to preventing C3 because: It is the
present core of global capital reproduction with its colossal waste of energy and material resources.
The fossil fuel and nuclear industries are integrated within the MIC. The MIC has a dominant role in
setting the domestic and foreign policy agenda of the United States and other leading capitalist
countries. The Pentagon is the “global oil-protection service” for both the U.S. imperial agenda (Klare
2007) and the transnational capital class itself (e.g., Robinson 2004). The MIC's Imperial Agenda
blocks the global cooperation and equity required to prevent C3. Nevertheless, what the struggle for
a GND [Green New Deal] can accomplish is very significant, indeed critical to confronting the
challenge of preventing C3 [Catastrophic Climate Change]. Humanity cannot afford to wait for
socialism to replace capitalism to begin implementing this prevention program [Italics
Original]. And I have argued that starting this prevention program under existing capitalism can
open up a path toward ecosocialist transition, indeed a 21st century Socialism worthy of its name.
Climate science tells us we must proceed now for any plausible chance of avoiding tipping
points plunging us into C3. Green job creation is likewise the creation of a new working-class
sector committed to ending the fossil fuel addiction. Such an historic shift to renewable energy
supplies would be comparable to the industrial revolution that replaced plant power in the form of
wood and agricultural products with coal.
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ANSWERS TO: “Green” Capitalism Fails
[
]
[
] Capitalists aren’t motivated exclusively by greed, and many companies are developing
solutions to environmental problems – supporting those endeavors is the only way to prevent
disaster.
Lewis and Canaty, directors of the Center for Community Enterprise & Common Futures, 2012
(Michael and Patrick, The Resilience Imperative: Cooperative Transitions to a Steady-state Economy,
New Society Publishers, googlebooks)
The agenda of the Great Transition also encompasses three major dimensions of change. Think of
them as the 3 Ps: the personal, practical, and political. Simplistic silver-bullet solutions, and sound
bites spun for culturally stunted attention spans, will not do. Consciously acting to link up the three Ps
with a multi-level agenda guided by the resilience imperative and cooperative transitions is complex.
Balkanized movements cannot contend with the scale of the problems and challenges we
face, nor the powerful forces that must be resisted and restrained. All kinds of constituencies
must be engaged unions, regionally based small and medium-sized businesses, all manner of
community and cooperative enterprises and intermediaries, farmers, credit unions and
progressive financial institutions, arts and culture organizations, faith organizations,
environmental groups, politicians, and academics. We can also work with large companies,
though caution and principled shrewdness is necessary. Companies occupying the
low-road/high-carbon economy have too much power, are unaccountable, and are so addicted
to the capitalist logic of growth that they represent a real and present danger to all of us.
However, there are other companies that are committed to building a highroad/low-carbon
economy, and we need their know-how and partnership if we are to navigate the Great
Transition without violence. So there we have it we are challenged to work consciously from local
to global across sectors, engage creatively multiple constituencies, while all the while paying attention
simultaneously to the macro and micro features of the transition challenge. Isn't life interesting? We
have been acutely conscious, while writing this book, that our concentration has been on the micro
side of the transition challenge, though we have attempted to keep the macro side consciously in play
as a kind of counterpoint tension. We hope we have shown how crucial change at the macro
policy and systems level is for facilitating and easing transition to a low-carbon, more
democratic, and fair economy. Indeed, there are a number of key policy questions that we have
raised directly or indicated in passing. These evident and practical possibilities can be summarized
as: 100 percent debt-free money: Why not mov e step by step toward governments issuing
democratic currency free of interest and, indeed, removing from banks the power to freely issue
money as high-cost debt?
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Alternative Fails – No Alternative to Capitalism
[
] There’s no alternative to capitalism – there needs to be a step-by-step process to
confront environmental degradation, and that requires utilizing the tools of capitalism in the
short term.
Schwartzman, Professor in the Department of Biology at Howard University, 2011
(David, Green New Deal: An Ecosocialist Perspective, Capitalism Nature Socialism, Volume
22, Issue 3, 18 Aug, pages 49-56)
And unlike the New Deal, achieving the GND on a global scale in the context of a robust solar
transition, by necessityaccompanied by demilitarization, will not end with a reinforcement of
militarized capital, as was the case in WWII and the Cold War aftermath. Rather, the GND has real
potential for opening up a path out of capitalism into ecosocialism. WWII and the emergence of
the MIC postponed the terminal crisis of capitalism to this century. Now we face the welcome project
of taking that terminal crisis on and finishing the job. We need a strategy of transition. This should
be a priority in theory and practice for ecosocialists. Any Left worth its label and demonization by
Glenn Beck and company must not only confront the immediate needs of the great majority of
those exploited and oppressed by big capital, but also be a leader in organizing to fight back.
So jobs, affordable housing, health and child care, environmental quality, and environmental
justice must be on the left agenda. But what kind of jobs? For unsustainable or sustainable green
production? And what about the conditions for the reproduction of labor power, itself a site of multidimensional class struggle, as Michael Lebowitz has argued (2003). Thus, the fightback program
must confront the ecological crisis and demand solutions that address climate change by
embracing clean energy. We should never advocate or even think that the “worse the better”
will deliver socialism by the collapse of capitalism, anticipating its terminal illness as hope.
For capitalism's dead weight will kill us all. No slogan or propaganda alone can achieve
success, as important as this ideological struggle is. Rather, only multidimensional and local-totransnational class struggle within capitalism (see Abramsky's illuminating volume 2010) can
terminate this system, which unfortunately will not die a natural death on its own accord. It will have
to be put to sleep forever. A critical role of the ecosocialist Left is to identify the strategic class
sectors—those existing and those in formation—that will be the gravediggers of capitalism.
Additionally, the ecosocialist Left must also, of course, participate in the creation of a collective
vision and its realization as embryos within capitalism of the new global civilization ending the
rule of capital. We now witness or can soon anticipate ongoing struggles for social governance of
production and consumption on all scales from neighborhood to global. Areas of struggle in this
fight should include nationalization of the energy, rail, and telecommunications industries;
municipalization of electric and water supplies; the creation and maintenance of decentralized solar
power, food, energy and farming cooperatives; the encouragement of worker-owned factories
(solidarity economy), the replacement of industrial and GMO agriculture with agroecologies; the
creation of green cities; and of course organizing the unorganized in all sectors, especially GND
workers. All of these objectives should be part of the ecosocialist agenda for struggles around a GND,
which of course, must include the termination of the MIC. One outstanding example of how to begin is
found in Mike Davis 2010), who argues for the potential of a radical movement for green urbanism
(see my commentary, Schwartzman, 2008).
Pg. 35
Capitalism Kritik
DUDA 2014-2015
JV Division
Alternative Fails – Capitalism is Human Nature
[
] The alternative is hopeless utopianism – capitalism isn’t imposed, it came about from
free human interactions – it’s human nature.
Hunter, professor of humanities at St. Petersburg College, 2011
(Mark “To Attack Capitalism Is To Attack Human Nature,” RealClearMarkets, June 21, Online:
http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2011/06/21/to_attack_capitalism_is_to_attack_human_natur
e_99087.html)
Furthermore, McCarraher seems content to overlook the fact that capitalism is an organic
economic system not created as much as evolving naturally as a consequence of free
individuals interacting with other free individuals. Private property and the production of goods
may be a part of capitalism, but its most essential virtue is as a guardian of man's freedom.
Criticizing capitalism for its avarice is not unlike condemning representative democracy for its failure
to elect the wisest of men - each may occur, but it is not relevant to their fundamental purpose. Both
capitalism and representative democracy maximize freedom by diffusing power and
responsibility across the broadest spectrum of society. Rigid control is antithetical to freedom
and it is this that most vexes the liberal intellectual. What McCarraher is unwilling to come to terms
with is that his inherent criticism of capitalism is not so much an indictment of capitalism but rather a
revealing supposition he is making about humanity itself. His attack on capitalism masks a general
contempt for a free people who in his worldview will inevitably choose a path of greed and avarice
unless a coercive political order prevents it. Therefore, any liberal political/economic system
proposed to replace capitalism must have at its core a process through which the masses are
controlled and coerced to overcome the human attributes so abhorred by the liberal
intellectual that he wrongly attributes to capitalism rather than people. McCarraher presents
the reader with a moral crusade cleverly cloaked as political theory. He sees the Deadly Sins ever
present in modern capitalism, and like the fourth century ascetic Evagrius Ponticus, McCarraher
seems particularly obsessed with man's rapacious gluttony. While capitalism's natural and organic
nature is condemned for its "deliberate nurturance of our vilest qualities" he fails to put forth
the ramifications of the artificial and contrived alternative. The progressive alternative to
capitalism must of necessity resemble Dostoyevsky's Grand Inquisitor because the crux of the matter
for both modern liberals and Dostoyevsky is human freedom. The infinite variety that is millions of
people making millions of decisions to reflect their own self interest needs to be replaced with a 21st
century Ubermensch or new political aristocracy that is able to impose on the masses a sin-free,
enlightened order. Redemption comes through man's inability to choose the indulgence of sin, and as
such the anointed elite - having removed man's freedom - become the deliverers of man's salvation
by taking upon themselves the burden of choice. Mankind, now being absolved of the burden of
freedom, can live content without the anxiety of responsibility. However beautiful the veneer of his
lofty rhetoric, this "Wellspring" is in the end enslavement. The only way to deliver mankind from the
demon Mammon will be by removing the greatest gift of the gods - freedom. In this Faustian
exchange we are guaranteed the Marxist security of bread, authoritarian certainty of order and
utopian unity of world government. Far from new, McCarraher's Wellspring of Radical Hope is one
more self-righteous proclamation by a moral prig intent on delivering mankind to elusive Olympian
heights. Beyond the rhetoric, one suspects this experiment would end as other such utopian
pursuits have concluded in history - hopeless.
Pg. 36
Capitalism Kritik
DUDA 2014-2015
JV Division
Alternative Fails – Capitalism is Sustainable
[
] Capitalism will never collapse – economic recessions and other crises aren’t
opportunities to overthrow it, it’s proven by the failure of the Occupy Wall Street Movement.
Castree, professor at Manchester University, 2010
(N., “Crisis, Continuity and Change: Neoliberalism, the Left and the Future of Capitalism” Antipode,
41: 185–213)
To my mind, the Left should not get its hopes up—at least not yet. It's sad to say, but only the
most wild-eyed optimist could believe that the two perceived crises of our time are harbingers
of a better future. Taking two cases—one national scale, one international—I want to argue that
Gramsci was right. The “old” may be dying, but it's far from dead. The essay comprises four
parts. I begin in the heat of the moment, by describing how and why the idea of two concurrent
worldwide “crises” became commonplace in a surprisingly short space of time (2007–2009).
Following this, I take a theoretical detour intended to explain why these crises have arisen, and how
they might play out. Marx, Karl Polanyi and James O’Connor are my guides. Focusing on Britain as
an illustrative case, I then explain why the present moment is not, regrettably, a propitious one
for left-wing change-makers. My point is to show that even in neoliberalism's heartlands, in the
thick of a financial crisis, there is only weak impetus for change. After this examination of how
crisis is playing-out at the scale of one notable nation state, I delve into the world of international
emissions trading philosophy and practice—with a particular focus on the European Union's still
young scheme. I suggest that the myriad practical failures of this and other market approaches to
greenhouse gas mitigation belie the abstract logic of “free market environmentalism”. Even so, these
approaches will be with us for many years to come in all probability. A short conclusion looks to a
future hopefully free of those “morbid symptoms” that Gramsci described just after the Great Crash of
1929. It's a future that will, I fear, be very hard to make. If William James were writing today, he
probably would not bet on the Left making its ideals flesh any time soon. Not for the first time, some
optimism of the will is required—quite a lot, in fact.
Pg. 37
Capitalism Kritik
DUDA 2014-2015
JV Division
Alternative Fails – Can’t Overcome Capitalism
[
] The alternative will fail – movements will be too small, elites will backlash, and there’s
no incentive for anyone to destroy their way of life.
Gordon, professor of environmental politics at the Arava Institute, 2012
(Uri, Anarchist Economics in Practice in The Accumulation of Freedom, pg. 215)
On the one hand, the anarchist movement is so small that even its most consistent and visible
efforts are but a drop in the ocean. On the other hand, political elites have proven themselves
extremely proficient at pulling the ground from under movements for social change, be it
through direct repression and demonization of the activists, diversion of public attention to
security and nationalist agendas, or, at best, minimal concessions that ameliorate the most
exploitative aspects of capitalism while contributing to the resilience of the system as a whole. It
would seem that ethical commitments to social justice and the enhancement of human freedom can
only serve as a motivation for a comparatively small number of people, and that without the
presence of genuine material interests among large sections of the population there is little
hope for a mass movement to emerge that would herald the departure from existing social,
economic, and political arrangements.
Pg. 38
Capitalism Kritik
DUDA 2014-2015
JV Division
Alternative Fails – Can’t Solve Climate Change
[
] The short timeframe for action means quick policy solutions are key – otherwise
warming will overtake us and prevent radical changes to society.
Parenti, Soros Senior Justice Fellow, 2013
(Christian, “A Radical Approach to the Climate Crisis” Dissent Magazine, Online:
http://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/a-radical-approach-to-the-climate-crisis)
And the very bad news is, time has run out. As I write this, news arrives of an ice-free arctic
summer by 2050. Scientists once assumed that would not happen for hundreds of years. Dealing
with climate change by first achieving radical social transformation—be it a socialist or
anarchist or deep-ecological/neo-primitive revolution, or a nostalgia-based localista
conversion back to a mythical small-town capitalism—would be a very long and drawn-out,
maybe even multigenerational, struggle. It would be marked by years of mass education and
organizing of a scale and intensity not seen in most core capitalist states since the 1960s or
even the 1930s. Nor is there any guarantee that the new system would not also degrade the
soil, lay waste to the forests, despoil bodies of water, and find itself still addicted to coal and
oil. Look at the history of “actually existing socialism” before its collapse in 1991. To put it
mildly, the economy was not at peace with nature. Or consider the vexing complexities facing
the left social democracies of Latin America. Bolivia, and Ecuador, states run by socialists who
are beholden to very powerful, autonomous grassroots movements, are still very dependent on
petroleum revenue. A more radical approach to the crisis of climate change begins not with a
long-term vision of an alternate society but with an honest engagement with the very
compressed timeframe that current climate science implies. In the age of climate change, these
are the real parameters of politics. Hard Facts The scientific consensus, expressed in peerreviewed and professionally vetted and published scientific literature, runs as follows: For the
last 650,000 years atmospheric levels of CO2—the primary heat-trapping gas—have hovered at
around 280 parts per million (ppm). At no point in the preindustrial era did CO2 concentrations go
above 300 ppm. By 1959, they had reached 316 ppm and are now over 400 ppm. And the rate of
emissions is accelerating. Since 2000, the world has pumped almost 100 billion tons of carbon into
the atmosphere—about a quarter of all CO2 emissions since 1750. At current rates, CO2 levels will
double by mid-century. Climate scientists believe that any increase in average global
temperatures beyond 2 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels will lead to dangerous
climate change, causing large-scale desertification, crop failure, inundation of coastal cities,
mass migration to higher and cooler ground, widespread extinctions of flora and fauna,
proliferating disease, and possible social collapse. Furthermore, scientists now understand that
the earth’s climate system has not evolved in a smooth linear fashion. Paleoclimatology has
uncovered evidence of sudden shifts in the earth’s climate regimes. Ice ages have stopped and
started not in a matter of centuries, but decades. Sea levels (which are actually uneven across the
globe) have risen and fallen more rapidly than was once believed. Throughout the climate system,
there exist dangerous positive-feedback loops and tipping points. A positive-feedback loop is a
dynamic in which effects compound, accelerate, or amplify the original cause. Tipping points in
the climate system reflect the fact that causes can build up while effects lag. Then, when the effects
kick in, they do so all at once, causing the relatively sudden shift from one climate regime to
another.
Pg. 39
Capitalism Kritik
DUDA 2014-2015
JV Division
Capitalism Good – Environment
[
] The environment is getting better now and it’s because of growth and technological
innovation.
Bailey, award-winning science correspondent for Reason magazine, 2000
(Ronald, “Earth Day, Then and Now The planet's future has never looked better. Here's why,”
Reason, Online http://reason.com/archives/2000/05/01/earth-day-then-and-now/4)
Earth Day 1970 provoked a torrent of apocalyptic predictions. "We have about five more years at the
outside to do something," ecologist Kenneth Watt declared to a Swarthmore College audience on
April 19, 1970. Harvard biologist George Wald estimated that "civilization will end within 15 or 30
years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind." "We are in an
environmental crisis which threatens the survival of this nation, and of the world as a suitable place of
human habitation," wrote Washington University biologist Barry Commoner in the Earth Day issue of
the scholarly journal Environment. The day after Earth Day, even the staid New York Times editorial
page warned, "Man must stop pollution and conserve his resources, not merely to enhance existence
but to save the race from intolerable deterioration and possible extinction." Very Apocalypse Now.
Three decades later, of course, the world hasn't come to an end; if anything, the planet's
ecological future has never looked so promising. With half a billion people suiting up around the
globe for Earth Day 2000, now is a good time to look back on the predictions made at the first Earth
Day and see how they've held up and what we can learn from them. The short answer: The prophets
of doom were not simply wrong, but spectacularly wrong. More important, many contemporary
environmental alarmists are similarly mistaken when they continue to insist that the Earth's future
remains an eco-tragedy that has already entered its final act. Such doomsters not only fail to
appreciate the huge environmental gains made over the past 30 years, they ignore the simple
fact that increased wealth, population, and technological innovation don't degrade and
destroy the environment. Rather, such developments preserve and enrich the environment. If it
is impossible to predict fully the future, it is nonetheless possible to learn from the past. And the best
lesson we can learn from revisiting the discourse surrounding the very first Earth Day is that
passionate concern, however sincere, is no substitute for rational analysis.
Pg. 40
Capitalism Kritik
DUDA 2014-2015
JV Division
Capitalism Good – Economic Growth
[
] Economic growth is at its highest point in history because of US-led globalization.
Barnett, Professor of Warfare Analysis & Research Department, U.S. Naval War College, 2011
(Thomas P.M.,“The New Rules: Leadership Fatigue Puts U.S., and Globalization, at Crossroads,”
World Politics Review, March 7, Online: http://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/articles/8099/the-newrules-leadership-fatigue-puts-u-s-and-globalization-at-crossroads)
It is worth first examining the larger picture: We live in a time of arguably the greatest structural
change in the global order yet endured, with this historical moment's most amazing feature being its
relative and absolute lack of mass violence. That is something to consider when Americans
contemplate military intervention in Libya, because if we do take the step to prevent larger-scale
killing by engaging in some killing of our own, we will not be adding to some fantastically imagined
global death count stemming from the ongoing "megalomania" and "evil" of American "empire." We'll
be engaging in the same sort of system-administering activity that has marked our stunningly
successful stewardship of global order since World War II. Let me be more blunt: As the guardian
of globalization, the U.S. military has been the greatest force for peace the world has ever
known. Had America been removed from the global dynamics that governed the 20th century, the
mass murder never would have ended. Indeed, it's entirely conceivable there would now be no
identifiable human civilization left, once nuclear weapons entered the killing equation. But the world
did not keep sliding down that path of perpetual war. Instead, America stepped up and changed
everything by ushering in our now-perpetual great-power peace. We introduced the international
liberal trade order known as globalization and played loyal Leviathan over its spread. What resulted
was the collapse of empires, an explosion of democracy, the persistent spread of human rights, the
liberation of women, the doubling of life expectancy, a roughly 10-fold increase in adjusted global
GDP and a profound and persistent reduction in battle deaths from state-based conflicts. That is
what American "hubris" actually delivered.
Pg. 41
Capitalism Kritik
DUDA 2014-2015
JV Division
Capitalism Good – Global Poverty
[
] Capitalism solves global inequality – poverty comes from corrupt governments. Only
capitalism provides a fair way of distributing wealth.
Obhof, Graduate of Yale Law School, 2003
(“WHY GLOBALIZATION? A LOOK AT GLOBAL CAPITALISM AND ITS EFFECTS”. University of
Florida Journal of Law & Public Policy. Fall 2003)
Many in the anti-globalization camp have focused their efforts on rising tensions within, rather than
between, countries. They argue that the rich and the poor are drifting farther apart, and that
violence between classes of people within the same country is increasing. Noting that economic
groups often tend to break down along ethnic lines, some have even postulated that the spread of
free-market democracy fosters "ethnoeconomic resentment" to the point of conflagration. n171 On
their collective face, these arguments appear to have some merit. Intrastate war is now the [*121]
predominant form of armed conflict. n172 In the last decade, civil wars "have scarred the world's
poorest countries, leaving a legacy of more than five million dead, many more driven from their
homes, billions of dollars in resources destroyed, and wasted economic opportunity." n173 Is the
spread of global capitalism responsible for these atrocities? The answer is likely no. Such
analyses often overlook more obvious sources of backlash: elite behavior, corruption, and
latent ethnic, nationalist, and religious tensions. n174 They also ignore historical and economic
realities. As discussed above, there is no correlation between globalization and increased
inequality within countries - in fact, the opposite is true. Furthermore, the risk factors most closely
correlated with civil war include the share of GDP coming from the export of primary commodities,
geography, recent conflicts, economic opportunities, and ethnic and religious composition. n175
Since the end of the Cold War, conflict has been concentrated in countries with little
education and economic decline. n176 Intrastate conflict is systematically related to low
national income n177 and a lack of economic opportunities, n178 but not inequality. n179
Unequal societies are simply not more prone to conflict than more egalitarian ones. Given the
importance of economic opportunity in preventing conflict, and the unequivocally positive results
of increased trade and foreign investment, it seems that global capitalism is a potential cure,
rather than a cause, of internal conflict. In fact, internal pressures appear to be greater [*122]
in countries that have not become more globalized in recent years. Whatever the merits of this
latter claim, though, the assertion that globalization has increased internal conflict is simply not
supported by the facts.
Pg. 42
Capitalism Kritik
DUDA 2014-2015
JV Division
Capitalism Good – War
[
] Capitalism prevents war – economic ties between countries deters conflict.
Griswold, Director of the Center for Trade Policy Studies at the CATO Institute, 2002
(Daniel, “seven Moral Arguments for Free Trade,” The Insider, 01 May, Online:
http://www.insideronline.org/feature.cfm?id=106)
In an 1845 speech in the British House of Commons, Richard Cobden called free trade “that advance
which is calculated to knit nations more together in the bonds of peace by means of commercial
intercourse.” Free trade does not guarantee peace, but it does strengthen peace by raising the
cost of war to governments and their citizens. As nations become more integrated through
expanding markets, they have more to lose should trade be disrupted. In recent years, the twin
trends of globalization and democratization have produced their own “peace dividend”: since 1987,
real spending on armaments throughout the world has dropped by more than one-third. Since
the end of the Cold War, the threat of major international wars has receded. Those nations most
closely associated with international terrorism – Libya, Sudan, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan,
and North Korea – are among the least globalized countries in the world in terms of non-oil trade
and foreign investment. Not one of them belongs to the World Trade Organization. During the 1930s,
the industrialized nations waged trade wars against each other. They raised tariffs and
imposed quotas in order to protect domestic industry. The result, however, was that other
nations only raised their barriers even further, choking off global trade and deepening and
prolonging the global economic depression. Those dark economic times contributed to the
conflict that became World War II. America’s post-war policy of encouraging free trade through
multilateral trade agreements was aimed at promoting peace as much as it was prosperity.
Pg. 43