AFF
NOTES
Need better internal links between accords and zap improvement and then to the impacts themselves
CAP:
1. Status quo links worse – whatever they’re critiquing is tied up to entrenched structures in the
status quo. Find a way for the aff to access those things.
For cap – the zaps are anti-cap. Advancing the zap’s cause would advance the entire endeavor of
resisting capitalism
Mucho cap now – alt will only be made stronger by the use of the zaps because they’re awesome
If we don’t have to defend the entirety of the 1AC – means the perm resolves a lot of the cap links
2. have generic evidence that can be used on the perm – how the aff intersects with other bodies
of literature. Cards talking about how the Zapatistas are the starting point for resisting other
things
3. Either the alt is able to dismantle all of capitalism – how would zaps ruin it?
They have to win some super impressive access point for dismantling cap
If it’s just a chill rejection then the aff is right along with that
4. dignity is a pre-imminent social value – that would throw a wrench in capitalism’s grasps on
society
Introduction of the risk calculus including dignity would be super hardcore anti-capitalist
Incorporating the dignity with the alt to better articulate a decision-making framework to then do the
alternative
Cap – revolution stuff
Aff is a particularized form of protest and distracts from capitalism
NEOLIB:
Neolib is much more abstract and less economy-based. It can morph into a K of things in the 1AC –
articulating autonomous social values or utilizing limited rights based accords
Neolib is much more ideological – answers have to be more specific – need a greater defense of things
in the 1AC – co-option arguments will be harder to deal with
If the neolib is able to capture rights-based discourses and tailor their own strategies and discourses to
match them and just show superficially that the system of has proves.
Plan co-opts the zaps because it creates a point of contact between the USFG and the zaps
ZAPATISTA 1AC
¡YA BASTA!
This is who we are.
The Zapatista National Liberation Army.
The voice that arms itself to be heard.
The face that hides itself to be seen.
The name that hides itself to be named.
The red star who calls out to humanity and the world
To be heard, to be seen, to be named.
The tomorrow to be harvested in the past.
Behind our black mask,
Behind our armed voice,
Behind our unnameable name,
Behind us, who you see,
Behind us, we are you.
Behind we are the simple and ordinary men and women,
Who are repeated in all races,
Painted in all colors,
Speak in all languages
And live in all places.
The same forgotten men and women.
The same excluded,
The same untolerated,
The same persecuted,
We are you.
-Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos
(Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos, insurgent leader for the EZLN, in charge of all
public statements, Our World is Our Weapon, pg. 103-104, Seven Stories Press: New
York, Luke Newell)
The Zapatistas welcome people to join them in solidarity – connecting ourselves with
them is to connect with a nonviolent protest against oppressive domination
Maccani 8 (RJ Maccani, senior reporter in NYC, working both for news organizations and resistance
groups, from the newsletter, “Solidarity: What does it mean now? May/June 2008,” “Be a Zapatista
Wherever You Are,”
http://www.resistinc.org/newsletters/articles/be-zapatista-wherever-you-are, Luke Newell)
Behind our black mask, behind our armed voice, behind our unnamable name, behind what you see of us, behind this,
we are you. - Major Ana Maria of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) at the First Intercontinental Encuentro for Humanity and
Against Neoliberalism. Chiapas, Mexico, 1996¶ In their words and in their actions, Mexico's zapatista rebels have developed and
propagated a powerful conception of solidarity. Through exploring a bit of their history, as well as the work of several of
their supporters and allies within the USA, I seek to share here some of my understandings of what solidarity means to the zapatistas and, thus,
what it might mean for those of us who seek to act in solidarity with them. ¶ Everything for Everyone, Nothing for Ourselves¶ Perhaps the
EZLN got lucky when they picked January 1, 1994 to be the day they would rise up in arms. As the prominent Mexican
intellectual Gustavo Esteva describes it, there wasn't much else happening at the time:¶ "Not a plane crashed. No tsunami came. No princess
died. No president had any sexual escapade. Nothing happened on earth. The media was empty. They had nothing to present us. So, on January
2, we had a thousand journalists in San Cristobal. CNN was projecting Zapatistas. We
had beautiful images with the ski masks
and all the emotion. It was perfect for the news. Six hours a day, CNN was presenting Zapatistas."¶ From Mexico's
southeastern state of Chiapas, the zapatista cry of "¡Ya Basta!" ("Enough is Enough!") quickly traveled around
the globe not only through the corporate media but, unfiltered and direct, over the Internet as well. A virtual army of volunteer translators
and web-junkies ensured that anyone who wanted to could engage directly with the communiqués, stories and letters of the zapatistas. In the
same moment that the North American Free Trade Agreement went into effect, the EZLN - in image and word - and the poverty of southern
Mexico were catapulted into the consciousness of people around the world.¶ Although they
succeeded in liberating over a
million acres of land from plantation owners in the first days of the uprising, the zapatistas' rag tag army of
poorly equipped peasant soldiers could never have dreamed of matching the violence of the Mexican military .
Demanding "work, land, housing, food, health care, education, independence, freedom, democracy,
justice and peace," they called on their fellow Mexicans to join them by rising up in arms to depose the one-party
rule of the PRI (Institutional Revolutionary Party). In response to this call, the zapatistas instead found themselves confronted
by a global "civil society" that echoed their demands but sought to achieve them through nonviolent means.
That the zapatistas were not annihilated by the Mexican Army has less to do with their military prowess and more to do with the hundreds
of thousands of people who flooded the streets of Mexico City and other cities around the world in
support of peace.¶ Taking a cue from the people they had hoped to lead into battle, the zapatistas decided to stop
speaking with "the fire" in order to strengthen the path of "the word". And so in the 14 years since the uprising, the
zapatistas have hosted countless consultas (mass consultations), encuentros (gatherings for listening and speaking), and other engagements
with various segments of a national and international "civil society" that was attracted to them and who the zapatistas recognized as their
peers. As Subcomandante Marcos, the spokesperson of the zapatistas, remarked in a recent interview,¶ ".it so happened that we, the
EZLN, were almost all indigenous from here in Chiapas, but we did not want to struggle just for our
own good, or just for the good of the indigenous of Chiapas, or just for the good of the Indian peoples of Mexico. We wanted to
fight along with everyone who was humble and simple like ourselves and who was in great need and who suffered
from exploitation and thievery by the rich and their bad governments here, in our Mexico, and in other countries in
the world." [emphasis added]¶ Since their public emergence, the zapatistas have sought to sustain an open and non-vanguardist style,
communicated through the aphorisms "Walking,
we ask questions" and "Lead by obeying." Their commitment to struggling
not just for themselves, but for the betterment of everyone, is expressed powerfully and clearly in their "Everything for everyone,
nothing for ourselves."
The Zapatistas cry for equality and dignity is humanity’s only chance against extinction
Bellinghausen 12 (Hermann, collaborator on the Mexican weekly magazines En Solidaridad and Mundo Médico and as
an editor for Ojarasca. He is an editorialist and a correspondent who covers the state of Chiapas, The EZLN, Origen of the
Current Social Unrest All Over the Globe, January 7, http://compamanuel.wordpress.com/2012/01/07/seminar-on-antisystemic-movements-re-ezln-influence/) IMTIAZ
The slogan that the
Zapatista Movement used for liberty, justice and democracy “walks through the whole
world not as an echo, but as the voices of thinking and a similar wanting,” points out the author of La democracia en
México. Those movements “coincide in that the solution is that democracy of everyone for everyone and
with everyone that is not delegated, and that some call democratic socialism or 21st Century socialism and others just
democracy, and that is that, and much more, because it is a new way of relating to the land and with human beings, a
new way of organizing life.Ӧ De Sousa, a professor at the University of Coimbra and promoter of the World Social Forum, maintained last night
that: “a change of civilization is needed” to conquer capitalism, dominant on a planetary scale, since “is has
created a civilization-wide totality” that one must conquer. “Zapatismo is a window of what this change can be like, the only
one that can save Humanity.Ӧ In a description of the progressive processes en Brazil, Ecuador, Bolivia and other South American countries, De
Sousa pointed out paradoxical aspects in relation to the content against the State in the anti-systemic protests. “The constituent assembly that is now demanded in
Chile and Tunis,” he suggested, means that at the moment there it is thought that it is necessary to re-found the State. Our continent, he said, “has possibilities of
using hegemonic instruments to be counter-hegemonic, utilizing them against the dominant class.Ӧ Assuming himself a Marxist with a long history, he admitted
that in the last 20 years the important popular revolts “have been led by actors ignored, strangers to Marxism.” He enumerated: women, indigenous, gays and
lesbians, migrants, campesinos, and that, “using words that the traditional left izquierda doesn’t know how to use,” like territory, dignity and spirituality. He
recognized the pioneer value of the new constitution in Ecuador that assumes the rights of nature, “a contribution of the indigenous movement whose importance
will only grow with time” in the entire world. ¶ Inside the “sociology of emergencies” that we live in, De Sousa recognized that the
Zapatistas “taught
us another way of looking at the world; they broke with prevailing Marxist orthodoxy, discourse,
semantics and some novel ideas; they taught us a new organizing logic that had a fundamental influence all
over the world.”
Dignity makes life worth living – fighting for it creates the place for democracy, liberty,
and justice and is crucial to life itself
Marcos 95 (Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos, insurgent leader for the EZLN, in charge of all public
statements, “Dignity cannot be studied, you live it or it dies,” Marcos, in an email written to French
journalist Eric Jauffret, ”http://flag.blackened.net/revolt/mexico/ezln/marcos_dignity_june95.html,
Luke Newell)
The indigenous peoples who support our just cause have decided to resist without surrender, without
accepting the alms with which the supreme government hopes to buy them. And they have decided this
because they have made theirs a word which is not understood with the head, which cannot be studied
or memorized. It is a word which is lived with the heart, a word which is felt deep inside your chest and
which makes men and women proud of belonging to the human race. This word is DIGNITY. Respect for
ourselves, for our right to be better, or right to struggle for what we believe in, our right to live and
die according to our ideals. Dignity cannot be studied, you live it or it dies, it aches inside you and
teaches you how to walk. Dignity is that international homeland which we forget many times.¶ Our
ideals are simple, and for that reason very large: we want, for all the men and women of this country,
and of the entire world, three things which are fundamental for any human being: democracy, liberty,
and justice. It can appear, and the powerful means of communication certainly help this appearance,
that these three things are not the same thing for an indigenous person of the Mexican southeast as for
a European. But it is about the same thing: the right to have a good government, the right to think and
act with a freedom which does not imply the slavery of others, the right to give and receive what is
just.¶ For these three values, for democracy, liberty and justice, we rose up in arms on January 1st of
1994. For these three values, we resist today without surrender. Both things, the war and resistance,
means that these three values represent everything for us, represent a cause worth fighting for, worth
dying for..so that living is worthy of us. Our cause we believe, is not only ours. It belongs to any honest
man or woman in any part of the world. And this is why we aspire so that our voice can be heard in all
the world and so that our struggle will be assumed by everyone in the world. Our cause is not the cause
of war, or the cause of destruction, or the cause of death. Our cause is that of peace, but peace with
justice; it is the cause of construction, but with equity and reason; it is the cause of life, but with
dignity, and always new and better.¶ Today, we find ourselves in a very difficult situation. The war is
dressed in its terrible suit of hunger and entire communities suffer in conditions below the minimum
survival level. We willingly accept this not because we like martyrdom or sterile sacrifice. We accept it
because we know that brothers and sisters the world over will know how to extend their hand to help
us triumph in a cause which is theirs as well.¶ Like yesterday, we cover our faces in order to show the
world the true face of the Mexico of the basement and after washing with our blood the mirror in which
Mexicans can see their own dignity. Now we hide our face in order to escape the treachery and death
which walks in the steps of those who say they govern the country. We are not fighting with our
weapons. Our example and our dignity now fight for us.¶ In the peace talks the government delegates
have confessed that they have studied in order to learn about dignity and that they have been unable
to understand it. They ask the Zapatista delegates to explain what is dignity. The Zapatistas laugh,
after months of pain they laugh. Their laughter echoes and escapes unto the high wall behind which
arrogance hides its fear. The Zapatista delegates laugh even when the dialogue ends, and they are
giving their report. Everyone who hears them laughs, and the laughter re-arranges faces which have
been hardened by hunger and betrayal. The Zapatistas laugh in the mountains of the Mexican southeast
and the sky cannot avoid infection by that laughter and the peals of laughter emerge. The laughter is so
great that tears arise and it begins to rain as though the laughter were a gift for the dry land...
Affirmation of dignity is an ethical obligation – it’s the only method to challenge
hegemonic power – dignity serves as the foundation to attack oppressive structures
Fender 11 (Meredith Fender, Spring 2011, “How Subcomandante Marcos Employed Strategic
Communication to Promote the Zapatista Revolution”
http://www.american.edu/sis/jis/upload/8Fender.pdf) Malhar
Significantly, Marcos’
discourse emphasized the importance of “dignity” ¶ — a concept that is understood and valued in
concept ¶ embodies honor, integrity, and worthiness. The term serves the purpose of
¶ altering the post-Enlightenment appeal to shared notions of human dignity to ¶ acknowledge cultural
specificity. Marcos’ emphasized the dignity of the ¶ indigenous peoples and frames their plight as an
ongoing struggle against ¶ European repression, and to preserve their languages, community-oriented
¶ identity, and ways of life against pressure from “Power,” or hegemonic forces. ¶ Thus, he attempted
to reshape preconceptions about indigenous peoples as ¶ worthy for inclusion and participation in
Mexican society. He framed them as ¶ worthy of being seen and heard — worthy of existing.
many cultures.90 This
The status quo is a brutally violent towards Chiapan communities. Structural violence
occurs every day and the US is one cause of these attacks against human rights.
Cunninghame and Corona ’98 – Patrick Cunninghame and Carolina Ballesteros Corona, writing for the Journal of
Capital and Class [Capital and Class, Autumn98, Vol. 21 Issue 66, p12-12. “A Rainbow at Midnight: Zapatistas and Autonomy.”
Ebscohost] Adoan
As in Bosnia and Rwanda, the war is not being fought so much against the armed guerrillas of the
EZLN, but rather the civilian population of the Zapatista 'base support communities'. The PRI regime's
aim is to exterminate and expel the Zapatista communities, so depopulating huge areas of the oil,
water and mineral-rich Lacandona Jungle, an area even more biodiverse than the Brazilian rain
forests. In this way not only will 'the fish have no water to swim in', but the path towards the greater exploitation of the area's human and
natural resources by mainly US-based transnational corporations (TNCs) will have been greatly smoothed, as was always the intention of the
NAFTA free trade agreement.¶ The
Acteal Massacre has been cynically used by the PRI regime to step up the
repression and harassment of the indigenous Zapatista communities by both the army and PRI
paramilitary groups who, despite some token arrests following the massacre, now enjoy ever greater
impunity and support from the Mexican Federal Army and the Chiapas state police force. The Zapatista
communities have fought back by accelerating their own implementation of the San Andrés Accords, setting up some 32 'autonomous
municipalities' under the terms of the agreement. The PRI regime is now attempting to bulldoze its revised and heavily diluted version of the
accords through the Mexican Congress. Meanwhile,
it has launched a campaign of violent repression against the
main autonomous municipalities such as Taniperlas and San Juan de la Libertad, where on June 10,
eight Zapatistas and two policemen were killed during an attack involving a 1,000-strong column of
soldiers, police and paramilitary forces, supported by tanks, helicopters and artillery. Hundreds have
been imprisoned or forced to flee into the mountains, leaving women, children and old people at the
mercy of the Mexican army and the MIRA (Revolutionary Anti-Zapatista Indigenous Movement), a
PRI-linked paramilitary organisation which now rules Taniperlas and other repressed communities by
terror with the open cooperation of the security forces.¶ In order to intensify its repression of the insurgent Zapatista
communities, the PRI regime has had to forcibly remove one of the main obstacles to this course of action, namely the presence of large
numbers of foreign human rights observers many of whom stay in 'peace camps' inside Zapatista communities in order to provide some sort of
protection from state terror. Over
200 such observers have been deported in the last year as the PRI regime
has whipped up a crude xenophobic campaign in the press, blaming the Chiapas conflict on meddling
by foreign political activists and local Catholic Church priests of foreign origin. Some 40 Italian human rights
observers were permanently expelled from Mexico in May, the most extreme deportation order, which before this year had only been used
once in the last 15 years.¶ There
can be little doubt that the PRI regime's use of state terror in Chiapas enjoys
the tacit support of the US and EU governments, the latter of whom signed a free trade agreement with Mexico last
December, despite its first clause making its implementation dependent on respect for human and democratic rights. Notwithstanding its
'ethical' foreign policy the New Labour presidency of the EU has failed to criticise President Zedillo's policy of state terror in Chiapas and the
British press have ignored the issue. A possible explanation could be that Britain is the EU's second largest investor in Mexico and the fourth in
the world. It has also emerged that the Labour government continues to grant export licences for the sale of weapons to the Mexican Army.[ 1]
The Zapatista revolution empowers minorities, homosexuals, and indigenous peoples
to achieve a greater sense of dignity and to break free from elitist domination.
Massimo De Angelis 2008 obtained a PhD in Economics at the University of Utah in 1995 and a Laurea in
Political Sciences at the Universita' Statale di Milano in 1985. He is a critical political economist. He is author of
several research publications on value theory, globalisation, social movements and the political reading of
economic narrative – NEIL MEHTA
In the Zapatistas’ hands however, this reflection on globalization as a world war, expropriation, and
enclosures does not lead to a self-indulging lament, but to a reflection of what is common between the indigenous
communities they are part of, and other world’s “minorities” they are inter-dependent with. This
implies essentially to begin a process of problematisation of the “we,” a reflection on who the political subjects are,
and how they are articulated among each other. The subjects are “minorities” and their articulation is a process of exclusion and fragmentation. This “new distribution of
¶
the world” has the power of exclusion of what at first appear as isolated minorities, and then, with a magic twist within the argumentative line, show themselves for what they are, the greatest majority of the world population:
The new distribution of the world excludes “minorities.” The indigenous, youth, women, homosexuals,
lesbians, people of color, immigrants, work-ers, peasants; the majority who make up the world basements are presented, for power, as disposable. The new distribution of the world excludes the
majorities (DOR).¶ ¶ The majority is made of minorities, but minorities are minorities to the extent they are isolated, atomized,
fragments facing the whole as an alien force, yet it is their inter-dependence that constitutes the
whole! The writings of the Zapatistas contain therefore both the awareness of the condition of
fragmentation within the division of labour constituting the global factory (Marcos 1992: 26) and the realisation
of the consequent condition of invisibility.9 However, this is an invisibility that is constructed by a particular mode of relation. This invisibility, this atomisation
and fragmentation of an entire population within the huge global productive machine is not only a characteristic of the Maya people in Southeast of Mexico. It is increasingly a condition of
existence of all kinds of people and individuals (although in different forms and contexts), once they
are understood in terms of their relation to each other, a relation that constitutes global disciplinary markets as we discussed in the previous section.
Structural violence outweighs – its relegation to the sidelines means debate is a crucial
space to expose its horrors.
Christie ’01 – Daniel J. Christie was a professor of psychology at Ohio State University, edited by RV Wagner and DA
Winter. [Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 2007. “Structural Violence”. 2007. http://academic.marion.ohiostate.edu/dchristie/Peace%20Psychology%20Book_files/Section%20II%20%20Structural%20Violence%20(Winter%20%26%20Leighton).pdf] ADoan
¶
Direct violence is horrific, but its brutality usually gets our attention: we notice it, and ¶ often respond to it. Structural
violence,
however, is almost always invisible, embedded in ¶ ubiquitous social structures, normalized by stable
institutions and regular experience. ¶ Structural violence occurs whenever people are disadvantaged
by political, legal, ¶ economic, or cultural traditions. Because they are longstanding, structural inequities ¶ usually seem
ordinary—the way things are and always have been. But structural violence ¶ produces suffering and death as often as
direct violence does, though the damage is ¶ slower, more subtle, more common, and more difficult to
repair. The chapters in this ¶ section teach us about some important but invisible forms of structural violence, and alert¶ us to the powerful
cultural mechanisms that create and maintain them over generations.¶ Johan Galtung originally framed the term “structural violence”
to mean any constraint¶ on human potential caused by economic and political structures (1969).
Unequal access ¶ to resources, to political power, to education, to health care, or to legal standing, are
forms of structural violence. When inner-city children have inadequate schools while ¶ others do not, when gays and lesbians are
fired for their sexual orientation, when laborers¶ toil in inhumane conditions, when people of color endure environmental toxins in their ¶
neighborhoods, structural violence exists. Unfortunately, even those who are victims
of ¶ structural violence often do not
see the systematic ways in which their plight is ¶ choreographed by unequal and unfair distribution of
society’s resources. Such is the ¶ insidiousness of structural violence.¶ Structural violence is problematic in and of
itself, but it is also dangerous because it ¶ frequently leads to direct violence. The chronically
oppressed are often, for logical ¶ reasons, those who resort to direct violence. Organized armed
conflict in various parts of ¶ the world is easily traced to structured inequalities. Northern Ireland, for example, has been
¶
marked by economic disparities between Northern Irish Catholics—who have ¶ higher unemployment rates and less formal education—and Protestants (Cairns & Darby, ¶ 1998). In Sri Lanka,
youth unemployment and underemployment exacerbates ethnic ¶ conflict (Rogers, Spencer, & Uyangoda, 1998). In Rwanda, huge disparities in both ¶ income and social status between the
Hutu and Tutsis eventually led to ethnic massacres.¶ While structural violence often leads to direct violence, the reverse is also true, as ¶ brutality terrorizes bystanders, who then become
unwilling or unable to confront social ¶ injustice. Increasingly, civilians pay enormous costs of war, not only through death, but ¶ through devastation of neighborhoods and ecosystems.
Ruling elites rarely suffer from ¶ armed conflict as much as civilian populations do, who endure
decades of poverty and ¶ disease in war-torn societies.Recognizing the operation of structural violence
forces us to ask questions about how ¶ and why we tolerate it, questions that often have painful
answers. The first chapter in this ¶ section, “Social Injustice,” by Susan Opotow, argues that our normal
perceptual/cognitive¶ processes lead us to care about people inside our scope of justice, but rarely
care about ¶ those people outside. Injustice that would be instantaneously confronted if it occurred to ¶ someone we love or
know is barely noticed if it occurs to strangers or those who are ¶ invisible or irrelevant to us. We do not seem to be able to open
our minds and our hearts ¶ to everyone; moral exclusion is a product of our normal cognitive
processes. But Opotow¶ argues convincingly that we can reduce its nefarious effects by becoming aware of our ¶ distorted perceptions.
Inclusionary thinking can be fostered by relationships, ¶ communication, and appreciation of diversity.¶ One outcome of exclusionary thinking is
the belief that victims of violence must in ¶ some way deserve their plight. But certainly
it is easy to see that young children
do not ¶ deserve to be victims. The next two chapters in this section address the violence ¶ experienced by children. In the first,
“The War Close to Home: Children and Violence in ¶ the United States,” Kathleen Kostelny and James Garbarino describe the direct and ¶
structural violence which children in Chicago and other urban areas of the United States ¶ endure, paralleling that experienced by children who
live in countries at war.
Children ¶ who endure these environments often become battle weary, numb,
hopeless, and/or ¶ morally impaired. But children not only suffer directly from violence, they also
suffer ¶ from the impaired parenting and communities which poverty inflicts
. The authors ¶ describe how community and family support mechanisms
can mitigate these effects. For example, home visitation and early childhood education programs provide crucial family ¶ and community support.¶ While Kostelny and Garbarino focus on community intervention techniques, Milton ¶ Schwebel and Daniel Christie, in their article “Children
and Structural Violence,” extend ¶ the analysis of structural violence by examining how economic and psychological ¶ deprivation impairs at-risk children. Children living in poverty experience diminished ¶ intellectual development because parents are too overwhelmed to be able to
provide ¶ crucial linguistic experiences. Schwebel and Christie’s discussion concludes that ¶ economic structures must provide parents with living-wage employment, good prenatal ¶ medical care, and high-quality child-care if we are to see the next generation develop into¶ the intelligent
. If children are the invisible victims of society’s structural violence, so are their ¶
mothers. In the chapter “Women, Girls, and Structural Violence: A Global Analysis,” Diane Mazurana and Susan McKay articulate the many ways in which global sexism
and caring citizens needed to create a peaceful world
¶
¶
¶
systematically denies females access to resources. From health care and food to legal ¶ standing and political power, women and girls get less than males in every country on the ¶ planet.
Mazurana and McKay argue that patriarchy-based structural violence will not be ¶ redressed until women are able to play more active roles making decisions about how ¶ resources are
distributed.¶ Patriarchal values also drive excessive militarism, as Deborah Winter, Marc Pilisuk, ¶ Sara Houck, and Matthew Lee argue in their chapter “Understanding Militarism: Money, ¶
The authors illuminate three motives fueling excessive military expenditures:
money, which, because of modern market forces,¶ leads half the world’s countries to spend more on arms than on health and education ¶
combined; masculinism, which leads societies to make soldiering a male rite of passage ¶ and proof of manhood; and the search
for the mystical, as men attempt to experience ¶ profound human processes of selfsacrifice, honor, and transcendence through war. Like
¶ William James, these authors argue that we will need to find a moral equivalent to war, in¶ order to build lasting peace.¶ The global
economy that drives weapons production and excessive militarization ¶ produces structural violence
on a planetary scale, especially in developing countries, ¶ which Marc Pilisuk argues in his chapter “Globalism and Structural Violence.”
As global ¶ markets grow, income disparity increases around the world. Relaxed trade regulations ¶ and increased
Masculinism, and the Search for the Mystical.”
communication networks are creating powerful multinational ¶ conglomerates that derive huge profits from exploiting underpaid laborers in
developing ¶ countries. The result is horrific structural violence to workers who toil under brutal ¶ conditions. Globalism
also produces
a monoculture, in which people throughout the ¶ world learn that “the good life” is based on
consumer values. Pilisuk shows how ¶ nongovernmental organizations at the local level can organize globally to reclaim ¶ workers’
dignity.¶ Finally, Brinton Lykes’s chapter, “Human Rights as Structural Violence,” shows how ¶ structural violence is invisible when human rights
are conceived simply in civic and ¶ political realms. She
argues for the expansion of human rights to include
collective, ¶ cultural, and indigenous rights, which guarantee people their traditional culture and
relationship with their land. Using two case studies, Guatemala and Argentina, she shows how collective rights help people heal and reclaim their cultural identities.
¶
¶
Lykes’s discussion, as well as each of the chapters in this section, help us see the ¶ limitations of psychology as it is traditionally conceived, that is, the study of individuals ¶ and their responses
to their environments. These papers require that we examine the ¶ political and economic institutions that psychologists typically ignore. In this respect, the ¶ thinking in both Sections II
(Structural Violence) and IV (Peacebuilding) of this book go ¶ beyond traditional psychology, illuminating the sociological, economic, political, and ¶ spiritual dimensions of violence and peace.¶
As insidious as structural violence is, each of these papers also point out that it is not ¶ inevitable. Learning about structural violence may be discouraging and overwhelming, ¶ but all the
. Reducing structural violence by
reclaiming ¶ neighborhoods, demanding social justice and living wages, providing prenatal care, ¶
alleviating sexism, organizing globally while celebrating local cultures, and finding nonmilitaristic
avenues to express our deepest spiritual motives, will be our most surefooted ¶ path to building
lasting peace.
authors in this section note that the same processes which feed structural ¶ violence can also be used to address it
And – independently, preserving human rights is a decision-rule: when given an option
to preserve human dignity, we must take it.
Mellion ’07 – Adam Mellion, Research Analyst at Forward Observer Inc, a public affairs research and strategy firm, and Project
Consultant at the California Homeless Youth Project, citing Kant and others [Mellion, Adam, "The Moral and Legal Aspects of Protecting Human
Rights: Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the¶ Intervention" (2007). Senior Honors Projects.Paper 53.
http://digitalcommons.uri.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1055&context=srhonorsprog]
In terms of the 1994 genocide, while some countries are guilty only of inaction, the ¶ United States and
France, in fact, took measures to specifically prevent countries from ¶ intervening if not downright aiding
the genocidaires.¶ 15 Security Council meetings became efforts ¶ to suppress knowledge of the events, and specifically not to label the crisis as a
genocide. At an ¶ infamous State Department press conference, the world watched spokeswoman Christine Shelley ¶ nervously parse words until utterly devoid of
meaning—her phrasing of “acts of genocide” has ¶ since become the symbol of American unwillingness to risk money and soldiers after the disaster ¶ in Somalia in
1993.When discussed in the dozens of emotional accounts of those
barbarous one hundred days, the collective global inaction towards resolving
the crisis is often referred to as—in some ¶ variation—a “horrific moral failure.”16 An albatross around Clinton's neck in
¶
his next term, he was even driven to fly to Kigali to personally apologize for his share of the responsibility (though conspicuously never leaving the airport in doing
so). Clinton's National Security Adviser Anthony Lake later remarked that his own ineptitude and lack of effort during the crisis was, in his own words, “truly
¶
¶
¶
¶
pathetic.”17 A specter haunting the conscience of the world, the case of ¶
in contemporary history. What can be
Rwanda stands out as a particularly shameful episode
gleaned from the near-universal contempt for the policy of entirely ignoring the Tutsi's massacre (often
upwards of 10,000 each day) is that respect for human rights goes beyond a utopian ideal. Instead, perhaps it comes from a rationally-derived system of ethics
¶
¶
¶
whose clear logic evokes the pangs of moral culpability. ¶
Deriving such an ethics from the Kantian system, one can show
not only why we should ¶ intervene in humanitarian crises, but also how it can be seen as a moral
obligation. The idea upon which one might found this is Kant's categorical imperative, imploring us (in one formulation) to “act only on that maxim through
¶
¶
¶
which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.”18 Ubiquitous in elementary philosophy, he famously uses the example of the
immorality of lying: one should not lie because, if universalized to an entire society that found no issue with lying, the very idea of 'truth' would become
meaningless. Though deceivingly similar to the “golden rule” ('do unto others...), Kant himself points out that this principle is “banal” and too restricted—it does
not provide a basis for duties to oneself or, more importantly for the purposes of the present thesis, benevolent duties to others.19 In sum, given the assumed
equality of mankind, only those ethical maxims based on this principle of universality can be considered valid. From the categorical imperative stems two critical
extensions in need of elaboration. Firstly, it is the source of the conception of human rights. Kant maintains, and indeed it is an integral component of the
¶
¶
¶
¶
¶
¶
¶
¶
¶
¶
¶
categorical imperative, that “every
rational being exists as an end in ¶ himself and not merely as a means to be
used by this or that will at its discretion.” Implied in this ¶ statement is that mankind is somehow
'outside of nature' and cannot be treated as mere objects. Personhood, singular and irreplaceable20, sets limits on the actions of
¶
others in ways that other forms of non-rational life does not. Whereas mankind is said to possess absolute value or worth, the value of objects, he later explains, is
contingent on the desires of human subjects. Bearing only relative value, objects can be said to have a price. The rational actor acts as a touchstone of value; our
ability to be the creator of desires, and therefore value, makes us unique vis-à-vis mere things. Furthermore, Kant explains that the capacity for rationally setting
ends for oneself, amid a world of others doing the same, makes a person a special locus of value21 distinct from all other Mellion 9 non-rational beings. Reason
accordingly checks out every maxim of your will, in its role as giver of laws, to see how it relates to everyone else’s will and also to every action towards yourself. It
doesn’t do this from any external practical motive or future advantage, but rather from the idea of the dignity of a rational being who obeys no law except one that
¶
¶
¶
¶
¶
¶
¶
¶
¶
¶
¶
¶
¶
he himself gives while obeying it.22¶
Universalizing the notion of ones own self-worth, we come to the conclusion
that all persons, ¶ insofar as they are capable of reason and self-legislation, are their own source of
value—they are ¶ to be considered as an end in themselves and treated with all due dignity . Human
rights, thus, ¶ originate not from a top-down, imposed ideal of a cosmopolitan society, but are a
priori to ¶ society itself . The origin of human rights, therefore, is indistinguishable from that of
mankind ¶ itself . Appropriately, 1948's Universal Declaration of Human Rights document, is, in many ways, an extension and pragmatic implementation
of the ¶ thirty articles in the Declaration—including the right to life and
liberty, freedom from slavery, ¶ the right to own property, and so on—act as a maxim that,
withstanding Kant's litmus test, can be ¶ universally applied without exception. In other words, these guarantees
¶
¶
of the categorical imperative.23 Many
would not contradict themselves if extended to the whole of humanity. The very first article of the Declaration, mimicking Kant's own words quite closely, reads as
¶
¶
All human beings are born free ¶ and equal in dignity and rights . They are endowed with
reason and conscience and should act ¶ towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.”24 The influence
follows: “
apparent, the categorical imperative is the source of validation for most of what are commonly referred to as 'basic' human rights. The ability to universalize the
articles of the Declaration does not, however, apply unconditionally. One must note that included are not only negative rights (freedom from something, such as
¶
¶
¶
¶
¶
being enslaved) but positive rights, as well—a quite meaningful distinction. Mellion 10¶
The idea of a positive right demands some sort
of end be brought upon or given to another by ¶ society. Article eighteen (“freedom of thought, conscience, and religion”), a
negative right, differs in this sense from article twenty-six, affirming the right to free elementary education. Kant himself was wary of positive rights being taken as
¶
¶
guaranteed, for reasons that will be explicated below. With
this vocabulary of rights in mind one can frame the discussion
for the ¶ second essential component derived from the categorical imperative: the duties and
¶
obligations ¶ we have towards our fellow man, and, in particular, protecting human rights.
PLAN
Thus the plan: The United States federal government should substantially increase its
economic engagement toward Mexico, if and only if the Mexican government abides
by the San Andres Accords.
Solvency
Mexican political decisions are heavily influenced by US policy.
Rivera ’04 – Gaspar Rivera, Graduate Student at Stanford University [Stanford University, “The Struggle of the Zapatatista
Movement: Seeking a Solution after 10 years”, March 11, 2004,
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CC4QFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.stanford.edu%2Fclass%
2Fe297a%2FThe%2520Struggle%2520of%2520the%2520Zapatista%2520Movement.doc&ei=QRjOUbCLGZOn0AGeiYDwAQ&usg=AFQjCNFYABT
pWRgVE5Tt4hAgPtqQAF8ufw&sig2=UerAsQZ5HXvGX4QPjH-niw&bvm=bv.48572450,d.dmQ]
The Mexican Government has historically made political decisions based on the influence of the
United States. Mexico’s economic dependence of the US has led to this political influence. US foreign
influence on Mexico is a significant factor in the inability of the EZLN achieving its goals. The attacks on
September 11 had a great impact in the Zapatista movement due to this US influence. It led to a loss of focus towards the Zapatista movement,
but it also shifted the type of focus that was towards the movement. The EZLN has been labeled a terrorist organization by US government
agencies (SIPAZ Report). This was a sensitive time in American politics, and supporting any terrorist would anger the American government.
The EZLN is still considered a terrorist organization, and the any negotiations with the EZLN can be
seen as negotiation between terrorist. This influences the Mexican government to slow negotiations.
This was a bigger problem in the past. Most of the Americans do no not really know about the Zapatista
Movement. It gets not media attention. Chiapas borders with Guatemala, and the US is concerned about the regulation of that border
(San Antonio Express-News). Negotiations at this time do seem slow. As a result, Vicente Fox seems to be
returning to a covert war using army intimidation and encouraging paramilitary activity (Chiapaslink).
And – US acceptance of accords is uniquely key – they’ve been the ones urging Mexico
to stay non-compliant all along. Now is a critical time to opening the door to
negotiations and empower Chiapas.
Narconews ’00 [Narconews, drug war bulletin and voice of the people, “Fox's First Challenge: The San Andrés Peace Accords”,
November 26, 2000, http://www.narconews.com/mextransition2.html] Alex Doan
Our nine-part series on Chiapas published last Spring reported what the Colombian daily El Universal of Medellín concluded in an investigative
report last Wednesday, November 22nd: that in the past five years, with the Mexican Army and 70,000 of its troops occupying every corner of
Chiapas, the drug trade in that State has increased exponentially. Chiapas, in wartime, has become a Narco-State, where the government
trafficks the drugs in place of combatting them.¶ Bringing a peace with justice to Chiapas is not just necessary for Fox's ability to govern at
home; it is an absolute requirement for the new president to continue to enjoy goodwill abroad.¶ There is one sentence, however, that is vitally
necessary for Fox to speak, loudly and clearly. It is: That
the San Andrés Peace Agreements will be enacted, in the
form that they were signed. And then he needs to go beyond words and enact them.¶ The Mexican State
signed the peace accords in 1996 with the Zapatista communities, and then proceeded to break them ruthlessly and violently.¶ Had the ruling
PRI party of 71 years respected those agreements, it would still be in power. Thus, Fox owes his historic presidential victory to the Zapatista
rebellion which began the end of the one-party state.¶ And yet Fox and his aides have ducked those three words -- San Andrés Accords -- at
home and abroad.¶ The press, domestic and international, has also failed to pin him down on this central point. ¶ We explained, last August, the
reasons for the cageyness regarding the San Andrés Accords by Fox and too much of the media.¶ The
San Andrés accords restore
autonomy to indigenous communities: that is to say, autonomous control over local government, its
form, its judicial processes (including certain drug policies), its media, and, above all, autonomous
control over the land.¶ The US government has pressured the Mexican State to break that treaty (just
as the US has broken all its treaties with indigenous peoples). The interests of multi-national corporations who want
the oil to be privatized and looted along with the minerals, the hardwoods, the agriculture, the natural wealth of the Lacandon jungle, and the
cheap labor of persecuted Chiapanecos, are mounted against the concept that Indians will control those resources in and under their towns.¶
Furthermore, US officials fear the precedent set: the enactment of the San Andrés Accords in Mexico
will restore autonomy not just to Chiapas, but to all of Mexico's 56 indigenous ethnic groups in
regions from South to North. This historic development would come as indigenous peoples in other lands - Guatemala, Ecuador,
Bolivia, Peru, Brazil, Nicaragua, Panama, Colombia and others - are demanding the same justice.¶ Fox is caught between his campaign promise
to respect and enact the San Andrés Accords and the pressures of the superpower to the North and its business interests (including the media,
which has a vested interest in opposing that part of the treaty that would guarantee Indigenous access to the airwaves).¶ We say it again:
Enactment of the San Andrés Peace Accords by the Fox government will be the sina qua non - that
without which nothing else can happen - of his ability to govern the great nation of 96 million people,
ten million or more of them indigenous, that is Mexico.
And – enforcing the San Andres Accords leads to a broader solution.
Rivera ’04 – Gaspar Rivera, Graduate Student at Stanford University [Stanford University, “The Struggle of the Zapatatista
Movement: Seeking a Solution after 10 years”, March 11, 2004,
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CC4QFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.stanford.edu%2Fclass%
2Fe297a%2FThe%2520Struggle%2520of%2520the%2520Zapatista%2520Movement.doc&ei=QRjOUbCLGZOn0AGeiYDwAQ&usg=AFQjCNFYABT
pWRgVE5Tt4hAgPtqQAF8ufw&sig2=UerAsQZ5HXvGX4QPjH-niw&bvm=bv.48572450,d.dmQ] Alex Doan
As Fox’s advisor,
I would recommend that the San Andreas Accords be strictly ENFORCED. This action
requires no negotiations. Zero negotiations means that enforcement will be fast. It can take less than those 15 minutes
promised by the bearded Vicente Fox. The law is already signed by both parties. The problem will be convincing Fox to agree
with this proposition. But the answer is again feasible. Elections are near, and the enforcement the San Andreas Accords will
be seen as a positive move by a portion of the Mexican voting body. It would be seen as negative by only a limited
number of voting Mexicans. This is true because Mexicans would be willing to give “indios” these indigenous
rights due to the majority of the Mexican population being Meztiso (half Indian blood, half European blood). A large portion of the “nonindigenous” population look just like the same people they would be oppressing. It is harder to dehumanize someone if they
look just like you. Also, supporters of the Zapatista movement would also vote for the PAN party of Vicente Fox again. After all, it may
have been the Zapatista’s support that helped Fox gain his historical presidential victory over the PRI. Agreeing to support the San Andreas
Accords is then a strategic move during the election season.¶ The next big issue is the response of the Zapatistas. The Zapatistas will likely
not take the proposal to enforce the accords seriously. They will likely brush off the proposal and continue to abstain from negotiations. So
the government is going to have to prove itself to the EZLN. Fox will have to implement and enforce the San Andreas Accords instead of
announcing that he will enforce them. Only actions will be an acceptable gesture at this point in the conflict. Otherwise the EZLN will think
that the Mexican Government is lying again. I am assuming that the EZLN’s trust of the Mexican government is low. ¶ Presentation
of
the idea to enforce the San Andreas Accords will sway the Mexican Government to agree with these
San Andreas Accords. Simply explain that expanding democracy to cover the indigenous communities will get those votes from the
general Mexican community, and also provide them with a increased level of control of the indigenous community (because it is easier to
regulate a community of registered voters than a rebel community). This will also prevent some bloodshed due to military actions of the EZLN
and Paramilitaries. Also,
the U.S would not condemn pushes for equality by the Mexican government.
Therefore, enforcing the San Andreas Accords is the first step towards a solution. It is the step that
will revive the negotiations that have been hindered for years.
Marcos himself believes the San Andres Accords are a crucial step to give power to the
Zapatistas and is a pinpoint of their ideology
Marcos 1 (Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos, insurgent leader for the EZLN, in charge
of all public statements, Our World is Our Weapon, pg. 139, Seven Stories Press: New
York, Luke Newell)
What better example of this phobia of history is there than the attitude of the Mexican government
toward the indigenous peoples? Are not the indigenous demands a worrisome stain on history,
dimming the splendor of globalization? Is not the very existence of indigenous people an affront to the
global dictatorship of the Market? Fulfilling the Sand Andres agreements is equivalent to
acknowledging that history has a place in the present. And this is unacceptable. To fulfill the San
Andres Accords is to admit that the end of the century is not the end of history. And this is intolerable
(“not negotiable,” says the up-and-coming ex-coordinator of the governmental dialogue, Mr. Emilio
Rabasa).¶ The present is the only acceptable guide. The Mexican federal government will not fulfill the
San Andres Accords. It thus believes that the present will defeat history and can proceed to the future.
But history, that stubborn and rude teacher of life, will return to pummel a truncated reality, falsified by
the masks of power and money. History will return for a rematch when the present will be most
vulnerable – in other words, in the future.¶ Meanwhile, on the clock at San Andres, the hands mark a
quarter to twelve. Attention! The fight is about to begin… Come on down. It is pointless for you to look
for a seat from which to watch the fight. There are no seats outside the ring. The Supreme One, upon
transforming the table for a peace dialogue into a boxing ring, has forced everyone to climb into the
ring. Silence now, here comes the announcer to introduce the opponents.
Discourse is key to spread the Zapatista movement
Gelsomino 10(Mark Gelsomino, Mark is a recent graduate of the Masters of Information Studies
program at the University of Toronto. In addition to his studies he sat on the executive of the Canadian
Library Association U of T Student Chapter and served as co-chair for the U of T Librarians Without
Borders chapter. Prior to coming to Toronto, Mark worked as a Systems Specialist for the Ottawa Public
Library. He completed his Anthropology undergrad at Carleton University where he focused on
criminology, forensic psychology and Indigenous issues, “The Zapatista Effect: Information
Communication Technology Activism and Marginalized Communities”
http://fiq.ischool.utoronto.ca/index.php/fiq/article/view/15404) Malhar
EZLN ideology is based on a unique hybrid of Socialist Marxism and traditional Mayan beliefs. They
primarily agitate for improved
social and economic conditions in Chiapas as well as agrarian land reform and redistribution (Oleson,
2004). For hundreds of years, indigenous issues have been largely ignored in Mexico. The Zapatistas argued that their
issues should be included in public discourse and that their needs be taken into account during
government policy making activities . Instead of running for office in what they consider an illegitimate government structure,
the Zapatistas sought indigenous autonomy and the right to negotiate with governments on a nationto-nation basis (Semo, 2006). One of their primary goals was to have Chiapan municipalities recognized by
the Mexican government as sovereign and autonomous states.
Debate is key—it brings a new form of communication and activism
Gelsomino 10(Mark Gelsomino, Mark is a recent graduate of the Masters of Information Studies
program at the University of Toronto. In addition to his studies he sat on the executive of the Canadian
Library Association U of T Student Chapter and served as co-chair for the U of T Librarians Without
Borders chapter. Prior to coming to Toronto, Mark worked as a Systems Specialist for the Ottawa Public
Library. He completed his Anthropology undergrad at Carleton University where he focused on
criminology, forensic psychology and Indigenous issues, “The Zapatista Effect: Information
Communication Technology Activism and Marginalized Communities”
http://fiq.ischool.utoronto.ca/index.php/fiq/article/view/15404) Malhar
Instead of running for office, the EZLN
sought to influence the decision-making process by exposing political
corruption and promoting their needs via the media. The Zapatistas wanted shifts in policy, not mere
personnel changes . If a corrupt president were to be ousted, he would simply be replaced by another
one, with the same ideas and schemes. In 1994, the Zapatistas began using email lists, Usenet groups, listservs and websites to
disseminate communiqués written by Marcos. Initially, the Mexican media refused to cover Zapatista events or
publish their communiqués. The denial of access to traditional media outlets did not deter the group.
Further, new forms of communication would allow them to side-step traditional practices.
Our advocacy means that we’re fighting on the side of the Zapatistas – we choose to
affirm solidarity with the Zapatistas.
Freire ’05 – Paulo Freire, PhD and philosopher, who advocated critical pedagogy [Continuum International Publishing Group, New York,
2005 – first published 1970, “PEDAGOGY ¶ of the ¶ OPPRESSED”, http://www.users.humboldt.edu/jwpowell/edreformFriere_pedagogy.pdf]
ADoan
This solution cannot be achieved in idealistic terms. In order for the oppressed to be able to wage the
struggle for their liberation, they must perceive the reality of oppression not as a closed world ¶ from
which there is no exit, but as a limiting situation which they can transform. This perception is a
necessary but not a sufficient ¶ condition foi* liberation; it must become the motivating force for ¶
liberating action. Nor does the discovery by the oppressed that they ¶ exist in dialectical relationship to
the oppressor, as his antithesis— ¶ that without them the oppressor could not exist4—in itself constitute
¶ liberation. The oppressed can overcome the contradiction in which they are caught only when this
perception enlists them in the struggle to free themselves. ¶ The same is true with respect to the
individual oppressor as a ¶ person. Discovering himself to be an oppressor may cause considerable
anguish, but it does not necessarily lead to solidarity with the oppressed. Rationalizing his guilt
through paternalistic treatment ¶ of the oppressed, all the while holding them fast in a position of ¶
dependence, will not do. Solidarity requires that one enter into the ¶ situation of those with whom one is
solidary; it is a radical posture. ¶ If what characterizes the oppressed is their subordination to the
consciousness of the master, as Hegel affirms, true solidarity with the oppressed means fighting at
their side to transform the objective reality which has made them these "beings for another." The
oppressor is solidary with the oppressed only when he stops regarding the ¶ oppressed as an abstract
category and sees them as persons who ¶ have been unjustly dealt with, deprived of their voice, cheated
in ¶ the sale of their labor—when he stops making pious, sentimental, ¶ and individualistic gestures and
risks an act of love. True solidarity is found only in the plenitude of this act of love, in its existentiality,
in its praxis. To affirm that men and women are persons and as persons should be free, and yet to do
nothing tangible to make this affirmation a reality, is a farce
Participation is possible – the Zapatistas embrace being the average person behind the
mask and they are equals
FARAH, 13 (Tatiana is a staff writer for Roarmag.org “Brazilian Movement Takes Inspiration From Zapatistas”)
http://www.countercurrents.org/farah270613.htm (andrew)
“Abajo y a la izquierda está el corazón” — “the
heart lies below and to the left”. This sentence by Subcomandante
Marcos of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) in Mexico was used in an opening speech by
the Free Fare Movement (MPL), which initiated protests across Brazil by forcing a drop in public
transport fares. “Below” refers to the marginalized groups and minorities, which MPL calls “the
bottom”, and “the left” refers to the anti-capitalist discourse. Formed by students of the University of São Paulo (USP)
and by workers from the periphery, the movement defines itself as anti-capitalist, non-partisan, peaceful,
autonomous and horizontal. Some MPL activists, including 19-year-old Luiza Calagian from São Paulo, have crossed the continent to
meet with Zapatista communities in Chiapas, who gained worldwide attention in 1994 when the Zapatistas lowered their weapons to negotiate
their indigenous rights with the Mexican government. They soon became an example for the new social movements organized against the
effects of globalization. Like the Zapatistas, the MPL differs from traditional political parties in its horizontal form of organization, where all
decisions are made collectively. There
are no positions or leaders. All speak on behalf of the movement. On the
streets, one cannot hear the sound of car radios promoting election rallies, as they want to avoid
dictating the discourse to “the bottom”. “Marcos is gay in San Francisco, a black in South Africa, an
Asian in Europe, a Chicano in San Isidro, an anarchist in Spain…”. In the ’90s, Subcomandante Marcos,
the intellectual from the Autonomous University of Mexico who plunged into the jungle of Chiapas to
fight alongside the indigenous community, basically became a legend. When asked who the
Subcomandante was — the “sub” refers to the fact that the true leaders are the indigenous people,
the Zapatistas, who cover their faces with masks — they respond: “We are all Marcos”.
2AC Case
NOTES:
Read whichever impact overview they handled worse between dignity and structural violence (dignity’s
cooler), and tack on the util impact framing from the extinction level impact at the end.
Dignity
First is dignity – this isn’t your standard value to life claim – Zapatismo holds human
dignity as a fundamental necessity for life - dignity is respect for ourselves and our
right to live by our ideals without harming those around us. Marcos says lack of
dignity makes life virtually meaningless since we have no respect for our lives or
ourselves – this is a pre-requisite to all other impacts. Fender says this is a d-rule –
absent dignity there’s no way to challenge oppressive structures, and all respect in the
world dwindles.
Structural Violence
We also access structural violence impacts – De Angelis says almost every form of
social oppression or exclusion is refuted through practice of Zapatismo – Mellion says
this is a d-rule – reject every instance of structural violence when possible
Extinction
We’ll win the util debate too – the Bellinghausen 12 evidence says absent support for
the Zapatistas, there’s no hope for the endless spiral downwards for humanity. We
access terminal existential impact claims – no matter if they solve 1 extinction impact,
in a world absent Zapatismo’s widespread backing, extinction is inevitable anyway –
means you default to other impact framings
Fem addon
Zapatismo helps promote feminism and help bridge the inequality gap
Hontarava 11(Alena Hontarava, Coha research associate, June 21, 2011, “Mexico: Failure to Silence
EZLN Activists” http://www.coha.org/mexico-failure-to-silence-ezln-activists/)
The current state of insurgency engulfing Mexico from north to south has strongly resonated in the state of Chiapas. International
human rights and Zapatista (Ejercito Zapatista de Liberación Nacional, EZLN) activists involved in promoting
women’s rights have often been targeted and brutally abused by paramilitary groups as well as by the
Mexican military. The beatings and brutalities these activists face represent a new stage of psychological
warfare against the Zapatista movement, and particularly its female constituency. Women are targeted in and around
churches, in the fields where they work, and in the markets, limiting their freedom of movement and independence. Almost all spaces they
frequent have become intrinsically dangerous. “They [soldiers] scare us, they threaten us and we women can’t walk alone if they are around,”
comments a young female on the situation in Lacandon Jungle.
The pace with which violence has spread throughout Chiapas and neighboring states is often directly associated with the Zapatista movement
and its growing number of female followers. Marina Pages, coordinator of the Servicio Internacional para la Paz (SIPAZ) wrote in a letter to the
SIPAZ members, “Between September 2009 and October 2010, 37 human rights defenders were terrorized, beaten, and arbitrarily detained,
seven have disappeared and five died while in the hands of authorities or organized crime.” While
the majority of victims are
predominantly Zapatista women, the growing number of foreign female targets alarms observers and
attracts increasing international attention. In April 2010, Bety Cariño, director of the Center for Communal Support Working
Together, and the Finnish human rights observer, Jyri Jaakkola, were killed in an attack while traveling to San Juan Copala, Oaxaca. This
occurrence is one of many in which foreign and mestiza female activists are threatened with death, brutally attacked, or gang-raped.
The escalation in violent crimes against women has been especially notable since the January 2006 death of Ramona, an indigenous Maya
comandante and women’s rights activist. Ramona spent a long time travelling around southern Mexico asking women about their living
conditions and social status. Her
work resulted in the Revolutionary Women´s Law, which was passed in the
Zapatista Territory in 1993 by the EZLN. The document lists ten basic rights guaranteeing social and
political freedoms to Mayan women. These rights include the right to receive an education, to work and receive a just salary, and
the right to choose whom to marry. “Before we didn’t have any rights; before we were not valued as women,” says a woman from the Zapatista
movement. Two other women speak of the changes brought to their communities: “In our zone before the Zapatista struggle things were
different. We had no right to decide who we married. And when we married we were mistreated, beaten and humiliated by our husbands, and
The creation and promotion of the Law were necessary steps for the EZLN
movement to discontinue oppressive societal practices against women and set off irreversible
changes in the Zapatista and other Mexican communities. With the explicit intention of demoralizing
the indigenous spirit and withdrawing women’s rights, paramilitary organizations purposely target
women even slightly associated with the Zapatista movement. Responsible for social reproduction, Mayan women
more when they were drunk.”
hold indigenous communities together, which intimidates and impedes perpetrators. Today, these women continue to preserve their ancient
traditions and history, while exercising the new rights introduced in the Revolutionary Law. The
crimes committed against
women by the military and close-minded community members are nothing but pitiful attempts to
stifle the movement into submission. As Soneile Hymn points out, “Rape has been on the rise since the uprising, as a military
tactic of terrorism in indigenous villages.” As in any other type of warfare, dehumanizing and violating victims, particularly
women, serves as a means to discourage and weaken the cause and its ideals. Dishonored in the eyes of their
offenders, these women are expected to discontinue their fight and revert to the passivity of the pre-Revolutionary Law days when similarly
horrific beatings and rape were common. Unlike the dominant misogynistic mentality of the previous era, today’s younger generation of Mayan
women know their rights well and are unwilling to relinquish them. The Revolutionary Law has raised a new generation of Mayan luchadoras
who say ¡Basta! to the violence employed by their oppressors. No longer do women have to put up with sexual assault from their patrons or
beatings from drunken spouses. Today, Maya
women are beginning to embrace their rights guaranteed in the
Revolutionary Law, including the right to resist physical abuse and the right to participate in the
revolutionary movement. The sporadic violence aimed at the human rights and female EZLN activists
is but a pathetic attempt by scared and desperate perpetrators to silence the women and delay the
simmering changes now taking place in Mayan communities.
Zapatista Solvency
Zapatista governments are working – the development of “good government” allows
all people in Mexico equal access to justice
Tilly and Kennedy 6 (Chris Tilly and Marie Kennedy, Chris Tilly is Professor of Regional Economic and
Social Development at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. Marie Kennedy is Professor Emerita of
Community Planning at the College of Public and Community Service, University of Massachusetts
Boston and on the Advisory Committee of Planners Network and editorial board of Progressive Planning.
Both have worked in Latin America solidarity movements for many years. They visited Chiapas in January
2006, written in spring 2006, “From here to autonomy: Mexico’s Zapatistas combine local administration
and national politics,” http://www.uml.edu/centers/CIC/Research/Tilly_Research/Mexico/KennedyTilly-Zap%20autonomy-ProgPlan-02.26.06.pdf, Luke Newell)
Instead, the key seems to be, in the words of the Maya communities themselves, good government. As
the municipal authorities of Magdalena told us through their spokesperson, “The idea is to demonstrate
that we can do this work. We’re trying to end the government’s power to use the people just to build
the strength of the parties. We are resolving all our problems on our own, with our own words, in our
own way, without the involvement of the [official] government.” According to CIEPAC’s Pickard, it’s
working. “The most impressive thing I hear about,” he said, “is the justice system. For the first time in
over 500 years, indigenous people are getting justice! They’re getting it in their own language, they can
be heard, it’s not corrupt, the authorities can’t be bought off.” The result, he added, is that Zapatista,
non-Zapatista, and even anti-Zapatista community members seek out the autonomous judicial
authorities, even for complex and contentious issues such as conflicting land claims. Eastern Michigan
University political scientist Richard Stahler-Sholk writes that in one Zapatista region he studied, the
officials reported that they hear more complaints brought by non- Zapatistas than Zapatistas! The
Magdalena officials confirmed that people often come to them after failing to get satisfaction from the
official side of the plaza. They displayed a refreshingly pragmatic attitude, saying that when a case
proves especially difficult they consult with the “bad government” to resolve it. Many non-Zapatistas
also sign up for “good government” driver’s licenses, according to Pickard, even though the official
police do not recognize them.
Zapatista governing structures are also, quite explicitly, schools of participatory democracy. Policing
and jurisprudence lean heavily on discussion and negotiation rather than coercion. Municipios choose
their leaders in assemblies. At the next level up, in the Caracoles and the Good Government Councils,
the movement rotates people through for short stints, trying to spread around the experience of
governing.
Another advantage the autonomous councils bring to the table is that they build on long- standing
Maya traditions. Bernardo, a young Mayan taxi driver who swore he would never join the Zapatistas
because “They want to run the country like Fidel Castro—you know their slogan, ‘Everything for
everybody,’” nonetheless told us he likes the fact that they are preserving Mayan ways. Language and
costume are the most visible signs, of course. Enrique, a young Zapatista activist, noted that collective
work and taking up community collections are part of the Maya culture as well. (One powerful Maya
custom is that communities only speak through designated spokespersons; thus, although we had
individual conversations with several members of Zapatista communities, we were told in no uncertain
terms that it would be inappropriate to identify them, and are using pseudonyms.) Alberto, an
anthropologist who studies the Maya, added that Mayan peoples value simplicity and humility, and
view costly possessions with suspicion—perhaps rendering the unfinished boards of Magdalena’s
“other” city hall more appealing than the polished surfaces of the official one.
Accords solvency
The Accords set the framework for improvements on social rights issues, autonomy,
and gives equal opportunities for indigenous peoples to influence their country’s
policies – The Zapatistas believe it’s the lynchpin to their movement
Van der Haar 4 (Gemma van der Haar, Development Sociology, Wageningen University
& Centre for International Conflict Analysis and Management, Institute of Management
Research, Radboud University Nijmegen / African Studies Centre, Leiden University; the
Netherlands, “The Zapatista Uprising and the Struggle for Indigenous Autonomy,”
http://www.cedla.uva.nl/50_publications/pdf/revista/76RevistaEuropea/76VanderHaar.
pdf, Luke Newell)
The Accords set the framework for a new relation between the Mexican State and Mexico’s
indigenous peoples based on respect and recognition of cultural diversity. They establish recognition
of a number of indigenous rights in the fields of, among others, forms of social and political
organization, the election of local authorities, the administration of justice, management of resources,
land tenure and cultural development, and they commit the Mexican government to promoting these
rights. Furthermore, the Accords recognize indigenous communities as entities of public law and allow
for restructuring of municipalities with a sizable indigenous population. Other chapters address the
right to pluri-cultural education, the promotion of indigenous languages, and the consultation and
participation of indigenous people in issues of public policy that affect them.4
‘Autonomy’ is the key word in the San Andrés Accords. In a general sense, autonomy refers to a degree
of self-government within a national framework, involving the transferral of political, administrative
and juridical power without secession. It draws on, and is an expression of, the right to selfdetermination, as defined in the ILO Convention 169 on the rights of indigenous peoples in independent
countries, ratified by Mexico as well, and an important reference throughout the San Andrés process.5
The way autonomy is operationalized in the final text of the San Andrés Accords has some problems,
however. Autonomy is being restricted to the communal and (to some extent) municipal levels6 and
many issues are left unresolved. The precise nature of autonomy and the functions it would comprise
remain unspecified, leaving these issues to be resolved in state-level legislation.
Notwithstanding these limitations, the Zapatistas in Chiapas and their sympathisers worldwide
regarded the Accords as an important step forward, and these also received the support of large
sectors of Mexico’s indigenous movement. The CNI (Congreso Nacional Indígena), encompassing a
broad range of indigenous organizations, committed itself to the promotion of the Accords during its
founding congress (October 1996). The San Andrés Accords developed into a central point of reference
in indigenous struggles all over Mexico and ‘autonomy’ became one of the principal banners. The
signing of the San Andrés Accords also seemed to bring a solution to the Chiapas conflict within reach.
This hope was soon to fade, however, as the process of legal reform necessary to bring the Accords into
effect halted.
AT: Mexico won’t accept
Extend Rivera 4 – because of Mexico’s economic reliance on the US, they’ll let us
influence their policy decision – exactly as the plan does
The crisis proves – Mexico is reliant on the US for their economic stability, and is
incentivized to pursue engagement now
Hamilton 9 (Lee H. Hamilton, president and director for the Woodrow Wilson International Center for
Scholars, written by the entirety of the Center, including Condaleezza Rice, The Woodrow Wilson
International Center for Scholars, established by Congress in 1968 and headquartered in Washington,
D.C., is a living national memorial to President Wilson.The Center’s mission is to commemorate the
ideals and concerns of Woodrow Wilson by providing a link between the worlds of ideas and policy,
while fostering research, study, discussion, and collaboration among a broad spectrum of individuals
concerned with policy and scholarship in national and international affairs, “THE UNITED STATES AND
MEXICO: Towards a Strategic Partnership,”
http://www.wilsoncenter.org/sites/default/files/The%20U.S.%20and%20Mexico.%20Towards%20a%20
Strategic%20Partnership.pdf, Luke Newell)
Crises offer challenges and opportunities¶ for long term strategies. The current downturn highlights,
perhaps more than other times in the past, the need for better macroeconomic policy consultation and
short-term crisis management mechanisms to avoid sudden shocks to the economies of both countries
by developments that take place on either side of the border. History shows us that each country
benefits from its partner’s success and each is diminished by¶ the other’s problems. The United States
has a vested interest in Mexico’s economic and social stability and long-term health, given the impact
that Mexico’s economy has on U.S. exports and¶ on migration. Financial mismanagement and insufficient
regulation in the United States have had a direct impact in Mexico. And although¶ good macroeconomic
management has allowed Mexico’s economy to grow gradually since the late 1990s,22 the lack of
attention to crucial structural reforms, including rule of law, competition policy, tax collection, labor
laws, primary and secondary education, energy and monopolies have limited the potential for growth
and highlighted weaknesses in Mexico’s economy.23 Insufficient investment in infrastructure and
human capital create long-term drags on the Mexican economy and, in turn, limit the potential for
economic growth, with secondary effects on the U.S. economy. While these are essentially matters of
domestic policy in each country, both governments have a vested interest in improving communication,
pursuing a more viable process of engagement on macroeconomic policy and maintaining a critical
dialogue about the need for sound economic policies in both countries.¶
Neolib Impacts
The neoliberal order spreads unrestricted warfare into the urban settings of the world
– Syria, Turkey, Libya…even the capitalist haven of America is not safe from this new
form of pervasive, mindless warfare to sustain the elites. Violence on a global scale is
already happening, but we are sitting idly by.
Clement ’10 – Matthew Thomas Clement, PhD candidate in sociology at the University of Oregon, reviewing book by Stephen Graham,
author of Cities Under Siege: The New Military Urbanism (London: Verso, 2010) [Monthly Review: An Independent Socialist Magazine,
“Neoliberalism, Imperialism, and the ¶ Militarization of Urban Spaces”, Oct2012, Vol. 64 Issue 5, p44-50, Ebsco] ADoan
In the epilogue of Planet of Slums, Mike Davis gives us a glimpse into the ¶ militarization of urban spaces and what the military elite are doing
about ¶ the world’s cities. Davis cites an article published in the US Army War ¶ College journal: “The
future of warfare lies in the
streets, sewers, highrise buildings, industrial parks, and the sprawl of houses, shacks, and ¶ shelters
that form the broken cities of our world…. Our recent military ¶ history is punctuated with city names—Tuzla,
Mogadishu, Los Angeles, ¶ Beirut, Panama City, Hue, Saigon, Santo Domingo—but these encounters ¶
have been but a prologue, with the real drama still to come.” It is important to note that, in his book, Davis inserts his
own exclamation mark ¶ after “Los Angeles,” perhaps to emphasize how military elites are drawing comparisons between urban conflicts in the
first and third worlds.¶ Meanwhile, the militarization of cities around the world, in both the ¶ core and the periphery, is the main focus of
Stephen Graham’s fascinating and accessible book, Cities Under Siege. For Graham, an academic, this ¶ book represents the culmination and
synthesis of much previous research ¶ on how urban issues are being incorporated into military doctrine and ¶ how military
and civilian
security forces are invading the cityscape. The ¶ book’s argument is organized around conceptual and empirical themes: ¶ the
first part of the book examines the theoretical dimensions of what he ¶ calls the new military urbanism, and the second part offers more
detailed ¶ case studies that help flesh out these conceptual issues. The
end result is ¶ a theoretically and empirically rich
study of how violence, control, and ¶ surveillance have come to “colonize the city landscape and the
spaces of ¶ everyday life in both the ‘homelands’ and domestic cities of the West as ¶ well as the
world’s neo-colonial frontiers” (xiv).¶ Graham cites classical and contemporary research describing how ¶ urban processes have
long been driven by, and have influenced, military concerns (e.g., U.S. suburbanization as a way to reduce vulnerability ¶ against a nuclear
attack). Yet, he provides a detailed argument for why ¶ the contemporary form of urban militarization is novel. There are seven ¶ characteristics
that distinguish the new military urbanism from the old: ¶ 1. Western militaries are largely staffed by rural soldiers who are ¶ increasingly
deployed in urban arenas. ¶ 2. Military
and civilian control technologies are blurring “into the ¶ background of
urban environments, urban infrastructures and ¶ urban life” (64).¶ 3. Corporate media has constructed urban warfare
as a spectacle to be ¶ consumed in the West.¶ 4. There is a surging market for security and surveillance.¶ 5. The movement of capital, media,
and people into and out of cities is ¶ transnational, and is being militarized to protect private elite interests. ¶ 6. The
contemporary
security discourse is contradictory, emphasizing ¶ territorial notions of “homeland” that imply antiurbanism and anticosmopolitanism despite an increasingly urban and ethnically diverse ¶ population.
Graham rhetorically asks: Is New York City a homeland?¶ 7. State violence is used to evict people from rural communities and ¶ informal urban
settlements to clear space for future accumulation.¶ While these are the seven characteristics of the new military urbanism, Graham argues
that neoliberalism
and imperialism play central roles ¶ in the militarization of urban spaces. These forces
have turned many cities in the global South into the “feral” spaces that are increasingly feared ¶ and
targeted by Western militaries (see the discussion in Planet of Slums¶ on the “little witches of Kinshasa”). Yet, the militarization of
cities, both ¶ in the core and periphery, is an interdependent process. Referring to ¶ Foucault, Graham conceptualizes this interdependence as
the “boomerang effect,” which represents the multidirectional sharing of information ¶ by police departments and militaries around the world
to better prepare ¶ for warfare in the city landscape. For instance, as Graham cites, separate ¶ urban conflicts in the United States and Israel
have resulted in collaboration between these two nations to develop “non-lethal weapons,” some ¶ of which are now being deployed in both
countries. We see an example ¶ of this in the use of “sonic weapons, which broadcast beams of sounds ¶ that are so loud as to make continued
presence in a targeted area unbearably dizzying and nauseating” (246). These sonic
weapons have been ¶ used in anticapitalist protests; even the corporate news took notice of ¶ their use at the G20 summit in Pittsburgh in September 2009. But often,
the intended consequences of the new military urbanism are not as “non-lethal” as sonic weapons; just
consider Graham’s ¶ discussion about the
emergence of “shoot-to-kill” policies by police ¶ departments around
the world to deal with suspected suicide bombers. Nor are these consequences as direct and immediate as they are ¶ in the
use of weapons. Indeed, the new military urbanism is insidious, pervasive, and global . For example, Graham makes
connections ¶ between escalating incarceration rates in the United States and the ¶ global war on terror. While the New York Police
Department has set up ¶ offices around the globe, the U.S. incarceration system, in general, “is ¶ paralleled by the construction of a global
system of extraordinary rendition…with both systems using similar techniques, private security ¶ corporations, means of abuse, and legal
suspensions” (110). The rights ¶ of both citizens and non-citizens are being undermined in what has ¶ been called
the “securocratic war”: a battle intended to protect public ¶ safety against vaguely defined enemies who “lurk within the interstices ¶ of urban
and social life, blending invisibly with it” (91).
Neoliberalism destroys democracy and creates the conditions for rampant poverty.
Atassi ’11 – Political Researcher at the Arab Studies Institute [Berkeley Political Review, “Neoliberalism and the “Arab Spring”, April 2,
2011, http://bpr.berkeley.edu/2011/04/neoliberalism-and-the-arab-spring/] ADoan
Open markets lead to open democracies. That was the logic of the Western theory of neoliberalism.
Liberalize the economy, open up your markets to foreign trade, and democracy and Western values will spread with it. Countries that trade
with other countries cannot possibly be closed societies, the logic goes, because opening up your economy means that nations must
simultaneously open up their society to new ideas, among them, democracy and “Western”, and therefore “universal”, values. Now, in
the
midst of the “Arab Spring”, it has become apparent that the West’s theory of neoliberalism spreading
openness and democracy has utterly failed.¶ Yemeni Anti-Government Protesters¶ Throughout the Arab world, many
authoritarian elites subscribed to the neoliberal ideology, and subsequently went down the route of
economic liberalization. Opening their countries up to multinational corporations, and making sure
their country is “business-friendly”, were part of these “reforms” that were instituted. When faced with the
prospects of democratic reforms or the prospect of economic liberalization, closed Arab countries opted for the latter, in an attempt to
“modernize” their countries while still clinging on to power.¶ These
neoliberal economic policies have not only caused
immense poverty and unemployment, but have also failed to promote any kind of democracy or
openness. If neoliberals claim that their economic policies lead to democracy and openness, then how is it that neoliberal economic policies
have been instituted in the most authoritarian countries and have been found to be completely compatible with their system of government?
These economic policies have actually done more to consolidate the authoritarian elites, and have actually prevented democratization. The
wave of protests that are sweeping the Arab world may have many causes, but protesters in every
country have mentioned some kind of economic woes as at least a partial reason for their protest.
Poverty, unemployment, and lack of economic security are all cited as reasons that protests have broken out. Simultaneously, they are
demanding democracy. The great irony here is that neoliberal economic policies in the Arab states did not lead to democratization, but the
reaction against the ills caused by these policies is.¶ It seems that these policies have the ability to actively work against democracy, not for it.
This begs the question: Are
neoliberal authoritarian systems exceptions to the rule, or are the neoliberal
democracies the exception? One can even ignore China, the most obvious example of a nondemocratic government that has instituted neoliberal economic policies. Just look to the Arab world,
where Ben Ali was able to resist democratization after instituting neoliberal economic policies . One sees
a similar case in Mubarak’s Egypt. It was only the reaction against these policies that led to the downfall of the dictators. Similar economic
policies have been carried out in the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Syria and across the Arab world, with mixed results and mixed
reactions. Every case is different, and not necessarily all countries that have instituted such policies will experience a revolution. The
only
thing that seems undeniably true is that these policies have not only failed to yield democracy, but
have actively prevented democratization from becoming a reality.
2AC Ks
Cap
Framework – the affirmative should be able to weigh our impacts – even if they prove
our methodology or epistemology is flawed, Gelsomino says promoting the Zapatistas
through speech can independently build up their movement – means we get our
impacts anyway
Case outweighs –
First – We win in a utilitarian framework – the Bellinghausen evidence gives us access to an existential
impact the K can’t solve for – here’s a simple net benefit to the perm
Second – we access all your structural violence claims – Zapatismo stands as a front against these
forms of oppression, and offers a new way to challenge them
Third – We have an external dignity impact – Fender gives it as a d-rule – as long as the K can’t access
this impact, we’ll always outweigh.
Case solve the alt - Beillinghausen 12 says Zapatismo has the ability to break down
oppressive capitalist structures in the long-term. Dignity as a pervasive value would
also have the ability to spread equality [INSERT WARRANT] – solves inequalities –
that’s De Angelis
Perm do both – a risk there is violence caused by systems other than capitalism means
the perm is best
Maccani 8 says others can join in solidarity – means the permutation is in line with the
rest of the aff’s thesis
Incorporating as many perspectives as possible creates a topological politics that
avoids the need for starting points or pre-requisites
Nail 10 (Thomas Nail, professor of philosophy at the University of Denver, PhD, University of Oregon, MA, University of Oregon, BA,
University of North Texas, “Constructivism and the Future Anterior of Radical Politics,” http://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/thomas-nailconstructivism-and-the-future-anterior-of-radical-politics, Luke Newell)
For Deleuze and Guattari, unlike Day, the thesis that there is no central axis of struggle is not a matter
of groundlessness, lack, or infinite responsibility, rather it indicates a positive multiplication of axes of
struggle requiring a new kind of multi-centered political analysis. If political reality has multiple
intersectional axes, we can no longer employ diagnostic methods that reduce them all to a single plane
(economics, culture, or gender, etc.). But what does Deleuze and Guattari’s post-anarchism offer us as a
political-theoretical strategy to respond to this? I argue that they propose a topological theory of
diagnosis. “It was a decisive event when the mathematician Riemann uprooted the multiple from its
predicate state and made it a noun, ‘multiplicity,’” Deleuze and Guattari say, “It marked the end of
dialectics and the beginning of a typology and topology of multiplicities” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987:
482–3). Thus, taken from mathematics, the concept of a topological field is a single surface with
potentially infinite dimensions created by foldings or morphisms (like a piece of origami). Independent
of linear contiguity or succession it moves and changes by folding itself into new relations. Sierpinski’s
sponge, Von Koch’s curve without tangent, and Mandelbrot’s fractals are examples of iterated
topological fields in geometry.¶ The concept of a specifically “political” topology thus provides a new
way to consider political events as having several political tendencies at once, each to a greater or
lesser degree, and not as a matter of lack. For example, perhaps a political struggle has a strong anticapitalist tendency but also a strong territorial or religious tendency toward patriarchal norms.
Topologically speaking there is no central axis or “essential political ideology” operating here. There is
only a relative mix of political tendencies to be determined without the aid of evolutionary succession
or explanatory reductionism. Rather, each of these political tendencies instead, according to Deleuze
and Guattari, acts as the “loci of a topology that defines primitive societies here, States there, and
elsewhere war machines” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987: 430). Thus topologically, these political tendencies
or types are really distinct insofar as they occupy different dimensions of a struggle and yet they also
coexist simultaneously insofar as they occupy a single political event that holds them all together
under the same name. Thus, instead of succession (presupposing separate taxonomic categories)
political tendencies change and merge as they cross the different thresholds immanent to the struggle
under consideration. For example, Deleuze and Guattari say,¶ The appearance of a central power is thus
a function of a threshold or degree beyond which what is anticipated takes on consistency or fails to,
and what is conjured away ceases to be so and arrives. This threshold of consistency, or of constraint, is
not evolutionary but rather coexists with what has yet to cross it (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987: 432).¶ The
Zapatistas, contrary to centrist or vanguard analyses that revolve around a privileged method/science,
site or dimension of struggle, similarly offer an inclusive intersectional analysis that does not
necessarily privilege any single method, front, or site of struggle. Revolution, according to Marcos:¶ is
about a process which incorporates different methods, different fronts, different and various levels of
commitment and participation. This means that all methods have their place, that all the fronts of
struggle are necessary, and that all levels of participation are important. This is about an inclusive
process, which is anti-vanguard and collective. The problem with the revolution (pay attention to the
small letters) is then no longer a problem of THE organization, THE method, THE caudillo [dictator,
political boss]. It becomes rather a problem which concerns all those who see that revolution as
necessary and possible, and whose achievement, is important for everyone (Marcos, 2004: 164).¶
Marcos, in Beyond Resistance (2007) describes precisely the practical labour of this task in La Otra
Campaña (The Other Campaign). To mobilize the population of the excluded and marginalized in
Mexico was not a matter of discovering the evolutionary, dialectical, or single explanatory cause of
oppression, it was a matter of listening and surveying all the multiple folds/fronts in the topological
field. It was to create, as Marcos says, “a diagnostic of suffering” in all its dimensions (Marcos, 2008:
11). These folds, “the criminalization of youth, the oppression of women, environmental pollution, etc”
are all coexisting and intersecting dimensions of the same struggle (Marcos, 2008: 11). During this time
the Zapatistas also began diagnosing their own internal dangers. “[T]here are two mistakes,”
Subcomandante Marcos says:¶ which seem to have persisted in our political work (and which flagrantly
contradict our principles): the place of women, on the one hand, and, on the other, the relationship
between the political-military structure and the autonomous governments.[4]
They exclude discussions of any other forms of dignity or violence against people –
becomes independent offense against the K – as long as we still provide a place for a
capitalist revolution, there’s no reason the K alone is better
Perm do the plan and the alt in all other instances – the status quo entrenched in
structural violence and capitalist oppression – that’s Christie – means there’s no
chance the aff could make it worse, and only a risk it makes it better
Zapatismo is the last hope to overthrow capitalism – but sweeping claims about
government usage being a link gut alt solvency
Gelsomino 10(Mark Gelsomino, Mark is a recent graduate of the Masters of Information Studies
program at the University of Toronto. In addition to his studies he sat on the executive of the Canadian
Library Association U of T Student Chapter and served as co-chair for the U of T Librarians Without
Borders chapter. Prior to coming to Toronto, Mark worked as a Systems Specialist for the Ottawa Public
Library. He completed his Anthropology undergrad at Carleton University where he focused on
criminology, forensic psychology and Indigenous issues, “The Zapatista Effect: Information
Communication Technology Activism and Marginalized Communities”
http://fiq.ischool.utoronto.ca/index.php/fiq/article/view/15404) Malhar
In the new millennium, the traditional Marxist idea of the overthrow of the capitalist system no
longer seems realistic or even possible (Gonzalez, 2000). The famous Rosa Luxemburg/Eduard
Bernstein debates in classic Marxism now seem moot (Bruhn, 1999). Luxemburg was a famous
proponent of the “general strike”, or the sudden and spontaneous revolution that would swiftly
dispose of capitalism and replace it with a Marxist utopia. Bernstein desired the same end result, but
believed this would be achieved via gradual social change brought on by workers (Bruhn, 1999). While
they envisioned different paths, both believed that only the destruction of capitalism could produce a
just society. The Zapatistas, however, broke this seemingly incontrovertible link between revolution
and the end of the state (Holloway, 2002). They envisioned an alternative system that would
produce social justice, yet did not require the dismantling of the government. Indigenous autonomy
meant that the Mexican government could still exist, but that the Zapatistas could form their own
alternative structure. This sovereign Zapatista collective would have the right to negotiate with the
Mexican government as equal partners.
Neolib
Framework – the affirmative should be able to weigh our impacts – even if they prove
our methodology or epistemology is flawed, Gelsomino says promoting the Zapatistas
through speech can independently build up their movement – means we get our
impacts anyway
Case outweighs First – We win in a utilitarian framework – the Bellinghausen evidence gives us access to an existential
impact the K can’t solve for – here’s a simple net benefit to the perm
Second – we access all your structural violence claims – Zapatismo stands as a front against these
forms of oppression, and offers a new way to challenge them
Third – We have an external dignity impact – Fender gives it as a d-rule – as long as the K can’t access
this impact, we’ll always outweigh.
Case solve the alt - Beillinghausen 12 says Zapatismo has the ability to break down
oppressive neoliberalist structures in the long-term. Dignity as a pervasive value
would also have the ability to spread equality – solves inequalities – that’s De Angelis
Perm do both - Maccani 8 says others can join in solidarity – means the permutation is
in line with the rest of the aff’s thesis
Incorporating as many perspectives as possible creates a topological politics that
avoids the need for starting points or pre-requisites
Nail 10 (Thomas Nail, professor of philosophy at the University of Denver, PhD, University of Oregon, MA, University of Oregon, BA,
University of North Texas, “Constructivism and the Future Anterior of Radical Politics,” http://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/thomas-nailconstructivism-and-the-future-anterior-of-radical-politics, Luke Newell)
For Deleuze and Guattari, unlike Day, the thesis that there is no central axis of struggle is not a matter
of groundlessness, lack, or infinite responsibility, rather it indicates a positive multiplication of axes of
struggle requiring a new kind of multi-centered political analysis. If political reality has multiple
intersectional axes, we can no longer employ diagnostic methods that reduce them all to a single plane
(economics, culture, or gender, etc.). But what does Deleuze and Guattari’s post-anarchism offer us as a
political-theoretical strategy to respond to this? I argue that they propose a topological theory of
diagnosis. “It was a decisive event when the mathematician Riemann uprooted the multiple from its
predicate state and made it a noun, ‘multiplicity,’” Deleuze and Guattari say, “It marked the end of
dialectics and the beginning of a typology and topology of multiplicities” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987:
482–3). Thus, taken from mathematics, the concept of a topological field is a single surface with
potentially infinite dimensions created by foldings or morphisms (like a piece of origami). Independent
of linear contiguity or succession it moves and changes by folding itself into new relations. Sierpinski’s
sponge, Von Koch’s curve without tangent, and Mandelbrot’s fractals are examples of iterated
topological fields in geometry.¶ The concept of a specifically “political” topology thus provides a new
way to consider political events as having several political tendencies at once, each to a greater or
lesser degree, and not as a matter of lack. For example, perhaps a political struggle has a strong anticapitalist tendency but also a strong territorial or religious tendency toward patriarchal norms.
Topologically speaking there is no central axis or “essential political ideology” operating here. There is
only a relative mix of political tendencies to be determined without the aid of evolutionary succession
or explanatory reductionism. Rather, each of these political tendencies instead, according to Deleuze
and Guattari, acts as the “loci of a topology that defines primitive societies here, States there, and
elsewhere war machines” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987: 430). Thus topologically, these political tendencies
or types are really distinct insofar as they occupy different dimensions of a struggle and yet they also
coexist simultaneously insofar as they occupy a single political event that holds them all together
under the same name. Thus, instead of succession (presupposing separate taxonomic categories)
political tendencies change and merge as they cross the different thresholds immanent to the struggle
under consideration. For example, Deleuze and Guattari say,¶ The appearance of a central power is thus
a function of a threshold or degree beyond which what is anticipated takes on consistency or fails to,
and what is conjured away ceases to be so and arrives. This threshold of consistency, or of constraint, is
not evolutionary but rather coexists with what has yet to cross it (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987: 432).¶ The
Zapatistas, contrary to centrist or vanguard analyses that revolve around a privileged method/science,
site or dimension of struggle, similarly offer an inclusive intersectional analysis that does not
necessarily privilege any single method, front, or site of struggle. Revolution, according to Marcos:¶ is
about a process which incorporates different methods, different fronts, different and various levels of
commitment and participation. This means that all methods have their place, that all the fronts of
struggle are necessary, and that all levels of participation are important. This is about an inclusive
process, which is anti-vanguard and collective. The problem with the revolution (pay attention to the
small letters) is then no longer a problem of THE organization, THE method, THE caudillo [dictator,
political boss]. It becomes rather a problem which concerns all those who see that revolution as
necessary and possible, and whose achievement, is important for everyone (Marcos, 2004: 164).¶
Marcos, in Beyond Resistance (2007) describes precisely the practical labour of this task in La Otra
Campaña (The Other Campaign). To mobilize the population of the excluded and marginalized in
Mexico was not a matter of discovering the evolutionary, dialectical, or single explanatory cause of
oppression, it was a matter of listening and surveying all the multiple folds/fronts in the topological
field. It was to create, as Marcos says, “a diagnostic of suffering” in all its dimensions (Marcos, 2008:
11). These folds, “the criminalization of youth, the oppression of women, environmental pollution, etc”
are all coexisting and intersecting dimensions of the same struggle (Marcos, 2008: 11). During this time
the Zapatistas also began diagnosing their own internal dangers. “[T]here are two mistakes,”
Subcomandante Marcos says:¶ which seem to have persisted in our political work (and which flagrantly
contradict our principles): the place of women, on the one hand, and, on the other, the relationship
between the political-military structure and the autonomous governments.[4]
The radical politics of the Zapatista liberate us from the neoliberal control that
permeates our lives – the methodology of Zapatismo empowers the populous to
challenge the politics of social relations
Massimo De Angelis 2008 obtained a PhD in Economics at the University of Utah in 1995 and a Laurea in
Political Sciences at the Universita' Statale di Milano in 1985. He is a critical political economist. He is author of
several research publications on value theory, globalisation, social movements and the political reading of
economic narrative – NEIL MEHTA
Behind the market ideology therefore there is not so much an idea of distribution of resources, there is a mode of doing and therefore of
relating. Distribution is either a particular premise (in the forms of enclosure and expropriation) or result (in the form of emergent patterns of
exploitation) of this mode of doing. But the center around which capitalism and the neoliberal
discourse are constructed is a mode of
be challenged not with another ideology, but
with the positing of values that open up a million other modes of social doing and of articulation of
social cooperation. The historical importance of the Zapatistas, I suggest, is to have begun both in practice and discursively the journey
doing, a mode of articulating social cooperation through the market. This ideology must
to that other “world that contains many worlds” in which the forms of the “containing” or articulation, cannot be spelled out clearly by an
ideology, but must emerge out of the free interaction of the people constituting those many worlds. Thus, the Zapatistas did not enter the
scene with an ideology to oppose the ideology of capital and disciplinary markets. They did not rebuke neoliberalism with an ideological
formula to apply to all contexts and situations. Many were waiting and hoping for them to do exactly that. Some left solidarity circles
disillusioned by the fact that the Zapatistas had not followed the paths we were familiar with. Many, who were aware that power relations and
oppression were behind old emancipatory ideologies, checked for those signs of impurity in their practice, tried to shame them with the
“gothca” attitude for their alleged “deviations” on nationalism, sexism, or petty-bourgeoise tendencies. But
Zapatismo was not
about a new ideology, or about an asymptotic convergence to an ideological credo that needs to be measured in terms of its degree of
purity. It is not even a reformulation of the old ones. Zapatismo was about a politics of social relations, and since
political activity is by its nature a relational activity, Zapatismo has introduced the plane of
immanence in politics: the end and organisational means of political activity coincide; they both have
to do with social relations, hence the world we want and our activities to get to that world are not
external to each other but are two sides of the same coin, that is, two interrelated moments of a
transformational activity. And if this is the case therefore, new questions start to emerge, questions that were somehow straight
jacketed within old ideological frameworks. How do we coordinate social action to build a different world? And who is “we”? What are the lines
of inclusion and exclusion? And when this “we” is somehow grasped, what is it that this “we” (so diverse because made of so many different
“minorities”) wants? And when we have defined what “we” want, how do we go about getting it? In a word, how do we live a new set of social
relations? Before the Zapatistas entered the scene, these types of questions seemed naïve. Answers were already there for anybody entering a
political milieu: we, the “working class” want “socialism,” and we get it either through “revolution” or “reform,” two diverse schools of thought
indeed, which however were agreeing on one thing: the leadership of “the party” is there to guide us into the promised land and seize state
power. With
the Zapatistas, politics is turned upside down, as Holloway puts it, “revolution is redefined as a
question rather than an answer” (Holloway 1998), a question of communal self-empowerment rather than
a pre-established answer in the hands of few enlightened people belonging to some central
committee. Life cannot be postponed to the “after revolution,” and in the process of asking questions we walk forward and deal with the
problems as they come. Preguntando caminamos, “asking we walk,” is a famous Zapatista saying. And in the process of asking questions people
struggle to go beyond the obstacles that are encountered. And in the process of asking questions, people also dance and sing thus stripping
politics of its alienated mantle of dedicated and professional seriousness. Politics becomes a human affair, in its totality. This clear cut
difference between traditional revolutionary politcs predicated on ideology and the horizons proposed by the Zapatistas is, for example,
evident in a communiqué of the EZLN to the EPR (Revolutionary Popular Army), a guerrilla group with bases in Guerrero, the Zapatistas spell out
the differences that according to them exist between the two formations. To me, these differences are the differences between the
“Zapatistas’ revolutionary expropriation of politics” (Moreno 1995) which is based on people’s exercise of power, and the traditional
conception of politics, based on the seizure of state power (whether through revolutionary or reformist means, this does not really matter).
Perm do the plan and the alt in all other instances – the status quo entrenched in
structural violence and capitalist oppression – that’s Christie – means there’s no
chance the aff could make it worse, and only a risk it makes it better
Zapatista ideology rejects neoliberalism as well
Fender 11 (Meredith Fender, Spring 2011, “How Subcomandante Marcos Employed Strategic
Communication to Promote the Zapatista Revolution”
http://www.american.edu/sis/jis/upload/8Fender.pdf) Malhar
Neoliberal Capitalism Marcos
frequently engages in a discourse against neoliberal capitalism — often framing
it as the insidious enemy of Zapatismo: “Businesses of evil wealth have a new etiquette. Another mask hides our pain from our
own eyes. A new name has been given to injustice, to slavery, to the usurpation: neoliberalism.”80 This line is
set apart from the rest of the text for emphasis. Marcos compares the hegemony of the neoliberal ideology to a concealing mask similar to the
trademark black ski masks worn by the EZLN warriors. This passage suggests that the
businesses benefiting from neoliberal
policies acquired their “evil wealth” through unethical and unjust methods that maintain the peasant
underclass in a state of virtual slavery. Katz asserts, “The critics [of neoliberalism] argue that the policies and practices of
neoliberal globalization increase the wealth and power of the few at the expense of the many.”81 Marcos subscribes to this logic and argues
that the
victims of neoliberalism are the impoverished campesinos on behalf of whom he advocates.
percent of Mexicans living in poverty are indigenous and typically earn 30 percent of
what their non-indigenous counterparts make.82 Thus, Marcos frames neoliberalism as an ideology that
is likely to exacerbate the already dire economic circumstances of Mexico’s indigenous peoples. Speed
Brysk observes that 80
argues, “The Zapatista uprising was, in many ways, a recognition by indigenous communities that the terms of rule had changed and an
assertion of their intention to play an active role in the renegotiation of their relationship to the state in the context of neoliberal
globalization.”83 In a communiqué addressed to Zapatista solidarity groups meeting in Brescia, Italy, Marcos emphasizes the presence of the
indigenous peoples in the trend toward neoliberalism: “Today the
thick mantle with which they try to cover their crime
is called neoliberalism, and it represents death and misery for the original people of these lands, and
for all of those of a different skin color but with a single indigenous heart that we call Mexicans.”84
Marcos frames the government’s implementation of neoliberalism as a “crime” for removing state
protection of indigenous lands and leaving them with the impossibility of competing with foreign
products such as corn from the U.S. (which enjoys substantial protectionist subsidies from the U.S. government and benefits from modern
production methods) that the indigenous corn farmers of Chiapas cannot possibly compete with without
state assistance. Marcos mentions “death” in the sense of culture, traditions, and languages —
perhaps even identities — of indigenous peoples as a result of the purportedly homogenizing effects
of globalization. Marcos continues, “The great international criminal, money, today has a name that reflects the incapacity of Power to
create new things. We suffer a new world war today. It is a war against all of the peoples, of human beings,
of culture, of history. It is a war headed by a handful of financial centers without homeland and without shame, an international war:
money versus humanity. They call it Neoliberalism now, this Terror Intentional.” He appeals to Zapatista allies in Italy
by comparing neoliberalism to the world wars that devastated Italy. He also appeals to socialist
sentiments — popular in Italy — by blaming the greed, immorality, and lack of patria or national pride
and dignity of financial institutions, which he frames as criminal, for crimes against humanity. His
mention of a war against “culture” and “history” indicates that he frames neoliberalism as a threat against indigenous
rights, as it may negate the traditional ways of life of indigenous peoples as they struggle to compete,
perhaps even survive, in a global economy. He equates neoliberalism with a terrorist organization to
emphasize the deleterious effects of neoliberal policies on the indigenous peoples of Mexico.
Perm do the alt – a critique of neoliberalism is the basis of a portion of Zapatismo –
means the aff solves
Cleaver 97 (Harry, Harry Cleaver was Associate Professor in the Department of Economics at the
University of Texas at Austin, where he taught Marxism and Marxian economics, as well as courses on
Political Economy, April 1997, Nature, Neoliberalism and Sustainable Development: Between Charybdis
& Scylla, https://webspace.utexas.edu/hcleaver/www/port.html) IMTIAZ
In a simple language, rooted in the day to day lives and cultures of its communities, Zapatista
communiqués and writings have elaborated a critique of Neoliberalism that while focused on Mexico
has resonated with its victims and opponents in both hemispheres. At the same time, their major
spokesperson Subcommandante Marcos has conjured from the same source visions of alternatives that
have had an equally wide appeal despite their largely local origins and framing.21¶ Against Neoliberal
reforms the Zapatistas have revealed its brutal reality: the final enclosure of the Mexican commons,
deepened exploitation, increased suffering from malnutrition, lack of medical care, daily violence and
cultural genocide against the indigenous. Against the Mexican government's Neoliberal Dream of a
competitive Mexican ship rowing vigorously in a free market sea captained by Harvard-trained
economists, the Zapatistas have revealed a Nightmare. The boat, they have pointed out, is no free
adventurer but a slave ship, the rowers are chained to their oars and the captains either corrupt or
delusional. Ex-president Carlos Salinas and current President Ernesto Zedillo are neither Jason nor
Odysseus but mad Ahabs who have been steering their country to catastrophe.22 Faced with such
madness, the Zapatistas have demanded direct democratic control over their own lives and convoked
others (in civil society) to demand the same.¶ Against the vertical subordination of indigenous needs
to those of "Mexican" development, whose dynamic in turn has been subordinated to global markets
(i.e., capitalist global policy in this period), the Zapatistas have called for a horizontally interlinked and
cooperative pattern of autonomy - for the indigenous communities, for women, and for bioregions. No
pastoralists, despite their agrarian origins, they envision no abandonment of modern industries and
technologies that can be turned to good account, but instead offer a fundamental reordering of social
priorities and liberation from all mandates of development (accumulation).
Protest
A LOT OF THIS WILL OVERLAP WITH CAP (MANY OF THESE CARDS/ARGS WITH JUST BE CROSSAPPLICATIONS – BE AWARE)
Framework – the affirmative should be able to weigh our impacts – even if they prove
our methodology or epistemology is flawed, Gelsomino says promoting the Zapatistas
through speech can independently build up their movement – means we get our
impacts anyway
Case solve the alt - Beillinghausen 12 says Zapatismo has the ability to break down
oppressive structures in the long-term. Dignity as a pervasive value would also have
the ability to spread equality – solves inequalities – that’s De Angelis
Perm do both –
The Zapatistas have successfully used solidarity with other groups to fight against
capitalism – that’s exactly what Badiou advocates for
Knight 9 (Alex Knight, bachelor’s and Master’s degree in political science from Lehigh University, teacher, writer, activist, “3. Why is it
Breaking Down?” http://endofcapitalism.com/about/3-why-is-it-collapsing/, Luke Newell)
Such popular rebellion hasn’t been more contagious than in the hills of Chiapas, Mexico, where the
Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional (EZLN), an army of indigenous peasant farmers, has been in
revolt against the government of Mexico and its neoliberal policies for 15 years. The Zapatistas rose up
on the same day that the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) went into effect, a treaty
which they called “a death sentence” because it eliminated protections for the poor to keep their land.
These masked Mayans took up arms and made their first “Declaration from the Lacandon Jungle,” with
eleven demands: work, land, shelter, food, health, education, independence, freedom, democracy,
justice and peace.¶ Freedom, Democracy, Justice¶ The Zapatistas have been able to survive government
repression by tapping into the support of grassroots social movements throughout Mexico and
beyond. In return, the Zapatistas have organized the “Other Campaign” to reach out and listen to
people’s struggles, and imagine new ways of working against capitalism. It is this practice of solidarity
that not only saves the EZLN, but in turn gives the rest of us the example of successful resistance by
common citizens against a much more economically and militarily superior government.¶ The words of
the Zapatistas inspire hope and determination for all of us: “We have nothing, absolutely nothing, not
even a roof over our heads, no land, no work, no health care, no food nor education. Nor are we able to
freely and democratically elect our political representatives, nor is there independence from foreigners,
nor is there peace nor justice for ourselves and our children. But today, we say ENOUGH IS ENOUGH.
We are the inheritors of the true builders of our nation. The dispossessed, we are millions and we
thereby call our brothers and sisters to join this struggle…”¶ The breakdown of the neoliberal project in
Latin America was a major defeat for global capitalism, displaying the inherent weakness of the system
– it requires our consent in order to rule us. Once this consent is withdrawn, capitalism must either rely
on the use of repressive violence, or succumb to popular demands.
Perm do the plan and the alt in all other instances - no reason this specific debate
round is key to breaking down oppression
Incorporating as many perspectives as possible creates a topological politics that
avoids the need for starting points or pre-requisites
Nail 10 (Thomas Nail, professor of philosophy at the University of Denver, PhD, University of Oregon, MA, University of Oregon, BA,
University of North Texas, “Constructivism and the Future Anterior of Radical Politics,” http://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/thomas-nailconstructivism-and-the-future-anterior-of-radical-politics, Luke Newell)
For Deleuze and Guattari, unlike Day, the thesis that there is no central axis of struggle is not a matter
of groundlessness, lack, or infinite responsibility, rather it indicates a positive multiplication of axes of
struggle requiring a new kind of multi-centered political analysis. If political reality has multiple
intersectional axes, we can no longer employ diagnostic methods that reduce them all to a single plane
(economics, culture, or gender, etc.). But what does Deleuze and Guattari’s post-anarchism offer us as a
political-theoretical strategy to respond to this? I argue that they propose a topological theory of
diagnosis. “It was a decisive event when the mathematician Riemann uprooted the multiple from its
predicate state and made it a noun, ‘multiplicity,’” Deleuze and Guattari say, “It marked the end of
dialectics and the beginning of a typology and topology of multiplicities” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987:
482–3). Thus, taken from mathematics, the concept of a topological field is a single surface with
potentially infinite dimensions created by foldings or morphisms (like a piece of origami). Independent
of linear contiguity or succession it moves and changes by folding itself into new relations. Sierpinski’s
sponge, Von Koch’s curve without tangent, and Mandelbrot’s fractals are examples of iterated
topological fields in geometry.¶ The concept of a specifically “political” topology thus provides a new
way to consider political events as having several political tendencies at once, each to a greater or
lesser degree, and not as a matter of lack. For example, perhaps a political struggle has a strong anticapitalist tendency but also a strong territorial or religious tendency toward patriarchal norms.
Topologically speaking there is no central axis or “essential political ideology” operating here. There is
only a relative mix of political tendencies to be determined without the aid of evolutionary succession
or explanatory reductionism. Rather, each of these political tendencies instead, according to Deleuze
and Guattari, acts as the “loci of a topology that defines primitive societies here, States there, and
elsewhere war machines” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987: 430). Thus topologically, these political tendencies
or types are really distinct insofar as they occupy different dimensions of a struggle and yet they also
coexist simultaneously insofar as they occupy a single political event that holds them all together
under the same name. Thus, instead of succession (presupposing separate taxonomic categories)
political tendencies change and merge as they cross the different thresholds immanent to the struggle
under consideration. For example, Deleuze and Guattari say,¶ The appearance of a central power is thus
a function of a threshold or degree beyond which what is anticipated takes on consistency or fails to,
and what is conjured away ceases to be so and arrives. This threshold of consistency, or of constraint, is
not evolutionary but rather coexists with what has yet to cross it (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987: 432).¶ The
Zapatistas, contrary to centrist or vanguard analyses that revolve around a privileged method/science,
site or dimension of struggle, similarly offer an inclusive intersectional analysis that does not
necessarily privilege any single method, front, or site of struggle. Revolution, according to Marcos:¶ is
about a process which incorporates different methods, different fronts, different and various levels of
commitment and participation. This means that all methods have their place, that all the fronts of
struggle are necessary, and that all levels of participation are important. This is about an inclusive
process, which is anti-vanguard and collective. The problem with the revolution (pay attention to the
small letters) is then no longer a problem of THE organization, THE method, THE caudillo [dictator,
political boss]. It becomes rather a problem which concerns all those who see that revolution as
necessary and possible, and whose achievement, is important for everyone (Marcos, 2004: 164).¶
Marcos, in Beyond Resistance (2007) describes precisely the practical labour of this task in La Otra
Campaña (The Other Campaign). To mobilize the population of the excluded and marginalized in
Mexico was not a matter of discovering the evolutionary, dialectical, or single explanatory cause of
oppression, it was a matter of listening and surveying all the multiple folds/fronts in the topological
field. It was to create, as Marcos says, “a diagnostic of suffering” in all its dimensions (Marcos, 2008:
11). These folds, “the criminalization of youth, the oppression of women, environmental pollution, etc”
are all coexisting and intersecting dimensions of the same struggle (Marcos, 2008: 11). During this time
the Zapatistas also began diagnosing their own internal dangers. “[T]here are two mistakes,”
Subcomandante Marcos says:¶ which seem to have persisted in our political work (and which flagrantly
contradict our principles): the place of women, on the one hand, and, on the other, the relationship
between the political-military structure and the autonomous governments.[4]
A revolution with a specified alternative fails – the specific goals of the 1NC ensures
the state can coopt it and stop all riots
Bernes and Clover 12 (Jasper Bernes, postdoctoral fellow at Duke University, author, reviewer for the LA Review of
Books, and Joshua Clover, writer, poet, professor, Professor of English Literature and Critical Theory at the University of California,
Davis, winner of the Walt Whitman Award, “History and the Sphinx: Of Riots and Uprisings,” LA Review of Books.
http://lareviewofbooks.org/article.php?id=949&fulltext=1, Luke Newell)
Badiou’s communism thus drives itself straightaway into the ditch separating new from the old: “at a
distance from the state,” but still fundamentally oriented toward hoary ideas about the state’s
withering away. Though “organization” no longer means a party capable of seizing state power and
directing its military and bureaucratic power toward particular programmatic ends, it does mean that
“[y]ou decide what the state must do and find the means of forcing it to, while always keeping your
distance from the state…” And yet this orientation toward the state – regardless of its reliance on
telekinesis rather than direct contact – reproduces the primary weakness of the riots and uprisings of
the present, the very thing it seeks to overcome. Whether or not they feature explicit demands, these
riots are always heard by the state and powers-that-be as practical calls for reform: “Mubarak must go!”
and “No more austerity!” are how the uprisings of Egypt and Greece sound in paraphrase. This has less
to do with the ideas actually held by participants, who may indeed have anticapitalist and antistate
aspirations, than it does with their particular strategic and tactical choices: massing in the square
defensively, for instance, or attacking the parliament building on the eve of an austerity vote. Even the
supposedly “meaningless” violence of the London riots gets heard as a call for reform, for amelioration
of poverty, social exclusion, and the racist harassment of the police.¶ It is unclear, then, what solution
Badiou’s call for “organization” might provide to the limits of the historical riot, which he rightly notes
“does not by itself offer an alternative to the power it intends to overthrow.” The dubious case of
“Latin American socialism” and the sloganizing of the antiglobalization movement notwithstanding, no
such alternative has yet emerged in the 21st century. We might wonder, instead, if the very concept of
an alternative belongs to the now-outmoded politics of party, state and program. In the 20th century,
“alternative” always meant an alternate form of modernization and industrialization – modernization
under socialist (or fascist) conditions of political control and distribution. Past revolutionary ideas of the
future depended on a conception of an alternate course of development. But such futures are gone.
There are no creditable images of the century to come that are not formed of nightmare and ruin,
however much the Shanghai skyline tries to tell us otherwise. Everyone dreads the future. Which means
that we might need to revise our very conception of what “revolution” and “alternative” mean.
Protest fails – after the initial protest ends everyone forgets – makes it meaningless
Tucker 11 (Griffin is a blogger for TED) http://www.ted.com/conversations/5028/why_protests_don_t_work_in_the.html
why protests don't work in the long run starting a following is easy to do if you know how, for instance an opposing ideal. what
usually happens next is a formulation of people organised to start a protest against the ideal by means of (ideally) peaceful marches
to grab attention
so why doesn't it work?
once the protest is over, people who joined the protest but were
sitting on the fence, so to speak, will do nothing further and think their work has been done. i'm not
entirely sure, but i think the majority of the protestors in a lot of cases of protests would have an
almost 'sitting on the fence' frame of mind where they wouldn't do anything further than attend the
protest.
i've noticed that protestors sometimes seem to think that the people in power over an ideal
are almost completely wrong on all of their ideals, and victimize them by bending the truth about
them, or even spreading completely false information about them. this is not the way to change things positively
for the future. in fact what usually happens is the people in power will smother the flame of the protest, and nothing gets
work THROUGH the system to get things changed. if people don't take you
seriously when you offer an opposing ideal, get signatures proving that there are more people who
agree with your opposing ideal, and take it to those in power to help them realise there is a problem
with their original ideal.
only then, will the formulation of think-tanks to find solutions to problems
that they were unaware of in the first place begin to form. perhaps with signatures AND original ideas
from the people who sign about the opposing ideal, would it be possible to solve a problem
accomplished.
solution?
Statism
Framework – the affirmative should be able to weigh our impacts – even if they prove
our methodology or epistemology is flawed, Gelsomino says promoting the Zapatistas
through speech can independently build up their movement – means we get our
impacts anyway
Case outweighs First – We win in a utilitarian framework – the Bellinghausen evidence gives us access to an existential
impact the K can’t solve for – here’s a simple net benefit to the perm
Second – we access all your structural violence claims – Zapatismo stands as a front against these
forms of oppression, and offers a new way to challenge them
Third – We have an external dignity impact – Fender gives it as a d-rule – as long as the K can’t access
this impact, we’ll always outweigh.
Perm-do the plan and reject statism in all other instances—EITHER the alt is able to
overcome the residual link to the plan and the plan is a drop in the bucket OR the
alternative can’t solve. No specific link to the aff means this instance is NOT UNIQUELY
IMPORTANT.
K DOES NOT SOLVE THE CASE—an anarchist society could not economically engage
with Mexico.
Alt links to the K—The collective anarchist society which works together through
mutual agreement is the collectivist thinking that Mann kritiks.
THE ALT DOESN’T SOLVE—3 reasons
1) It does NOT REJECT THE “CONCEPT” of Government---it destroys the entirety of the
government.
2) it does not recognize the potential of each individual which Zupanic says it the only
way to solve the impact.
3) The alt links into their impact—Spunk talks about making all individuals viewed as
equal—THIS LIMITS INDIVIDUAL’S ABILITY to reach their potential and recognize their
“infinite.”
Alt causes to overcoming DRH—no spillover effect
MANN 97 (Fredrick, N.S.P.I.C. DEBATE (Neuro-Semantic Political Illusion Complex) http://www.mindtrek.com/reports/tl07e.htm) Malhar
Before some people can overcome DRH, they first need to overcome some of the more basic related
problems. In many of John de Rivaz's articles (not included here), he unwittingly demonstrated that he suffers from
psychological reversal, victim-mentality, slave-mentality, and deathism -- all of which are aspects of
the DEBILITY element of DRH. Some recommended Reports covering most of these topics are: #13F: The Millionaire's Secret (VI),
and #04: How to Find Out Who You Are.¶ Transcending DRH can require a considerable mental and intellectual
effort. Many people need to read, analyze, think about, and re-read a number of the Reports many times before they can grasp the subject
matter and apply it. A few readers wrote to me to say that they had read some Reports ten times, and more! -- and benefitted significantly
from each reading. Each time you re-read something, you can pick up additional points which you might have missed previously.¶ A clear
indicator that you need to re-read something will typically be realized by those Reports which you have difficulty understanding one or more
parts of. You might find it useful to make a list of the Reports which you've read, and mark off against each one whether you understood it all,
or mostly, or only partly -- and come back to those which you had difficulty with in a few days time -- or shortly after reading one of the other
related Reports which you haven't read yet.¶ Several readers also wrote about the great joy they experienced, and continued to experience,
when they finally overcame their hallucinations! (Also, see David Smith's letter: The Experience of Personal Power, Freedom, and Prosperity, for
an example from a few years ago of similar things.)¶
Focusing on method and process are bad—we need to focus on outcomes
Novaes 11(Catarina Dutilh Novaes, October 1, 2011, “Feynman on precise definitions and
philosophical methodology” http://www.newappsblog.com/2011/10/feynman-on-precise-definitionsand-philosophical-methodology.html) Malhar
Yet, Feynman’s quote resonates with a worry I’ve had for a long time concerning the
methodology of analytic philosophy: the
excessive focus on providing necessary and sufficient conditions for something to count as A. (Naturally,
Wittgenstein had similar worries much before me.) In schematic form, we could say that philosophers seek precisifications of the following
schema:¶ x is A <=> x is B, C, D …¶ where A is the concept to be analyzed in terms of (presumably) simpler concepts B, C, D... A
paradigmatic case is the definition of the concept of knowledge as true justified belief. Now, one of the
problems with this methodology is that it opens the door to a cottage industry of counter-examples,
one more far-fetched than the other (Gettier cases, Barn facades… For the real guide, see here), which either satisfy the
definiens but not the definiendum, or the other way round. Now, what bothers me most about this approach is that it
forces us to focus almost entirely on borderline, atypical cases of something counting as A or satisfying properties B, C,
D…; but if the goal is to attain a better knowledge of property A, looking at the borders rather than at the
core does not strike me as the most suitable approach.
Vague alts are a voting issue——kills aff ground by shifting the focus of the kritik in
various directions during each speech—voter for fairness.
Speaking for Others
Framework – the affirmative should be able to weigh our impacts – even if they prove
our methodology or epistemology is flawed, Gelsomino says promoting the Zapatistas
through speech can independently build up their movement – means we get our
impacts anyway
Case outweighs First – We win in a utilitarian framework – the Bellinghausen evidence gives us access to an existential
impact the K can’t solve for – here’s a simple net benefit to the perm
Second – we access all your structural violence claims – Zapatismo stands as a front against these
forms of oppression, and offers a new way to challenge them
Third – We have an external dignity impact – Fender gives it as a d-rule – as long as the K can’t access
this impact, we’ll always outweigh.
Perm do both - Maccani 8 says others can join in solidarity – means the permutation is
in line with the rest of the aff’s thesis
Collective speaking is more powerful – it generates solidarity with the oppressed.
Hornsey et al ’05 - MATTHEW J. HORNSEY is a lecturer at the University¶ of Queensland, Australia, and the Director of the¶ Centre
for Research on Group Processes. LEDA BLACKWOOD is a postgraduate student at the¶ University of Queensland. ANNE O’BRIEN is a
postdoctoral researcher at the¶ University of Exeter, UK [Group Processes Intergroup Relations July 2005 vol. 8 no. 3 245-257, “Speaking for
Others: The Pros and Cons of Group Advocates using Collective Language”, July 18, 2005,
http://gpi.sagepub.com/content/8/3/245.full.pdf+html] ADoan
When attempting to persuade others of the¶ legitimacy of a group’s concerns, people have a¶ choice
as to what rhetorical style they use. On¶ the one hand, they can emphasize the personal¶ nature of the
attitude (‘I believe’) in the hope¶ that their testimonial will help foster sympathy¶ for the cause of the
wider group. Alternatively,¶ they can speak on behalf of the wider group¶ (‘We believe’).¶ There is a
convergence of theory and research¶ that speaks to the appropriateness of the latter¶ strategy when
engaging in political action. For¶ example, the use of collective language helps¶ signal solidarity and unity
which, according to¶ research on minority influence, is fundamentally important when it comes to
influencing¶ the views of the majority (Maass & Clark, 1984;¶ Moscovici, 1976; Mugny & Perez, 1991).
By¶ using collective language, the advocate indicates that the group feels certainty in, and¶ strong
commitment to, its message. This helps¶ promote uncertainty and doubt regarding the¶ issue in the
minds of the majority and helps¶ draw attention to the minority group as a coherent entity that
deserves to be taken seriously. So,¶ for outgroup audiences at least (e.g. the general public; rival
groups), it can be expected¶ that collective language will be more effective¶ than personal language.¶ A
second reason that collective language¶ might be more effective is that it helps emphasize the
ongoing loyalty and commitment of the¶ advocate to their constituency (the ingroup¶ members). In
order to explicate the underlying¶ mechanisms affecting this relationship, we turn¶ to the social identity
perspective on group processes. The basic premise of social identity¶ theory (Tajfel & Turner, 1979) and
its extension,¶ self-categorization theory (Turner, Hogg, Oakes,¶ Reicher, & Wetherell, 1987; Turner,
1991), is¶ that an important part of our sense of self¶ derives from the groups to which we belong (see¶
Hogg, 2002; Turner, 1999, for recent reviews).¶ According to this social identity perspective, the¶ more
strongly people identify with a salient¶ group, the more they will depersonalize around¶ the prototype of
the group. Rather than relying¶ on idiosyncratic attitudes, memories, and behaviors that distinguish
themselves from other¶ individuals (their ‘personal identities’), high¶ identifiers are more likely to
converge to the¶ collective attitudes, memories, and behaviors¶ Group Processes & Intergroup Relations
8(3)¶ 246¶ 04 Hornsey (bc-s) 27/6/05 1:49 pm Page 246¶ Downloaded from gpi.sagepub.com at
GEORGETOWN UNIV LIBRARY on July 2, 2013that define their group in opposition to other¶ groups.
Thus, according to the social identity¶ perspective of leadership (Hogg, 2001; Turner¶ & Haslam, 2001), a
highly prototypical leader¶ does not need to be explicitly coercive in order¶ to win support from other
group members.¶ Rather, by virtue of the fact that they represent¶ the group prototype, influence
will occur spontaneously and automatically as group members¶ cognitively and behaviorally
assimilate themselves to those features. Consistent with this,¶ there is growing empirical evidence
that leaders¶ are seen to be more effective, likable, and fair¶ the more they embody the attitudes
and behaviors of the group prototype (Fielding & Hogg,¶ 1997; Hains, Hogg, & Duck, 1997; Haslam et
al.,¶ 1998; Hogg, Hains, & Mason, 1998; Platow, Reid,¶ & Andrew, 1998; van Vugt & de Cremer, 1999).
Case solve the alt - Beillinghausen 12 says Zapatismo has the ability to break down
oppressive structures in the long-term. Dignity as a pervasive value would also have
the ability to spread equality – solves inequalities – that’s De Angelis
Incorporating as many perspectives as possible creates a topological politics that
avoids the need for starting points or pre-requisites
Nail 10 (Thomas Nail, professor of philosophy at the University of Denver, PhD, University of Oregon, MA, University of Oregon, BA,
University of North Texas, “Constructivism and the Future Anterior of Radical Politics,” http://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/thomas-nailconstructivism-and-the-future-anterior-of-radical-politics, Luke Newell)
For Deleuze and Guattari, unlike Day, the thesis that there is no central axis of struggle is not a matter
of groundlessness, lack, or infinite responsibility, rather it indicates a positive multiplication of axes of
struggle requiring a new kind of multi-centered political analysis. If political reality has multiple
intersectional axes, we can no longer employ diagnostic methods that reduce them all to a single plane
(economics, culture, or gender, etc.). But what does Deleuze and Guattari’s post-anarchism offer us as a
political-theoretical strategy to respond to this? I argue that they propose a topological theory of
diagnosis. “It was a decisive event when the mathematician Riemann uprooted the multiple from its
predicate state and made it a noun, ‘multiplicity,’” Deleuze and Guattari say, “It marked the end of
dialectics and the beginning of a typology and topology of multiplicities” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987:
482–3). Thus, taken from mathematics, the concept of a topological field is a single surface with
potentially infinite dimensions created by foldings or morphisms (like a piece of origami). Independent
of linear contiguity or succession it moves and changes by folding itself into new relations. Sierpinski’s
sponge, Von Koch’s curve without tangent, and Mandelbrot’s fractals are examples of iterated
topological fields in geometry.¶ The concept of a specifically “political” topology thus provides a new
way to consider political events as having several political tendencies at once, each to a greater or
lesser degree, and not as a matter of lack. For example, perhaps a political struggle has a strong anticapitalist tendency but also a strong territorial or religious tendency toward patriarchal norms.
Topologically speaking there is no central axis or “essential political ideology” operating here. There is
only a relative mix of political tendencies to be determined without the aid of evolutionary succession
or explanatory reductionism. Rather, each of these political tendencies instead, according to Deleuze
and Guattari, acts as the “loci of a topology that defines primitive societies here, States there, and
elsewhere war machines” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987: 430). Thus topologically, these political tendencies
or types are really distinct insofar as they occupy different dimensions of a struggle and yet they also
coexist simultaneously insofar as they occupy a single political event that holds them all together
under the same name. Thus, instead of succession (presupposing separate taxonomic categories)
political tendencies change and merge as they cross the different thresholds immanent to the struggle
under consideration. For example, Deleuze and Guattari say,¶ The appearance of a central power is thus
a function of a threshold or degree beyond which what is anticipated takes on consistency or fails to,
and what is conjured away ceases to be so and arrives. This threshold of consistency, or of constraint, is
not evolutionary but rather coexists with what has yet to cross it (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987: 432).¶ The
Zapatistas, contrary to centrist or vanguard analyses that revolve around a privileged method/science,
site or dimension of struggle, similarly offer an inclusive intersectional analysis that does not
necessarily privilege any single method, front, or site of struggle. Revolution, according to Marcos:¶ is
about a process which incorporates different methods, different fronts, different and various levels of
commitment and participation. This means that all methods have their place, that all the fronts of
struggle are necessary, and that all levels of participation are important. This is about an inclusive
process, which is anti-vanguard and collective. The problem with the revolution (pay attention to the
small letters) is then no longer a problem of THE organization, THE method, THE caudillo [dictator,
political boss]. It becomes rather a problem which concerns all those who see that revolution as
necessary and possible, and whose achievement, is important for everyone (Marcos, 2004: 164).¶
Marcos, in Beyond Resistance (2007) describes precisely the practical labour of this task in La Otra
Campaña (The Other Campaign). To mobilize the population of the excluded and marginalized in
Mexico was not a matter of discovering the evolutionary, dialectical, or single explanatory cause of
oppression, it was a matter of listening and surveying all the multiple folds/fronts in the topological
field. It was to create, as Marcos says, “a diagnostic of suffering” in all its dimensions (Marcos, 2008:
11). These folds, “the criminalization of youth, the oppression of women, environmental pollution, etc”
are all coexisting and intersecting dimensions of the same struggle (Marcos, 2008: 11). During this time
the Zapatistas also began diagnosing their own internal dangers. “[T]here are two mistakes,”
Subcomandante Marcos says:¶ which seem to have persisted in our political work (and which flagrantly
contradict our principles): the place of women, on the one hand, and, on the other, the relationship
between the political-military structure and the autonomous governments.[4]
Alt doesn’t solve—squo proves Mexican censorship prevents Zapatistas from
expressing their opinion—try or die for the aff to prevent extinction—that’s
Bellinghausen 12.
There is a distinction between speaking FOR someone and speaking WITH someone-In order to reach true solidarity with the Zapatistas, we must fight by their side in
order to transform their ideas into reality-that’s Freire 05.
As students, we are UNIQUELY KEY for the Zapatista global solidarity movement
Krovel 10 (R. Krovel, 2010, “Global Discourse A development Journal of Research in Politics and
International Relations” http://globaldiscourse.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/krovel.pdf) Malhar
There is at least one more reason why the case of the Zapatista
global solidarity movement is of interest for students
movement with the Zapatistas stands out from other
earlier solidarity movements with armed revolutionaries in the region, for example in El Salvador, Nicaragua and
of International Relations and anarchism. The solidarity
Guatemala. In Nicaragua, for example, a number of European states sided with the Sandinista government against the Contras supported by
the US. North American and European trade unions were involved in the international movement in support of those who struggled against the
authoritarian governments in Guatemala and El Salvador. Faith based groups also played a pivotal role in the solidarity movement with Central
America. These
and other actors were largely absent in the global solidarity movement with the
Zapatistas. The global solidarity movement thus came to rely on individual activists and small informal
organizations forming a loose network. Although many would hesitate to define themselves as “anarchists”, I would argue that
the network was heavily influenced by various strains of “anarchism” in the broadest sense of the word.¶ The aim of this paper is to contribute
to the existing literature on the global solidarity movement. It is intended to understand the development of the global solidarity movement in
relation to anarchist literature. It asks two research questions: Why did the activists of the global solidarity network identify themselves with
the indigenous peoples of the Zapatista communities in Chiapas? How did the communication between the two groups influence the
development of the political organization of the Zapatistas and the development of a wider global movement against neoliberal globalization?
The research takes a historical approach. It will argue that the political debate in the global solidarity movement evolved around a few central
themes. The article will follow the discussion as it developed gradually after January 1st 1994 onwards. For clarity I try to divide the developing
discussion into three phases, even though they often overlap. In
the first phase the indigenous identity of the Zapatistas
was “discovered and underlined by a number of visiting activists and scholars. The second phase
followed closely. In this phase a particular Zapatista democratic practice was investigated and
reported by activists and scholars. The article will move on to analyze the third phase where demands
for particular collective indigenous rights came to the forefront of the struggle. Collective indigenous
rights invite a discussion of individualism vs. collectivism. The last section tries to link these debates to the anarchist
literature on environmentalism. I will argue that understanding these debates is necessary to understand why and how the global solidarity
movement came to develop and grow in influence during the 1990’s. Understanding them is also necessary for a critical analysis of why the
movement was ridden by splits and conflicts.
Perm do the alt
We must speak with the Zapatistas in order to spread their message to the debate
sphere through our advocacy. Debate brings a new form of communication that
allows Zapatistas to side-step traditional forms of spreading their message, such as
the internet and forums—that’s Gelsomino 10.
Zapatistas can’t communicate with the debate sphere due to linguistic differences and
they are not high school students--this guts alt solvency because the alt is stuck to
silence—the aff is net better than saying nothing at all.
No Link--They assume that participation with the Zapatistas is not possible—Farah 13
indicates that the opposite is true—behind the mask we are all the great revolutionary
leaders—we are using debate as a place for us to become Zapatistas.
Each individual has their own responsibility within the Zapatista movement
Gonzales 04 (Patrisia Gonzales, Roberto Rodriguez, January 5, 2004, “We are all Zapatistas” author of
'The Mud People: Chronicles, Testimonios & Rembrances' , author of 'Justice: A Question of Race' Bilingual Review Press and the electronic books, 'The X in La Raza' and 'Codex Tamuanchan: On
Becoming Human' . http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0105-12.htm) Malhar
The sacred
fire shot high into the night sky in Temoaya, Mexico, at a gathering of indigenous peoples. It brought
the eagle and the condor -- native peoples from the north and south -- to this ceremonial center of the
Otomi nation in October 1993.¶ In front of the fire were the sacred Peace and Dignity staffs carried by runners via Alaska and Chile.
Living in subservience was no longer an option. A large Chiapas delegation -- symbolically representing the Quetzal of the Mayans -- spoke with
a sense of urgency. The fire roared even higher into the cold Otomi sky. It was a prelude to Jan. 1, 1994, the Zapatista insurrection, timed to
coincide with the first day of implementation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). The Ejercito Zapatista de Liberacion (EZLN)
-- which had been building for a decade -- chose that day to protest the brazen inhumanity and the unconstitutional nature of the agreement.
The drive to implement it included the stripping of article 27 from the Mexican Constitution -- which
formerly protected the integrity of the nation's communal lands.¶ The year before, there had been a huge indigenous
gathering at the sacred site of Teotihuacan, Mexico, on Oct. 11, 1992. Many had come to greet the runners carrying the sacred staffs and
prayers from throughout the continent (Abya Yalla, Pacha Mama, Semanahuak, Turtle Island). Others were there to affirm their sovereignty in
the face of 500 years of European occupation. Before that, there had also been a historic gathering of indigenous peoples in Quito, Ecuador.¶
Something was in the air. Rigoberta Menchu had been named the 1992 Nobel Peace Prize winner, and then came the United Nation's Decade
of Indigenous Peoples. After
the initial Zapatista insurrection shocked the world, support arrived from the
four winds. "Todos somos Zapatistas" -- "We are all Zapatistas" -- became the mantra for its
supporters worldwide, though everyone was sent home with the same message: Don't come here
simply to help us. Fight for your own dignity. And thus everyone returned home, all with their own
tasks.¶ For indigenous people worldwide, it was not about others, but about us. There had always been contact between indigenous peoples.
But now, it was more sustained, affirming a historic acknowledgement that the continent is one. Whereas before, the enemies of indigenous
peoples had been European colonizers and their descendants, the new enemy was U.S. multinational corporations, come to take the little
communal and indigenous land, resources and sustenance that remained.¶ The
Zapatista struggle was not just another
political movement. It was the first struggle of the electronic age, and it was a new "flower war" -- a
poetic and humanistic war from deep within the Chiapas jungle, which the Zapatistas clearly won. Their
"pasamontanas," their masks, gave indigenous people a face and a heart. A large part of that face was organizing and creating autonomous,
self-governing municipalities or zones. While
an indigenous rights law -- guaranteeing land, cultural and language
rights -- remains elusive, the Zapatistas have changed the face of Mexico and the continent. They've
also inspired the worldwide anti-globalization movement.¶ Since the initial uprising, the continent has seen other major
indigenous uprisings from Bolivia to Peru to Ecuador and Guatemala. No one can predict whether the recently negotiated Central American
Free Trade Agreement (between the United States, Nicaragua, Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras) will trigger other indigenous (or even
broader) uprisings, though what's certain is that the same NAFTA dynamic will be unleashed.¶ Close to 2 million campesinos have been
displaced from their lands due to U.S.-subsidized agricultural imports (maize) flooding into Mexico. This has greatly accelerated a century-old
uprooting and migration process to the cities and into the United States. NAFTA has also meant huge job losses in the U.S. manufacturing sector
(estimated at 3 million). At least a half-million have been certified by the U.S. government as NAFTA-related.¶ The recent turmoil and protests
in Miami (against the Free Trade Area of the Americas) and in Cancun, Mexico, (against the World Trade Organization talks) indicate that
forthcoming agreements are not a done deal. They call for handing the continent's and world's natural resources (including the DNA of all living
things) -- at the expense of environmental, wage, labor, safety and human rights laws -- over to multinational corporations. If anything, these
proposed agreements may be a prelude to a worldwide Zapatista insurrection based on respect for our sacred Mother Earth. That can't spell
good news for the best-laid plans of the multinationals.
2AC Das
Ptx CIR
Case outweighs First – We win in a utilitarian framework – the Bellinghausen evidence gives us access to an existential
impact the K can’t solve for – here’s a simple net benefit to the perm
Second – we access all your structural violence claims – Zapatismo stands as a front against these
forms of oppression, and offers a new way to challenge them
Third – We have an external dignity impact – Fender gives it as a d-rule – as long as the K can’t access
this impact, we’ll always outweigh.
No passage – border security and house
Wheat 6/14
[Dan, Washington field reporter, “Immigration Reform Outlook Iffy in House, Nassif Says,” Capital Press,
6/14/13, http://www.capitalpress.com/content/djw-immigration-061413]
As United Farm Workers of America and other groups step up public lobbying for the Senate immigration reform bill,
a lead lobbyist
for
agriculture says
chances of its passage in the Senate are good but just 50-50 in the House.¶ The Senate likely
will pass its bill by the Fourth of July but whether the House can pass a bill so a conference committee between
both chambers starts before the August recess is a key question, said Tom Nassif, president and CEO of Western
Growers Association of Irvine, Calif.¶ " It will be more difficult afterward . There won't be much time after that
before the holidays and other bills and then electioneering (for the mid-term 2014 election," Nassif said.¶ " What
they do when campaigning may be different ," he said.¶ On June 13, the Senate rejected an amendment by Sen. Charles
Grassley, R-Iowa, by a vote of 57-43, that would have held off a first step toward legal status for 11 million illegal aliens living in the country
until the Department of Homeland Security had maintained effective control of the entire U.S.-Mexico border for six months.¶ Proponents of
the bill said that could take years to achieve.¶ The Senate bill likely has 60 votes, enough for passage, but the
so-called Gang of Eight
that drafted it wants to get more Republicans on board to reach 70, Nassif said.¶ That would require
agreement on border security, which is difficult , he said. That element is also key in the House, where
there also is a lot of skepticism about government enforcement of anything that passes, he said.¶ "I think we
have to be very cautious about the House," Nassif said.¶ At least two bills and maybe another
partisan group are forming there, he said.
No chance – house
Barrett 6/12
[Ted, CNN Senior Congressional producer, “Senate Immigration Bill Clears First Hurdle; Debate Begins,”
CNN, 6/12/13, http://www.cnn.com/2013/06/11/politics/immigration-senate/index.html]
A major immigration bill that would give millions of people living illegally in America a path to citizenship cleared a key
legislative hurdle Tuesday when a strong Senate majority voted to open debate on it.¶ The 82-15 vote, with most Republicans joining the
chamber's Democratic majority in support, launched what was expected to be an arduous legislative journey for the 1,076-page measure.¶
Both supporters
and opponents expect the bill to pass the Senate despite fierce opposition from
conservatives.¶ However, one GOP foe said Tuesday the Republican-controlled House would defeat it in its
current form due to the pathway to citizenship.
Forcing controversial fights key to Obama’s agenda- try or die for the link turn
Dickerson 1/18 (John, Slate, Go for the Throat!,
www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2013/01/barack_obama_s_second_inaugural_addre
ss_the_president_should_declare_war.single.html)
On Monday, President Obama will preside over the grand reopening of his administration. It would be altogether fitting if he stepped to the microphone, looked
down the mall, and let out a sigh: so many people expecting so much from a government that appears capable of so little. A second inaugural suggests new
beginnings, but this one is being bookended by dead-end debates. Gridlock over the fiscal cliff preceded it and gridlock over the debt limit,
sequester, and budget will follow. After the election, the
same people are in power in all the branches of government and
they don't get along. There's no indication that the president's clashes with House Republicans will end soon. Inaugural
speeches are supposed to be huge and stirring. Presidents haul our heroes onstage, from George Washington to Martin Luther King Jr. George W. Bush brought the
Liberty Bell. They use history to make greatness and achievements seem like something you can just take down from the shelf. Americans are not stuck in the rut of
the day. But this might be too much for Obama’s second inaugural address: After the last four years, how do you call the nation and its elected representatives to
common action while standing on the steps of a building where collective action goes to die? That bipartisan bag of tricks has been tried and it didn’t work. People
don’t believe it. Congress' approval rating is 14 percent, the lowest in history. In a December Gallup poll, 77 percent of those asked said the way Washington works
is doing “serious harm” to the country. The
challenge for President Obama’s speech is the challenge of his second term: how to be
great when the environment stinks. Enhancing the president’s legacy requires something more than simply
predictable stratagems . Washington’s partisan rancor, the size of the problems facing government, and the
limited amount of time before Obama is a lame duck all point to a single conclusion: The president who
came into office speaking in lofty terms about bipartisanship and cooperation can only cement his legacy if he destroys the GOP . If
the clever application of
he wants to transform American politics,
he must go for the throat . President Obama could, of course, resign himself to tending to the
achievements of his first term. He'd make sure health care reform is implemented, nurse the economy back to health, and put the military on a new footing after
two wars. But he's more ambitious than that. He ran for president as a one-term senator with no executive experience. In his first term, he pushed for the biggest
overhaul of health care possible because, as he told his aides, he wanted to make history. He may already have made it. There's no question that he is already a
president of consequence. But there's no sign he's content to ride out the second half of the game in the Barcalounger. He is approaching gun control, climate
change, and immigration with wide and excited eyes. He's not going for caretaker. How should the president proceed then, if he wants to be bold? The Barack
Obama of the first administration might have approached the task by finding some Republicans to deal with and
then start agreeing to some of their demands in hope that he would win some of their votes. It's the traditional approach. Perhaps he could add a
good deal more schmoozing with lawmakers, too. That's the old way. He has abandoned that. He doesn't think it will
work and he doesn't have the time. As Obama explained in his last press conference, he thinks the Republicans are dead set on
opposing him . They cannot be unchained by schmoozing. Even if Obama were wrong about
Republican intransigence, other constraints will limit the chance for cooperation. Republican
lawmakers worried about primary challenges in 2014 are not going to be willing partners. He probably has at most
18 months before people start dropping the lame-duck label in close proximity to his name. Obama’s only remaining option is to
pulverize. Whether he succeeds in passing legislation or not, given his ambitions, his goal should be to delegitimize his opponents. Through a series
of clarifying fights over controversial issues , he can force Republicans to either side with their coalition's most extreme
elements or cause
a rift in the party that will leave it, at least temporarily, in disarray .
Logical policymaker can do both
Political capital doesn’t exist and isn’t key to their DA- more likely winners win
Michael Hirsch, chief correspondent for National Journal. He also contributes to 2012 Decoded. Hirsh previously served as
the senior editor and national economics correspondent for Newsweek, based in its Washington bureau. He was also
Newsweek’s Washington web editor and authored a weekly column for Newsweek.com, “The World from Washington.” Earlier
on, he was Newsweek’s foreign editor, guiding its award-winning coverage of the September 11 attacks and the war on terror.
He has done on-the-ground reporting in Iraq, Afghanistan, and other places around the world, and served as the Tokyo-based
Asia Bureau Chief for Institutional Investor from 1992 to 1994. http://www.nationaljournal.com/magazine/there-s-no-suchthing-as-political-capital-20130207
On Tuesday, in his State of the Union address, President Obama will do what every president does this time of year. For about 60 minutes, he will lay out a sprawling and ambitious wish list highlighted by gun control and immigration reform, climate change and debt reduction. In
pundits will do what they always do
talk about
much political capital Obama possesses to push his program through
response, the
this time of year: They will
“
how
this talk will have no bearing
how unrealistic most of the proposals are, discussions often informed by sagacious reckonings of
”
. Most of
on what actually happens
Three months ago
if someone had talked
about
capital to oversee
both immigration and gun-control
this person would have been called crazy
In his first
term
Obama didn’t dare to even bring up gun control
And yet, for reasons that have very little to do with Obama’s
political
capital chances are fair that both will now happen What changed In the case of gun control
Newtown
over the next four years. Consider this:
Obama having enough political
, just before the November election,
passage of
seriously
reform
legislation at the beginning of his second term—even after winning the
election by 4 percentage points and 5 million votes (the actual final tally)—
and stripped of his pundit’s license. (It doesn’t exist, but it ought to.)
, in a starkly polarized country, the president had been so frustrated by GOP resistance that he finally issued a limited executive order last August permitting immigrants who entered the country illegally as children to work without fear of deportation for at least two years.
, a Democratic “third rail” that has cost the party elections and that actually might have been even less popular on the right than the president’s health
care law.
personal prestige or popularity—variously put in terms of a “mandate” or “
”—
.
election. It was the horror of the 20 first-graders who were slaughtered in
?
, of course, it wasn’t the
, Conn., in mid-December. The sickening reality of little girls and boys riddled with bullets from a high-capacity assault weapon seemed to precipitate a sudden tipping point in the
national conscience. One thing changed after another. Wayne LaPierre of the National Rifle Association marginalized himself with poorly chosen comments soon after the massacre. The pro-gun lobby, once a phalanx of opposition, began to fissure into reasonables and crazies. Former
Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., who was shot in the head two years ago and is still struggling to speak and walk, started a PAC with her husband to appeal to the moderate middle of gun owners. Then she gave riveting and poignant testimony to the Senate, challenging lawmakers: “Be
bold.” As a result, momentum has appeared to build around some kind of a plan to curtail sales of the most dangerous weapons and ammunition and the way people are permitted to buy them. It’s impossible to say now whether such a bill will pass and, if it does, whether it will make
anything more than cosmetic changes to gun laws. But one thing is clear: The political tectonics have shifted dramatically in very little time. Whole new possibilities exist now that didn’t a few weeks ago.
Meanwhile
, the Republican members of the Senate’s so-called
immigration
turnaround has very little to do with Obama’s personal influence
It has almost
entirely to do with
the
Hispanic vote
movement on immigration has come
out of the Republican Party’s introspection
Gang of Eight are pushing hard for a new spirit of compromise on
reform, a sharp change after an election year in which the GOP standard-bearer declared he would make life so miserable for the 11 million illegal immigrants in the U.S. that they would
“self-deport.” But this
—his political mandate, as it were.
just two numbers: 71 and 27. That’s 71 percent for Obama, 27 percent for Mitt Romney,
breakdown of the
in the 2012 presidential election. Obama drove home his advantage by giving a
speech on immigration reform on Jan. 29 at a Hispanic-dominated high school in Nevada, a swing state he won by a surprising 8 percentage points in November. But the
recent
mainly
, and the realization by its more thoughtful members, such as Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida and Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, that without such a shift the party
may be facing demographic death in a country where the 2010 census showed, for the first time, that white births have fallen into the minority. It’s got nothing to do with Obama’s political capital or, indeed, Obama at all. The point is not that “political capital” is a meaningless term.
Often it is a synonym for “mandate” or “momentum” in the aftermath of a decisive election—and just about every politician ever elected has tried to claim more of a mandate than he actually has. Certainly, Obama can say that because he was elected and Romney wasn’t, he has a better
claim on the country’s mood and direction. Many pundits still defend political capital as a useful metaphor at least. “It’s a n unquantifiable but meaningful concept,” says Norman Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute. “You can’t really look at a president and say he’s got 37 ounces
the idea of political capita
is so poorly
defined that presidents and pundits often get it wrong.
capital
conveys that we know more than we really do about ever-elusive
political power
unforeseen events can suddenly change everything
of political capital. But the fact is, it’s a concept that matters, if you have popularity and some momentum on your side.” T he real problem is that
l—or mandates, or momentum—
“Presidents usually over-estimate it,” says George Edwards, a presidential scholar at Texas A&M University. “The best kind of
political capital—some sense of an electoral mandate to do something—is very rare. It almost never happens. In 1964, maybe. And to some degree in 1980.” For that reason, political
the idea
the
is a concept that misleads far more than it enlightens. It is distortionary. It
concept of
, and it discounts the way
. Instead, it suggests, erroneously, that a political figure has a concrete amount of political capital to invest, just as someone might have real
investment capital—that a particular leader can bank his gains, and the size of his account determines what he can do at any given moment in history. Naturally, any president has practical and electoral limits. Does he have a majority in both chambers of Congress and a cohesive coalition
behind him? Obama has neither at present. And unless a surge in the economy—at the moment, still stuck—or some other great victory gives him more momentum, it is inevitable that the closer Obama gets to the 2014 election, the less he will be able to get done. Going into the
midterms, Republicans will increasingly avoid any concessions that make him (and the Democrats) stronger. But the abrupt emergence of the immigration and gun-control issues illustrates how suddenly shifts in mood can occur and how political interests can align in new ways just as
suddenly. Indeed, the pseudo-concept of political capital masks a larger truth about Washington that is kindergarten simple: You just don’t know what you can do until you try. Or as Ornstein himself once wrote years ago, “Winning wins.” In theory, and in practice,
depending on Obama’s handling of any
issue, even in a polarized time he could still deliver on his
second-term goals depending on
the breaks
political capital is, at best, an empty concept
that almost nothing in the academic literature successfully quantifies or even defines it.
Winning on
particular
,
his skill and
,
a lot of
. Unforeseen catalysts can appear, like Newtown. Epiphanies can dawn, such as when many Republican Party leaders suddenly woke up in panic to the
huge disparity in the Hispanic vote. Some political scientists who study the elusive calculus of how to pass legislation and run successful presidencies say that
, and
“It can refer to a very abstract thing, like
a president’s popularity, but there’s no mechanism there. That makes it kind of useless,” says Richard Bensel, a government professor at Cornell University. Even Ornstein concedes that the calculus is far more complex than the term suggests.
one issue often changes the calculation for the next issue; there is never any known amount of
capital
Ornstein says. “If
they think he’s going to win, they may change positions to get on the winning side. It’s a bandwagon
effect.Ӧ
¶
. “The idea here is, if an issue comes up where the conventional wisdom is that president is not going to get what he wants, and he gets it, then each time that happens, it changes the calculus of the other actors”
ALL THE WAY WITH LBJ
Sometimes, a clever practitioner of power can get more done just because he’s aggressive and knows the hallways of Congress w ell. Texas A&M’s Edwards is right to say that the outcome of the 1964 election, Lyndon Johnson’s landslide
victory over Barry Goldwater, was one of the few that conveyed a mandate. But one of the main reasons for that mandate (in addition to Goldwater’s ineptitude as a candidate) was President Johnson’s masterful use of power leading up to that election, and his ability to get far more
done than anyone thought possible, given his limited political capital. In the newest volume in his exhaustive study of LBJ, The Passage of Power, historian Robert Caro recalls Johnson getting cautionary advice after he assumed the presidency from the assassinated John F. Kennedy in late
1963. Don’t focus on a long-stalled civil-rights bill, advisers told him, because it might jeopardize Southern lawmakers’ support for a tax cut and appropriations bills the president needed. “One of the wise, practical people around the table [said that] the presidency has only a certain
amount of coinage to expend, and you oughtn’t to expend it on this,” Caro writes. (Coinage, of course, was what political capital was called in those days.) Johnson replied, “Well, what the hell’s the presidency for?” Johnson didn’t worry about coinage, and he got the Civil Rights Act
enacted, along with much else: Medicare, a tax cut, antipoverty programs. He appeared to understand not just the ways of Congress but also the way to maximize the momentum he possessed in the lingering mood of national grief and determination by picking the right issues, as Caro
records. “Momentum is not a mysterious mistress,” LBJ said. “It is a controllable fact of political life.” Johnson had the skill and wherewithal to realize that, at that moment of history, he could have unlimited coinage if he handled the politics right. He did. (At least until Vietnam, that is.)
And then there are the presidents who get the politics, and the issues, wrong. It was the last president before Obama who was just starting a second term, George W. Bush, who really revived the claim of political capital, which he was very fond of wielding. Then Bush promptly
demonstrated that he didn’t fully understand the concept either. At his first news conference after his 2004 victory, a confident-sounding Bush declared, “I earned capital in the campaign, political capital, and now I intend to spend it. That’s my style.” The 43rd president threw all of his
political capital at an overriding passion: the partial privatization of Social Security. He mounted a full-bore public-relations campaign that included town-hall meetings across the country. Bush failed utterly, of course. But the problem was not that he didn’t have enough political capital.
Yes, he may have overestimated his standing. Bush’s margin over John Kerry was thin—helped along by a bumbling Kerry campaign that was almost the mirror image of Romney’s gaffe-filled failure this time—but that was not the real mistake. The problem was that whatever credibility or
stature Bush thought he had earned as a newly reelected president did nothing to make Social Security privatization a better idea in most people’s eyes. Voters didn’t trust the plan, and four years later, at the end of Bush’s term, the stock-market collapse bore out the public’s skepticism.
Privatization just didn’t have any momentum behind it, no matter who was pushing it or how much capital Bush spent to sell it. The mistake that Bush made with Social Security, says John Sides, an associate professor of political science at George Washington University and a wellfollowed political blogger, “was that just because he won an election, he thought he had a green light. But there was no sense of any kind of public urgency on Social Security reform. It’s like he went into the garage where various Republican policy ideas were hanging up and picked one. I
don’t think Obama’s going to make that mistake.… Bush decided he wanted to push a rock up a hill. He didn’t understand how steep the hill was. I think Obama has more momentum on his side because of the Republican Party’s concerns about the Latino vote and the shooting at
Obama may get his way
not because of his reelection,
but because Republicans are
beginning to doubt whether taking a hard line on fiscal policy is a good idea
¶
¶
Newtown.”
also
on the debt ceiling,
Sides says, “
,” as the party suffers in the polls.
THE REAL LIMITS ON POWER
Presidents are limited in what they can do by time and attention span, of course, just as much as they are by electoral balances in the House and Senate. But this, too, has nothing to do with political capital. Another well-worn meme of recent years was that Obama used up too much
political capital passing the health care law in his first term. But the real problem was that the plan was unpopular, the economy was bad, and the president didn’t realize that the national mood (yes, again, the national mood) was at a tipping point against big-government intervention,
with the tea-party revolt about to burst on the scene. For Americans in 2009 and 2010—haunted by too many rounds of layoffs, appalled by the Wall Street bailout, aghast at the amount of federal spending that never seemed to find its way into their pockets—government-imposed
health care coverage was simply an intervention too far. So was the idea of another economic stimulus. Cue the tea party and what ensued: two titanic fights over the debt ceiling. Obama, like Bush, had settled on pushing an issue that was out of sync with the country’s mood. Unlike
Bush, Obama did ultimately get his idea passed. But the bigger political problem with health care reform was that it distracted the government’s attention from other issues that people cared about more urgently, such as the need to jump-start the economy and financial reform. Various
congressional staffers told me at the time that their bosses didn’t really have the time to understand how the Wall Street lobby was riddling the Dodd-Frank financial-reform legislation with loopholes. Health care was sucking all the oxygen out of the room, the aides said. Weighing the
imponderables of momentum, the often-mystical calculations about when the historic moment is ripe for an issue, will never be a science. It is mainly intuition, and its best practitioners have a long history in American politics. This is a tale told well in Steven Spielberg’s hit movie Lincoln.
Daniel Day-Lewis’s Abraham Lincoln attempts a lot of behind-the-scenes vote-buying to win passage of the 13th Amendment, banning slavery, along with eloquent attempts to move people’s hearts and minds. He appears to be using the political capital of his reelection and the turning of
the tide in the Civil War. But it’s clear that a surge of conscience, a sense of the changing times, has as much to do with the final vote as all the backroom horse-trading. “The reason I think the idea of political capital is kind of distorting is that it implies you have chits you can give out to
people. It really oversimplifies why you elect politicians, or why they can do what Lincoln did,” says Tommy Bruce, a former political consultant in Washington. Consider, as another example, the storied political career of President Franklin Roosevelt. Because the mood was ripe for
dramatic change in the depths of the Great Depression, FDR was able to push an astonishing array of New Deal programs through a largely compliant Congress, assuming what some described as near-dictatorial powers. But in his second term, full of confidence because of a landslide
victory in 1936 that brought in unprecedented Democratic majorities in the House and Senate, Roosevelt overreached with his infamous Court-packing proposal. All of a sudden, the political capital that experts thought was limitless disappeared. FDR’s plan to expand the Supreme Court
by putting in his judicial allies abruptly created an unanticipated wall of opposition from newly reunited Republicans and conservative Southern Democrats. FDR thus inadvertently handed back to Congress, especially to the Senate, the power and influence he had seized in his first term.
Sure, Roosevelt had loads of popularity and momentum in 1937. He seemed to have a bank vault full of political capital. But, once again, a president simply chose to take on the wrong issue at the wrong time; this time, instead of most of the political interests in the country aligning his
way, they opposed him. Roosevelt didn’t fully recover until World War II, despite two more election victories. In terms of Obama’s second-term agenda, what all these shifting tides of momentum and political calculation mean is this: Anything goes. Obama has no more elections to win,
if he picks issues
reason to think he can’t win far more victories than
is possible
he can get some early wins
may well lead to others. “Winning wins
and he needs to worry only about the support he will have in the House and Senate after 2014. But
there is no
careful calculators of political capital believe
If
that will create momentum, and one win
that the country’s mood will support—such as, perhaps, immigration reform and gun control—
any of the
now
, including battles over tax reform and deficit reduction. Amid today’s atmosphere of Republican self-doubt, a new, more mature Obama seems to be emerging, one who has his agenda clearly in mind and will ride the mood of the country more adroitly.
—as he already has, apparently, on the fiscal cliff and the upper-income tax increase—
.” Obama himself learned some hard lessons over the past four years about the falsity of the political-capital concept. Despite his decisive victory over John McCain in 2008, he
fumbled the selling of his $787 billion stimulus plan by portraying himself naively as a “post-partisan” president who somehow had been given the electoral mandate to be all things to all people. So Obama tried to sell his stimulus as a long-term restructuring plan that would “lay the
groundwork for long-term economic growth.” The president thus fed GOP suspicions that he was just another big-government liberal. Had he understood better that the country was digging in against yet more government intervention and had sold the stimulus as what it mainly was—a
giant shot of adrenalin to an economy with a stopped heart, a pure emergency measure—he might well have escaped the worst of the backlash. But by laying on ambitious programs, and following up quickly with his health care plan, he only sealed his reputation on the right as a closet
socialist. After that, Obama’s public posturing provoked automatic opposition from the GOP, no matter what he said. If the president put his personal imprimatur on any plan—from deficit reduction, to health care, to immigration reform—Republicans were virtually guaranteed to come
out against it. But this year, when he sought to exploit the chastened GOP’s newfound willingness to compromise on immigration, his approach was different. He seemed to understand that the Republicans needed to reclaim immigration reform as their own issue, and he was willing to
let them have some credit. When he mounted his bully pulpit in Nevada, he delivered another new message as well: You Republicans don’t have to listen to what I say anymore. And don’t worry about who’s got the political capital. Just take a hard look at where I’m saying this: in a state
you were supposed to have won but lost because of the rising Hispanic vote. Obama was cleverly pointing the GOP toward conclusions that he knows it is already reaching on its own: If you, the Republicans, want to have any kind of a future in a vastly changed electoral map, you have no
choice but to move. It’s your choice.
8% chance of the internal link
Beckman and Kumar, September 2011 (Matthew – associate professor of political science UC Irvine, and
VImal – economic professor at the Indian Institute of Tech, Opportunism in Polarization, Presidential
Studies Quarterly, 41.3)
The final important piece in our theoretical model—presidents' political capital— also finds support in these analyses, though
the results here are less reliable. Presidents operating under the specter of strong economy and high
approval ratings get an important, albeit moderate, increase in their chances for prevailing on "key"
Senate roll-call votes (b = .10, se = .06, p < .10). Figure 4 displays the substantive implications of these results in the context of
polarization, showing that going from the lower third of political capital to the upper third increases presidents'
chances for success by 8 percentage points (in a setting like 2008). Thus, political capital's impact does
provide an important boost to presidents' success on Capitol Hill, but it is certainly not potent enough
to overcome basic congressional realities. Political capital is just strong enough to put a presidential
thumb on the congressional scales, which often will not matter, but can in
Fiat solves the link
Case turns DA – Economic engagement with Mexico is a prerequisite to CIR passage
Casteneda and Suro, 13
Roberto Suro, Jorge G. Castañeda, Roberto Suro is director of the Tomas Rivera Policy Institute and a
professor of public policy at the University of Southern California. Jorge G. Castañeda, a former foreign
minister of Mexico, is a professor of politics and Latin American and Caribbean studies at New York
University, Washington Post, 4/14/13, lexis
We can't fix immigration without Mexico¶ Everyone, it seems, is remaking the United States' immigration
system. The Senate and the House have their respective gangs of eight; labor and business groups have their talks; and the White House has its say, along with dozens of lobbyists and advocacy groups.¶ But there
is one critical player missing from the effort: Mexico. No reform can be successfully devised or
implemented without the willing participation of the Mexican government and public, so why not get
them involved from the start?¶ That involvement needs to begin May 2, when President Obama visits Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto. And it should start with Obama admitting
the obvious: He needs help.¶ Although many elements of an immigration bill remain unresolved, three objectives are essential: legalizing the current population of unauthorized migrants, creating an effective
enforcement system that thwarts recurring illegal immigration and channeling future flows through temporary and permanent migration programs. None of these goals can be
accomplished - let alone all three at once - without engaging Mexico as a full partner.¶ About 12 million people born in
Mexico live in the United States. They account for 30 percent of the foreign-born population. They are not going away. Rather, their numbers will grow. ¶ Despite a predictable downturn during the Great Recession, the U.S. labor
market has not lost its appetite for Mexican workers. Even with a tepid economy, we can expect a net flow averaging 260,000 people, both legal and illegal, every year through 2017, according to a recent study by the Wilson
Center and the Migration Policy Institute. That is almost back to the pre-recession level of 280,000 migrants a year. And the study concluded that if the U.S. economy lights up, particularly in the construction sector, the estimated
the unauthorized population has proved remarkably resilient. Since
the
Department of Homeland Security estimates that the number of illegal immigrants living in the United
States has remained the same - about 11.5 million - for at least three years now. About 60 percent are from Mexico.¶ The last time Washington tried a legalization program, in 1986, Congress
net flow could reach 330,000 a year before the end of the decade. ¶ Moreover,
Obama took office in 2009, more than 1.2 million people have been removed from the country, but new arrivals have taken their place. Despite the deportations and record numbers of Border Patrol agents,
limited eligibility to long-time residents and farmworkers, and the application process was an obstacle course. As a result, only about half of the unauthorized population received legal status. That left a big underground
population, and all of the human networks and illicit businesses that facilitate unauthorized migration remained in place. The big lesson from 1986 is that partial amnesties don't accomplish the long-term goal of eliminating illegal
immigration.¶ To succeed this time, the entire unauthorized population - minus dangerous criminals - needs to be eligible, and everyone must be brought under a legal umbrella as quickly as possible. ¶ Congress can require a long
and hard road to eventual citizenship with language tests, background checks and employment requirements at various stages along the way. That is not a problem. The first stage, however, is critical. Ideally, all 11.5 million people
The federal
government will need help from many quarters, including from Mexico.¶ The illegal immigrants would
be motivated to participate if they were protected from deportation. Obtaining basic civil rights, access to credit and the ability to look an
would come out of the shadows and present themselves to government authorities so the process can begin expeditiously. Given the number of people involved, that would be no small undertaking.
employer in the eye are what they want most, and the process should give them those right away. Inevitably there would be hoops to jump through such as producing identification documents, proof of residency and employment,
and money for fees. That is harder than it sounds if you think about coming to this country with only the clothes on your back and then living underground for years. The process must help immigrants jump through those hoops or
else many potential applicants will be disqualified, discouraged or, worse yet, will resort to counterfeit documents. ¶ A successful legalization effort will require mobilizing organizations that immigrants trust, such as their
community organizations and churches but also the network of 50 Mexican consulates around the country. Only a concerted effort by multiple Mexican entities can ensure that applicants have the necessary documents,
Mexico's cooperation also will be essential to prevent a resurgence of illegal
immigration across our shared border. The United States has more than doubled the size of the Border Patrol over the past decade and has built hundreds of miles of fences but still
can't declare that the border is secure. It is past time to engage Mexico more fully . Some successful efforts at cross-border law enforcement have developed on reducing the
information and legal advice.¶
flow drugs and guns and could be extended to human trafficking. In the context of a broad reform that creates robust legal channels for Mexican migration, the Mexican government could also start enforcing its laws against
traveling without the proper papers.¶ Some of the biggest challenges for U.S. immigration control are even farther away, on Mexico's southern border. More than 1.5 million illegal immigrants from El Salvador, Honduras and
, the flow through Mexico to the United States is increasing as those countries
experience a wicked combination of criminal violence, economic stagnation and ineffective
governance.¶ Mexico is needed for the third element of immigration reform as well. The United States must undertake both
Guatemala live in the United States. By all indications
legalization of the current population of illegal immigrants and new immigration enforcement measures on the border and in the workplace - but neither can be effective in the long run without adequate legal channels for
handling future migration.
The best way to end illegal immigration is to make it legal. ¶ Migration between Mexico and the United States is built on family
networks and labor-market ties that are profound, enduring and efficient. The current era of Mexican migration developed in the 1970s, gained momentum in the 1980s, surged in the 1990s and remained closely intertwined with
the U.S. economy in the 2000s. This migration now has an immoveable anchor in that about 3.8 million Mexican migrants, about a third of the total, are U.S. citizens, and 100,000 more take the oath every year - twice the number
from any other country. They are fully American, but like many immigrants before them, they retain close ties to families and communities in their home country, traveling, sending remittances and doing business. ¶ Managing a
Mexico's
cooperation will be essential for a temporary program of any significant size. Workers will need to be vetted and contracted in Mexico
well-established migration of this kind requires several types of admissions programs, some short term and some permanent, some centered on employment, others on family; the mix will need to evolve.
before departure, and Mexico will need to ensure that there are financial and employment incentives for them to return. ¶ Soon after taking office, the Obama administration proclaimed the doctrine of "shared responsibility" in
fighting the drug trade; this notion has become the touchstone for cooperation on security policies between the United States and Mexico. Now it is time to see whether that sense of mutual interests and obligations can bring
results on immigration.¶ The last time the presidents of these two countries talked seriously about immigration was in 2001, when George W. Bush and Vicente Fox tried to negotiate a broad bilateral accord in which the
governments would jointly administer immigration programs. The Sept. 11 attacks derailed talk of a special deal for Mexico, and there is no need to go back to the idea. Instead, Obama simply needs to acknowledge that when it
He does not need to
compromise any U.S. interests to accept the fact that Mexico is special. And when Obama meets Peña
Nieto, he simply needs to recognize that the United States can't fix its immigration problems without
Mexico's help.¶
comes to U.S. immigration policies, there is Mexico accounting for the lion's share of the flow - and then there is every other country producing just fractions.
2AC T/Framework
T
1) <insert C/I>
2) We meet the C/I – the aff __________
*We meet the neg interpretation – ________
3) AT Standards:
a. [Topic specific] education: We access this best – the Zapatistas are
constantly excluded from discussion. Our 1AC provides a unique view on
the resolution – discourse brings about Zapatistas challenges hegemonic
structures. This means we turn their education claims
b. Predictability: Our aff is on the GDS wiki which checks this point 100%
c. Limits: less limits forces us to be more creative and flexible with
arguments – turns their education claim.
d. Ground: We give the neg more ground with our interpretation – turns
education and takes out their fairness claim. We also give them stable
disad links.
e. SSD: We are switch side, this argument doesn’t make sense. There are no
two clear sides of an issue and even policy teams defend heg on both
sides.
4) Prefer reasonability – competing interpretations is a race to the bottom
5) Case is a disad to Topicality –
a. Excluding the Zapatistas from discussion results in continued structural
violence and EXTINCTION – that’s Bellinghausen ‘12 and Christie ’01
b. Dignity is a D-rule – Censorship of human rights violations crushes
Zapatista dignity which kills value to life– that’s Marcos ’95 and Mellion
’07. The conceded Fender 11 is GAME OVER for the neg – we have an
ethical obligation to preserve dignity.
c. Rejection of dignity cedes the political to elites and recreates the very
impacts neg is solving for – that’s Fender 11.
6) Topicality is a hegemonic power structure the aff is trying to fight – only the
aff’s political-social relations accomplished through Zapatismo can create a
superior model of framework within the debate sphere.
7) NEG TOPICALITY IS AN EXPLICIT AFFIRMATION OF GENOCIDE – an affirmation of
status quo structural violence as normal and acceptable will create a corrupt
debate sphere
8) This debate sphere is uniquely key for change – neg topicality kills the potential
for debate to challenge the status quo, an aspect of critical thinking which is the
foundation of debate and critical discourse – that’s Gelsomino ‘10
9) Censorship DA - Censoring critical theory turns their framework – excluding the
Zapatistas from the discussion is a strategy for limiting discourse
Judith Butler 2004, Professor of Rhetoric at UC Berkeley, Precarious Life The Powers of Mourning
and Violence Preface http://butlerphile.files.wordpress.com/2010/06/butler_judith__precarious_lif.pdf - Neil
Dissent and debate
depend upon the inclusion of those who maintain critical views of state policy and
civic culture remaining part of a larger public discussion of the value of policies and politics. To charge those who voice
critical views with treason, terrorist-sympathizing, anti-Semitism, moral relativism, postmodernism, juvenile behavior,
collaboration, anachronistic Leftism, is to seek to destroy the credibility not of the views that are held, but of
the persons who hold them. It produces the climate of fear in which to voice a certain view is to
risk being branded and shamed with a heinous appellation. To continue to voice one's views under those
conditions is not easy, since one must not only discount the truth of the appellation, but brave the stigma that seizes up from the public
domain. Dissent is quelled, in part, through threatening the speaking subject with an uninhabitable identification. Because it would be
heinous to identify as treasonous, as a collaborator, one fails to speak, or one speaks in throttled ways, in order to sidestep the terrorizing
identification that threatens to take hold. This
strategy for quelling dissent and limiting the reach of critical
debate happens not only through a series of shaming tactics which have a certain psycho-logical
terrorization as their effect, but they work as well by producing what will and will not count as a
viable speaking subject and a reasonable opinion within the public domain. It is precisely because
one does not want to lose one 's status as a viable speaking being that one does not say what one
thinks. Under social conditions that regulate identifications and the sense of viability to this degree, censorship operates implicitly and
forcefully. The line that circum-scribes what is speakable and what is livable also functions as an instrument of censorship. To decide
what views will count as reasonable within the public domain, however, is to decide what will and
will not count as the public sphere of debate. And if someone holds views that are not in line with
the nationalist norm, that person comes to lack credibility as a speaking person, and the media is
not open to him or her (though the internet, interestingly, is). The foreclosure of critique empties the public
domain of debate and democratic contestation itself, so that debate becomes the exchange of
views among the like-minded, and criticism, which ought to be central to any democracy,
becomes a fugitive and suspect activity. Public policy, including foreign policy, often seeks to
restrain the public sphere from being open to certain forms of debate and the circulation of media
coverage. One way a hegemonic understanding of politics is achieved is through circumscribing what will and will not be admissible as
part of the public sphere itself Without disposing populations in such a way that war seems good and right and true, no war can claim
popular consent, and no administration can maintain its popularity. To produce what will constitute the public sphere, however, it is
necessary to control the way in which people see, how they hear, what they see. The constraints are not only on content certain images of
dead bodies in Iraq, for instance, are considered unacceptable for public visual consumption but on what can be heard, read, seen, felt,
and known. The
public sphere is constituted in part by what can appear, and the regulation of the
sphere of appearance is one way to establish what will count as reality, and what will not. It is also a
way of establishing whose lives can be marked as lives, and whose deaths will count as deaths. Our capacity to feel and to apprehend
hangs in balance. But so, too, does the fate of the reality of certain lives and deaths as well as the ability to critically and publicly about the
effects of the war.
10) Elitism DA – T seeks to integrate the debate community within an elitist
education structure that suppresses individualism instead of allowing us to
view the world through a critical lens – that’s key to cultural understanding.
Sarah Dee Shenker ’12 – Graduate student at the University College London [International Journal
of Educational Development. Volume 32, Issue 3: May 2012, Pages 432-443. “Towards a world in
which many worlds fit?: Zapatista autonomous education as an alternative means of development”.
Science Direct] ADoan
One of the Zapatistas’ complaints, exposed in the ‘First Declaration of the Lacandón Jungle’ (E.Z.L.N., 1993) was
that the indigenous population was being denied an education. This conviction arose from the
series of failed education models which were implemented in rural Chiapas since the 1910
revolution. The government's Department of Public Education (Secretaría de Educación Pública – SEP),
created in 1921, embodied the philosophy of its first director, José Vasconcelos. Vasconcelos
aimed to integrate all members of Mexican society into the ‘cosmic race’ (Vasconcelos, 1948) of the
mestizo – mixed indigenous and European – culture through teaching indigenous Mexicans to read, to write
and to speak Spanish. The Department of Indigenous Education and Culture, the SEP's rural schools, its ‘cultural missions’
and its Casa del Estudiante Indígena – urban boarding school for indigenous students – assumed the responsibility of assimilating
indigenous students with the criollo population – Mexicans with direct Spanish ancestry (Meneses Navarro, 2007). This
integrationist education ideology was not dissimilar to the approach of other governments of
countries with indigenous populations. Years of colonization saw indigenous peoples
worldwide marginalised and socially and economically undermined (May, 1998). Many
governments have more recently adopted a desire for centralization and homogeneity (Corson,
1998) and an emphasis on a common language and culture as an identifier of citizenship (May,
1998) and have thereby built an education system in which indigenous peoples’ difference is
not recognised and they are forced to assimilate with the mainstream culture. The history of North
American Indian education, for example, has been described as a ‘grand experiment in standardisation’ with the aim of transforming
indigenous people to match a national ideal (Lomowaima and McCarty, 2002).
The failure of this integrationist
education in Chiapas, manifested in the hostility with which it was met by many indigenous
communities, encouraged, in the 1960s, various indigenous organisations to demand a respect
for cultural diversity in education. This culminated, alongside a shift towards allowing indigenous communities a
greater control over their development, in the SEP's initiation of its bilingual education programme in 1978. This new phase of
educational policy has not functioned to the satisfaction of the Zapatistas and other indigenous groups. Various studies have
exposed indigenous groups’ criticisms of the application of the SEP's bilingual education programme in rural Chiapas (Flores, 2003,
Klein, 2001 and Sobéranes Bojórquez, 2003), and found that an aim of these SEP schools is to create conditions within which the
state's hegemony can be consolidated (Gutierrez Narváez, 2005, p. 242).
Extra T
Extra T inevitable – all advantages are based off of actions outside the resolution
AT Standards:
1. No Ground Loss — The plan is still the focus of the debate. The negative still has
counterplan ground. Also, the negative can run disads to the extra-topical plan spikes.
2. No Abuse — The extra-topical planks are neutral parts of the plan that have
potential of answering disads, but not claiming independent advantages. They can
remove “minuses” but never create “pluses.”
3. Limits: less limits forces us to be more creative and flexible with arguments – turns
their education claim.
4. Best Policy — permitting extra-topical planks allows us to find the best policy. The
resolution is still justified as long as it is part of the optimal policy package.
5. Real World Supports — Members of Congress use riders to their bills for the best
policies.
6. Reciprocity — Counterplans also contain elements that are “spikes” or at least have
non-competitive portions of the counterplan. The affirmative should also have this
privilege.
7. No Infinite Regress — There is a limit to the ability to spike out disads.
T Counter Interps
QPQ
“Economic engagement” can be unconditional or conditional
Kahler 4 – Miles Kahler, Graduate School of International Relations and Pacific Studies at the University
of California, San Diego, and Scott L. Kastner Department of Government and Politics University of
Maryland, “Strategic Uses of Economic Interdependence: Engagement Policies in South Korea,
Singapore, and Taiwan”, November, http://www.bsos.umd.edu/gvpt/kastner/KahlerKastner.doc
Economic engagement—a policy of deliberately expanding economic ties with an adversary in order
to change the behavior of the target state and effect an improvement in bilateral political relations—
is the subject of growing, but still limited, interest in the i nternational r elations literature. The bulk of the work
on economic statecraft continues to focus on coercive policies such as economic sanctions. The emphasis on negative forms of
economic statecraft is not without justification: the use of economic sanctions is widespread and well-documented, and several quantitative
studies have shown that adversarial relations between countries tend to correspond to reduced, rather than enhanced, levels of trade (Gowa
1994; Pollins 1989). At the same time, however, relatively little is known about how widespread strategies of economic engagement actually
are: scholars disagree on this point, in part because no database cataloging instances of positive economic statecraft exists (Mastanduno 2003).
Furthermore, beginning with the classic work of Hirschman (1945), most studies in this regard have focused on policies adopted by great
powers. But engagement policies adopted by South Korea and the other two states examined in this study, Singapore and Taiwan,
demonstrate that engagement is not a strategy limited to the domain of great power politics; instead, it may be more widespread than
previously recognized.
Drawing
from the existing literature, our framework distinguishes between different forms of economic
engagement, and outlines the factors likely to facilitate or undermine the implementation of these different strategies. With this
We begin by developing a theoretical framework through which to examine strategies of economic engagement.
framework as a guide, we then examine the strategic use of economic interdependence—focusing in particular on economic engagement—in
three East Asian States: South Korea, Singapore, and Taiwan. We use these case studies to draw conclusions about the underlying factors that
facilitate the use of a strategy of economic engagement, that determine the particular type of engagement strategy used, and that help to
predict the likelihood of success. Because our conclusions are primarily derived inductively from a small number of cases, we are cautious in
making claims of generalizability. Nonetheless, it is our hope that the narratives we provide and the conclusions that we draw from them will
help to spur further research into this interesting yet under-studied subject.
ECONOMIC ENGAGMENT: STRATEGIES AND EXPECTATIONS
Scholars have usefully distinguished between two types of economic engagement :
conditional policies that require an explicit quid-pro-quo on the part of the target country, and
policies that are unconditional. Conditional policies, sometimes called “linkage” or economic “carrots,” are the inverse of
economic sanctions. Instead of threatening a target country with a sanction absent a change in policy, conditional engagement policies
promise increased economic flows in exchange for policy change. Drezner’s (1999/2000) analysis of conditional economic inducements yields a
set of highly plausible expectations concerning when conditional strategies are likely to be employed, and when they are likely to succeed.
Specifically, he suggests that reasons exist to believe, a priori, that policies of conditional engagement will be less prevalent than economic
sanctions. First, economic coercion is costly if it fails (sanctions are only carried out if the target country fails to change policy), while
conditional engagement is costly if it succeeds (economic payoffs are delivered only if the target country does change policy). Second, states
may be reluctant to offer economic inducements with adversaries with whom they expect long-term conflict, as this may undermine their
resolve in the eyes of their opponent while also making the opponent stronger. Third, the potential for market failure in an anarchic
international setting looms large: both the initiating and the target states must be capable of making a credible commitment to uphold their
end of the bargain. These factors lead Drezner to hypothesize that the use of economic carrots is most likely to occur and succeed between
democracies (because democracies are better able to make credible commitments than non-democracies), within the context of international
regimes (because such regimes reduce the transactions costs of market exchange), and, among adversaries, only after coercive threats are first
used.
Unconditional engagement strategies are more passive in that they do not include a specific quid-proquo. Rather, countries deploy economic links with an adversary in the hopes that economic
interdependence itself will, over time, effect change in the target’s foreign policy behavior and yield a reduced threat
of military conflict at the bilateral level. How increased commercial and/or financial integration at the bilateral level might yield an improved
bilateral political environment is not obvious. While most empirical studies on the subject find that increased economic ties tend to be
associated with a reduced likelihood of military violence, no consensus exists regarding how such effects are realized. At a minimum, two
causal pathways exist that state leaders might seek to exploit by pursuing a policy of unconditional engagement: economic interdependence
can act as a constraint on the foreign policy behavior of the target state, and economic interdependence can act as a transforming agent that
helps to reshape the goals of the target state.
Perhaps the most widely accepted theoretical link between economic integration and a reduced danger of military violence centers on the constraints imposed on state
behavior by increasing economic exchange. Once established, a disruption in economic relations between countries would be costly on two levels. First, firms might lose assets that could not
readily be redeployed elsewhere. For example, direct investments cannot easily be moved, and may be lost (i.e. seized or destroyed) if war breaks out. Second, firms engaged in bilateral
economic exchange would be forced to search for next-best alternatives, which could impose significant costs on an economy as a whole if bilateral commercial ties are extensive. In short,
economic interdependence makes war more costly, meaning that states will be less likely to initiate armed conflict against countries with which they are integrated economically.
Constraining effects of economic interdependence may also arise more indirectly: as economic integration between two countries increases, an increasing number of economic
actors within those two countries benefit directly from bilateral economic ties, who in turn are likely to support—and lobby for—stable bilateral political relations. Economic integration, in
other words, creates vested interests in peace (Hirschman 1945; Russett and Oneal 2001; Levy 2003). These interests are likely to become more influential as economic ties grow (Rogowski
1989), suggesting that leaders will pay increasing domestic political costs for implementing policies that destabilize bilateral political relations. Domestic political institutions might act as
important intervening variables here. For example, these effects may be most likely to take effect in democracies, which provide actors who benefit from trade clear paths through which to
influence the political process (Papayoanou 1999; Gelpi and Grieco 2003; Russett and Oneal 2001). Democracies, of course, likely vary in the influence they give to commercial interests, as do
authoritarian polities (e.g. Papayoanou and Kastner 1999/2000).
Recently, scholars have questioned whether the increased costs of military conflict associated with economic interdependence necessarily act as a constraint on state leaders.
Indeed, without further assumptions, the effects appear indeterminate: while economic interdependence increases the costs of conflict for the target state, it also increases those costs for the
engaging state. On the one hand, increased costs for the target might make it less willing to provoke conflict, but on the other hand, the increased costs for the engaging state may
paradoxically embolden the target state, believing it could get away with more before provoking a strong response (Morrow 1999, 2003; Gartzke 2003; Gartzke et al. 2001). This critique
suggests that for an unconditional engagement policy exploiting the constraining effects of economic interdependence to work, leaders in the target state must value the benefits afforded by
economic integration more than leaders in the initiating state (on this point, see also Abdelal and Kirshner 1999/2000). Such asymmetry is most likely to arise when the target state’s economy
depends more heavily on bilateral economic exchange than the sending state (Hirschman 1945), and when domestic political institutions in the target state give the benefactors of bilateral
exchange considerable political influence (Papayoanou and Kastner 1999/2000).
The second mechanism through which economic interdependence might effect improved political relations centers on elite transformation that reshapes state strategies. This
transformation can be defined as both an elevation at the national level of goals of economic welfare (and a concurrent devaluation of the old values of military status and territorial
acquisition) and a systemic transformation of values away from the military orientation of the Westphalian order. Such arguments have a long heritage, including both Joseph Schumpeter's
analysis of imperialism as an atavism that would be superseded by more pacific bourgeois values, and interwar idealists, who sometimes based their arguments on the material
transformations underway in the international system. How economic interdependence creates transformed (and more pacific) elites is less clear. Learning may take place at the individual
level—the cases of Mikhail Gorbachev and Deng Xiaoping come to mind—but such learning must often take place before policy encourages increased interdependence. Processes of creating
shared values and identity and economic influences on broader social learning are more difficult to trace.
A different and perhaps more plausible transformational route follows from the vested interests argument outlined above. What appears to be social learning is in effect
coalitional change: internationalist elites committed to economic openness and international stability supplant or marginalize nationalist elites wedded to the threat or use of military force.
Whether a society is a pluralist democracy or not, interests tied to the international economy become a critical part of the selectorate to whom political elites must respond. Etel Solingen
(1998) outlines such a model of transformation in regional orders when strong internationalist coalitions committed to economic liberalization create zones of stable peace.
The barriers to a successful unconditional engagement strategy that aims to achieve elite transformation in the target state would appear substantial. Strategies in this vein are
likely to encounter substantial resistance in the target state: most elites probably don’t want to be “transformed,” and they certainly don’t want to be replaced. Faced with likely resistance,
initiating states pursuing this strategy must be prepared to open economic links unilaterally (i.e. without the cooperation of the target), hoping that the prospect of bilateral economic ties will
generate a latent coalition of groups desiring a peaceful environment in which they could take advantage of those ties, and that eventually a political entrepreneur will mobilize this latent
coalition in an effort to challenge the existing order. Because transformational strategies may require long time horizons and may also incur repeated disappointments, they are perhaps most
likely to be successful when a broad and stable consensus—one able to withstand changes in governing party—exists within the country initiating such a strategy (see, for example, Davis
1999).
In summary, we have distinguished between three types of economic engagement :
conditional engagement (linkage); unconditional engagement seeking to utilize the constraining
effects of economic interdependence; and unconditional engagement seeking to utilize the
transforming effects of economic interdependence. We have also outlined a number of expectations, mostly drawn from
the existing literature, regarding the conditions likely to facilitate the use of these various strategies. In the remainder of this essay we examine
the engagement policies of South Korea, Singapore and Taiwan, and we use these cases to draw conclusions concerning the conditions
facilitating the strategic use of economic interdependence.
“Economic engagement” can be either conditional or unconditional
Haass 00 – Richard N. Haass, Vice President and Director of Foreign Policy Studies at the Brookings
Institution, and Meghan L. O’Sullivan, Fellow with the Foreign Policy Studies Program at the Brookings
Institution, “Terms of Engagement: Alternatives to Punitive Policies”, Survival, 42(2), Summer, p. 2-3
Many different types of engagement strategies exist, depending on who is engaged, the kind of incentives employed and
the sorts of objectives pursued. Engagement may be conditional when it entails a negotiated series of
exchanges, such as where the US extends positive inducements for changes undertaken by the target country. Or engagement
may be unconditional if it offers modifications in US policy towards a country without the explicit
expectation that a reciprocal act will follow. Generally, conditional engagement is geared towards a government;
unconditional engagement works with a country’s civil society or private sector in the hopes of promoting forces that will eventually facilitate
cooperation.
Architects of engagement strategies can choose from a wide variety of incentives. Economic
engagement might offer tangible
incentives such as export credits, investment insurance or promotion, access to technology, loans and
economic aid.3 Other equally useful economic incentives involve the removal of penalties such as trade embargoes, investment bans or
high tariffs, which have impeded economic relations between the United States and the target country. Facilitated entry into the economic
global arena and the institutions that govern it rank among the most potent incentives in today’s global market. Similarly, political engagement
can involve the lure of diplomatic recognition, access to regional or international institutions, the scheduling of summits between leaders – or
the termination of these benefits. Military engagement could involve the extension of international military educational training in order both
to strengthen respect for civilian authority and human rights among a country’s armed forces and, more feasibly, to establish relationships
between Americans and young foreign military officers. While these areas of engagement are likely to involve working with state institutions,
cultural or civil-society engagement entails building people-to-people contacts. Funding nongovernmental organisations, facilitating the flow of
remittances and promoting the exchange of students, tourists and other non-governmental people between countries are just some of the
possible incentives used in the form of engagement.
Economic Engagement – Can be negative
W/M – We don’t embargo Mexico or decrease engagement – we are only positive
pressure
“Engagement” includes negative pressure
Singh 12 – Robert Singh, Professor of Politics at Birkbeck College, Barack Obama's Post-American
Foreign Policy: The Limits of Engagement, Google Books
The cumulative result of the shifting international order meant that renewing US leadership in an increasingly multi-polar - or even, as Richard
Haass termed it, non-polar25 - international order required an intelligent and imaginative approach by the incoming administration. Obama's
response was to emphasize a pragmatic but nonetheless ambitious international strategy that attended carefully to a new era of limits on
unilateral US power while simultaneously devoting substantial resources to rebuilding America's faltering domestic base. The
term most
commonly invoked over 2009-12 to define Obama's foreign policy was strategic "engagement." The National
Security Strategy (NSS) document of May 2010 defined engagement rather broadly as "the active participation of
the United States in relationships beyond our borders."26 A more precise definition might be "persuasion": employing
positive and negative inducements to convince or cajole others to change their behavior, as their most
rewarding or least harmful course of action. (Although, technically, a "pure" policy of engagement would abandon
negative inducements or threats altogether,2? the terms "engagement" or "strategic engagement" will be used here
to cover both variants.)
Positive/negative distinction is arbitrary and subjective
Baldwin 71 – David A., Professor of World Order Studies and Political Science at Columbia University,
“The Power of Positive Sanctions”, World Politics, 24(1),
http://www.princeton.edu/~dbaldwin/selected%20articles/Baldwin%20(1971)%20The%20Power%20of
%20Positive%20Sanctions.pdf
II. THE CONCEPT OF POSITIVE SANCTIONS
Positive sanctions are defined as actual or promised rewards to B; negative sanctions are defined as actual or
threatened punishments to B. Although these definitions appear simple enough, there are both
conceptual and empirical difficulties in distinguishing between positive and negative sanctions. Some
things take the form of positive sanctions, but actually are not: e.g., giving a bonus of $100 to a man
who expected a bonus of $200, or promising not to kill a man who never expected to be killed in the
first place. Likewise, some things take the form of negative sanctions, but actually are not: e.g., a
threat to cut by $100 the salary of a man who expected his salary to be cut by $200, a threat to punch
in the nose, next week, a man who knows he will be hanged at sunrise, or the beating of a masochist.
Is with-holding a reward ever a punishment? Always a punishment? Is withholding a punishment ever a reward? Always a reward? The answers
depend on B's perceptions of the situation.20
In order to distinguish rewards from punishments one must establish B's baseline of expectations at
the moment A's influence attempt begins.2' This baseline is defined in terms of B's expected future value position, i.e., his
expectations about his future position relative to the things he values. Positive sanctions, then, are actual or promised
improvements in B's value position relative to his baseline of expectations.
Negative sanctions are actual or threatened deprivations relative to the same baseline. Whereas conceptual
establishment of B's baseline is vital but not difficult, empirical establishment of the baseline is both vital and
difficult .
Three pitfalls await those who would distinguish the concept of positive from that of negative
sanctions. The pitfalls concern B's perceptions , time , and conditional influence attempts. As Bachrach
and Baratz have reminded us, explanations of power relations should specify from whose point of view the situation is being viewed.22 In
any given power relationship, A may perceive himself as employing carrots, while B may perceive A as
using sticks. Although many Americans perceive their foreign aid program in terms of positive sanctions,
many recipients perceive it differently. There is also a danger that the outside observer, i.e., the
political scientist, will substitute his own baseline for that of B, e.g., "if someone gave me a million
dollars, I would regard it as a reward.
The second pitfall concerns time and is illustrated by Dahl's discussion of positive coercion. After defining power in terms of
negative sanctions, he observes that substantial rewards can be made to operate in the same way: "For if . .
. [B] is offered a very large reward for compliance, then once his expectations are adjusted to this large reward,
[they] he suffers a prospective loss if [they] he does not comply."23 The italicized words indicate that time is not being
held constant. Only after B's expectations are adjusted, does he perceive withholding the reward as
coercive. What Dahl has done here is to use two different baselines. In referring to negative sanctions, he uses the baseline existing at the
moment of A's influence attempt, while his references to positive sanctions use the new baseline after B has taken account of A's influence
attempt. Since the purpose of A's influence attempt is to shift B's baseline, i.e., to cause B to change the expected values associated with doing
X, Dahl's treatment tends to conceal the dynamics of the influence process. In
distinguishing carrots from sticks one must be
careful to specify not only B's baseline of expectations, but also the point in time at which that
baseline was established.
It is important, however, to recognize that the baseline changes over time. Today's reward may lay the groundwork
for tomorrow's threat, and tomorrow's threat may lay the groundwork for a promise on the day after tomorrow. Thomas Schelling's24
discussions of "compellent threats" could be improved by recognition of this fact. The threat that compels, he says, often takes the form of
administering the punishment until B acts, rather than if he acts.25 To call such a conditional commitment to withdraw punishment a "threat" is
counter to both common usage and the analysis presented above. Such situations could be more usefully described as ones in which A uses a
negative sanction (the punishment) to lay the groundwork for the subsequent use of positive sanctions (the promise to withdraw the
punishment if B complies). What A is doing in such situations is using the stick to shift B's baseline so as to make the subsequent promise of a
carrot more attractive. A's offer to stop tipping the boat if B will row is unlikely to be perceived by B as a carrot unless A is actually tipping the
boat at the time the offer is made. A tips the boat in order to shift B's expectation baseline, so that B will perceive the offer to stop tipping the
boat as a reward. In his discussions of compellent threats Schelling
blurs the distinction between positive and negative
sanctions. Indeed, he turns the time sequence usually associated with threats around, so that a conditional commitment to
punish and a conditional commitment to stop punishing are both called threats. Common usage, however,
suggests a difference between offering to pull a thorn out of B's foot and a threat to stick a thorn in.
The third pitfall is associated with conditional influence attempts, i.e., those in which A conditionally commits himself
to reward or punish B for compliance or noncompliance.26 The problem is that it seems to be easier to distinguish rewards from punishments
than to distinguish promises from threats. The
possibility that withholding a reward may be regarded by B as a
punishment tempts one to regard threats and promises as two sides of one coin. The argument runs as follows:
"An unconditional commitment by A to reward (or punish) B regardless of whether he does X or not is not a promise (or threat). Thus, a
promise to reward if B complies must imply a threat not to reward if B fails to comply. Likewise, a threat to punish B for non- compliance must
imply a promise not to punish for compliance. Thus, all threats imply promises and all promises imply threats; they are
simply different ways of describing the same conditional influence attempt." An implicit assumption along these lines may explain why so few
political scientists bother to distinguish between threats and promises. An explicit example of such reasoning is found in Schelling's Strategy of
Conflict.27 After considering several definitions and after admitting that the distinction between a threat and a promise is not obvious, he
finally concludes that threats and promises
selective and conditional self-commitment."
are merely "names for different aspects of the same tactic of
Economic Engagement
And – we’re t – economic engagement occurs when dealing with class dynamics.
Bolzan ’12 – Alberto Bolzan, writing for the joint conference AHE, IIPPE, FAPE “Political economy and the
outlook for capitalism [University of Paris 1 - Panthéon-Sorbonne, France, “Mexican Agriculture: Neo-liberalism,
Heterogeneity and Struggle”, June 28, 2012, http://www.assoeconomiepolitique.org/political-economy-outlookfor-capitalism/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/Bolzan_Alberto-MexicanAgriculture.pdf] Adoan
The specific purpose has been to understand how social classes have been formed, the driving force behind this, and how class dynamics and capital accumulation permeates peasant
movements. From this analysis, previous scholarly work on the struggle of peasant movements - in particular EZLN – and ideas developed by peasant activists should be rethought. I have
argued for a critical understanding of accumulation strategies and class based approach. The main issues related to this were the historically promotion of capitalist relations through state
policies, the shift during the 1990s toward Neo-liberalism the re-definitions of capital accumulation strategies, and the Marxist interpretation of the current production process of PCPs and
large capitalist farming. This investigation was possible thanks to a historical materialist analytical framework that locates social relations of production (Poulantzas, 1973) and their outcomes
in political and economic sphere as the basis of capitalism. Using this, I implied that relations of exploitation between capital and labour are present in peasant as well as in large-capitalist
farming: this was suggested by considering state promotion of capitalism combined by the labour theory of value developed by Marx. Furthermore, I demonstrated that rural populations are
composed of several social classes which are shaped differently by contemporary globalisation. The research has demonstrated how capitalist relations of production have developed in post
second world war Mexican society, and how peasants and peasantry should no longer be misunderstood as a pre-capitalist social relation of production. I argued that social classes are
formed through changes in relation of production and changes in capital accumulation. Moreover, peasants’ struggle, as represented by EZLN, has homogenised different class interests,
among which the formal proletariat, semi-proletariat and PCPs coexist for traditional and small scale farming. This is, therefore, a re-proposition of an agrarian populism. In order to
demonstrate this populist re-proposition, in the first part I compared Agrarian Populist scholars and Marxist approaches, with regard to their conceptualisation of peasants and exploitation.
In the firt chapter, I investigated how the general reorganisation of the state, the promotion of Neoliberal policies as the Mexican Land Reform in 1992 and the introduction of the NAFTA,
generate firstly a social differentiation of rural population, through a process of ‘double squeeze’ that has created proletarianisation and semi-proletarianisation (Kay, 2000: 132) and,
secondly, a reorganisation of capital accumulation on a national level. Moreover, I outlined the social composition of the EZLN and the political struggle that it pursues. The third chapter
showed a re-conceptualisation of Marx’s idea of ‘formal and real subsumption of labour under capital’ (1973). Marx explains how different social relations of production and the division of
capital and labour is driven by technological advancement applied in the production process. I examined the technological developments of contemporary farming, largely driven by agrochemicals TNCs and networks of integration of small-scale production in the global market. The chapter, finally, analysed the potential for peasant movements to address progressive labour
regulation and, at the same time, addressed the weaknesses in analysis of different class interests within the movements.There are some restrictions that I need to acknowledge. For instance,
the paper is not tackling the process of democratisation or political strategy of EZLN within the Mexican society, because this does not precisely deal with the social relations of production
and class formation. Moreover, I do not discuss the role of movements in the promotion of social policies within the Neo-liberal ideology, especially with respect to the reorganisation of
global capital accumulation because this tends to homogenise social classes in local and national level. Instead, the research seeks to understand dynamics of accumulation, class composition
and class struggle from the economic sphere (production) to a political one. Further research could be carried out in order to investigate the labour process and the overall changes in farming
thanks to the technological innovation in connection with other economic sectors. Further studies could question the struggle from above and struggle from below in the rural, as well as
industrial context. This could highlight important features in the overall process of national and international capital accumulation and the contraposition of economic interest between profit
There is, therefore, a definite need for political and economic engagement in class
dynamics, especially if a deeper analysis of changes determined in production and class relations is
desired. Progressive movements, political parties and left-wing traditions often investigate classical class analysis too little.
and interest-bearing capital.
Framework
1) Counter Interpretation: The affirmative should win if they provide the best
policy action and the negative should win if they negate it or provide a better
competing advocacy
2) We meet their Interp and the C/I: We defend a plan text enacted by the USfg
with stable disad links. This mitigates ALL of their offense on this flow
3) AT Standards:
a. [Topic specific] education: We access this best – the Zapatistas are
constantly excluded from discussion. Our 1AC provides a unique view on
the resolution – discourse brings about Zapatistas challenges hegemonic
structures. This means we turn their education claims
b. Predictability: Our aff is on the GDS wiki which checks this point 100%.
Internet disclosure is the ONLY guarantee for predictability because any
other measure is presumptive
c. Limits: less limits forces us to be more creative and flexible with
arguments – turns their education claim.
d. Ground: We give the neg more ground with our interpretation – turns
education and takes out their fairness claim. We also give them stable
disad links.
e. Fairness: cross-apply our answers to Predictability
f. SSD: We are switch side, this argument doesn’t make sense. There are no
two clear sides of an issue – even policy teams defend heg on both sides.
4) Case is a disad to their framework –
a. Excluding the Zapatistas from discussion results in continued structural
violence and EXTINCTION – that’s Bellinghausen ‘12 and Christie ’01
b. Dignity is a D-rule – Censorship of human rights violations crushes
Zapatista dignity which kills value to life– that’s Marcos ’95 and Mellion
’07. The conceded Fender 11 is GAME OVER for the neg – we have an
ethical obligation to preserve dignity.
c. Rejection of dignity cedes the political to elites and recreates the very
impacts neg is solving for – that’s Fender 11.
5) Framework is a hegemonic power structure the aff is trying to fight – only the
aff’s political-social relations accomplished through Zapatismo can create a
superior model of framework within the debate sphere.
6) NEG FRAMEWORK IS AN EXPLICIT AFFIRMATION OF GENOCIDE – an affirmation
of status quo structural violence as normal and acceptable will create a corrupt
debate sphere
7) This debate sphere is uniquely key for change – neg framework kills the
potential for debate to challenge the status quo, an aspect of critical thinking
which is the foundation of debate and critical discourse – that’s the two pieces
of Gelsomino ‘10
8) Censorship DA - Censoring critical theory turns their framework – excluding the
Zapatistas from the discussion is a strategy for limiting discourse
Judith Butler 2004, Professor of Rhetoric at UC Berkeley, Precarious Life The Powers of Mourning
and Violence Preface http://butlerphile.files.wordpress.com/2010/06/butler_judith__precarious_lif.pdf - Neil
Dissent and debate
depend upon the inclusion of those who maintain critical views of state policy and
charge those who voice
critical views with treason, terrorist-sympathizing, anti-Semitism, moral relativism, postmodernism, juvenile behavior,
collaboration, anachronistic Leftism, is to seek to destroy the credibility not of the views that are held, but of
the persons who hold them. It produces the climate of fear in which to voice a certain view is to
risk being branded and shamed with a heinous appellation. To continue to voice one's views under those
civic culture remaining part of a larger public discussion of the value of policies and politics. To
conditions is not easy, since one must not only discount the truth of the appellation, but brave the stigma that seizes up from the public
domain. Dissent is quelled, in part, through threatening the speaking subject with an uninhabitable identification. Because it would be
heinous to identify as treasonous, as a collaborator, one fails to speak, or one speaks in throttled ways, in order to sidestep the terrorizing
identification that threatens to take hold. This
strategy for quelling dissent and limiting the reach of critical
debate happens not only through a series of shaming tactics which have a certain psycho-logical
terrorization as their effect, but they work as well by producing what will and will not count as a
viable speaking subject and a reasonable opinion within the public domain. It is precisely because
one does not want to lose one 's status as a viable speaking being that one does not say what one
thinks. Under social conditions that regulate identifications and the sense of viability to this degree, censorship operates implicitly and
forcefully. The line that circum-scribes what is speakable and what is livable also functions as an instrument of censorship. To decide
what views will count as reasonable within the public domain, however, is to decide what will and
will not count as the public sphere of debate. And if someone holds views that are not in line with
the nationalist norm, that person comes to lack credibility as a speaking person, and the media is
not open to him or her (though the internet, interestingly, is). The foreclosure of critique empties the public
domain of debate and democratic contestation itself, so that debate becomes the exchange of
views among the like-minded, and criticism, which ought to be central to any democracy,
becomes a fugitive and suspect activity. Public policy, including foreign policy, often seeks to
restrain the public sphere from being open to certain forms of debate and the circulation of media
coverage. One way a hegemonic understanding of politics is achieved is through circumscribing what will and will not be admissible as
part of the public sphere itself Without disposing populations in such a way that war seems good and right and true, no war can claim
popular consent, and no administration can maintain its popularity. To produce what will constitute the public sphere, however, it is
necessary to control the way in which people see, how they hear, what they see. The constraints are not only on content certain images of
dead bodies in Iraq, for instance, are considered unacceptable for public visual consumption but on what can be heard, read, seen, felt,
and known. The
public sphere is constituted in part by what can appear, and the regulation of the
sphere of appearance is one way to establish what will count as reality, and what will not . It is also a
way of establishing whose lives can be marked as lives, and whose deaths will count as deaths. Our capacity to feel and to apprehend
hangs in balance. But so, too, does the fate of the reality of certain lives and deaths as well as the ability to critically and publicly about the
effects of the war.
9) Elitism DA – Framework seeks to integrate the debate community within an
elitist education structure that suppresses individualism instead of allowing us
to view the world through a critical lens – that’s key to cultural understanding.
Sarah Dee Shenker ’12 – Graduate student at the University College London [International
Journal of Educational Development. Volume 32, Issue 3: May 2012, Pages 432-443. “Towards a
world in which many worlds fit?: Zapatista autonomous education as an alternative means of
development”. Science Direct] ADoan
One of the Zapatistas’ complaints, exposed in the ‘First Declaration of the Lacandón Jungle’ (E.Z.L.N., 1993) was
that the indigenous population was being denied an education. This conviction arose from the
series of failed education models which were implemented in rural Chiapas since the 1910
revolution. The government's Department of Public Education (Secretaría de Educación Pública – SEP),
created in 1921, embodied the philosophy of its first director, José Vasconcelos. Vasconcelos
aimed to integrate all members of Mexican society into the ‘cosmic race’ (Vasconcelos, 1948) of the
mestizo – mixed indigenous and European – culture through teaching indigenous Mexicans to read, to write
and to speak Spanish. The Department of Indigenous Education and Culture, the SEP's rural schools, its ‘cultural missions’
and its Casa del Estudiante Indígena – urban boarding school for indigenous students – assumed the responsibility of assimilating
indigenous students with the criollo population – Mexicans with direct Spanish ancestry (Meneses Navarro, 2007). This
integrationist education ideology was not dissimilar to the approach of other governments of
countries with indigenous populations. Years of colonization saw indigenous peoples
worldwide marginalised and socially and economically undermined (May, 1998). Many
governments have more recently adopted a desire for centralization and homogeneity (Corson,
1998) and an emphasis on a common language and culture as an identifier of citizenship (May,
1998) and have thereby built an education system in which indigenous peoples’ difference is
not recognised and they are forced to assimilate with the mainstream culture. The history of North
American Indian education, for example, has been described as a ‘grand experiment in standardisation’ with the aim of transforming
indigenous people to match a national ideal (Lomowaima and McCarty, 2002).
The failure of this integrationist
education in Chiapas, manifested in the hostility with which it was met by many indigenous
communities, encouraged, in the 1960s, various indigenous organisations to demand a respect
for cultural diversity in education. This culminated, alongside a shift towards allowing indigenous communities a
greater control over their development, in the SEP's initiation of its bilingual education programme in 1978. This new phase of
educational policy has not functioned to the satisfaction of the Zapatistas and other indigenous groups. Various studies have
exposed indigenous groups’ criticisms of the application of the SEP's bilingual education programme in rural Chiapas (Flores, 2003,
Klein, 2001 and Sobéranes Bojórquez, 2003), and found that an aim of these SEP schools is to create conditions within which the
state's hegemony can be consolidated (Gutierrez Narváez, 2005, p. 242).
NEG
CASE
Case Turn
The affirmative’s attempt to engage Mexico economically increases neoliberalism [an
institution that the Zapatistas are trying to break down].
The affirmative plan is a performative contradiction – they attempt to break down
neoliberalism by supporting the Zapatistas yet economically engage with Mexico – a
necessarily neoliberal act.
Mexico Solidarity Network [no date] – US organization focusing attention on Mexico, with
special emphasis on indigenous populations in the state of Chiapas [Mexico Solidarity Network,
“Neoliberalism: Mexico – a neoliberal experiment”,
http://www.mexicosolidarity.org/programs/alternativeeconomy/neoliberalism] ADoan
Neoliberalism is the dominant economic, social and political model of our time - the latest phase of
capitalism. In the neoliberal era, western-style representative governments have largely abandoned their (at
least theoretical) roles as representatives of and mediators among a range of social actors. Joachim Hirsch refers
to the "national competitive state" in which government represents the interests of capital at the expense of popular sectors of society. The
role of the state is limited to administering poverty and managing social discord so that neither
interferes with corporate profits. Disputed social territory - including personal security, public education, social security, public
health programs, environmental protection, labor rights, etc. - is increasingly left to "market mechanisms," as the state abandons its role,
however marginal that role may be historically, as benefactor (promoter of social programs) and protector of those sectors ravaged by market
mechanisms (the homeless, the poor and the unemployed, to name but a few).
Neoliberalism is characterized by easy
movement of money and goods across borders, but strict control of people (or "labor markets" in the logic of capitalism).
The South provides cheap labor, cheap commodities and, increasingly, cheap industrial products for consumers in Europe and North America.¶
Neoliberalism finds its roots in the so-called Washington consensus, which is nothing more than a
class consensus that extends across borders. Conniving governments from the South are often representative democracies,
but only in the formal sense of a democracy that can be purchased by local elites and "democracy-building" programs sponsored by the Agency
for International Development. The governments are indeed representative. The problem is who they represent! Democracy is a principle
worth defending and, in fact, worth dying for. But
the "democracy" that is integral to the Washington consensus
has very little to do with civil society ordering the affairs of a nation, and everything to do with control
of key economic and political decisions by local elites. There are no better examples than the United
States and Mexico. In the constellation of forces during most of the last decade, neither president George W. Bush nor
presidents Fox or Calderon even won a majority of the vote in their respective elections - not that voting
has a whole lot to do with democracy when nearly unlimited money can build a surrealistic view of
the most important political issues of the day that often bares little resemblance to reality. In the final
analysis, Wall Street own Barack Obama, the Sinaloa cartel owns Felipe Calderon, and the rest of us are left with precious little
to say about the important affairs of our countries.¶ While military power is occasionally (and from recent experience, increasingly)
necessary to maintain the Washington consensus, economic power exercises day-to-day control. Corporate-centered
globalization, the everyday operational face of the neoliberal model, is impressive in its reach and level of absolute greed. The neoliberal
model has been predominant in this hemisphere for a third of a century (depending on the country in question)
and there is sufficient data available for an even-handed evaluation.¶ Though the elites throughout the hemisphere
exercise their influence through the mainstream media to obscure reality with platitudes and slogans
in an effort to convince the masses that the neoliberal model is the only and best model, the facts speak
eloquently. In the 1970s, countries in this hemisphere averaged 4.5% growth in cumulative gross national
product. In the 1980s, average growth declined to 3.5%, and in the 1990s average growth declined to
2.5%. (Gross National Product is, at best, an imperfect indicator of improving standards of living - for example, the environmental disaster caused by the
grounding of the Exxon Valdez in Alaskan waters added to the GNP of the US for several years because the cleanup generated economic activity. And with increasing
concentrations of wealth in the hands of a small elite, growth
in GNP correlates even less with the economic well-being of
the masses. But as a general marker it gives us an idea of where we're headed. And even by neoliberal standards, we appear to be headed in the wrong
direction!)¶ So why is there a Washington consensus if economic growth is actually slowing? The key element here is the understanding of the Washington
consensus as a class consensus across borders. While most of us are treading water or getting progressively poorer, the neoliberal model has resulted in an
historically unparalleled concentration of wealth and power in the hands of transnational corporations, their shareholders, and the political and technical elites who
Between 1982 and 1996, real wages in Mexico decreased by an
astounding 80%, reversing slightly in the late 1990s, then declining again at the turn of the century, for
a cumulative loss of over two-thirds over a period of two decades. In 2004, the minimum wage in Mexico is equivalent to
oversee the system.¶ Again, the facts speak eloquently.
about US$3.96 per day. In a country where prices at WalMart, the largest retailer and employer in Mexico, are typically equal to or higher than WalMart prices in
Houston, Mexico's minimum wage doesn't buy much. Yet Mexico's minimum wage remains among the lowest in the world. The US working class fares better, but
not by much. Between 1970 and 1992, real wages in the US decreased by 19%, even in the midst of what most mainstream economists would consider a period of
prosperity. And the poorest half of the population continues to lose ground. ¶ On the other end of the champagne glass (to borrow a common metaphor that
portrays the wealthy at the top enjoying oodles of bubbly while the poor share the dregs in the confined neck at the bottom), the rich are doing quite well under the
neoliberal model, thank you very much. In 1997, the richest one-fifth of the world's population owned an astounding 85% of the world's wealth, though this
compares favorably with the United States where the wealth of the top 1% of households now exceeds the combined household financial wealth of the bottom
95%. The absolute concentration of wealth and power at the top is unparalleled. The rich are getting richer, the poor are getting poorer, and the illusionary "middle
class" is rapidly disappearing. The
rich constructed the Washington consensus. The poor majorities are left only with the
consensus that neoliberal "adjustments" are always accompanied by "pain," and are nearing a consensus that the pain will be permanent,
rather than temporary as neoliberal defenders always promise. Perhaps we should be asking ourselves, first, why do these wonderful programs
always involve adjustment pains, and second, why are we always the ones who suffer these pains?¶ The
United States and Mexico
have been central to the development of the neoliberal model. We share a 2,000 mile border, the only place in the
world where the Global North meets the South. The US-Mexico border is unique, and the relationship between the
two nations is equally unique.¶ In many ways, this geographic marriage represents the most
important relationship in the world - a laboratory that is defining the neoliberal model. Three historical
markers stand out as central to the development of neoliberalism: the establishment of free trade zones and maquiladoras in 1965, Structural
Adjustment Programs initiated by the International Monetary Fund in 1982, and the signing of the North America Free Trade Agreement in
1994.¶ The
US-Mexico relationship has been the proving ground for the practical realities of the
Washington consensus: production-for-export replacing production for internal consumption, the use
of debt as a lever to force structural adjustment programs, loose investment rules that allow hot
money to cross borders in seconds, and a trade agreement (read NAFTA) that is the model for a new
legal framework that expands the rights of corporations at the expense of civil society.
Zapatistas Bad
Zapatistas are classified as insurgents – their party is concerned with gang warfare
[this is from a US Government report about terrorism].
Miro ’03 – Ramon J. Miro, Researcher for the Federal Research Division [Library of Congress, “ORGANIZED CRIME AND
TERRORIST ACTIVITY ¶ IN MEXICO, 1999-2002”, February 2003, http://www.loc.gov/rr/frd/pdf-files/OrgCrime_Mexico.pdf]
ADoan
The Zapatista National Liberation Army (Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional—¶ EZLN) is by far the largest and
most sophisticated insurgent group in Mexico. This highly ¶ media-savvy organization is not a purely indigenous movement,
but is instead an alliance of ¶ radicalized middle-class intellectuals and indigenous groups dating from
the early 1980s. The ¶ EZLN began as an offshoot of the National Liberation Forces (Fuerzas de Liberación Nacional—¶ FLN), a Maoist
guerrilla group that had been largely dormant since the 1970s. At the start of the ¶ Zapatista rebellion, command of Zapatista forces was jointly
held by FLN veterans from Mexico ¶ City and a "clandestine committee" of Chiapas Indians representing the various ethnic subgroups ¶ residing
in the area. In early 1996, the Zapatistas declared their willingness in principle to lay ¶ down their arms and become a legal political party
pending major reforms of the political ¶ system. By declaring an indefinite ceasefire and engaging in a prolonged process of negotiations ¶ with
the government over indigenous rights laws, the organization shifted its focus from armed ¶ struggle to political mobilization of Mexico’s largely
indigenous underclass on behalf of land ¶ rights and against “globalization.” The
EZLN’s highly effective recruitment of an
international support network of antiglobalization activists has earned it the title of world’s first
“post-communist” insurgency, while its strategy has been characterized as “social netwar.”102 Despite its preoccupation with ¶
projecting a nonviolent public image, the group remains armed and reserves the right of “self ¶ defense” if it believes that its existence or the
livelihood of the indigenous groups it claims to ¶ represent are directly threatened. ¶ Since
the mid-1990s, armed EZLN
militants have engaged in a continuous, low-intensity ¶ gang war with local paramilitary groups
sponsored by ranchers and elements of the Institutional ¶ Revolutionary Party (Partido Revolucionario
Institucioncal--PRI) in Chiapas. The violence, ¶ which has been largely confined to Chiapas, consists mainly of tit-for-tat shootings
and acts of ¶ vandalism. Although the EZLN publicly eschews large-scale violence, there exists the possibility ¶ that dissatisfied urban cadres
may at some point be drawn to more violent groups such as the ¶ EPR or ERPI. In the event that negotiations with the government were to stall
or the physical or ¶ economic security of the Chiapas indigenous communities were to deteriorate significantly, it
is ¶ conceivable that
membership in the EZLN could become a gateway to future violent anti-system ¶ activity for
thousands of EZLN supporters.
Solvency deficits
Zapatistas refuse your aid without consultation – even the affirmative’s discourse in a
neoliberal context is abhorred.
Evans ’08 – Doctor Brad Evans is a Senior Lecturer in International Relations at the University of Bristol. He is also the Founder and
Director of the Histories of Violence project.In addition, he is a serving board member for the Centre for Scholarship in the Public Interest
(McMaster University, Ontario); an founding member of the Society for the Study of Bio-Political Futures (Syracuse University, NY); and
honorary associate of the Zygmunt Bauman Institute (The University of Leeds) [New Political Science. Dec2008, Vol. 30 Issue 4, p497-520. “The
Zapatista Insurgency: Bringing the Political Back into Conflict Analysis”, December 2008, EbscoHost] ADoan
The “political” dimensions to the Zapatistas autonomy can, in certain senses,¶ be evidenced by the
fact that their refusal of aid has required some selfdeprivation.40 As Duncan Earle and Jean Simonelli argue, their
system of¶ autonomy is strengthened by a “commitment to resist, political, economic, and¶ social
entrapment that comes with participation in specific government programs¶ and practices.”41 Thus, in a
direct challenge to Liberal rationality, this version of¶ autonomy proceeds by rejecting the notion that scarcity necessarily requires the¶
breakdown of the collective forms of political organisation; that bigger is¶ necessarily better; that in times of poverty economic considerations
trump all; or¶ that life itself is simply a rational, calculating, and maximising economic agent.¶ Indeed, from personal encounters with the
Zapatistas, it is clear that their political¶ intuitions work to altogether “different” rationality:¶ Yes, of course not
accepting government “aid” is sometimes difficult—very¶ difficult. But what “aid” has meant for us is for others to tell us what our problems¶
are, for others to impose their model for development upon us, for others to tell us¶ how we should live. This often has meant re-locating us off
the land and into more¶ urban areas, or—into places where we can simply be forgotten. The development¶ agenda if that’s what you call it has
never been for us, otherwise the mal gobinero¶ [bad government] would listen to what we want.42¶ Whilst it is important to emphasise that
the Zapatistas attitude to State aid has¶ become a significant if not defining feature of their quest for autonomy, what is¶ perhaps more
revealing (especially of the global nature of their political¶ predicament) is that these
concerns have gradually come to
inform their entire¶ relationships with all non-governmental organisations. By 2001, the Zapatistas¶ were already
of the opinion that “we don’t want handouts but the chance to make¶ a different reality of ourselves.”43
These sentiments were taken a stage further in¶ July 2003 when Marcos launched a remarkable and scathing five part critique¶ against what he
termed “the ‘Cinderella syndrome’ of civil society types.”44 As¶
Marcos later explained in response to a question about
this critique:¶ ... there is a kind of handout that is even more concerning. This is the approach of¶
NGOs and international organisations that consist, broadly speaking, in that¶ they decide what communities
need, without a thought towards consulting;¶ imposing not just predetermined projects but also the time frame and form
they¶ should take ... [Therefore] we have insisted that the resistance of the Zapatista¶ communities is not in order to provoke pity, but rather
respect. Here, now, poverty¶ is a weapon that we have elected for our communities to use for two reasons: to¶ prove that we are not seeking
“assistance-ism” and to demonstrate, with our own¶ example, that it is possible to govern and govern ourselves without this parasite that¶ is
called a “govern-er.”45 Recognising, therefore, that the
“imposition of projects” were in some instances¶ undermining their
autonomous gains, in a profound reversal of developmental¶ practice it would be the Zapatistas themselves who
would start to impose the¶ “conditionality.”
And – Zapatistas would say no – they’re opposed to the states, and unilateral plans
destroy their democratic ideals.
Cunninghame and Corona ’98 – Patrick Cunninghame and Carolina Ballesteros Corona, writing for the Journal of
Capital and Class [Capital and Class, Autumn98, Vol. 21 Issue 66, p12-12. “A Rainbow at Midnight: Zapatistas and Autonomy.”
Ebscohost]
The EZLN takes its name and to some extent its ideology from the libertarian, anti-statist element of
the 1910-1917 Mexican Revolution gathered around the peasant army led by Emiliano Zapata and the
slogan 'Land and Freedom!'. It calls itself an army of 'national liberation' as it sees Mexico (and not just
Chiapas) as an occupied territory, conquered and pillaged first by European colonialism, then
postcolonial 'latifundism' where economic policy was dominated first by the interests of land-owning
and later industrial elites, and now by the interests of the TNCs, with their neoliberal project of free
trade and free markets. The EZLN's use of the Mexican Hag. its 'social patriotism' and its break from the
traditions of the revolutionary Left have led to accusations of petit-bourgeois nationalism and social
democratic reformism by the more dogmatic sections of the international radical Left. They have,
however, failed to understand the EZLN's concept of nationhood based on a network of autonomous
communities rather than the historically centralised, hierarchical nation-state. Nor do they appreciate
the originality of its strategy for revolutionary transformation to a post capitalist society which is based
not on a vanguardist seizure of the state and the commanding heights of the economy, let alone
parliamentary reformism, but on an alliance with other grassroots social movements, including the
Colonos, rural migrant squatters on the periphery of the main urban centres, the students, gay and
women's movements, and the independent unions of teachers, electrical and transport workers. The
EZLN has refused to lead or hegemonize this gathering network of movements, but instead has sought
to struggle side-by-side with them, consulting civil society at every stage in its negotiations with the
government, also through self-organised referenda on a national scale to hear their opinions and
suggestions for changes in its strategy. This strategy of grassroots autonomous networking is an
extension and development of the indigenous practice of directly democratic decision-making through
the search for consensus rather than the imposition of the 'majority' on the 'minority' through voting.
The San Andreas accords break down the democratic structure of Mexico and will
reinforce traditional misogynist structures.
Hilton ’01 – Ronald Hilton, British-American Journalist and Visiting Scholar at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University
[Stanford University, “MEXICO: Pitfalls of San Andres Accords”, 3/10/01,
http://wais.stanford.edu/Mexico/mexico_pitfalls31001.html]
"I have just returned from Mexico, where I found people animatedly debating the merits of Fox's approach versus Marcos's strategy--without
recognizing the pitfalls inherent in the San Andres Accords." George's observations coincide with my comments Especially am
I concerned
by the use of the word "Indian". All the many "Indians" interviewed on TV speak very good Spanish,
and have certainly been accultured and become ordinary Mexicans. Some are probably mesrizo. George has written
the following report:¶ Unanticipated Consequences of San Andrés Accords¶ Despite President Vicente Fox's good-faith
peace overtures, Marcos continues to flail his "bourgeois" regime. Yet Mexican officials remain upbeat about reaching an accord with the EZLN.
There are, however, aspects of the San Andrés pact which, if not fundamentally revised, could boomerang on Mexico's nascent
administration:* While sounding benign, "local
autonomy" can enable the strong to suppress the weak in a state
riven with myriad feuds: the EZLN versus its foes, Protestants versus Catholics, progressives versus conservative Catholics,
landowners versus the landless, Mexicans versus Guatemalans, and Fox enthusiasts versus militants in the recently vanquished Institutional
Revolutionary Party (PRI).¶
Self-determination can create a "state within a state," as municipalities demand
control of minerals, timber, and water resources located within their boundaries. Even if handled
responsibly in Chiapas, autonomy there would excite cries for similar treatment in the nine other
states where Indians constitute 14 percent or more of the population--a process that skeptics insist
would "Balkanize" the country. Adoption of Indigenous practices--called "uses and customs"--could
find elders dictating how villagers vote, as well as continued male dominance over females at a time
when Mexico is making unprecedented democratic advances.¶ With respect to the last point, Xóchitl Gálvez, who
pulled herself up from abject poverty to become a high-tech star, decried the San Andrés compact before Fox named her to head a new Indian
affairs office. The fair-skinned daughter of a Otomí father and mestizo mother, Gálvez, 37, decried the racist assumptions imbedded in the
accords. "How
much Indian blood must flow through your veins in order to belong to one Mexico or the
other?" she asked tartly. "Or if you are 100% Indian you must respect the proposed law and, if not, you
don't have to?"¶ Apart from the polarizing effects of the San Andrés provisions, Marcos's current visit to the capital affords an irresistible
occasion for firebrands in universities, squatter groups, and labor organizations to hurl their grievances at the government. The city's populist
mayor, leader of the Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD), has already turned sit-ins from an art form into an exact science. And the SME
Electrical Workers are using the Zapatistas's appearance to thwart a critically needed energy reform.¶ Foreign NGOs, local churchmen, and PRD
rabble-rousers have applauded Fox's lofting Chiapas to the top of his agenda. Meanwhile, average Mexicans cite jobs, higher salaries, improved
health care, quality schools, and safe streets as higher priorities."¶
Impact Stuff
Neolib Defense
Neoliberalism and populism can survive side by side.
Roberts ’95 – Dr. Kenneth M. Roberts is a professor of Latin American Politics at Cornell University. [World Politics, Vol. 48,
No. 1 (Oct., 1995), pp. 82-116, “Neoliberalism and the Transformation of Populism in Latin America: The Peruvian Case”, JSTOR]
ADoan
Drawing from an analysis of the Fujimori regime in Peru, this study ¶ suggests the
emergence of new forms of populism that
are compatible ¶ with and complementary to neoliberal reforms in certain contexts. This ¶ new, more liberal
variant of populism is associated with the breakdown ¶ of institutionalized forms of political representation that often occurs ¶ during periods
of social and economic upheaval. Its
emergence demon ¶ strates that populism can adapt to the neoliberal era
and that it is not ¶ defined by fiscal profligacy; indeed, even when constrained by fiscal ¶ austerity and
market reforms, personalist leaders have discovered di ¶ verse political and economic instruments to
mobilize popular sector ¶ support when intermediary institutions are in crisis. ¶ To understand this
transformation of populism in the neoliberal era, ¶ a framework is needed for the comparative analysis of different expressions or subtypes of
populism. This framework should help identify ¶ change and continuity in populist phenomena, while facilitating analysis of the conditions that
spawned the unconventional partnership between neoliberalism and populism in Peru. The following section develops a comparative
framework that can be applied to both the Peruvian case and other examples of populism, whether of liberal or statist ¶ orientation. This
framework suggests that intertemporal and cross ¶ regional generalizability could be enhanced by decoupling the populist ¶ concept from any
specific phase or model of development.
Neoliberalism actually helps populism – it allows it to transform, thus continuing the
fight against elitism.
Roberts ’95 – Dr. Kenneth M. Roberts is a professor of Latin American Politics at Cornell University. [World Politics, Vol. 48,
No. 1 (Oct., 1995), pp. 82-116, “Neoliberalism and the Transformation of Populism in Latin America: The Peruvian Case”, JSTOR]
ADoan
Since neoliberalism first arrived in Latin America under the iron fist of ¶ Chile's military dictator Augusto Pinochet, its political implications ¶
have been widely and hotly debated. Early critics saw authoritarian ¶ coercion as a functional requisite to suppressing political opposition to ¶
strict market reforms.96 More recently, the "Washington consensus" ¶ presumes a natural harmony between political and economic liberalism,
free markets and democratic politics.97 ¶ Over time neoliberalism has demonstrated its
political versatility; nevertheless, as political dealignment spawns personalist regimes across ¶ much of
Latin America, it is time to consider whether the most natural ¶ political correlate to the neoliberal era
may actually be populism, the ¶ option most widely seen as its antithesis.98 ¶ This study suggests that
neoliberalism and populism contain unexpected symmetries and affinities. The Peruvian case
demonstrates that ¶ populism can complement and reinforce neoliberalism in certain con ¶ texts, even
if its form differs from the classical populism associated with ¶ the likes of Peron, Vargas, Cardenas,
Haya de la Torre, and Gaitan. ¶ Rather than representing the eclipse of populism, neoliberalism may ¶
actually be integral to its transformation, as populism adapts to changing structures of opportunities and constraints. ¶ Given
¶ and thus an affinity between
this resiliency and malleability, populism should be decoupled ¶ from any specific phase or model of socioeconomic development. In ¶ deed, its
multiple expressions enable it to survive and even thrive? ¶ under diverse political and economic conditions. Simply
put, populism ¶ is
a recurring feature of Latin American politics. Its recurrence is attributable not so much to a personalist strain in the region's
political culture, or even to the distributive conflicts engendered by entrenched ¶ socioeconomic inequalities, as to the fragility of autonomous
political ¶ organizing among popular sectors and the weakness of intermediary institutions that aggregate and channel social demands within
the political arena. That is, it is the failure of representative institutions like ¶ political parties, labor unions, and autonomous social
organizations to ¶ mediate between citizens and the state that paves the way for the direct, personalist mobilization of heterogeneous masses
which is synonymous with populism.99
Extinction outweighs
The right to life is the most fundamental human right – it precedes everything else.
Trujillo and Maqueda ’12 – Diana Ortiz Trujillo, PhD Candidate in Law at Universidad Panamericana, and Santiago
Maqueda, Lawyer at Baker & McKenzie, Argentina. Professor of Constitutional and Administrative Law ¶ at Universidad Austra
[Americans United for Life, “Defending the Human Right to Life in Latin America”, July 2012, http://www.aul.org/contentsdefending-the-human-right-to-life-in-latin-america] ADoan
Article 4.1 of the treaty establishes that:¶ “Every person has the right to have his life respected. This
right shall ¶ be protected by law and, in general, from the moment of conception. No ¶ one shall be
arbitrarily deprived of his life”.¶ It should be noted that, on March 24, 1981, the Organization of
American ¶ States’ General Secretariat received an instrument—which included an Interpreting ¶
Declaration—by which the Mexican State adhered to the Pact of San José under ¶ the following terms:¶
“Regarding article 4.1, it is considered that the expression ‘in general’ ¶ does not bind the states to adopt
or keep in force the legislation protecting ¶ life ‘from the moment of conception,’ since this matter is
reserved to the ¶ states dominion.¶ On the other hand, the Government of Mexico maintains that article ¶
12.3 comprises the limitation that establishes that every religious legal ¶ proceeding shall take place in
the temples, as set forth by the Political ¶ Constitution of the United Mexican States”.
Life is a natural right – it is intrinsic to the meaning of being a human and thus is a
precondition for all other rights.
Shestack ’01 -
Philadelphia lawyer and human rights advocate, president of the American Bar Association (ABA) from 1997 to 1998.
He chaired the International League for Human Rights for twenty years, and was appointed the United States Ambassador to the United
Nations Commission on Human Rights from 1979 to 1980. Considered one of the top 100 most influential lawyers regularly during his lifetime
[Human Rights Quarterly 20.2 (1998) 201-234, “The Philosophic Foundations of Human Rights”, 1998,
http://www.princeton.edu/~bsimpson/Human%20Rights/articles/Shestack,%20Philosophical%20Foundation%20of%20Human%20Rights.htm]
What is meant by
human rights? To speak of human rights requires a conception of what rights one possesses by virtue of being human.
That does not mean human rights in the self-evident sense that those who have them are human, but rather, the rights that human
beings have simply because they are human beings and independent of their varying social circumstances and degrees of
merit.¶ Some scholars identify human rights as those that are "important," "moral," and "universal." It is comforting to adorn human rights with
those characteristics; but, such attributes themselves contain ambiguities. For
example, when one says a right is
"important" enough to be a human right, one may be speaking of one or more of the following
qualities: (1) intrinsic value; (2) instrumental value; (3) value to a scheme of rights; (4) importance in
not being outweighed by other considerations; or (5) importance as structural support for the system
of the good life. "Universal" and "moral" are perhaps even more complicated words. What makes certain rights universal, moral, and
important, and who decides? 5¶ Intuitive moral philosophers claim that definitions of human rights are futile because they involve moral
judgments that must be self-evident and that are not further explicable. Other moral philosophers focus on the consequences of human rights
and their purpose. The prescriptivist school says that one should not be concerned with what is sought to be achieved by issuing a moral
(human rights) utterance but with that which is actually accomplished.¶ The definitional process is not easier when examining the term human
rights. Certainly "rights" is a chameleon-like term that can describe a variety of legal relationships. 6 Sometimes "right" is used in its strict sense
of the right holder being entitled to something with a correlative duty in another. Sometimes "right" is used to indicate an immunity from
having a legal status altered. Sometimes it indicates a privilege to do something. Sometimes it refers to a power to create a legal relationship.
Although all of these terms have been identified as rights, each invokes different protections. ¶ For example, when speaking of an inalienable
right, does one mean a right to which no expectations or limitations are valid? Or does one mean a prima facie right with a special burden on
the proponent of any limitation? Or is it a principle that one must follow unless some other moral principle weighty enough to allow
abridgment arises? [End Page 203]¶
If one classifies a right as a claim against a government to refrain from
certain acts, such as not to torture its citizens or deny them freedom of speech, religion, or
emigration, then other complexities arise. If a particular claim stems from a metaphysical concept
such as the nature of humanity, or from a religious concept such as the divine will, or from some other
a priori concept, then the claim may really be an immunity to which normative judgments should not
apply. If, however, the claim is based on certain interests such as the common good, other problems arise such as the need to determine
what constitutes the common good, or the need to balance other societal interests, that may allow a wide variety of interpretations not
supportive of individual human rights demands.¶ If speaking of the "rights" in the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural
Rights, 7 such as the right to social security, health, education, fair wages, a decent standard of living, and even holidays with pay, what does
one intend? Are these rights that individuals can realistically assert, or are they only aspirational goals? Assuming they are rights as intended,
on whom are the correlative duties imposed?¶ If one speaks of privileges, other concerns arise. If the privileges are granted by the state, then
presumably the state is entitled to condition them. Does the right of a state to derogate from rights in an international covenant mean that the
rights are, in fact, only privileges? Here too, the answer is connected to the moral strength and inviolability of the "right" or "privilege" that is
involved.¶ The definitional answers to these questions are obviously complex.¶ To summarize, even where international law has established a
conventional system of human rights, a philosophic understanding of the nature of rights is not just an academic exercise. Understanding
the nature of the "right" involved can help clarify one's consideration of the degree of protection
available, the nature of derogations or exceptions, the priorities to be afforded to various rights, the
question of the hierarchical relationships in a series of rights, the question of whether rights "trump"
competing claims based on cultural rooting, and similar problems. To be sure, the answers to these questions may evolve over time through legal
rulings, interpretations, decisions, and pragmatic compromises. But how those answers emerge will be influenced, if not driven by, the moral justifications of the human rights in issue.¶ A starting point in understanding the moral
foundations of human rights law is to examine the sources of human rights claims. From where does one [End Page 204] derive the moral justifications that can be urged for or against human rights law? What is their scope or
content, and how compelling are they?¶ III. Sources of Human Rights¶ A. Religion¶ To be sure, the term "human rights" as such is not found in traditional religions. Nonetheless, theology presents the basis for a human rights
theory stemming from a law higher than that of the state and whose source is the Supreme Being.¶ If one accepts the premise of the Old Testament that Adam was created in the "image of God," this implies that the divine stamp
gives human beings a high value of worth. 8 In a similar vein the Quran says, "surely we have accorded dignity to the sons of man." So too, in the Bhagavad-Gita, "Who sees his Lord/Within every creature/Deathlessly
dwelling/Amidst the mortal: That man sees truly . . . ."¶ In a religious context every human being is considered sacred. Accepting a universal common father gives rise to a common humanity, and from this flows a universality of
certain rights. Because rights stem from a divine source, they are inalienable by mortal authority. This concept is found not only in the Judeo-Christian tradition, but also in Islam and other religions with a deistic base. 9¶ Even if
one accepts the revealed truth of the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of all humans, the problem of which human rights flow therefrom remains. Equality of all human beings in the eyes of God would seem a necessary
development from the common creation by God, but freedom to live as one prefers is not. Indeed, religions generally impose severe limitations on individual freedom. For most religions, the emphasis falls on duties rather than
rights. Moreover, revelation is capable of differing interpretations, and some religions have been quite restrictive toward slaves, women, and nonbelievers, even though all are God's creations. Thus, at least as practiced, serious
incompatibilities exist between various [End Page 205] religious practices and the scope of human rights structured by the United Nations.¶ However, religious philosophers of all faiths are engaged in the process of interpreting
religious doctrines toward the end of effecting a reconciliation with basic human rights prescriptions. This process is largely via hermeneutic exercise, namely reinterpretation of a religion's sacred texts through both historical
explication and a type of prophetic application to modern conditions.¶ Thus, religious doctrine offers a promising possibility of constructing a broad intercultural rationale that supports the various fundamental principles of
equality and justice that underlie international human rights. Indeed, once the leap to belief has been made, religion may be the most attractive of the theoretical approaches. When human beings are not visualized in God's image
then their basic rights may well lose their metaphysical raison d'être. On the other hand, the concept of human beings created in the image of God certainly endows men and women with a worth and dignity from which the
components of a comprehensive human rights system can flow logically.¶ B. Natural Law: The Autonomous Individual¶ Philosophers and jurists did not leave human rights solely to theologians. In their search for a law that was
higher than positive law, they developed the theory of natural law. Although natural law theory has underpinnings in Sophocles and Aristotle, it was first elaborated by the stoics of the Greek Hellenistic period, and later by those of
the Roman period. Natural law, they believed, embodied those elementary principles of justice which were right reason, i.e., in accordance with nature, unalterable, and eternal. A classic example is that of Antigone who defied
Creon's command not to bury her slain brother by claiming that she was obeying immutable laws higher then the ruler's command.¶ Medieval Christian philosophers, such as Thomas Aquinas, put great stress on natural law as
conferring certain immutable rights upon individuals as part of the law of God. 10 However, critical limitations in the medieval concepts that recognized slavery and serfdom excluded central ideas of freedom and equality.¶ As
feudalism declined, modern secular theories of natural law arose, particularly as enunciated by Grotius and Pufendorf. Their philosophy detached natural law from religion, laying the groundwork for the secular, [End Page 206]
rationalistic version of modern natural law. According to Grotius, a natural characteristic of human beings is the social impulse to live peacefully and in harmony with others. Whatever conformed to the nature of men and women
as rational, social beings was right and just; whatever opposed it by disturbing the social harmony was wrong and unjust. Grotius defined natural law as a "dictate of right reason." 11 He claimed that an act, according to whether it
is or is not in conformity with rational nature, has in it a quality of moral necessity or moral baseness.¶ Grotius was also a father of modern international law. He saw the law of nations as embodying both laws that have as their
Natural law theory led to
natural rights theory--the theory most closely associated with modern human rights. The chief
exponent of this theory was John Locke, who developed his philosophy within the framework of
seventeenth century humanism and political activity, known as the Age of Enlightenment. 12 Locke
source the will of man and laws derived from the principles of the law of nature. This theory, of course, has immense importance for the legitimacy of international law.¶
imagined the existence of human beings in a state of nature. In that state men and women were in a state of freedom, able to determine their
actions, and also in a state of equality in the sense that no one was subjected to the will or authority of another. However, to end the hazards
and inconveniences of the state of nature, men and women entered into a "social contract" by which they mutually agreed to form a
community and set up a body politic. Still,
in setting up that political authority, individuals retained the natural
rights of life, liberty, and property. Government was obliged to protect the natural rights of its
subjects, and if government neglected this obligation, it forfeited its validity and office. 13¶ Natural
rights theory was the philosophic impetus for the wave of revolt against absolutism during the late
eighteenth century. It is visible in the French Declaration of the Rights of Man, 14 in the US
Declaration of Independence, 15 in the constitutions of numerous states created upon liberation from
colonialism, and in the principal UN human rights documents. [End Page 207]¶ Natural rights theory makes
an important contribution to human rights. It affords an appeal from the realities of naked power to a higher authority that is
asserted for the protection of human rights. It identifies with and provides security for human freedom and equality, from which other human
rights easily flow. It also provides properties of security and support for a human rights system, both domestically and internationally.¶ From a
philosophical viewpoint, the critical problem that natural rights doctrine faced is how to determine the norms that are to be considered as part
of the law of nature and therefore inalienable, or at least prima facie inalienable.¶ Under
Locke's view of human beings in the
state of nature, all that was needed was the opportunity to be self-dependent; life, liberty, and
property were the inherent rights that met this demand. But what about a world unlike the times of Locke, in which
ample resources are not available to satisfy human needs? Does natural law theory have the flexibility to satisfy new claims based on
contemporary conditions and modern human understanding? Perhaps it does, but that very potential for flexibility has formed the basis for the
chief criticism of natural rights theory. Critics pointed out that most of the norm setting of natural rights theories contain a priori elements
deduced by the norm setter. In short, the principal problem with natural law is that the rights considered to be natural can differ from theorist
to theorist, depending upon their conceptions of nature.
Util Good
Extinction comes first
Bok, professor of philosophy, 1988 (Sissela, Professor of Philosophy at Brandeis, Applied Ethics
and Ethical Theory, Rosenthal and Shehadi, Ed.)
The same argument can be made for Kant’s other formulations of the Categorical Imperative: “So act as to use humanity, both in your own person and in the person
of every other, always at the same time as an end, never simply as a means”; and “So act as if you were always through your actions a law-making member in a
No one with a concern for humanity could consistently will to risk eliminating humanity in the
the sake of justice. To risk their
collective death for the sake of following one’s conscience would be, as Rawls said, “irrational, crazy.” And
to say that one did not intend such a catastrophe, but that one merely failed to stop other persons from bringing it about would
be beside the point when the end of the world was at stake. For although it is true that we cannot be held responsible for
universal Kingdom of Ends.”
person of himself and every other or to risk the death of all members in a universal Kingdom of Ends for
most of the wrongs that others commit, the Latin maxim presents a case where we would have to take such responsibility seriously – perhaps to the point of
deceiving, bribing, even killing an innocent person, in order that the world not perish. To avoid self-contradiction, the Categorical Imperative would, therefore, have
to rule against the Latin maxim on account of its cavalier attitude toward the survival of mankind. But the ruling would then produce a rift in the application of the
Categorical Imperative. Most often the Imperative would ask us to disregard all unintended but foreseeable consequences, such as the death of innocent persons,
whenever concern for such consequences conflicts with concern for acting according to duty. But, in
the extreme case, we might have to
go against even the strictest moral duty precisely because of the consequences. Acknowledging such a rift would
post a strong challenge to the unity and simplicity of Kant’s moral theory.
Ks
Speaking for Others K
1NC
We cannot speak on behalf of the Zapatistas – this is against their philosophy and
falsely represents them.
Tormey ’06 – Simon Tormey, Professor of Politics and Critical Theory at the University of Nottingham, UK, and Director of the Centre
for Social and Global Justice based in the School of Politics and International Relations [Parliam Aff (January 2006) 59 (1): 138-154.
http://pa.oxfordjournals.org/content/59/1/138.full#sec-1] ADoan
HIGH up in the mountains of the south east of Mexico an experiment is taking place that tests some of the most cherished notions political
theorists have held and still hold about the nature of politics, of rationality, of order, of emancipation.2 The experiment is being conducted by
the Zapatistas, a group that insists that it is ‘exercising power’ not on behalf of the people of the
Chiapas, the region it ‘liberated’ from the federal government in 1994, but with the people of the
Chiapas. Whilst seeking to give voice to people they are not speaking for them , if they are ‘speaking’ at all (no official
communiqués were issued between the end of 2001 and January 2003—the Zapatistas had announced that they were too busy ‘listening’ to
people). The
Zapatistas are seeking a way in which people living in the region can not merely find their
own voice, but be heard by those who would otherwise remain deaf, which, predictably, includes
those who would seek to ‘represent’ them: the official parties of the Mexican political establishment;
various Marxist and revolutionary groups; and movements representing the poor or particular indigenous groups. But how are the Zapatistas
different to the various groups before them who were unembarrassed to lead, to represent? What have they seen or thought about which
makes them suspicious not merely of the actuality of political representation in Mexico, but its very logic? Why have they set their face against,
what for occidental political thought, is politics?¶ The
stance and philosophy of the Zapatistas is, I would argue,
remarkable in itself, but also symptomatic of a more general shift in the underpinnings of the political
‘field’, one that problematises and points beyond ‘representation’. This is a shift that first announced itself in
relation to philosophy, ethics and literature some decades ago, in turn spreading to black studies, feminism, queer and lesbian studies, and
latterly to post-colonial and subaltern studies. It can now be felt and heard in what is sometimes termed ‘the new activism’. The ‘not in my
name’ sentiment that resounded in response to the war in Iraq speaks directly to this mood, and to a politics that sets its face against being
represented by others, particularly governments. The rejection of what might be termed the pragmatics of representation (‘speaking for’)
coincides with, reinforces and feeds off the much commented upon ‘crisis of representative politics’ across the liberal-democratic world. As has
been well documented, fewer people are voting (particularly at subnational and supernational level), joining political parties, or engaging with
‘official’ political processes, which are for the most part resolutely ‘representative’ in orientation.¶ My
suggestion is that these two
moments are linked: that the questioning of representational approaches theoretically and
philosophically is mirrored in the growing dissatisfaction with representational politics either as a
basis for mobilising people qua ‘citizens’ (the ‘political science’ dilemma) or for thinking about how
the world might otherwise look (the ‘normative political theory’ dilemma). Assuming this to be the case, then
what is curious is the degree to which political theory is still evidently wedded to the model of representation as a means for thinking about
how communities can function or organise themselves. Rather than witnessing an emerging literature on ‘post-representation’, we see merely
the remodelling of representation in ever more baroque fashion so that groups, minorities or diverse interests can be integrated into existing
representative systems of governance.3 Like
Plato’s Pharmakon, representation has become both poison and
cure, both a source of disaffection and the means for its overcoming. In my view this represents a
failure of the normative imagination, an unwillingness to contemplate life ‘after’ representation. It is as
if the memories of Rousseau and Marx weigh so heavily on the minds of the living (to borrow from the latter) that we are unwilling even to
contemplate what is implied in ‘post-representation’ for fear of invoking the dreaded ‘totalitarian’ impasse of the General Will. This
in turn
implies that political theorists have nothing to say in response to those who are disillusioned with
representative structures or those such as the Zapatistas who are attempting to elaborate structures,
institutions and processes that go beyond representation. I want to take issue with this position and to suggest that we
can meaningfully think the ‘beyond’ or ‘outside’ of representation. Indeed not to do so is to consign normative theorising to irrelevance. It is to
shrug our shoulders in the face of those who share the intuition that no amount of tinkering will salvage the antique presuppositions propping
up ‘the representative claim’.
And – our vastly different perspective means we cannot understand the struggle of
the Zapatistas, and thus cannot accurately represent them – the 1AC creates barriers
between the privileged debater and the struggling Zapatista, ultimately reinforcing
oppression by silencing the Zapatista.
Alcoff ’95 - Linda Martín Alcoff is Professor of Philosophy at Hunter College and the CUNY Graduate
Center [Personal Website, “THE PROBLEM OF SPEAKING FOR OTHERS”, 1995,
http://www.alcoff.com/content/speaothers.html] ADoan
only site in which the problem of speaking for others has been acknowledged and addressed. In
anthropology there is similar discussion about whether it is possible to speak for others either
adequately or justifiably. Trinh T. Minh-ha explains the grounds for skepticism when she says that anthropology is "mainly
a conversation of `us' with `us' about `them,' of the white man with the white man about the
primitive-nature man...in which `them' is silenced. `Them' always stands on the other side of the hill,
naked and speechless...`them' is only admitted among `us', the discussing subjects, when
accompanied or introduced by an `us'..."4 Given this analysis, even ethnographies written by progressive anthropologists are a
¶ Feminist discourse is not the
priori regressive because of the structural features of anthropological discursive practice. ¶ The recognition that there is a problem in speaking
for others has followed from the widespread acceptance of two claims. First,
there has been a growing awareness that
where one speaks from affects both the meaning and truth of what one says, and thus that one
cannot assume an ability to transcend her location. In other words, a speaker's location (which I take here
to refer to her social location or social identity) has an epistemically significant impact on that
speaker's claims, and can serve either to authorize or dis-authorize one's speech. The creation of Women's
Studies and African American Studies departments were founded on this very belief: that both the study of and the advocacy for
the oppressed must come to be done principally by the oppressed themselves, and that we must
finally acknowledge that systematic divergences in social location between speakers and those
spoken for will have a significant effect on the content of what is said. The unspoken premise here is simply that a
speaker's location is epistemically salient. I shall explore this issue further in the next section. ¶ The second claim holds that not only is location
epistemically salient, but certain privileged locations are discursively dangerous.5 In particular, the practice of privileged persons speaking for
or on behalf of less privileged persons has actually resulted (in many cases) in increasing or reenforcing the oppression of the group spoken for.
This was part of the argument made against Anne Cameron's speaking for Native women: Cameron's intentions were never in question, but the
effects of her writing were argued to be harmful to the needs of Native authors because it is Cameron rather than they who will be listened to
and whose books will be bought by readers interested in Native women. Persons
from dominant groups who speak for
others are often treated as authenticating presences that confer legitimacy and credibility on the
demands of subjugated speakers; such speaking for others does nothing to disrupt the discursive
hierarchies that operate in public spaces. For this reason, the work of privileged authors who speak on
behalf of the oppressed is becoming increasingly criticized by members of those oppressed groups
themselves.6
Reject the hierarchical rituals of speaking to ensure liberty. We must open up spaces
to allow the other to speak—academic spaces are critical locations for this effort. Vote
negative to listen.
Alcoff ’95 - Linda Martín Alcoff is Professor of Philosophy at Hunter College and the CUNY Graduate
Center [Personal Website, “THE PROBLEM OF SPEAKING FOR OTHERS”, 1995,
http://www.alcoff.com/content/speaothers.html] ADoan
The final response to the problem of speaking for others that I will consider occurs in Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak's rich essay "Can the Subaltern
Speak?"14 Spivak rejects a total retreat from speaking for others, and she criticizes the "self-abnegating intellectual" pose that Foucault and
Deleuze adopt when they reject speaking for others on the grounds that their position assumes the oppressed can transparently represent their
own true interests. According to Spivak, Foucault and Deleuze's self-abnegation serves only to conceal the actual authorizing power of the
retreating intellectuals, who in their very retreat help to consolidate a particular conception of experience (as transparent and self-knowing).
Thus, to
promote "listening to" as opposed to speaking for essentializes the oppressed as nonideologically constructed subjects. But Spivak is also critical of speaking for which engages in dangerous representations. In the end Spivak prefers a "speaking to," in which the intellectual neither abnegates his or her discursive role nor
presumes an authenticity of the oppressed, but still allows for the possibility that the oppressed will produce a "countersentence" that can then
suggest a new historical narrative.¶ Spivak's arguments show that a simple solution can not be found in for the oppressed or less privileged
being able to speak for themselves, since their speech will not necessarily be either liberatory or reflective of their "true interests", if such exist.
I agree with her on this point but I would emphasize also that ignoring the subaltern's or oppressed person's speech is, as she herself notes, "to
continue the imperialist project."15 Even
if the oppressed person's speech is not liberatory in its content, it
remains the case that the very act of speaking itself constitutes a subject that challenges and subverts
the opposition between the knowing agent and the object of knowledge, an opposition which has
served as a key player in the reproduction of imperialist modes of discourse. Thus, the problem with speaking for
others exists in the very structure of discursive practice, irrespective of its content, and subverting the hierarchical rituals of speaking will
always have some liberatory effects.¶ I agree, then, that we
should strive to create wherever possible the conditions
for dialogue and the practice of speaking with and to rather than speaking for others. Often the
possibility of dialogue is left unexplored or inadequately pursued by more privileged persons. Spaces in
which it may seem as if it is impossible to engage in dialogic encounters need to be transformed in order to do so, such as classrooms, hospitals,
workplaces, welfare agencies, universities, institutions for international development and aid, and governments. It has long been noted that
existing communication technologies have the potential to produce these kinds of interaction even though research and development teams
have not found it advantageous under capitalism to do so.¶ However, while there is much theoretical and practical work to be done to develop
such alternatives, the practice of speaking for others remains the best option in some existing situations. An absolute retreat weakens political
effectivity, is based on a metaphysical illusion, and often effects only an obscuring of the intellectual's power. There
can be no
complete or definitive solution to the problem of speaking for others, but there is a possibility that its
dangers can be decreased. The remainder of this paper will try to contribute toward developing that possibility.
2NC Overview
Speaking for others comes first – analyzing the social location through which the
affirmative team speaks is crucial to understanding how this round functions – it is a
priori to evaluating the round because absent understanding their social location, we
cannot accurately represent the struggle of the Zapatistas.
If you believe any bit of their case, then you must vote negative because they actually
close the political space for the Zapatistas. By “representing” the Zapatistas, they
actually push them out of the political arena because this representation means that
only the socially privileged are speaking – while the Zapatistas sit to the side and allow
themselves to be “represented” – whether or not the affirmative actually says what
they want. This means that when the Zapatistas try to enter the political spectrum,
people do not want to listen to them because they’ve already heard their story.
Absent analysis of the affirmative’s social location and how they fundamentally
CANNOT speak for the Zapatistas, we uphold the dominant structures that they
criticize so vehemently. They separate us from them, creating dichotomies. Our
evidence indicates that we must instead listen – this solves the entirety of the case
because A) the Zapatistas have their demands heard and B) allows the Zapatistas to
participate in the public process, thus breaking down social barriers.
2NC Representations Bad
Representations of the Zapatistas traps them in static ontologies and fundamentally
misrepresents them.
Tormey ’06 – Simon Tormey, Professor of Politics and Critical Theory at the University of Nottingham, UK, and Director of the Centre
for Social and Global Justice based in the School of Politics and International Relations [Parliam Aff (January 2006) 59 (1): 138-154.
http://pa.oxfordjournals.org/content/59/1/138.full#sec-1] ADoan
Where Deleuze departs from Hume is in the latter’s view that the process of naming and categorising is
a function of human interaction and sociality—more broadly of language. For Deleuze the process of
signification or representation contains at least the potential of (ontological) violence where ‘being
different’ becomes an aspect of individualisation—or becoming singular. Whereas Hume reads the
reduction of the world to the same, the similar, the ‘known and understood’ as the basis upon which life
can take place, Deleuze argues that we need to embrace a ‘superior empiricism’ in which the capacity,
propensity or desire of a singularity to differentiate itself can be preserved and nurtured for itself. If
difference is to be thought of as prior to sameness, this implies that we should resist representing
being where this would constrain singularity or do violence to the possibility of becoming singular.
Difference should not on this ground be subsumed within the same or the identical, but ‘speak for
itself’. Here Deleuze moves from Hume to Nietzsche, and from a resigned stance vis-à-vis the primacy of
systems of representation (representation via ‘analogy’ and ‘associations’ as the necessary underpinning
of sociality) to one that seeks to enlist difference within the radical reappraisal of the possibilities
available to the individual subject to ‘speak to’ her difference.
Speaking for others destroys social identities and assumes homogeneity – thus
crushing personal agency.
Hornsey et al ’05 - MATTHEW J. HORNSEY is a lecturer at the University¶ of Queensland, Australia, and the Director of the¶ Centre
for Research on Group Processes. LEDA BLACKWOOD is a postgraduate student at the¶ University of Queensland. ANNE O’BRIEN is a
postdoctoral researcher at the¶ University of Exeter, UK [Group Processes Intergroup Relations July 2005 vol. 8 no. 3 245-257, “Speaking for
Others: The Pros and Cons of Group Advocates using Collective Language”, July 18, 2005,
http://gpi.sagepub.com/content/8/3/245.full.pdf+html] ADoan
Social identities, however, are not static and¶ tangible things; rather, they are highly contextual¶ (e.g.
Haslam, Turner, Oakes, McGarty, &¶ Hayes, 1992; Turner, Oakes, Haslam, & McGarty,¶ 1994). What represents the prototype of
the¶ group can shift depending on the intergroup¶ context, and so leaders that encapsulate the¶
defining features of the group in one context¶ might be seen as less prototypical in other contexts.¶ The
challenge for leaders, then, is to¶ manage their rhetoric such that they are continually¶ adapting to the changing context and¶ locating
themselves as central members of the¶ group. Through the strategic use of language,¶
identities can be socially
constructed, and to a¶ degree, manipulated (e.g. Hopkins & Reicher,¶ 1996; Reicher & Hopkins, 2001). For example,¶ Reicher
and Hopkins (1996a) described how an¶ anti-abortionist’s speech to a medical audience¶ was managed in such a way that he claimed¶ common
ingroup membership with the audience.¶ Others have described examples of politicians¶ constructing their rhetoric such that¶ their party is
portrayed as representative of a¶ broad national ingroup (Rapley, 1998; Reicher¶ & Hopkins, 1996b). Given that people are typically¶ more
open to messages from ingroup than¶ from outgroup speakers (Hornsey, Oppes, &¶ Svensson, 2002; Mackie, Worth, & Asuncion,¶ 1990), and
that prototypical group members¶ are typically seen to be more persuasive than¶ peripheral group members (Hogg, 2001; van¶ Knippenberg,
Lossie, & Wilke, 1994), such a¶ strategy makes perfect sense.¶ One way to rhetorically emphasize common¶ ingroup membership is to use
collective language¶ (e.g. ‘we believe’). Indeed, Brewer and¶ Gardner (1996) found that the mere process of¶ priming the word ‘we’ was
enough to increase¶ the extent to which people used collective selfdescriptions.¶ Collective language, then, might¶ send out the message that
the advocate is¶ invested in and representative of the group,¶ perceptions that are critical in gaining favor. In¶ sum, the use of collective
language is predicted¶ to be effective in two ways: first, in terms of¶ influencing outgroups, and second, in terms¶ of winning over the trust and
compliance of¶ ingroup members.¶ Despite this,
there might be some circumstances¶ under which collective
language would¶ be rejected by group members. Speaking on¶ behalf of the group assumes both
homogeneity¶ in the group and agreement about what the¶ prototypical position is. In reality, this is
rare;¶ groups are not flat, undifferentiated entities.¶ Although group members share at least one¶ dimension in common
(e.g. ‘we are all women’),¶ they may have different conceptualizations¶ about what this identity means and
different¶ levels of commitment to the identity (Kelly &¶ Breinlinger, 1996). Furthermore, groups often¶
embrace a diversity of subgroups defined by¶ intragroup role assignments or by wider social¶ category
memberships (e.g. profession, socioeconomic¶ status, ethnicity). These individual¶ and subgroup
differences can manifest themselves¶ as internal struggles over status and the¶ related power to define the group’s
values¶ (Hornsey & Hogg, 2000a, 2000b, 2000c, 2002;¶ Mummendey & Wenzel, 1999; Sani & Reicher,¶ 1998, 2000). So when an
advocate speaks ‘on¶ behalf of the group’, group members have the¶ right to question just who within
the group the¶ advocate is representing.
We cannot use collective language because we are NOT Zapatistas – we are also the
worst form of representation because we come from a completely opposite social
location and represent them without their consent.
Hornsey et al ’05 - MATTHEW J. HORNSEY is a lecturer at the University¶ of Queensland, Australia, and the Director of the¶ Centre
for Research on Group Processes. LEDA BLACKWOOD is a postgraduate student at the¶ University of Queensland. ANNE O’BRIEN is a
postdoctoral researcher at the¶ University of Exeter, UK [Group Processes Intergroup Relations July 2005 vol. 8 no. 3 245-257, “Speaking for
Others: The Pros and Cons of Group Advocates using Collective Language”, July 18, 2005,
http://gpi.sagepub.com/content/8/3/245.full.pdf+html] ADoan
When operationalizing the research questions¶ described above, one is faced with a critical¶ question: What
type of advocate are
we talking¶ about? Some advocates are ‘official’ representatives¶ (e.g. politicians, activists, advocates, lobbyists)¶ who have been
employed or elected for the¶ specific purpose of representing the interests of¶ the group. But not all advocates play this role in¶ an official
sense. Sometimes, advocates are¶ rank-and-file group members who have spontaneously¶ decided to take political action: the¶ concerned
individual who fires off a letter to¶ the editor or steps up to the megaphone at a¶ rally. Although there is limited research relating¶ to this
question, it is possible that the
choice of¶ language might have different ramifications for¶ official than for
unofficial advocates.¶ As argued earlier, collective language might¶ be beneficial for an advocate because it
locates¶ them as a central member of the group, thus¶ potentially maximizing their influence. But it is¶
reasonable to expect that this is not a mindless,¶ hydraulic process; presumably people are¶ capable of consciously weighing up the identity
claims made by the advocate with the objective¶ credentials of the speaker (see Hornsey &¶ Jetten, 2003, for a related discussion on
impostors).¶
At times, official representatives can be¶ criticized for being too distant from the groups¶
that they claim to represent. An official advocate¶ (e.g. union leader, politician) often¶ accrues power,
prestige, and material reward¶ over and above the intrinsic rewards associated¶ with defending the
group. As such, they are¶ often depicted as having been seduced by their¶ position and as having
forgotten what it is like¶ to be ‘one of us’. Indeed, it is a paradox of the¶ social identity model of leadership that the very¶
process of being identified as a leader implies a¶ separateness from followers, which in turn has¶ the potential to ‘sever the empathic
intragroup¶ bond’ (Hogg, 2001, p. 195). At
worst, our representatives¶ may be seen as being of another¶ group
altogether—a reviled group of politicians¶ or activists—who have one eye on serving their¶
constituency and the other eye on serving¶ their long-term individual career goals as¶ advocates. For this
reason, group members¶ (particularly low identifiers) might feel relatively¶ comfortable hearing collective language¶ (‘we believe’) from a rankand-file member who¶ ‘emerges’ from the crowd and spontaneously¶ takes on the role of fighting for the welfare of¶ the group. In contrast,
they might feel that an¶ official advocate did not have the same entitlement¶ to speak as though they share the experiences¶ and aspirations of
the group.
We can never know who we are speaking for and thus can never hope to represent
the Zapatistas.
Adams ‘05- Tony E. Adams is a doctoral student in Communication at the University of
South Florida [Soundings: An Interdisciplinary Journal, Vol. 88, No. 3/4 (Fall/Winter 2005), pp. 331-¶ 345, “SPEAKING FOR
OTHERS: Finding the "Whos" of Discourse”, 2005, Jstor] ADoan
However, identities
remain uncertain in discourse. We can ¶ never know for "whom" we speak: "For the
most part / myself am ¶ not the 'who' of Dasein; the they-self is its 'who'" (Heidegger 312, ¶ emphasis mine). We
can never know "who" others will perceive ¶ us to be: ¶ In expressive discourse a complex of social meanings embedded ¶
within a linguistic system is put into play. These sedimented social ¶ meanings, in both the spoken and written word, transcend the epi- ¶
sodical speech act, and may indeed come to expression unbe- ¶ knownst to the speaker or author. (Schräg, Praxis 36-37) ¶ Also, we can never
know to whom we speak: "The writer's [and ¶ speaker's] audience is always a fiction" (Ong 9).
Our discourse ¶ consists of an
undetermined and diverse number of "whos," all of ¶ whom, for the most part, remain unclear. This
"identity-work" ¶ occurs on different levels in any discourse. It includes making ¶ known any personal identities, tailoring my discourse to
whom- ¶ ever I think listens, and others' labeling of me in specific ways. ¶ This is as true in an everyday, phatic communication (such as asking
one, "how are you?") as it is in a formal business ¶ presentation. ¶ In
discourse, speakers and audiences also rely upon
identity ¶ categories applicable to the situation-at-hand, and we, as speakers ¶ and audiences, must use identity
categories with which we are ¶ familiar to interpret the author of a text; we cannot return to a ¶ past time in order to
observe previous ways of classifying and in- ¶ teracting with people. We can, via texts from another
period, attempt to understand an author's discourse environment, but we ¶ can never definitively
grasp or understand it. As Charles Guignon ¶ notes, ¶ Interpretation is an ongoing, open-ended "historical"
process. It ¶ evolves through time and is subject to revision with changing inter- ¶ ests and orientations
toward life, yet it is also embedded in a con- ¶ crete historical context from which it draws its
possibilities of ¶ understanding and to which it must be faithful in its readings. ¶ (184)
2NC Alt
We cannot speak for others – rather, we should allow them to express themselves.
Foucault and Deleuze ’72 – Michel Foucault and Gilles Deleuze, philosophers extraordinaire [libcom.org “Intellectuals and
power: A conversation between Michel Foucault and Gilles Deleuze”, 1972, http://libcom.org/library/intellectuals-power-a-conversationbetween-michel-foucault-and-gilles-deleuze] ADoan
It seems to me that the political involvement of the intellectual was traditionally the product of two different aspects of his activity: his position
as an intellectual in bourgeois society, in the system of capitalist production and within the ideology it produces or imposes (his exploitation,
poverty, rejection, persecution, the accusations of subversive activity, immorality, etc); and his proper discourse to the extent that it revealed a
particular truth, that it disclosed political relationships where they were unsuspected. These two forms of politicisation did not exclude each
other, but, being of a different order, neither did they coincide. Some were classed as "outcasts" and others as "socialists." During moments of
violent reaction on the part of the authorities, these two positions were readily fused: after 1848, after the Commune, after 1940. The
intellectual was rejected and persecuted at the precise moment when the facts became incontrovertible, when it was forbidden to say that the
emperor had no clothes. The
intellectual spoke the truth to those who had yet to see it, in the name of those
who were forbidden to speak the truth: he was conscience, consciousness, and eloquence. In the most
recent upheaval (3) the intellectual discovered that the masses no longer need him to gain
knowledge: they know perfectly well, without illusion; they know far better than he and they are
certainly capable of expressing themselves. But there exists a system of power which blocks,
prohibits, and invalidates this discourse and this knowledge, a power not only found in the manifest
authority of censorship, but one that profoundly and subtly penetrates an entire societal network.
Intellectuals are themselves agents of this system of power-the idea of their responsibility for
"consciousness" and discourse forms part of the system. The intellectual's role is no longer to place
himself "somewhat ahead and to the side" in order to express the stifled truth of the collectivity; rather, it is to
struggle against the forms of power that transform him into its object and instrument in the
sphere of "knowledge," "truth," "consciousness," and "discourse. "(4) In this sense theory does not express,
translate, or serve to apply practice: it is practice. But it is local and regional, as you said, and not totalising. This
is a struggle against power, a struggle aimed at revealing and undermining power where it is most
invisible and insidious. It is not to "awaken consciousness" that we struggle (the masses have been aware
for some time that consciousness is a form of knowledge; and consciousness as the basis of subjectivity is a prerogative of the bourgeoisie),
but to sap power, to take power; it is an activity conducted alongside those who struggle for power, and not their illumination from a
safe distance. A "theory" is the regional system of this struggle. DELEUZE: Precisely. A theory is exactly like a box of tools. It has nothing to do
with the signifier. It must be useful. It must function. And not for itself. If no one uses it, beginning with the theoretician himself (who then
ceases to be a theoretician), then the theory is worthless or the moment is inappropriate. We don't revise a theory, but construct new ones; we
have no choice but to make others. It is strange that it was Proust, an author thought to be a pure intellectual, who said it so clearly: treat
my book as a pair of glasses directed to the outside; if they don't suit you, find another pair; I
leave it to you to find your own instrument, which is necessarily an investment for combat. A
theory does not totalise; it is an instrument for multiplication and it also multiplies itself. It is in the nature of power to totalise and it is your
as a theory is enmeshed in a
particular point, we realise that it will never possess the slightest practical importance unless it
can erupt in a totally different area. This is why the notion of reform is so stupid and hypocritical.
position. and one I fully agree with, that theory is by nature opposed to power. As soon
Either reforms are designed by people who claim to be representative, who make a profession of
speaking for others, and they lead to a division of power, to a distribution of this new power which is
consequently increased by a double repression; or they arise from the complaints and demands of
those concerned. This latter instance is no longer a reform but revolutionary action that
questions (expressing the full force of its partiality) the totality of power and the hierarchy that maintains it.
This is surely evident in prisons: the smallest and most insignificant of the prisoners' demands can
puncture Pleven's pseudoreform (5). If the protests of children were heard in kindergarten, if their
questions were attended to, it
would be enough to explode the entire educational system. There is no denying
that our social system is totally without tolerance; this accounts for its extreme fragility in all its
aspects and also its need for a global form of repression. In my opinion, you were the first-in your
books and in the practical sphere-to teach us something absolutely fundamental: the indignity of
speaking for others. Pe ridiculed representation and said it was finished, but we failed to draw the
consequences of this "theoretical" conversion-to appreciate the theoretical fact that only those
directly concerned can speak in a practical way on their own behalf.
Only listening grants agency – star this card – we MUST resist the urge to speak for
others – absent this, we destroy the agency of the other and thus fail to account for
their social location.
Marino ’05 – Macalester Journal of Philosophy [Marino, Lauren (2005) "Speaking For Others,"Macalester Journal of Philosophy: Vol.
14: Iss. 1, Article 4, 2005, JSTOR] ADoan
This brings us to the political issue. The¶ intuitive response is to do everything possible to allow¶ the
oppressed to speak for themselves. This is not¶ always possible. But, if language constitutes the self,¶
then who can speak for the oppressed and how can she¶ do so? Alcoff’s understanding of speaking for
others is¶ a good starting point.¶ 5¶ Her general argument is that the¶ location of the speaker affect s the
meaning and truth of¶ what is said. Moreover, the location of the speaker¶ affects the speech itself.
Language is a creative activity ¶ and what we create is contingent on where we are¶ located within
society. Alcoff’s arguments can be added¶ to Rorty’s interpretation of the self. When we speak we¶ are
not only creating new truth relative to the language¶ games we employ, but we create ourselves.
Hooks uses¶ this idea of selves to create a political program for¶ oppressed groups. She extends the
metaphor of¶ language as a game. If language is a game then it has¶ elements of competition and
power, and even ¶ playfulness. These elements can be used to make a¶ speech for others a speech to
their advantage, but with a¶ few caveats. The first is that we initially resist the urge¶ to speak for
others and listen to them. This ideally ¶ allows the speaker to share agency with the oppressed¶ by
including them in the creative process. Secondly,¶ we must account for our location and context when
we¶ speak. President Bush’s analysis of Iraq is very ¶ different from that of an Iraqi. Each should
account for¶ the way their location affects his speech. Third, the¶ speaker must be responsible for her
own speech.¶ Speaking on behalf of someone else doesn’t enable the¶ speaker to speak without thought.
Finally, the speaker¶ must attempt to take account of the affects of the speech.¶ Ultimately, we must
recognize that speaking and silence are always a political decision. We must use¶ our voice
consciously
2NC AT: Perm
Perm impossible: you can’t speak for someone and with someone at the same time.
And – it’s too late to perm – the 1AC was a speech act that ENTIRELY spoke for others
– you can’t go back now. You cannot listen now because you have already spoken for
the other.
Can’t do the alt in all other instances – that still means you lose the debate because
this specific instance turns the entirety of the aff – you ignore the cries of the
Zapatistas in this specific instance which means that even if you do the alt in all other
instances it’s game over for the aff.
Perm do the k links to severance – that’s a bad ¶ model for debate.
2NC Solves the Case
The alternative solves the case – by speaking less and listening more, we actually draw
attention to the marginalized.
Michelle Lowry ‘98, Master’s of Arts [University of Toronto, “The Construction of ‘Needy Subjects’: An
Analysis of the Representation of ‘Third World’ Children in Charity Advertising”, 1998,
https://tspace.library.utoronto.ca/bitstream/1807/15441/1/MQ40660.pdf] ADoan
In order to avoid the methodological pitfalls of image and stereotype analysis alone, Shohat and Stam
suggest that critics speak less of images and more of voices and discourses. By voice, they are
referring to the ability of marginalised groups to speak on their own behalf, and the practice of
advantaged groups "speaking for" marginalised people. Shohat and Stam suggest that voice and image should be
considered together dialectically, calling attention to the cultural voices at play in a given text. If for example, a specific group
identifies with a community voice or discourse then a negative image is not as important as the
identification itself. Bhabha also argues that the "point of intervention should shift from the identification of images as positive or negative, to
an understanding of the process of subjectification made possible (and plausible) through stereotypical discourse" (Bhabha, 1990, p. 7 1). In
other words, the study of stereotypes should focus on how they affect the way people are positioned and understood as subjects. As
opposed to just identifying stereotypes as positive or negative. A move away from the domain of
stereotypes and images done to a focus on the "character and consequences of representational
practices" (MacLear, 1994, p. 4) would draw attention to the content, context and effects of the
representation of marginalised groups. This shift would allow the critic to investigate how relations
between dominant and marginalised groups are "structured and mediated through representation"
(MacLear, 1994, p. 4). A move towards the interrogation of voice and discourse does not mean that critics
should not investigate stereotypes. Instead, we should view stereotypes as one element of colonial
and racist discourse.
Interaction by people outside of our social location is key to solve agency problems –
we must open a space for interaction rather than speaking for others. Only solving
agency problems allows the Zapatistas to act for themselves.
Emirbayer and Mische ’98 - Mustafa Emirbayer (Ph.D. 1989, Harvard University) is Professor of Sociology at the University of
Wisconsin at Madison and Dr. Ann Mische is an associate professor of Social Research at the University of Notre Dame [American Journal of
Sociology, Vol. 103, No. 4 (January 1998), pp. 962-1023, “What Is Agency?”, January 1998, Jstor] ADoan
Third, we wish
to stress that our conception of agency is intrinsically¶ social and relational (Emirbayer 1997)
since it centers around the engagement (and disengagement) by actors of the different contextual
environments that constitute their own structured yet flexible social universes.¶ For this reason, and also
because of our deep resonance with both classical¶ and contemporary pragmatism, one might characterize our approach as¶ relational
pragmatics. Viewed internally,
agency entails different ways of¶ experiencing the world, although even here, just as
consciousness is always consciousness of something (James 1976; Husserl 1960), so too is¶ agency always agency toward
something, by means of which actors enter¶ into relationship with surrounding persons, places,
meanings, and events.¶ Viewed externally, agency entails actual interactions with its contexts, in¶ something like an ongoing
conversation; in this sense, it is “filled with¶ dialogic overtones,” as a sort of “link in the chain of speech communication” (Bakhtin 1986, pp. 92,
91). Following Mead and Joas, we
highlight¶ the importance of intersubjectivity, social interaction, and
communication as critical components of agentic processes: agency is always a dialogical¶ process by
and through which actors immersed in temporal passage engage with others within collectively
organized contexts of action.¶ Finally, we ground this capacity for human agency in the structures¶ and processes of the human self,
conceived of as an internal conversation¶ possessing analytic autonomy vis-a`¶ -vis transpersonal interactions. We¶ conceptualize the self not
as a metaphysical substance or entity, such as¶ the “soul” or “will” (see White 1995), but rather as a dialogical structure,¶ itself thoroughly
relational. Our perspective, in other words, is relational¶ all the way down.9¶ We
cannot begin to explore here the ontology
of the¶ self or the full implications for agency of such categories as “desire” (although see Lacan 1977). Nor can
we present here a systematic analysis of¶ the components or structures of this self, or elaborate a new
philosophical¶ psychology, although we can suggest, following Norbert Wiley (1994,¶ p. 210) in The Semiotic Self, that
“the interpretive process [taking place¶ within it] is, within limits, open and free,” and that this “in turn allows¶
humans to create as well as to pursue goals.”10 We maintain that while¶ transpersonal contexts do both constrain
and enable the dialogical process, such contexts cannot themselves serve as the point of origin of
agentic¶ possibilities, which must reside one level down (so to speak), at the level¶ of self-dynamics.
Listening to the narratives of others – rather than telling them ourselves – reveals
crucial cultural divisions to us, and allows the subjected to develop a sense of
movement.
Emirbayer and Mische ’98 - Mustafa Emirbayer (Ph.D. 1989, Harvard University) is Professor of Sociology at the University of
Wisconsin at Madison and Dr. Ann Mische is an associate professor of Social Research at the University of Notre Dame [American Journal of
Sociology, Vol. 103, No. 4 (January 1998), pp. 962-1023, “What Is Agency?”, January 1998, Jstor] ADoan
Narrative construction.—Such identification of typical trajectories is¶ closely tied to the construction of
narratives that locate future possibilities¶ in relation to more or less coherent causal and temporal
sequences. While¶ narratives are not identical with projects (since narratives represent a particular cultural structure that may exist
independently of intentionality),¶ they do provide cultural resources by which actors can develop a sense¶ of
movement forward in time (i.e., the proverbial beginning, middle, and¶ end). Jerome Bruner (1986) notes that the plots of such
stories contain¶ at least three basic elements: plight, character, and consciousness; these¶ elements help actors to visualize proposed
resolutions to lived conflicts¶ (see also Taylor 1989). All
social groups possess repertoires of stories that¶ serve as
temporal framing resources and that help to define membership¶ in a community (Carr 1986; Somers 1992);
the degree of specificity and¶ complexity with which futures are imagined is closely related to the salience of existing narratives and the
“careers” (White 1992) that they present as both morally and practically acceptable. While
narratives provide¶ “maps of
action” (Ricoeur 1991) and thus help to institutionalize stages in¶ the life course (Meyer 1986), they
also, because of their flexible and metaphoric structure, can be used to experimentally posit new
resolutions to¶ emerging problems.
State bad K
1NC SHELL
We reject the affirmative’s engagement with statist concepts. Only this rejection
produces individual thought and checks back against the blurring function of
bureaucracy.
MANN, 97 (Fredrick, N.S.P.I.C. DEBATE (Neuro-Semantic Political Illusion Complex) http://www.mind-trek.com/reports/tl07e.htm
Statist fraud-concepts like "government," "state," "law," etc. tend to have a debilitating effect. People
who cling to these concepts can't think straight on the subject of political systems, they generally feel
helpless and impotent because they see themselves as small and insignificant compared to the enormous
monolithic monster they call "government" or "state" - collectivist thinking. On the other hand, when you ditch the
statist fraud-concepts, you think in terms of individuals. You are almost never faced with a "huge unbeatable enemy";
instead you are faced with individuals - individual bureaucrats (including police) with much of their behavior fairly
predictable - making it relatively easy to organize your life and affairs so they are least likely to bother you - individualistic thinking. You'll
be amazed by how much more powerful and capable you'll become when you ditch statist fraud-concepts and think individualistically. Operating
this way also gives you a much more powerful attitude. You'll be amazed at the additional options that become available to you. So take off your
blinkers and ditch the statist fraud-concepts!
We can’t continue to divorce ourselves from politics. We should acknowledge the
dangerous power of absolute moral imperatives and replace them with the recognition
that individual action has unlimited consequences. Any alternative risks the violence
that characterized autocracies in the 20th century.
ZUPANCIC, 00 (Alenka, “Ethics of the Real”, pg:97) http://ideiaeideologia.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/zupancicethics_of_the_real.pdf
We do not contest the validity of this argument per se. But
the problem is that it leaves us with an image of Kantian
ethics which is not very far from what we might call an 'ethics of tragic resignation': a man is only a
man; he is finite, divided in himself - and therein lies his uniqueness, his tragic glory. A man is not God,
and he should not try to act like God, because if he does, he will inevitably cause evil. The problem with this
stance is that it fails to recognize the real source of evil (in the common sense of the word). Let us take the example which is most frequently
used, the Holocaust: what
made it possible for the Nazis to torture and kill millions ofJews was not simply
that they thought they were gods, and could therefore decide who would live and who would die, but the fact that they
saw themselves as instru- ments of God (or some other Idea), who had already decided who could live
and who must die. Indeed, what is most danger- ous is not an insignificant bureaucrat who thinks he
is God but, rather, the God who pretends to be an insignificant bureaucrat.
One could even say that, for the
subject, the most difficult thing is to accept that, in a certain sense, she is 'God', that she has a choice. Hence the right answer to the religious
promise of immortality is not the pathos of the finite; the
basis of ethics cannot be an imperative which commands us
to endorse our finitude and renounce our 'higher', 'impossible' aspirations but, rather, an imperative
which invites us to recognize as our own the 'infinite' which can occur as something that is 'essentially
a by-product' of our actions.
0.1 percent risk of us solving then that means you vote neg
MANN, 97 (Fredrick, N.S.P.I.C. DEBATE (Neuro-Semantic Political Illusion Complex) http://www.mind-trek.com/reports/tl07e.htm
FM: You still don't know what this debate is about. It's not really about the "nature of government" -- it's about your
De Rivaz Hallucination -- DRH.
DRH
hallucination: the
is at the root of the "government" problem. If even 0.1 percent (one in a thousand) of freedom-
lovers were to cure themselves
of DRH
and learn to communicate about it effectively, the cure would
start spreading more rapidly. This would greatly accelerate the solution of the "government"
problem.
Even if only one percent of readers could fairly quickly understand this debate, it will probably induce
a further 5-10 percent to start thinking and questioning. Some will also realize the profound increase in personal power
that comes with transcending DRH. JDR quoting Shakespeare: "The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers." - Henry VIFM: No,
John/Shakespeare. You got it horribly wrong. The
first thing we do, let's kill all the hallucinations in our heads -particularly the hallucination that the lawyers' noises and scribbles constitute "the law."
The alt is to reject the “state” as our superior. Only by rejection can we truly solve
SPUNK LIBRARY, NO DATE (an online anarchist library and archive)
http://www.spunk.org/texts/intro/faq/sp001547/secI4.html
In other words, the "planned administration of things" would be done by the producers themselves, in independent groupings. This would
likely take the form (as we indicated in section I.3) of confederations of syndicates who communicate information between themselves
and response to changes in the production and distribution of products by increasing or decreasing the required means of production in
a cooperative (i.e. "planned") fashion. No
"central planning" or "central planners" governing the economy, just
workers cooperating together as equals. Therefore, an anarchist society would abolish work by
ensuring that those who do the work actually control it. They would do so in a network of self-managed associations,
a society "composed of a number of societies banded together for everything that demands a common effort: federations of producers for all
kinds of production, of societies for consumption . . . All
these groups will unite their efforts through mutual
agreement . . . Personal initiative will be encouraged and every tendency to uniformity and centralisation combated"
[Peter Kropotkin, quoted by Buber in Paths in Utopia] In response to consumption patterns, syndicates will have to expand or reduce
production and will have to attract volunteers to go the necessary work. The very
basis of free association will ensure
the abolition of work, as individuals will apply for "work" they enjoy doing and so would be interested in
reducing "work" they did not want to do to a minimum. Such a decentralisation of power would unleash a wealth of
innovation and ensure that unpleasant work be minimalised and fairly shared (see section I.4.13).
2nc/1nr overviews
AT THE TOP: KRITIK SOLVES THE CASE BUT AVOIDS VIEWING THE GOVERNMENT AS
SOLUTION AKIN TO “GOD”. ASSUMING “THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT” HAS
COLLECTIVE WILL TRANSFORMS IT INTO A SUPER-ENTITY SUPERIOR TO MERE
MORTALS. THIS RHETORIC ACCEDES TO POWER OVER THE POPULATION, ENABLES
SACRIFICIAL GENOCIDES, And MAKES EXTINCTION INEVITABLE SO IT’S TRY OR DIE FOR
THE NEGATIVE.
Extend competition - K competes textually b/c the aff plan text, and K text cannot be put together we do
not include the term “USFG” at any point
 Mann 97 ev: indicates that the word “government” necessarily imposes the notion of a monolithic
“big brother”: which is just a figment of people’s imagination the aff’s attachment to a monolithic
sovereign.
Zupancic says the impact is people consider this word/concept as valid and a given, the impact is over a
hundred million people dead, b/c the notion of the monolithic state literally constrains human agency 2
the role of subordinate bureaucrats, which makes resistance to totalitariansm and omnicide impossible.
His warrant is that it allows political brainwashing, and makes us blind patriots willing 2 go 2 war for the
sake of being “loyal citizens.”
VOTING NEGATIVE SOLVES – REJECTING FRAUD CONCEPTS LIKE ‘GOVERNMENT’ EMPOWERS
OURSELVES AND BREAKS THROUGH THE NUMBING EFFECT OF THE COLLECTIVE.
2nc/1nr framework
They get to weigh their impacts, but only if they prove their methodology is correct in
getting there – if we disprove that, they have no solvency in the first place
AND WE WIN IN EVEN IF UTIL FRAMEWORK - ALTERNATIVE SOLVES 100% BUT
WITHOUT VIOLENCE – (Again) That’s the Mann evidence
IF YOU ACCEPT THEIR FRAMEWORK, WE TURN THEIR CASE BECAUSE VIOLENCE
PREVENTS SOLVENCY – That’s Zupancic
2nc/1nr AT perms
AT: Perm do the K
Do the K
(1.) PERM IS SEVERANCE, TWO WAYS:
(A.) FUNCTIONALLY – we exclude fiat of the entire ‘federal government,’ perm severs certainty of the
plan which is guaranteed by “resolved” – makes them un-topical
(B.) TEXTUALLY –
(1) the word “government” only occurs in the plan, our Mann evidence generates a net benefit. The
text is central to our strategy SEVERANCE IS A VOTING ISSUE – even if they don’t go for the
perm, it ruins neg strategy, forces us to waste time, and encourages further shifts in the rebuttals
(2.) The 1AC use of “government” conditions the mind into hierarchy, that’s Mann. Only a risk
they link and we don’t.
AT: Perm Do both
(1.) PERM STILL LINKS
(A.) LINKS HARDER – PLACING THE K NEXT TO THE PLAN SHARPENS THE DISTINCTIONS BETWEEN
INDIVIDUALS AND THE SO CALLED ‘GOVERNMENT.’ ONLY EXCLUDING THE STATE ALL TOGETHER
ALLOWS RECOGNITION THAT IT’S ACTUALLY INDIVIDUALS WHO MAKE AND ENFORCE THE LAWS.
(B.) STARTING POINTS MATTER – BEGINNING YOUR POLITICS IN WORSHIP OF THE STATE CRUSHES THE
MOVE TO PERSONAL AGENCY.
(2) ‘DO BOTH’ IS VAGUE AND A VOTING ISSUE:
(A.) CAN MORPH – BECOMES SEQUENCING OR PLAN-AND-PART-OF-CP IN THE
REBUTTALS, MAKES THE 2NR IMPOSSIBLE
(B.) TIME SKEW – WE HAVE TO SPEND MINUTES ON A THREE-WORD PERM, THEY SHOULD
READ ALL OF BOTH PLANS
(C.) DOESN’T TEST COMPETITION IN A TEXTUAL FRAMEWORK – ‘DO BOTH’ ISN’T FOUND
IN EITHER ADVOCACY, SO IT CAN’T BE EVALUATED
(3) DEFER TO RISK ANALYSIS IF WE SOLVE ALL OF THE AFF – IT’S THE ONLY WAY TO RESOLVE TWO
SIMILAR CHOICES. ANY CHANCE OF A LINK IS ENOUGH TO VOTE NEG.
AT PERM: Do the Plan and Reject Statism in other/all other ways
1)
Links harder.– PLACING THE K NEXT TO THE PLAN SHARPENS THE DISTINCTIONS BETWEEN
INDIVIDUALS AND THE SO CALLED ‘GOVERNMENT.’ ONLY EXCLUDING THE STATE ALL TOGETHER
ALLOWS RECOGNITION THAT IT’S ACTUALLY INDIVIDUALS WHO MAKE AND ENFORCE THE LAWS.
2)
Severance – they immediately reject the implementation of the plan – the government, all of
the things they defend in the 1AC as key to solvency – Voter for two reasons: First means they
are not topical because they are not resolved. Two: Severance bad because the Affirmative
shifts out of the 1AC, makes debate unpredictable and logically they can continue to shift in
2AR.
NO SOLVENCY THROUGH THE GOVERNMENT
AT: Not Competitive
(1.) TEXTUAL COMPETITION IS GOOD
(A.) Ground – plan is all we get pre-round, it’s the core of our strategy, which shouldn’t be contingent on
cross-x or clarifying function
(B.) Predictable – they wrote the plan and should have net benefits to every word. It’s better than veto,
consult, or any number of counterplans based on functionality
(C.) Education on precise language is best – Writing is an essential job skill, they should defend their
textual advocacy
(2.) COMBINING TEXTUAL AND FUNCTIONAL COMPETITION DESTROYS NEGATIVE STRATEGY –
ELIMINATES ALL GENERIC CPS WHICH ARE CRITICAL TO BALANCE MASSIVE AMOUNT OF TOPICAL
AFFIRMATIVES.
(3.) Words implicate solvency – ADVOCATING FREEDOM WHILE EMPLOYING COLLECTIVIST
LANGUAGE ENSURES THE PLAN WILL BE EMPLOYED AS PART OF A rejection
AT: other
At state good
Us perceiving the government in the current sphere is bad because we aren’t getting our inviduality
that’s the Mann card also the Zupancic card talks about how that the state is an insignificant bureaucrat
that we perceive as our savior and they always suppress us. Also the whole reason they are running this
aff is because the Mexican government surprised the Zapatistas, so by reading that the state is good, is
contradicting themselves
AT cede the political
So does the aff if the link is true because we are just kritiking the USFG
We accept the aff’s political, but provide a better way to show it
both of the Gelsomino cards talks about how that’s how the Zapatistas function with discourse and
debate is key for that meaning, so in that since we aren’t operating in the political sphere
The alternative is almost exactly the same as the affirmative
AT case outweighs
The case doesn’t outweigh…in fact you can only solve the case when we don’t recognize the state, the
Mann card talks about ho if we don’t recognize the state that’s when we become true individuals, and
can actually engage of the politics of the Zapatistas an engage with the Zapatistas
Cap
1NC - Cap
Marxism requires being a unified front to attack – the Zapatista’s advocacy for a
incomplete rebellion prevents true reform
Proyect 3 (Louis, Former professor at Columbia University, worldwide author on Marxism, “Fetishizing the Zapatistas: a critique of
"Change the World Without Taking Power," http://www.columbia.edu/~lnp3/mydocs/modernism/holloway.htm, Luke Newell)
For Marx, the only way to overcome alienation (and fetishism, by implication) is to change material
conditions: "This 'alienation' (to use a term which will be comprehensible to the philosophers) can, of
course, only be abolished given two practical premises. For it to become an 'intolerable' power, i.e. a
power against which men make a revolution, it must necessarily have rendered the great mass of
humanity 'propertyless', and produced, at the same time, the contradiction of an existing world of
wealth and culture, both of which conditions presuppose a great increase in productive power, a high
degree of its development. And, on the other hand, this development of productive forces (which itself
implies the actual empirical existence of men in their world-historical, instead of local, being) is an
absolutely necessary practical premise because without it want is merely made general, and with
destitution the struggle for necessities and all the old filthy business would necessarily be reproduced;
and furthermore, because only with this universal development of productive forces is a universal
intercourse between men established, which produces in all nations simultaneously the phenomenon of
the 'propertyless' mass (universal competition), makes each nation dependent on the revolutions of
the others, and finally has put world-historical, empirically universal individuals in place of local ones."
(German Ideology; emphasis added) This is the reason that Marxists have historically targeted the state.
In order to achieve a classless society, it is necessary to develop the productive forces to such a high
degree that competition for goods becomes more and more unnecessary. As leisure time and the
general level of culture increases, human beings will enjoy a level of freedom that has never been
attainable in class society. For a variety of reasons, socialist revolutions have occurred in backward
countries where the development of productive forces has been hampered by a number of factors,
including imperialist blockade, technological and industrial underdevelopment, low productivity of
labor and the need to stave off invasions and subversion--in other words, the kinds of conditions that
make a country like Cuba fall short of communist ideals. Notwithstanding Cuba's difficulties, the
revolution has made a significant impact on peoples' lives, so much so that it earned the praise of James
Wolfensohn, the president of the World Bank, in May of 2001: "Cuba has done a great job on education
and health and if you judge the country by education and health they've done a terrific job."
Wolfensohn was simply recognizing the reality of statistics in the bank's World Development Indicators
report that showed Cubans living longer than other Latin Americans, including residents of the US
Commonwealth of Puerto Rico. Literacy levels were on a par with Uruguay, while the life expectancy
rate was 76 years, second only to Costa Rica at 77. Infant mortality in Cuba was seven deaths per 1,000
live births, much lower than the rest of Latin America. While it is true that Cuba is enmeshed in a myriad
of ways within the world capitalist economy, it did withdrew from the World Bank and its sister lending
agency, the International Monetary Fund, in 1959. Despite the collapse of the USSR and continuing
efforts to destroy the country economically by the USA, Cuba continues to develop its productive
capabilities and raise the cultural level of the people. Turning to Chiapas, the general picture is far less
encouraging. In a February 3, 2003 Newsday article titled "Infant Deaths Plague Mexico", we learn that
the Comitan hospital serves nearly 500,000 people in Chiapas. Burdened by inadequate staffing and
supplies, babies die at twice the national rate. Meanwhile, the February 21, 2001 Financial Times
reported on a study conducted by the Association for the Health of Indigenous Children in Mexico in the
village of Las Canadas, Chiapas. It found that not one girl had adequate nutritional levels compared
with 39.4 per cent of boys. Female malnutrition has actually led to physical shrinking over the last
decade from an average height of 1.42 meters to 1.32 meters. At the same time, more than half of
women who speak an indigenous language are illiterate - five times the national average. While nobody
can blame the EZLN for failing to make a revolution in Mexico, we would be remiss if we did not point
out the obvious material differences between the two societies, especially in the countryside where
poverty has traditionally been extreme. With its abundant natural resources, including oil and fertile
farmland, it is not too difficult to imagine how much of a difference a socialist Mexico would have
made in the lives of the poor. For John Holloway, access to decent medical care seems far less
important than "visibility", a term that he sees as practically defining Zapatismo and presumably missing
altogether in dreary Cuban state socialism. This is expressed through the balaclava, the mask that
Subcommandante wore at press conferences and which has since been appropriated by Black Block
activists breaking Starbucks windows in the name of anti-capitalism: "The struggle for visibility is also
central to the current indigenous movement, expressed most forcefully in the Zapatista wearing of the
balaclava: we cover our face so that we can be seen, our struggle is the struggle of those without face."
While every movement certainly needs an element of mystique, it is doubtful that the Zapatista
movement could sustain itself over the long haul using such symbols. Nor is it likely that it could
succeed without linking up to a dynamic, rising mass movement in the rest of Mexico. Localized peasant
struggles have a long history in Mexico going back to the 19th century. If you strip away the balaclava
and Subcommandante Marcos's laptop, you will find all the elements that ultimately frustrated the
efforts of the original Zapata, namely the failure of a regional uprising to become part of a general
assault on state power and the social and economic transformation of society. To fetishize these sorts
of incomplete and partial rebellions as a new way of doing politics not only does a disservice to the
valiant efforts of the Mayan people, it also creates obstacles to those of us who also want to change
the world but on a more favorable basis. For in the final analysis, it requires a democratic and
centralized movement of the working class and its allies to take power in a country like Mexico.
Capitalism ensures nuclear wars and repression of lower classes – the only way to end
the threat of extinction is a transition away from capitalism
Webb 4 (Sam Webb is chair of the Communist Party USA, “War, capitalism, and George W. Bush,” http://www.peoplesworld.org/warcapitalism-and-george-w-bush/, Luke Newell)
We are living in a fragile and unstable world. But perhaps that has always been the lot of humankind –
certainly, it is a state of affairs as old as capitalism. ¶ Capitalism was never a warm, cuddly, stable social
system. It came into the world dripping with blood from every pore, as Marx described it, laying waste
to old forms of production and ways of life in favor of new, more efficient manufacturing. Since then it
has combined nearly uninterrupted transformation of the instruments of production with immense
wealth for a few and unrelieved exploitation, insecurity, misery, and racial and gender inequality for
the many, along with periodic wars, and a vast zone of countries imprisoned in a seemingly
inescapable web of abject poverty. ¶ Yet as bad as that record is, its most destructive effects on our
world could still be ahead. ¶ Why do I say that? Because capitalism, with its imperatives of capital
accumulation, profit maximization and competition, is the cause of new global problems that threaten
the prospects and lives of billions of people worldwide, and, more importantly, it is also a formidable
barrier to humankind’s ability to solve these problems. ¶ Foremost among these, in addition to
ecological degradation, economic crises, population pressures, and endemic diseases, is the threat of
nuclear mass annihilation. ¶ With the end of the Cold War, most of us thought that the threat of nuclear
war would fade and with it the stockpiles of nuclear weapons. ¶ But those hopes were dashed. Rather
than easing, the nuclear threat is more palpable in some ways and caches of nuclear weapons are
growing. And our own government possesses the biggest stockpiles by far. Much like previous
administrations, the Bush administration has continued to develop more powerful nuclear weapons, but
with a twist: it insists on its singular right to employ nuclear weapons preemptively in a range of military
situations. This is a major departure from earlier U.S. policy – the stated policy of all previous
administrations was that nuclear weapons are weapons of last resort to be used only in circumstances in
which our nation is under severe attack. ¶ Meanwhile, today’s White House bullies demonize, impose
sanctions, and make or threaten war on states that are considering developing a nuclear weapons
capability. Bush tells us that this policy of arming ourselves while disarming others should cause no
anxiety because, he says, his administration desires only peace and has no imperial ambitions. Not
surprisingly, people greet his rhetorical assurances skeptically, especially as it becomes more and more
obvious that his administration’s political objective is not world peace, but world domination, cunningly
couched in the language of “fighting terrorism.” ¶ It is well that millions of peace-minded people distrust
Bush’s rhetoric. The hyper-aggressive gang in the Oval Office and Pentagon and the absolutely lethal
nature of modern weapons of mass destruction make for a highly unstable and explosive situation that
could cascade out of control. War has a logic of its own. ¶ But skepticism alone is not enough. It has to be
combined with a sustained mobilization of the world community – the other superpower in this unipolar
world – if the hand of the warmakers in the White House and Pentagon is to be stayed. ¶ A heavy
responsibility rests on the American people. For we have the opportunity to defeat Bush and his
counterparts in Congress in the November elections. Such a defeat will be a body blow to the policies of
preemption, regime change, and saber rattling, and a people’s mandate for peace, disarmament,
cooperation, and mutual security. The world will become a safer place. ¶ In the longer run, however, it is
necessary to replace the system of capitalism. With its expansionary logic to accumulate capital
globally and its competitive rivalries, capitalism has an undeniable structural tendency to militarism
and war. ¶ This doesn’t mean that nuclear war is inevitable. But it does suggest that nuclear war is a
latent, ever-present possibility in a world in which global capital is king. Whether that occurs depends
in large measure on the outcome of political struggle within and between classes and social
movements at the national and international level.
Capitalism’s reliance on oil makes war and environmental destruction inevitable –
peak oil also makes collapse inevitable
Knight 9 (Alex Knight, bachelor’s and Master’s degree in political science from Lehigh University, teacher, writer, activist, “3. Why is it
Breaking Down?” http://endofcapitalism.com/about/3-why-is-it-collapsing/, Luke Newell)
Oil is the lifeblood of capitalism; there is literally nothing on this earth that can replace it as the
dominant fuel for the engine of global capitalism. It’s not just that 40% of energy comes from oil,
making it the world’s #1 energy source, the key point is that the particular applications of oil are vital to
the entire economic structure. For example, 99% of the world’s pesticides are chemically produced
from oil (and almost all industrial fertilizers derive from natural gas), which means the entire industrial
mode of agriculture that has taken dominance over the world’s farmland depends upon abundant
cheap petroleum. In fact, including tractors, chemicals, packaging, distribution, and cooking, every
single calorie of food in the United States requires at least 10 calories of fossil fuel energy to bring that
food to the plate. The pharmaceutical industry, chemical, plastics, and military are equally dependent.¶
In addition to being found in just about everything we consume, petroleum is now also necessary for
fueling the extraction, production, packaging, and distribution of all other resources. Most crucially, oil
now powers 95% of all transportation, in the form of gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel. By definition the
global economy depends on the rapid transport of people and resources on a global scale, which
means burning oil and dumping billions of tons of carbon into the atmosphere, causing global
warming and destabilizing the Earth’s climate. Meanwhile, because oil is such a powerful resource,
states necessarily view it as a strategic imperative to maintain access to supplies. The quest for cheap
and available oil therefore becomes a prime motive for military action and warfare, as we’ve seen in
the actions of the US in the Middle East, where 66% of the world’s remaining oil lies.¶ Warfare and
climate chaos stand out as particularly devastating consequences of the massive rate of oil
consumption, but the reality is that the entire global assault on human justice and natural ecosystems
would in many ways not be possible without being fueled by cheap and abundant oil. Luckily, oil as a
resource is limited in supply (imagine the destruction if it weren’t), and in fact according to a growing
chorus of geologists, the worldwide supply of oil is now reaching its ultimate maximum level and will
soon enter decline.¶ The Global Oil Production Peak¶ The evidence shows that the global peak oil
production is here today. This historic event is occurring approximately 40 years after the peak
discovery of oil, in the mid-1960s. Since that time, less and less oil has been found worldwide, while
demand has skyrocketed. This isn’t the place for a full explanation of Peak Oil, but it serves to point out
that at least 54 countries have already reached their domestic peak oil, including the United States.
Data indicates that the immense run-up of prices in 2007-2008 can best be explained as a result of
global oil shortage, which certainly added stress to the financial markets and likely helped trigger the
current crisis.¶ Can This Continue?¶ The deepening oil shortage will affect the United States and its
imperialist project in a unique way. Having risen to power on a sea of oil in the first half of the 20th
century, the U.S. reached its peak oil in 1970 and now imports over 2/3 of its consumption. Still by far
the largest consumer of oil, using over 25% of global supply, the country is being forced into deeper
and deeper debt to pay for it. This enormous trade deficit is only counteracted by the willingness of
foreign countries from whom the United States purchases most of its stuff (Saudi Arabia for its oil, China
for its consumer goods), to recycle their dollars back into the US by purchasing Treasury Bonds, stocks,
real estate and other dollar-denominated assets. As U.S. financial markets crumble, how long until these
foreign countries decide their investments are safer elsewhere, and pull the rug out from under the
Empire?¶ In the face of this crisis, there has been and will continue to be corporate-driven hype about
“alternative fuels” that could theoretically be used to replace oil, including ethanol and tar sands. But
none of these fuels can provide the enormous energy that oil does with as little energy required to
supply it, which makes them highly suspect in terms of fueling further economic growth. Also, the most
hyped of these fuels are even more destructive than petroleum. For example corn ethanol has so far
done more to fuel a global food crisis than anything productive, as crops get diverted from hungry
mouths into gas tanks. But literally nothing has shown itself to be more devastating to living systems
than the Alberta tar sands.
The alternative is to reject the affirmative’s capitalist relations
Hollowing out capitalism solves – also avoids transition wars
HEROD, 04 ( James, “The Strategy described abstractly Section 6. of Getting Free, 4th Edition”)
http://site.www.umb.edu/faculty/salzman_g/Strate/GetFre/4-06.htm
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, nonhierarchical, 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, wageslavery, that we can’t simply stop participating in (but even here there are ways we can chip away at it).
Capitalism must be explicitly refused and replaced by something else. This constitutes War, but it is not
a war in the traditional sense of armies and tanks, but a war fought on a daily basis, on the level of
everyday life, by millions of people. It is a war nevertheless because the accumulators of capital will
use coercion, brutality, and murder, as they have always done in the past, to try to block any rejection
of the system. They have always had to force compliance; they will not hesitate to continue doing so.
Nevertheless, there are many concrete ways that individuals, groups, and neighborhoods can gut
capitalism, which I will enumerate shortly. We must always keep in mind how we became slaves; then we
can see more clearly how we can cease being slaves. We were forced into wage-slavery because the
ruling class slowly, systematically, and brutally destroyed our ability to live autonomously. By driving us
off the land, changing the property laws, destroying community rights, destroying our tools, imposing
taxes, destroying our local markets, and so forth, we were forced onto the labor market in order to
survive, our only remaining option being to sell, for a wage, our ability to work. It’s quite clear then how
we can overthrow slavery. We must reverse this process. We must begin to reacquire the ability to live
without working for a wage or buying the products made by wage-slaves (that is, we must get free from
the labor market and the way of living based on it), and embed ourselves instead in cooperative labor and
cooperatively produced goods. Another clarification is needed. This strategy does not call for reforming
capitalism, for changing capitalism into something else. It calls for replacing capitalism, totally, with a
new civilization. This is an important distinction, because capitalism has proved impervious to reforms, as
a system. We can sometimes in some places win certain concessions from it (usually only temporary
ones) and win some (usually short-lived) improvements in our lives as its victims, but we cannot reform it
piecemeal, as a system. Thus our strategy of gutting and eventually destroying capitalism requires at a
minimum a totalizing image, an awareness that we are attacking an entire way of life and replacing it with
another, and not merely reforming one way of life into something else. Many people may not be
accustomed to thinking about entire systems and social orders, but everyone knows what a lifestyle is, or
a way of life, and that is the way we should approach it. The thing is this: in order for capitalism to be
destroyed millions and millions of people must be dissatisfied with their way of life. They must want
something else and see certain existing things as obstacles to getting what they want. It is not useful to
think of this as a new ideology. It is not merely a belief-system that is needed, like a religion, or like
Marxism, or Anarchism. Rather it is a new prevailing vision, a dominant desire, an overriding need. What
must exist is a pressing desire to live a certain way, and not to live another way. If this pressing desire
were a desire to live free, to be autonomous, to live in democratically controlled communities, to
participate in the self-regulating activities of a mature people, then capitalism could be destroyed.
Otherwise we are doomed to perpetual slavery and possibly even to extinction.
2NC
AT: Perm
1. The alt is to vote negative, their perm is severance which is a voting issue because it
allows the 2ac to spike out of original plan text intent. Moots the 1nc and irreversibly
destroys neg block strategy.
2. The reason you vote neg is because you are rejecting the commands of capitalism.
Herod says that only by saying no to capitalism can we hollow out our existing power
structures. Marsh says that we need to ethically reject cap.
1. Our link arguments are reasons why the affirmative is a command from the cap
system, our trainer ev: indicates that <the links> actually makes capitalism worse by
allowing planetary destruction to continue
2. Voting neg is a form of insubordination and refusal to live according to the dictates of
capital. Demands on the state take the command structure of capital as our principle
reference point. This form of organizing always results in betrayal and cooption.
Perm doesn’t work – you can’t clean up part of capitalism, you must take down the
entirety of it.
Kovel ‘2 – Joel Kovel is an American Scholar and Author [The Enemy of Nature, Published by Zed Books, 2002,
http://books.google.com/books?id=Weavh4NQcwC&pg=PA154&lpg=PA154&dq=expanded+profitability+%E2%80%94+and+greater+ecodestruction.&source=bl&ots=
irP8Q822Yq&sig=5vm3t-e9z8Z-J0ihnad4oPBu2D4&hl=en&sa=X&ei=8HXUUaOyOK34AOr24GYCw&ved=0CCwQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=expanded%20profitability%20%E2%80%94%20and%20greater%20ecodest
ruction.&f=false] ADoan
The value-term that subsumes everything into the spell of capital sets going a kind of wheel of
accumulation, from production to consumption and back, spinning ever more rapidly as the inertial
mass of capital grows, and generating its force field as a spinning magnet generates an electrical field.
This phenomenon has important implications for the reformability of the system. Because capital is so
spectral, and succeeds so well in ideologically mystifying its real nature, attention is constantly
deflected from the actual source of eco-destabilization to the instruments by which that source acts.
The real problem, however, is the whole mass of globally accumulated capital, along with the speed of
its circulation and the class structures sustaining this. That is what generates the force field, in
proportion to its own scale; and it is this force field, acting across the numberless points of insertion
that constitute the ecosphere, that creates ever larger agglomerations of capital, sets the ecological
crisis going, and keeps it from being resolved. For one fact may be taken as certain — that to resolve
the ecological crisis as a whole, as against tidying up one corner or another, is radically incompatible
with the existence of gigantic pools of capital, the force field these induce, the criminal underworld
with which they connect, and, by extension, the elites who comprise the transnational bourgeoisie. And
by not resolving the crisis as a whole, we open ourselves to the spectre of another mythical creature,
the many-headed hydra, that regenerated itself the more its individual tentacles were chopped away.
To realize this is to recognize that there is no compromising with capital, no schema of reformism that
will clean up its act by making it act more greenly or efficiently We shall explore the practical
implications of this thesis in Part III, and here need simply to restate the conclusion in blunt terms: green
capital, or non-polluting capital, is preferable to the immediately ecodestructive breed on its immediate
terms. But this is the lesser point, and diminishes with its very success. For green capital (or
‘socially/ecologically responsible investing’) exists, by its very capital-nature, essentially to create more
value, and this leaches away from the concretely green location to join the great pool, and follows its
force field into zones of greater concentration, expanded profitability — and greater ecodestruction.
There are crises within capitalism, which both generates them¶ and is dependent upon them. Crises
are ruptures in the accumu-¶ lation process, causing the wheel to slow, but also stimulating¶ new tums;
they take many shapes, have long or short cycles, and¶ many intricate effects upon ecologies. A
recession may reduce¶ demand and so take some of the load off resources; recovery¶ may increase
this demand, but also occur with greater efficiency,¶ hence also reduce the load. Thus economic crises
condition the¶ ecological crisis, but have no necessary effect on it. There is no¶ singular generalization
that covers all cases. James O'Connor¶ summarizes the complexity:¶ Capitalist accumulation normally
causes ecological crisis of cer-¶ tain types; economic crisis is associated with partly different and¶
partly similar ecological problems of different severity; external¶ barriers to capital in the form of
scarce resources, urban space,¶ healthy and disciplined wage labor, and other conditions of¶ production
may have the effect of raising costs and threatening¶ profits; and finally, environmental and other social
movements¶ defending conditions of life, forests, soil quality, amenities,¶ health conditions, urban space,
and so on, may also raise costs¶ and make capital less flexible.”¶
Framework
1. Our interpretation is that The aff has to defend the methodology behind their plan.
2. Method first – it validates ones ontological and epistemological universe
Hollis and Smith 96 (Martin and Steve, Profs of IR, “A Response: Why Epistemology Matters”) Malhar
Now, there are two problems with this: first it seems a very odd way of distinguishing between ontology and epistemology. It implies, inter alia,
that historians
who write biographies are epistemologists, whilst historians who survey periods and
movements are ontologists. That strikes us as nonsensical. The second problem is that they fail to see the extent to
which Gidden’s claims are only possible precisely because he has already made an epistemological
choice. Indeed, this choice is spelt out very clearly in the preface to the book Jabri and Chan cite. Giddens explicitly rejects structural
sociology, seeing the focus of social theory as being on the actors and their interpretations of situations. In this critically important way he has
Far from downplaying the role of epistemology in favour of ontology, his
stress on ontology can only be made because he has already decided what kinds of criteria allow us to
judge what kinds of things exist in the social world. For Giddens, the appropriate epistemological position is one of what
we call ‘Understanding’. He defines social structures as the rules and resources that are grounded in the
knowledgeable activities of human agents. Structures are not external to actors but are internal to them. Here, Giddens
shows just how important epistemology is: it is only because he is working n the right-hand column of
our two-by-two matrix that he can say that epistemology is secondary. After all, if you settle
epistemological questions by fiat you are then likely to see them as settled! Thus, whilst Gidden’s
work is seen by Jabri and Chan as promoting a conception of structuration that overcomes questions
of epistemology by concentrating instead on questions of ontology, the paradox is that he has done
no such thing.
already dealt with epistemology!
3. Key to philosophical education—allows us to view the resolution from different
mindsets and different worlds, a world with capitalism and a world without
capitalism.
2NC Links
Link—Latin America
Latin American countries all have a capitalist economy
Petras 09 (Prof. James Petras, 19 November 2009, “Neoliberalism and the Dynamics of Capitalist
Development in Latin America” http://www.globalresearch.ca/neoliberalism-and-the-dynamics-ofcapitalist-development-in-latin-america/16167) Malhar
Latin America’s “restructured” capitalist economy emerged from the financial crisis of the 1990s and the
recession of the early years of the new millennium with its axis of growth anchored in the primary
sector of agro-mineral exports (Cypher, 2007; Ocampo, 2007). From 2003 to 2008 all Latin American economies,
regardless of their ideological orientation or political complexion, based their economic growth
strategy on the “re-primarization” of their export production, to take advantage thereby of the
expanding markets for oil, energy and natural resources and the general increase in the price of
primary commodities on the world market. The driving force of capitalist development in this period
was agribusiness and mineral exports, export-oriented production of primary commodities leading to
an increased dependence on diversified overseas markets and a change in the correlation of class
forces, strengthening the right and, notwithstanding a generalized tilt to the Left at the level of the
state, a weakening of the Left. Ironically, the primarization of exports led to the revival and strengthening of neoliberalism via the
reconfiguration of state policy to favor agro-mineral exporters and accommodate the poorest section through populist clientelistic “poverty
programs”. In the context of a primary commodities boom and the emergence of a range of democratically elected centre-left regimes, trade
union leaders were coopted and the social movements that had mobilized the forces of resistance to
neoliberalism in the 1990s were forced to beat a retreat from the class struggle (Petras and Veltmeyer, 2009).¶
Links – Collapse Rhetoric
Threats of “economic collapse” merely prop up capitalism – they implicitly accept that
capitalism is the best and only approach to govern economic systems
ŽiŽek ‘97 [Slavoj, lacanian psychoanalyst par excellance [slavoj, “multiculturalism, or, the cultural logic
of multinational capitalism,” new left review #224, pp. 34-35]
Today, financial crisis is a permanent state of things the reference to which legitimizes the demands to
cut social spending, health care, support of culture and scientific research, in short, the dismantling of
the welfare state. Is, however, this permanent crisis really an objective feature of our socio-economic
life? Is it not rather one of the effects of the shift of balance in the ‘class struggle’ towards Capital,
resulting from the growing role of new technologies as well as from the direct internationalization of
Capital and the co-dependent diminished role of the Nation-State which was further able to impose
certain minimal requirements and limitations to exploitation? In other words, the [financial] crisis is an
‘objective fact’ if and only if one accepts in advance as an unquestionable premise the inherent logic
of Capital—as more and more left-wing or liberal parties have done. We are thus witnessing the
uncanny spectacle of social-democratic parties which came to power with the between-the-lines
message to Capital ‘we will do the necessary job for you in an even more efficient and painless way than
the conservatives’. The problem, of course, is that, in today’s global socio-political circumstances, it is
practically impossible effectively to call into question the logic of Capital: even a modest socialdemocratic attempt to redistribute wealth beyond the limit acceptable to the Capital ‘effectively’ leads
to economic crisis, inflation, a fall in revenues and so on. Nevertheless, one should always bear in mind
how the connection between ‘cause’ (rising social expenditure) and ‘effect’ (economic crisis) is not a
direct objective causal one: it is always-already embedded in a situation of social antagonism and
struggle. The fact that, if one does not obey the limits set by Capital, a crisis ‘really follows’, in no way
‘proves’ that the necessity of these limits is an objective necessity of economic life. It should rather be
conceived as a proof of the privileged position Capital holds in the economic and political struggle, as
in the situation where a stronger partner threatens that if you do X, you will be punished by Y, and
then, upon your doing X, Y effectively ensues.
Links – Trade
Free trade is based upon a biased system that forces the exploitation of the poor and
desperate
De Angelis 2000 [Massimo, lecturer in Political Economy at University of East London Trade, the
global factory and the struggles for new commons, Paper presented at the CSE conference "Global
Capital and Global Struggles: Strategies, Alliances, and Alternatives” July 2000 ] ADoan
Let us be clear from the outset. There is no such as thing as "faire" trade liberalisation. To the billion of
people in the global economy, trade liberalisation is part of the project to impose upon them the
discipline of the global factory. This discipline is the competing game itself. Whether is Pakistan’s
textiles that replaces Italian’ textile workers or a British telecommunication firm that make Thailand's
telecom workers redundant, it is the game itself that sucks. Whatever gains some group of workers
obtain due to their competitive advantage, some other group of workers loses out, until they
themselves are forced to take notice of a new competitive force which came to displace them. And if we
patently follow the economists’ advice to wait for the long-term positive effect of trade, we are left to
wonder: isn’t it now the long term of 200 hundreds yeas ago, of 100 years ago, of 50, 40 years ago, of
twenty years ago? The people who died as result of the new enclosures accompanying trade
liberalisation in all these years, the people who suffered war as result of the disintegration of the social
fabric brought about by structural adjustment and associated export promotion, the people of any
country of the North has to run in the competing rat race no less, but even more than in the past, just to
acquire what is on average necessary to live with dignity, the average people struggling to overcome
an imposed condition of scarcity when in fact we live in plenty, can we say these people have
benefited of the long term advantage of trade? Nonsense, nobody can make these sorts of judgements.
Without a proper assessment of human, social and environmental costs of modern trade, one cannot
even to start talking about long term or short term advantages of trade. Without taking into
consideration the voice of those without voice the rhetoric of trade benefits is a bias rhetoric. If there
is no way anybody can argue whether trade has brought advantages or disadvantages, the only thing
we can say with certainty is that because of current patterns of trade the context in which our lives
and struggles of today are located is different than the context of our lives and struggles of yesterday
and, if trade liberalisation continues, of tomorrow. However, the recomposing factors of various
movement in Seattle last November, can be summarised by the slogan “no new round, WTO
turnaround.” With this slogan the movement sets against the boundlessness of capital’s accumulation,
but there is more. “No new round”, all movements agree. "WTO turnaround”, here is the problem,
because people start to ask and debate “where to?” The problem for us is to identify, in the context of
the large movement emerged in Seattle and that has set a temporary limit to trade liberalisation,
whether it is possible to start to promote a debate towards an independent position of planetary civil
society, one that does not bow to the easy traps of the free trade ideology. To do so, we must open a
debate on the contradictory nature of trade in this phase of capitalist accumulation, its meaning and
implications for a diverse organisation of human and natural resources of the planet. To gain an
independent position of planetary civil society, we must start to think about proposals of transformation
of current society within a conceptual grid that is independent from the main current dogmas that
sustain capital's discourse: competition and, especially, the meaning of growth. Behind these
unqualified concepts, there lies the project of today’s capital’s strategies.
Links – Hegemony
Hegemony internationalizes capitalism and violently coerces all those who attempt to
reject the system.
Rwengabo ’12 – Sabastiano Rwengabo, Department of Political Science, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, National University of
Singapore [Eastern Africa Social Science Research Review
Volume 28, Number 1, January 2012, “Hegemony: From Domestic Dominance to Global Empire”, January 2012, Project Muse] ADoan
¶
Hegemony internationalises through capitalist accumulation and the search for economic surplus, giving the
capitalist class overwhelming economic power. This economic power originates in the internationalisation of capital. Karl
Marx states this in the Communist Manifesto: "the need of a constantly expanding market for its
products chases the bourgeoisie over the entire surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle
everywhere, establish connections everywhere" - hence modern capitalist globalisation (Marx 1848, 6). He
goes on to indicate how the capitalist class secures political control: "Each step in the development of the bourgeoisie was
accompanied by a corresponding political advance of that class ... The bourgeoisie has at last ... conquered for itself ...
exclusive political sway. The executive of the modern state is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole
bourgeoisie" (Marx and Engels 1848, 4-5). This entry into the political legroom allows the bourgeoisie the wherewithal to institute lego-political,
ideological and other institutional forms that perpetuate "naked self-interest" and "brutal exploitation"; institutions for the internationalisation
of domestic relations of production, exchange and socioeconomic existence into international ones pronounced as state interests in
international relations. The
entrenchment of hegemony through the role of international organisations,
transnational business companies (such as Turkey's trade and investment and air services companies addressed by Amb Tom
Wheeler), and the cooptation of elites from periphery societies, combine to make international
hegemony resilient. It is now able to penetrate the remotest of the world and bringing its diverse humanity into its fold (Hardt and
Negri 2000). Hegemony at the international level is its replication from the domestic level. The state, seen at the international level, is an
enlarged reflection of the social relations at domestic level. The implications are clear: for instance the
neutralisation of West
European and American Labour Movements4 and progressive intellectuals allowed capitalist
production to resist anti-capitalist elements, allowing the same values of economic liberalisation to find a footing in the
neoliberalism that was adopted by structural adjustment countries, hence liberalisation of their economies, privatisation and entrenchment of
laissez-faire approach to economic governance. Through economic, industrial, ideational-intellectual and political processes the
internationalisation of hegemony is unquestionably apt through a cosmopolitanising modernity that we now call globalisation. Marx states:
[End Page 10]¶ The
bourgeoisie has through its exploitation of the world market given a cosmopolitan
character to production and consumption in every country. To the great chagrin of Reactionists, it has drawn from
under the feet of industry the national ground on which it stood. All old-established national industries have been destroyed or are daily being
destroyed. They are dislodged by new industries, whose introduction becomes a life and death question for all civilised nations, by industries
that no longer work up indigenous raw material, but raw material drawn from the remotest zones; industries whose products are consumed,
not only at home, but in every quarter of the globe. In place of the old wants, satisfied by the production of the country, we find new wants,
requiring for their satisfaction the products of distant lands and climes. In place of the old local and national seclusion and self-sufficiency, we
have intercourse in every direction, universal inter-dependence of nations. And as in material, so also in intellectual, production. The
intellectual creations of individual nations become common property.National
one-sidedness and narrow-mindedness
become more and more impossible, and from the numerous national and local literatures, there
arises a world literature. The bourgeoisie, by the rapid improvement of all instruments of production,
by the immensely facilitated means of communication, draws all, even the most barbarian, nations
into civilisation. The cheap prices of commodities are the heavy artillery with which it batters down all
Chinese walls, with which it forces the barbarians' intensely obstinate hatred of foreigners to
capitulate. It compels all nations, on pain of extinction, to adopt the bourgeois mode of production; it
compels them to introduce what it calls civilisation into their midst, i.e., to become bourgeois
themselves. In one word, it creates a world after its own image. Global universalism, economic and non-economic intercourse in every
direction, universal inter-dependence of nations, material and intellectual production, and compulsions are not invisible today. Thus effectively
the hegemonic "compels all nations, on pain of extinction, to adopt the bourgeois mode of production" or global capitalism. Thus no
society has survived capitalism; instead development is now seen as synonymous with capitalist development, capitalist
consumption, capitalist maximisation and capitalist existence. This is so given the internationality and interconnectedness of global production
we now witness. This determines the power of the state in international politics: "[g]reat powers have relative freedom to determine their
foreign policies in response to domestic interests; smaller powers have less autonomy" (Cox 1983, 169). When the distribution of material
capabilities changes, realists argue, power changes: hence dominant-class-controlled states with material (read economic) capabilities are the
ones to drive the political sway in international affairs (Waltz 1979). And these material capabilities, Marxists would argue, are based on
economic prowess most-times controlled by the big capitalist class. Domestic
interests are projected with capitalist
interests in the current [End Page 11] world order. As Teschke emphasises the Marxian thesis: "the need for an expanding
market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the whole surface of the globe" (Teschke 2008,164). But the capitalist class needs the state
for its protection, security of its interests and survival beyond borders: going it alone may reduce its capacity to resist counter-capitalist
responses in other countries (Robinson 2005). Thus
the domestic state is subdued to such a degree that it is
subjected to capitalist interests, so that at the time of internationalisation the state and capitalist
interests are almost (if not completely) indistinguishable. In this process states act as "guarantors of exploitative and
antagonistic class-divided societies" (Ibid.). The result is the "vertical deepening and horizontal widening of capitalism, progressively unifying
the world geographically, homogenising national differences socio-politically, while polarising class-relations universally" (Ibid.). In the
international realm the capitalist class also hegemonises. This
leads to what Hardt and Negri call Empire - a
representation of a globalised capitalist rule facilitated by modern techno-scientific systems,
ideational and social-value forces, institutions and rules.
Links – Oil
Oil is the blood of capitalism.
Huber ‘13 – Dr. Matthew T. Huber, Assistant Professor of Geography at Syracuse University [ECONOMIC GEOGRAPHY,
Volume 89, Issue 2, Article first published online: 31 JAN 2013, “Fueling Capitalism: Oil, the Regulation¶ Approach, and the
Ecology of Capital”, Ebsco] ADoan
Despite a deepening set of socioecological contradictions, it is remarkable that oil’s centrality to
capitalism persists. In economic geography, the regulation¶ approach has been useful in explaining
the persistence of capitalism despite its contradictory tendencies, and scholars have recently applied
the¶ regulation approach to the geography of natural¶ resources and environmental governance. In this¶
article, I argue that environmental regulation theory¶ is ill equipped to explain the persistence of
petrocapitalism in the United States. This literature has¶ been constructed largely through a critique of
regulation theory on two grounds: ignoring the ecological¶ dimension and relying on periodization.
Conversely, I aim to show that petro-capitalism can be usefully analyzed through the very classical regulationist lens that environmental
appropriations jettison. First, rather than positing nature as an unexamined “extraeconomic” dimension, the case of oil reveals how ecology
can be integrated into a foundational concept of the regulation approach—the wage relation. Specifically, the Fordist wage relation of mass
production for mass consumption was dependent on the construction of a specific kind of “high energy economy.” Massive productivity gains
in the labor process, powered by electricity, created larger pressures for an equally energy-intensive geography of consumption. In this respect,
oil played a decisive role in the extension of the spaces between home and work through the partial generalization of automobility and singlefamily home ownership. Second, I attempt to recuperate the method of “periodization” by explaining how a set of institutional supports served
to regularize the provision of oil through the domestic oil market from 1935 through 1972. I end with a discussion of the “institutional
exhaustion” of a specifically national form of petro-Fordism during the 1970s. On April 20, 2010, the Deepwater Horizon rig in the deep waters
of the Gulf of Mexico exploded, killing 11 workers and fomenting the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history. This disaster seemed to come at the
perfect historical moment to reveal the contradictions of President Obama’s energy policies. Only 3 weeks prior to the spill, Obama announced
a massive endeavor to open up much of the Atlantic coast to offshore drilling. Framed as a necessary concession to Republicans to get a
climate bill passed, Obama’s famous defense of the policy would haunt him as the oil gushed into the Gulf: “It turns out, by the way, that oil
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rigs today generally don’t cause spills. They are technologically very advanced” (Obama 2010).¶ The Gulf
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Oil spill represents the
latest in a history¶ of visceral reminders of the contradictions of petrocapitalism in the United
States.1¶ From the oil shocks¶ of the 1970s to the debacle of the Iraq war, it remains¶ clear that U.S. oil
consumption patterns forebode a¶ widening set of geopolitical, ecological, and social¶ crises. Indeed,
beginning with President Richard M.¶ Nixon’s “Project Independence” through George W.¶ Bush’s
proclamation that “America is addicted to oil,”¶ every American president has pledged to make the¶
United States “energy independent.”Nevertheless, American petro-capitalism persists.¶ In fact, in the
midst of the oil spill, American petroleum consumption increased for the first time in¶ nearly three
years (Energy Information Administration 2011a). Since much scholarly effort is focused on¶ how to
move toward a “postpetroleum” future, it is¶ equally important to offer explanations of why the¶
U.S. addiction to oil continues to reproduce itself¶ despite its many contradictions. In fact, this project
is¶ aligned with one of the most influential toolkits in¶ economic geography—the regulation approach
(RA).¶ In their review, Tickell and Peck (1992, 194)¶ explained perhaps the core thesis of the RA: “In spite¶
of its inherent contradictions and deeply embedded¶ crisis tendencies, the capitalist system appears¶
capable of continually reproducing itself.” In their¶ recent volume on the RA, Jessop and Sum ( 2006, 16)¶
also claimed that the RA is motivated by “interest in¶ the recurrent stabilization of capitalism, despite its¶
crisis tendencies.”
¶
2NC ALT
Individual action does produce change – denying the system of capitalism makes it fall
down.
Ainger et al ‘4 [Editorial collective of activists, editors, writers, teachers, and artists, Nov. 7 2004.
Katherine, Graeme Chesters, Tony Credland, John Jordan, Andrew Stern, and Jennifer Whitney. We Are
Everywhere: The Irresistible Rise of Global Anticapitalism ed. Notes From Nowhere
http://www.narconews.com/Issue35/article1121.html] ADoan
But all
gods have a secret vulnerability: they cease to exist when people no longer believe in them. Trust
corporate collapses and financial scandals rock the markets, and the democratic
deficit expands as people desert the charade of participation by voting, trust is in short supply. And
failure of belief in a system spreads fast. A contagious whisper, it ripples through the multitude, rising to a roar.
The roar was responded to by the World Economic Forum in 2003, when it chose “Rebuilding Trust” as
the theme for the gathering. As preparation for the meeting it commissioned a massive public opinion survey representing the views
of 1.4 billion people spanning every continent. The results, according to the WEF, revealed “that trust in many key institutions
has fallen to critical proportions.” The least-trusted of the 17 institutions in the survey were national governments and
is the fuel of power. As
corporations. Two-thirds of those surveyed worldwide disagreed that their country is “governed by the will of the people” and half distrusted
the WTO and the IMF to operate in the best interest of society. The
crisis of legitimacy [of capitalism] has hit
uncontainable proportions. According to a leaked email from a writer invited to Davos in 2003, the
fear amongst the guests was palpable. “These people are freaked out,” she wrote, describing her
dinner conversations with the elite. Despite their privilege and wealth, they know that their legitimacy is waning, that we have
seen through them, that when trust has been eroded it becomes increasingly difficult to wield power. Refusing to Cooperate “The tap root
of power lies below the surface. It is obedience, cooperation, collusion: the social glue that ensures
that each day proceeds much like the last. Every single one of us has the power to give or withhold our
willing participation. To ‘reproduce’ or reshape society.” – Alex Begg, Empowering the Earth: Strategies for Social Change, Green Books
We are led to believe that the system of power is like a pyramid, similar to a food chain with the dominant species at the top maintaining its
control over those at the bottom through superior strength and violence. But if an avalanche swept away all at Davos tomorrow, not much
would really change because the power the Davos class accrues, through their ownership of capital, extends everywhere. There is a secret,
however, that those on the mountaintop rarely reveal, which is that their power exists to some extent because we allow it to. They want us to
believe that they wield power over us with their weapons and armies and police forces, and although their violence is highly effective in
disrupting our movements, hurting our bodies and making us afraid, violence alone can’t guarantee their continued existence. Ultimately, it
depends upon us believing in their power, in their immutability, and failing to recognize our own. This was the substance of Shelley’s furious
ballad of 1819 when he wrote the famous lines to Manchester’s working poor after troops fired on them in the Peterloo massacre: “Rise, like
lions after slumber / In unvanquishable number/ Shake your chains to earth like dew / Which in sleep had fall’n on you! / Ye are many, and they
are few.” In reality, the system is more like a huge wedding cake than a pyramid: multiple layers of dominance held up by many pillars – pillars
which are institutions and individuals, values and belief systems. Successful
movement strategies, therefore, are those
that identify the key pillars in society, and work to weaken their compliance until they break [them].
As we take away one pillar, others begin to wobble and the system trembles.
The alternative is to participate in mass noncooperation – this promotes freedom,
justice, and can effectively breakdown the system – further, their blanket solvency
claims ensure failure
Knight 9 (Alex Knight, bachelor’s and Master’s degree in political science from Lehigh University, teacher, writer, activist, “3. Why is it
Breaking Down?” http://endofcapitalism.com/about/3-why-is-it-collapsing/, Luke Newell)
I believe strongly that we will win the future by mass noncooperation with the forces of fear and
violence. The demise of capitalism and empire is closing the curtain on corporate globalization, and
people the world over are going to seize the opportunity to redefine how they want to live with each
other and in connection to the Earth, on a local level. Ultimately technology, the economy, and even
culture will need to be appropriate to its surroundings. What works in a bioregion like the Great Plains
might be different from what works in the desert, which might be different from what works in the
inner city, or what once were the suburbs. This is exactly as it should be; it is impossible to construct a
uniform formula that all individuals and communities should follow. The best we can lay out are core
values to guide us on the journey we are about to undertake. And if we look inside ourselves, five such
core values immediately present themselves: democracy, justice, sustainability, freedom and love.¶
Ella Baker inspired the U.S. Civil Rights Movement and the other social movements of the ‘60s and ‘70s
with her principle of participatory democracy: individuals and communities having control of the
decisions that affect their lives. In those massive, decentralized movements this doctrine proved
successful not only as the ideal end but also as the best means available to social change activists. To
create a world in which workers control their workplaces, students and teachers control their
education, communities control their land and resources, women control their bodies, etc., our efforts
towards that goal must also function through democratic decision-making. We must make sure that our
movements remain inclusive of those with differing views and backgrounds, and we must involve
more and more people by keeping our messaging and tactics relevant to the average person on the
street. When people see themselves in the movement because we are speaking their language, they will
join us.¶ A sense of justice teaches us that our movements must be feminist, anti-racist, queer and
trans-positive, and anti-classist. Systems of oppression which privilege one group of people over
another cannot be a part of the future society we are working towards, and therefore they cannot go
unchallenged as we do our work. We must be sensitive to the fact that each and every one of us has
been negatively affected by patriarchy, white supremacy, class and heteronormativity in different and
overlapping ways, and even though some of us may be privileged for being male and/or white, for
example, it is in everyone’s interest to break these systems of oppression. A famous quote by
indigenous activist Lilla Watson shines a helpful light on this subject: “If you have come here to help me,
you are wasting your time. But if you have come here because your liberation is bound up with mine,
then let us work together.Ӧ Obviously we are working towards sustainability, but what does that really
mean? On a planet that has been devastated by industrial capitalism, and now is in danger of mass
extinction or catastrophic climate change, it is not enough that we merely switch energy sources or
technologies, while maintaining an economic structure based on growth. Industrial mass production and
global monoculture, no matter the system of government managing them, are antithetical to
sustainability. We can save trillions of dollars, create billions of jobs, and drastically reduce the threat
of climate change, simply by eliminating wasteful and unnecessary industrial production.¶ But not all
industries deserve the same treatment. For example, when it comes to transportation, it would be
responsible of government to invest in high-speed rail and other forms of desperately-needed public
transit, but there’s also a real need for small-scale bike construction and repair, which will create many
more jobs than mechanized auto production plants. Overall, a sustainable economy requires that we
drastically downscale and relocalize production, consumption and trade to the human level. In the
future we will all be more connected to the land and what nature readily provides, and not waste what
we do not need. However, that doesn’t mean we are all going to be huddled together and starving,
either. In the days before Empire and the State, humans worked an average of 2-4 hours a day (mostly
hunting, gathering, making their own tools and shelter, etc.), and yet ate more nutritiously and were far
healthier than all but the wealthiest people today at the height of industrial capitalism. Industrialization
itself is at the root of the unsustainability of our current society. We must move beyond it, and bring
the human economy back within the web of the ecosystem rather than an alien force above it.
2NC IMPACTS
Ethics Impact
Rejecting capitalism is an ethical priority—it determines our policy making
Zizek and Daly ‘04 (Slavoj and Glyn “Conversations with Zizek” Pg. 14-16) Malhar
For Zizek it is imperative that we cut through this Gordian knot of postmodern protocol and recognize
that our ethico-political responsibility is to confront the constitutive violence of today’s global
capitalism and its obscene naturalization / anonymization of the millions who are subjugated by it
throughout the world. Against the standardized positions of postmodern culture – with all its pieties
concerning ‘multiculturalist’ etiquette – Zizek is arguing for a politics that might be called ‘radically
incorrect’ in the sense that it break with these types of positions 7 and focuses instead on the very
organizing principles of today’s social reality: the principles of global liberal capitalism. This requires
some care and subtlety. For far too long, Marxism has been bedeviled by an almost fetishistic
economism that has tended towards political morbidity. With the likes of Hilferding and Gramsci, and
more recently Laclau and Mouffee, crucial theoretical advances have been made that enable the
transcendence of all forms of economism. In this new context, however, Zizek argues that the problem
that now presents itself is almost that of the opposite fetish. That is to say, the prohibitive anxieties
surrounding the taboo of economism can function as a way of not engaging with economic reality and
as a way of implicitly accepting the latter as a basic horizon of existence. In an ironic Freudian-Lacanian
twist, the fear of economism can end up reinforcing a de facto economic necessity in respect of
contemporary capitalism (i.e. the initial prohibition conjures up the very thing it fears). This is not to
endorse any kind of retrograde return to economism. Zizek’s point is rather that in rejecting
economism we should not lose sight of the systemic power of capital in shaping the lives and destinies
of humanity and our very sense of the possible. In particular we should not overlook Marx’s central
insight that in order to create a universal global system the forces of capitalism seek to conceal the
politico-discursive violence of its construction through a kind of gentrification of that system. What is
persistently denied by neo-liberals such as Rorty (1989) and Fukuyama (1992) is that the gentrification
of global liberal capitalism is one whose ‘universalism’ fundamentally reproduces and depends upon a
disavowed violence that excludes vast sectors of the world’s populations. In this way, neo-liberal
ideology attempts to naturalize capitalism by presenting its outcomes of winning and losing as if they
were simply a matter of chance and sound judgment in a neutral market place. Capitalism does indeed
create a space for a certain diversity, at least for the central capitalist regions, but it is neither neutral
nor ideal and its price in terms of social exclusion is exorbitant. That is to say, the human cost in terms
of inherent global poverty and degraded ‘life-chances’ cannot be calculated within the existing
economic rationale and, in consequence, social exclusion remains mystified and nameless (viz. the
patronizing reference to the ‘developing world’). And Zizek’s point is that this mystification is magnified
through capitalism’s profound capacity to ingest its own excesses and negativity: to redirect (or
misdirect) social antagonisms and to absorb them within a culture of differential affirmation. Instead of
Bolshevism, the tendency today is towards a kind of political boutiquism that is readily sustained by
postmodern forms of consumerism and lifestyle. Against this Zizek argues for a new universalism
whose primary ethical directive is to confront the fact that our forms of social existence are founded
on exclusion on a global scale. While it is perfectly true that universalism can never become Universal
(it will always require a hegemonic-particular embodiment in order to have any meaning), what is novel
about Zizek’s universalism is that it would not attempt to conceal this fact or reduce the status of the
abject Other to that of a ‘glitch’ in an otherwise sound matrix.
Capitalism isn’t ethical, democratic, or moral – it takes away from those three areas
DERESIEWICZ 12 (WILLIAM DERESIEWICZ is an American author, essayist, and literary critic – He
taught at Yale University from 1998-2008, NY Times, Capitalists and Other Psychopaths, May 12, 2012,
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/13/opinion/sunday/fables-of-wealth.html) IMTIAZ
There are ethical corporations, yes, and ethical businesspeople, but ethics in capitalism is purely
optional, purely extrinsic. To expect morality in the market is to commit a category error. Capitalist
values are antithetical to Christian ones. (How the loudest Christians in our public life can also be the
most bellicose proponents of an unbridled free market is a matter for their own consciences.) Capitalist
values are also antithetical to democratic ones. Like Christian ethics, the principles of republican
government require us to consider the interests of others. Capitalism, which entails the single-minded
pursuit of profit, would have us believe that it’s every man for himself.
Root Cause - Oppression
Capitalism perpetuates a system of endless repression of the lower classes and
promotes the interests of the elite. Endorsing this system ensures continued
repression
Badiou 12 (Alain Badiou, philosophy teacher at the Ecole normale supérieure and the Collége international de philosophie in Paris, French
philosopher at the European Graduate School, The Rebirth of History: Times of Riots and Uprisings, pg. 12-13, Verso publishing, we do not
endorse ableist language, Luke Newell)
Capitalism entrusts the fate of peoples to the financial appetites of a tiny oligarchy. In a sense, it is a
regime of gangsters. How can we accept the law of the world being laid down by the ruthless interests
of a camarilla of inheritors and parvenus? Cannot those whose only norm is profit reasonably be called
‘gangsters’? Individuals who are ready, in the service of this norm, to trample over millions of people if
necessary? That the fate of millions of people actually depends on the calculations of such gangsters is
now so patent, so conspicuous, that acceptance of this ‘reality’, as the gangsters’ scribblers call it, is
ever more surprising. The spectacle of states pathetically frustrated because a small, anonymous troop
of self-proclaimed evaluators has given them a bad mark, as would an economics prof to dunces, is at
once farcical and highly disturbing. So, dear voters, you have put in power people who tremble at night
like schoolchildren when they learn in the early hours that representatives of the ‘market’ – i.e. the
speculators and parasites of the world of property and capital – have rated them AAB rather than
AAA? Is it not barbarous, this consensual hold over our official masters by our unofficial masters, whose
sole concern is their current and future profits in the lottery in which they stake their millions? Not to
mention that their anguished bawling – ‘a!a!b!’ – will have to be paid for by compliance with the
mafia’s commands, which are invariably of the following kind: ‘Privatize everything. Abolish help for
the weak, the solitary, the sick and the unemployed. Abolish all aid for everyone except the banks.
Don’t look after the poor; let the elderly die. Reduce the wages of the poor, but reduce the taxes of
the rich. Make everyone work until they are ninety. Only teach mathematics to traders, reading to big
property-owners and history to on-duty ideologues.’ And the execution of these commands will in fact
ruin the life of millions
Environment
Capitalism inherently destroys the environment.
Newman ’06 – Robert Newman, writer for the Guardian [Guardian, “It's capitalism or a habitable
planet - you can't have both”, 2/2/06
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2006/feb/02/energy.comment/print] Adoan
There is no meaningful response to climate change without massive social change. A cap on this and a
quota on the other won't do it. Tinker at the edges as we may, we cannot sustain earth's life-support
systems within the present economic system.¶ Capitalism is not sustainable by its very nature. It is
predicated on infinitely expanding markets, faster consumption and bigger production in a finite
planet. And yet this ideological model remains the central organising principle of our lives, and as long
as it continues to be so it will automatically undo (with its invisible hand) every single green initiative
anybody cares to come up with.¶ Much discussion of energy, with never a word about power, leads to
the fallacy of a low-impact, green capitalism somehow put at the service of environmentalism. In reality,
power concentrates around wealth. Private ownership of trade and industry means that the decisive
political force in the world is private power. The corporation will outflank every puny law and
regulation that seeks to constrain its profitability. It therefore stands in the way of the functioning
democracy needed to tackle climate change. Only by breaking up corporate power and bringing it
under social control will we be able to overcome the global environmental crisis.¶ On these pages we
have been called on to admire capital's ability to take robust action while governments dither. All hail
Wal-Mart for imposing a 20% reduction in its own carbon emissions. But the point is that supermarkets
are over. We cannot have such long supply lines between us and our food. Not any more. The very
model of the supermarket is unsustainable, what with the packaging, food miles and destruction of
British farming. Small, independent suppliers, processors and retailers or community-owned shops
selling locally produced food provide a social glue and reduce carbon emissions. The same is true of food
co-ops such as Manchester's bulk-distribution scheme serving former "food deserts".¶ All hail BP and
Shell for having got beyond petroleum to become non-profit eco-networks supplying green energy.
But fail to cheer the Fortune 500 corporations that will save us all and ecologists are denounced as antibusiness. Many career environmentalists fear that an anti-capitalist position is what's alienating the
mainstream from their irresistible arguments. But is it not more likely that people are stunned into
inaction by the bizarre discrepancy between how extreme the crisis described and how insipid the
solutions proposed? Go on a march to the House of Commons. Write a letter to your MP. And what
system does your MP hold with? Name one that isn't pro-capitalist. Oh, all right then, smartarse. But
name five.¶
Capitalism causes extinction through environmental collapse: the tipping point is
approaching rapidly.
Foster and Clark ’12 – John Bellamy Foster, professor of sociology at University of Oregon, and Brett
Clark, professor of sociology and anthropology at NC State University [Monthly Review: An Independent
Socialist Magazine, “The Planetary Emergency”, 2012, Ebsco] ADoan
Science today tells us that we have a generation at most in which to ¶ carry out a radical
transformation in our economic relations, and our ¶ relations with the earth, if we want to avoid a
major tipping point or ¶ “point of no return,” after which vast changes in the earth’s climate ¶ will likely
be beyond our ability to prevent and will be irreversible.4¶ At ¶ that point it will be impossible to stop the
ice sheets in Antarctica and ¶ Greenland from continuing to melt, and thus the sea level from rising ¶ by as much as “tens of
meters.”5¶ Nor will we be able to prevent the ¶ Arctic sea ice from vanishing completely in the summer
months, or carbon dioxide and methane from being massively released by the decay ¶ of organic
matter currently trapped beneath the permafrost—both ¶ of which would represent positive feedbacks dangerously
accelerating climate change. Extreme weather events will become more and ¶ more frequent and destructive.
An article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences demonstrated that the record-breaking heat wave that ¶ hit the Moscow area
in 2010 with disastrous effect was made five times ¶ more likely, in the decade ending in that year as compared with earlier ¶ decades, due to
the warming trend, implying “an approximate 80% ¶ probability” that it “would not have occurred without climate warming.” Other instances
of extreme weather such as the deadly European ¶ heat wave in 2003 and the serious drought in Oklahoma and Texas in ¶ 2011, have been
shown to be connected to earth warming. Hurricane ¶ Sandy, which devastated much of New York and New Jersey at the end ¶ of October
2012, was impacted and amplified to a considerable extent ¶ by climate change.6¶ The point of irreversible climate change is usually thought of
as ¶ a 2°C (3.6°F) increase in global average temperature, which has been ¶ described as equivalent at the planetary level to the “cutting down
of ¶ the last palm tree” on Easter Island. An increase of 2°C in global average temperature coincides roughly with cumulative carbon emissions ¶
of around one trillion metric tons. Based on past emissions trends it ¶ is predicted by climate scientists at Oxford University that we will ¶ hit the
one trillion metric ton mark in 2043, or thirty-one years from ¶ now. We
could avoid emitting the trillionth metric ton if
we were ¶ to reduce our carbon emissions beginning immediately by an annual ¶ rate of 2.4 percent a
year.7¶ To be sure, climate science is not exact enough to pinpoint precisely how much warming will push us past a planetary tipping point.8¶
But all the recent indications are that if we want to avoid planetary ¶ disaster we need to stay
considerably below 2°C. As a result, almost ¶ all governments have signed on to staying below 2°C as a goal at the ¶ urging of the UN’s
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. More ¶ and more, 2°C has come to symbolize the reality of a planetary point ¶ of no return. In this
sense, all the discussions of what the climate ¶ will be like if the world warms to 3°C, or all the way to 6°C, are relatively meaningless.9¶ Before
such temperatures are attained, we will ¶ have already reached the limits of our ability to control the climate- ¶ change process, and we will
then be left with the task of adapting to ¶ apocalyptic ecological conditions. Already
Arctic sea ice experienced ¶ a record
melt in the summer of 2012 with some scientists predicting ¶ an ice-free Arctic in the summer as early
as 2016–2020. In the words ¶ of James Hansen, the world’s leading climatologist, we are facing ¶ a “planetary emergency”—since if we
approach 2°C “we will have ¶ started a process that is out of humanity’s control.”10 Given all of this, actually aiming
for the one trillion metric ton mark ¶ in cumulative carbon emissions, or a 2°C increase in global temperature, would be courting long-term
disaster. Some prominent climate ¶ analysts have proposed a target of staying below 750 billion cumulative ¶ metric tons of carbon—estimated
to provide a 75 percent chance of staying below the climate-change tipping point. At current rates of carbon ¶ emissions it is calculated that we
will reach the 750 billion metric tons ¶ mark in 2028, or sixteen years. We could avoid emitting the 750 billionth ¶ metric ton if we were to
reduce our carbon emissions beginning immediately at an average annual rate of 5.3 percent.11 To
get some perspective ¶ on this,
the Stern Review on The Economics of Climate Change issued by the ¶ British government in 2007,
which is generally seen as representing the ¶ progressive side of the carbon debate, argued that a
reduction in emissions of more than a 1 percent annual rate would generate a severe crisis ¶ for the
capitalist economy and hence was unthinkable.12¶ Many thought that the Great Financial Crisis would result in a ¶ sharp
curtailment of carbon emissions, helping to limit global warming. Carbon emissions dipped by 1.4 percent in 2009, but this brief ¶ decline was
more than offset by a record 5.9 percent growth of carbon ¶ emissions in 2010, even as the world economy as a whole continued ¶ to stagnate.
This rapid increase has been attributed primarily to the ¶ increasing fossil-fuel intensity of the world
economy, and to the continued expansion of emerging economies, notably China.13¶ In an influential article published in Nature Climate
Change, “Asymmetric ¶ Effects of Economic Decline on CO2¶ Emissions,” Richard York used ¶ data for over 150 countries between 1960 and
2008 to demonstrate that ¶ carbon dioxide emissions do not decline in the same proportion in ¶ an economic downturn as they increase in an
economic upturn. Thus ¶ for each 1 percent in the growth of GDP per capita, carbon emissions ¶ grew by 0.733 percent, whereas for each 1
percent drop in GDP, carbon emissions fell by only 0.430 percent. These asymmetric effects can ¶ be attributed to built-in infrastructural
conditions—factories, transportation networks, and homes—meaning that these structures do ¶ not disappear during recessions and continue
to influence fossil-fuel ¶ consumption. It follows of necessity that a boom-and-bust economic ¶ system cannot reduce carbon emissions; that
can only be achieved by ¶ an economy that reduces such emissions on a steady basis along with ¶ changes in the infrastructure of production
and society in general.14¶
Indeed, there is reason to believe that there is a strong pull on capitalism in its
current monopoly-finance phase to seek out more fossil-fuel intensive forms of production the more
deeply it falls into the stagnation trap, resulting in repeated attempts to restart the growth engine ¶ by, in effect, giving it more
gas. According to the Low Carbon Index, ¶ the carbon intensity of world production fell by 0.8 percent in 2009, ¶ and by 0.7 percent in 2010.
However, in 2011 the carbon intensity of ¶ world production rose by 0.6 percent. “The economic recovery, where ¶ it has occurred, has been
dirty.”15 The notion that a stagnant-prone ¶ capitalist growth economy (what Herman Daly calls a “failed growth ¶ economy”) would be even
more intensively destructive of the environment was a thesis advanced as early as 1976 by the pioneering Marxist ¶ environmental sociologist
Charles H. Anderson. As Anderson put it, ¶ “as the threat of stagnation mounts, so does the need for throughput in ¶ order to maintain
tolerable growth rates.”16
Capitalism causes massive environmental destruction
PEŃA, 12 ( Devon is a columnist for Alternet.com which is an environmental website) http://www.alternet.org/environment/whycapitalism-not-population-our-greatest-environmental-threat)
The Global Population Speak Out (GPSO) is a campaign led by scientists who hail principally from the U.S. and other Western
nations who seek to place the population issue at the center of policy discussions related to the multiple threats to the Earth’s
ecosystems and indeed the future survival of life on the planet. They are not entirely correct in pointing out that: “Media coverage
of the problem is sorely lacking.” Coverage of global climate change, the ozone hole, massive extinctions and threats to biodiversity
appear to be a major source of headlines in all media all the time. It has even reached an over-saturation point that turns many of
our potential allies off, especially since the ecological doomsayers too often resort to unproven or even embarrassing hyperbolic
claims that allow misinformed skeptics to continue challenging the basic scientific truths about climate change, biodiversity
extinctions, and the collapse of more resilient human-ecological couplings.In 2008, I received an email from the GPSO inviting other
“authoritative” scientific voices to join their call. This campaign is highly problematic and is basically a rehashing of the same
arguments that the neo-Malthusians like the Ehrlichs have been making since the 1960s. First, a summary of key aspects of the
GPSO campaign. The authors of the letter are correct to argue that our global ecological plight continues to worsen. The letter cites
a recent World Wildlife Fund (WWF) Living Planet Report suggesting that in “a moderate business-as-usual scenario…exhaustion of
ecological assets and large-scale ecosystem collapse become increasingly likely.” I especially take exception to the next part of
their argument: “Particularly underreported is the fundamental link between the size and growth of the human population and
environmental degradation. It is no comfort that the rate of global population growth has slowed in recent years...” The GPSO
website and project emphasizes the idea that the greatest threat to our planet is overpopulation. I
disagree and insist that
the greatest threat to our planet is capitalism and more specifically the globalization of capitalism as
the singular economic model embraced by all nations including India and China. Why am I reframing the
threat as capitalism instead of overpopulation? I have many reasons but present five here to provoke further reflection and
discussion. (1) History of Overpopulation Discourse. I wish to start with a brief history of the overpopulation discourse and present
The
overpopulation thesis was really first put on the discursive map by Thomas Malthus, an English
philosopher, mathematician, and heir of a prosperous family from Surrey. He published the first
edition of “An Essay on the Principle of Population” in 1798. What became the Malthusian thesis is
simple if inelegant: While population growth expands geometrically, our food supply expands
arithmetically. Thus, population growth overtakes the growth of our food supply resulting in mass
famine and starvation. A corollary of his argument was that the growth of population was also the
principal cause of poverty. Paul and Anne Ehrlich in The Population Bomb were proponents of this view. The Ehrlichs’
an interesting historical example to illustrate the problematic nature of the reductionist claims made by GPSO.
basic argument was that the principal cause of environmental degradation is overpopulation. It appears that this argument is still
embraced by the majority of Western natural scientists as is evident not just from a review of the signature list endorsing the GPSO
letter but from any review of the scientific literature on population and the environment. Indeed, at the University of Washington our
own celebrated Program on the Environment (PoE) often includes syllabi and lectures that uncritically emphasize the orthodoxy of
overpopulation as the key factor underlying ecological degradation and the crises of species extinctions and climate change.
2NC Slaughter
Capitalism casts us in invisible handcuffs that allows continuous violence on the lower
classes
Milloy ’13 – Jeremy Milloy, PhD student in working-class labour in the 20
th
century at Simon Fraser University [Labour / Le Travail Issue
71, Spring 2013, “Michael Perelman, The Invisible Handcuffs of Capitalism: How Market Tyranny Stifles the Economy by Stunting Workers (New
York: Monthly Review Press 2011)”, Spring 2013, Project Muse] ADoan
¶
Despite the recent tumult of a global financial crisis, Depression-level economic stagnation in North
America, and a government bailout of a criminal financial services industry that caused the crisis
through unfettered greed and duplicity, belief in the beneficence of the unregulated market remains
resilient. This laissez-faire fundamentalism is the inevitable outcome of mainstream economic theory, argues dissident economist Michael
Perelman. His new book The Invisible Handcuffs of Capitalism demonstrates that the discipline of economics has been predicated on a
tenacious disregard of the realities of work and an equally tenacious persecution of those who question prevailing dogmas. The result is an
economic system that prioritizes the profits of the powerful over the flourishing of the many.¶ Perelman, an economist at California State
University who has previously written several books on economic theory and the development of capitalism, enthusiastically tears into the
shibboleths of his profession. His
title inverts Adam Smith’s famous “invisible hand,” Smith’s contention that
the market worked automatically to justly order human relations. Perelman substitutes a pair of
“invisible [End Page 319] handcuffs,” reflecting his concept of the market as a coercive restraint on
human potential. The dogmas of mainstream economics that determine government economic policy – from interest rates to stimulus
packages to unemployment insurance – not only exploit workers, but also undermine capitalism itself by squandering the potential, knowledge
and creativity of the vast majority of working people. This
echoes Harry Braverman’s pioneering work on the labour
process.¶ Perelman calls our current system of economic theory and practice “Procrusteanism.” The
name refers to the ancient bandit king who sadistically forced his captives into a bed, stretching those
shorter than the bed and hacking the limbs from those who were too tall. He displays how the
seemingly abstract dictates of economic theory do actual harm to working Americans. For example,
US bankers and Treasury officials from Carter’s treasury secretary Paul Volcker to the present day
have, under the guise of attacking inflation, attacked workers. Their policies keep wages low, unemployment high,
and workers quiescent. We can see powerful examples of the rhetoric of economic violence in the pronouncements of Volcker – who steeled
his fellow economists for “blood all over the floor” after his assault on wages guaranteed higher unemployment – and Greenspan’s contented
musing over the “brutalized” workers of the mid-1990s who, perpetually afraid of losing their jobs, accepted stagnant wages even during a time
of rapid economic growth.¶ These episodes give the reader a peek behind the curtain where the wizards of macroeconomics work. This field is
governed by, Perelman shows, a stubborn, obtuse tendency to ignore factors of production and working conditions, instead theorizing the
economy as a level playing field of rational actors engaging in free transactions. This
produces economic theory and policy
that views the daily concerns of working people –job security, fulfilling work, safe and healthy
workplaces, livable wages – as irrelevancies. Perelman’s contention that this dismissal is part of an effort to “craft an ideology
that justifies the current system” sounds far-fetched at first, but it becomes more plausible after reading of the opprobrium visited on those
scholars who question economic orthodoxy. (114–5) Alan Krueger and David Card, respected economists who dared to publish a paper
suggesting increased minimum wages did not increase unemployment, were smeared as “camp-following whores” by a Nobel laureate in the
Wall Street Journal. Card later dropped research into the subject in the face of intense disapproval from his colleagues.¶ Perelman locates the
genesis of Procrusteanism in the very works of Adam Smith himself.
Procrusteanism was how Smith spackled over the
weaknesses in his theory of the division of labour, for example the central question of how a market
based on such a theory grows. Smith ignored the international colonial division of labour, which revealed the crucial role of the
state in capitalist accumulation and thus contradicted Smith’s model economic world of individual voluntarism. Smith instead
marginalized production, imagining the economy as a system of transactions and divorcing the value
of a commodity from the labour required to produce it. Questions of power, discipline, and coercion melted away as
Smith’s model recast almost everyone in society as a merchant. These pernicious misconceptions have dominated
economic thinking ever since. Perelman also attacks the notion of Adam Smith as a misunderstood
humanist. Instead he presents a man with an “obsessive concern” for working class discipline. Smith
called for the masses to be [End Page 320] educated not to free them, but to prepare them for military
sacrifice. He advocated extra-market coercion to force people to fit themselves to the discipline
required for life under capitalism.
2NC Extinction
Capitalism makes extinction inevitable.
Mészáros 2007, [István, professor emeritus at the University of Sussex “Bolívar and Chávez: The Spirit
of Radical Determination,” Monthly Review, Jul/Aug 2007, Vol. 59, Iss. 3] ADoan
This is so because capital's incorrigible destructiveness affects in our time every single facet of our life,
from the irresponsible wastefulness of profit-oriented productive pursuits to the suicidal degradation of
nature as well as the irreversible exhaustion of its vital reproductive resources, and from the
dehumanizing mass production of "superfluous people," in the form of chronic unemployment, to the
most extreme varieties of current military adventurism. This might be seen together with the
outrageous justification of nothing less than the use of nuclear weapons by the dominant imperialist
country, the United States, done not only retrospectively, with regard to the unforgivable deed
against the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but in a most sinister way also in relation to the future .
In this sense the traditional advocacy by capital's personifications "to think the unthinkable"-in their self-congratulatory spirit which claims the
virtues of successfully accomplished "productive destruction"-finds its ultimate realization in a form in which contemplating and threatening
the destruction of humanity, absurdly in the interest of the ruling socioeconomic system's survival at all cost, is legitimated as a necessary
strategic objective by capital's most powerful state formation. At
the root of all of these destructive manifestations we
find the insurmountable imperatives arising from the established order's self-perpetuating structural
hierarchies which necessarily exclude any comprehensive rational alternative to capital's mode of
social metabolic control. Naturally, considerations of substantive equality cannot conceivably enter capital's framework of decision
making when the fundamentals are at stake. This makes the structural crisis of our system of social reproductive control uniquely acute at the
present historical juncture, indicating at the same time the only feasible way of overcoming it. For
the destructive determinations
of the established order, erupting everywhere on a devastating scale with earlier inconceivable
gravity, now call for a fundamental structural change in the interest of humanity's survival. Since
structurally enforced inequality is the all-important defining characteristic of the capital system without which it could not function for a single
day, the institution of the required fundamental structural change makes it necessary to produce a substantively equitable alternative as
humanity's only viable future mode of social metabolic control. Moreover, there could not conceivably be a higher stake for human beings than
securing and safeguarding the survival and positive advancement of humankind by instituting a humanly fulfilling order of substantive social
equality, which under the present conditions is not an abstract possibility but a vital necessity. For this reason the forces dedicated to this great
historic task can pursue the realization of their objective with rationality fully on their side, confident of the complete justification of the values
advocated by them in their struggle against imperialism, monopoly, and oppression, in sharp contrast to their adversaries.
Truly, we live
in an age that might be called the clash of imperatives, although by no means "the clash of
civilizations." For the critical confrontation of our time asserts itself as the imperative for creating an
equitable and sustainable social order-i.e., an order which is historically sustainable precisely because
of its innermost determination as equitable in all of its substantive dimensions-as against capital's
insurmountable imperatives of destructive self-preservation. In view of the nature of the issues
involved and the urgency of their pursuit, there has never been an even remotely comparable
prospect for turning into reality the age-old advocacy of substantive equality as the primary
determination of human interchange.
2NC Exploitation
Capitalism’s drive for growth requires exploitation of the other, and thus is inherently
unfair to the other.
Peterson ’10 - V. Spike Peterson, School of Government and Public Policy, University of Arizona at Tucson [Globalizations¶ March–
June 2010, Vol. 7, Nos. 1–2, pp. 187–202, “A Long View of Globalization and Crisis”, March-June 2010, Ebsco] ADoan
From the vantage point of the longue duree (and deploying an extended definition of primitive¶ accumulation), I argue that accumulation
processes have historically and continuously taken a¶ variety of direct and indirect forms of
appropriating and exploiting resources, and have necessarily¶ involved justificatory ideologies that
obscure the ‘costs’ of these practices (whatever their¶ benefits), including the costs to those who are ‘Othered’ by
these processes. The institutionalization¶ (normalization) of justificatory ideologies involves subjects variously internalizing and¶
identifying with differential valorizations of land, resources and Others, with the historical¶ effect of augmenting the concentration of resources
and power within and across social formations.¶ Technologies shape
these processes, and over time have enhanced
productive¶ capacities, increased scales of accumulation, and enabled larger social formations. The
‘urban¶ revolution’ and early state formation marked a turning point in potential scales of accumulation;¶ the ‘industrial revolution’ and
European state making marked a subsequent leap associated with¶ modern capitalism (as commodification of labor).3 Throughout
this
history, accumulation has¶ involved both economic and non-economic processes and a mixture of
coercion and consent.¶ While the process has been uneven, its globalizing dynamic has gradually
incorporated most¶ people and most places into economic systems premised on profit-seeking
priorities that¶ require ‘growth’ (further accumulation) for their realization. I argue that a history of these transformations¶
illuminates issues shaping current crises: in particular, the ‘givenness’ (normalization)¶ of inequalities within and between groups; belief
systems that cultivate stratifications¶ and antagonistic relations; erasure of social reproduction as the indispensable foundation of
sustainability;¶ and
the idealization of ‘growth’ that underpins accumulation processes but is in tension
with fairness and sustainability.
2NC Coercion
Capitalism is intrinsically tied with coercive forces.
Banaji ‘03 – Dr. Jarius Banaji, Professorial Research Associate at SOAS University
London [“The Fictions of Free Labour: Contract, Coercion, and So-Called Unfree Labour”, Historical Materialism, volume 11:3 (69–95), 2003,
¶
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&ved=0CCwQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Faltglobal.gnu.ac.kr%2F_PROGRAM_bbs%2Fdownload_file.php%3Ffil
e%3D1341143045-banajifictionsfreelabor.pdf&ei=MmrUUZPfH-2l4AO5_4HoAw&usg=AFQjCNEsk_vORY3SHJXYT1T2GvmCpbrXiA&sig2=387ysXvUTOzfbnruJNGEjw&bvm=bv.48705608,d.dmg]
At another level, however, it is possible to argue that no contract is free¶ because economic coercion
is pervasive under capitalism. (This is as true for¶ ‘many capitals’ as it is for the individual worker.14)
This is certainly what¶ Marx had in mind in characterising wage-labour as ‘voluntary in
appearance’,15¶ and, presumably, also the sense of Sartre’s characterisation of the contract of¶
employment as a ‘pseudo-contract’.16 However, this sense of constraint – as the ‘diffused violence’ of the practico-inert (the
¶
labour market conceived as a ‘collective’ in Sartre’s sense) or the ‘dull compulsion of economic relations’ – is signalled in Marx less by any
obvious desire to contest the language of voluntarism than by repeated references to the free worker as a ‘free’ worker.17 Whatever the
common-law doctrine of duress, Marx and Engels clearly did not see the isolated wage-earner as a free agent or the wage contract as a free
contract.18 The issue here is not that of the plasticity of legal reasoning,19 of where one draws the line between free and unfree labour,20 but
¶
¶
¶
¶
¶
¶
¶
of the incoherence of the concept of free labour under capitalism. Coercion
is everywhere, because the ‘outcomes [of
bargaining] are heavily conditioned by the legal order in¶ effect at any given moment’.21 The line
between freedom and coercion is¶ impossible to draw, ‘either as a matter of logic or as a matter of
policy’.22¶ Indeed,¶ In every contract . . . it is an open question both whether the more informed¶
party ought to have shared more of his information with his trading partner¶ (that is, a question of
‘fraud’ arises, in some sense, in every case) and whether¶ the contract would have been made had
each party had other physically¶ imaginable though socially unavailable options available to him (that
is, a¶ question of ‘duress’ arises in every case).23
¶
And - Coercion destroys value to life
Hayek, Nobel prize winner, 60
(F.A. Hayek, Nobel Prize winner for Economics, 1960, The Constitution of Liberty, p.20)
By “coercion” we mean such control of the environment or circumstances of a person by another that,
in order to avoid greater evil, he is forced to act not according to a coherent plan of his own but to
serve the ends of another. Except in the sense of choosing the lesser evil in a situation forced on him by
another, he is unable either to use his own intelligence or knowledge or to follow his own aims and
beliefs. Coercion is evil precisely because it thus eliminates an individual as a thinking and valuing
person and makes him a bare tool in the achievement of the ends of another. Free action, in which a
person pursues his own aims by the means indicated by his own knowledge, must be based on data
which cannot be shaped at will by another. It presupposes the existence of a known sphere in which the
circumstances cannot be so shaped by another person as to leave one only that choice prescribed by the
other.
And Rights come first – survival focus empirically justifies the worst atrocities
Callahan 73
(Daniel Callahan, institute of Society and Ethics, 1973, The Tyranny of Survival, pp. 91-93)
The value of survival could not be so readily abused were it not for its evocative power. But abused it has been. In
the name of
survival, all manner of social and political evils have been committed against the rights of individuals,
including the right to life. The purported threat of Communist domination has for over two decades fueled the drive of militarists for
ever-larger defense budgets, no matter what the cost to other social needs. During World War II, native JapaneseAmericans were herded, without due process of law, to detention camps. This policy was later upheld
by the Supreme Court in Korematsu v. United States (1944) in the general context that a threat to national security can justify acts
otherwise blatantly unjustifiable. The survival of the Aryan race was one of the official legitimations of Nazism.
Under the banner of survival, the government of South Africa imposes a ruthless apartheid, heedless
of the most elementary human rights. The Vietnamese war has seen one of the greatest of the many
absurdities tolerated in the name of survival: the destruction of villages in order to save them. But it is
not only in a political setting that survival has been evoked as a final and unarguable value. The main rationale B. F. Skinner offers in Beyond
Freedom and Dignity for the controlled and conditioned society is the need for survival. For Jacques Monod, in Chance and Necessity, survival
requires that we overthrow almost every known religious, ethical and political system. In
genetics, the survival of the gene pool
has been put forward as sufficient grounds for a forceful prohibition of bearers of offensive genetic
traits from marrying and bearing children. Some have even suggested that we do the cause of survival no good by our misguided
medical efforts to find means by which those suffering from such common genetically based diseases as diabetes can live a normal life, and
thus procreate even more diabetics. In the field of population and environment, one can do no better than to cite Paul Ehrlich, whose works
have shown a high dedication to survival, and in its holy name a willingness to contemplate governmentally enforced abortions and a denial of
food to surviving populations of nations which have not enacted population-control policies. For all these reasons it is possible to counterpoise
over against the need for survival a "tyranny of survival." There
seems to be no imaginable evil which some group is
not willing to inflict on another for sake of survival, no rights, liberties or dignities which it is not ready
to suppress. It is easy, of course, to recognize the danger when survival is falsely and manipulatively invoked. Dictators never talk
about their aggressions, but only about the need to defend the fatherland to save it from destruction at
the hands of its enemies. But my point goes deeper than that. It is directed even at a legitimate concern for survival, when that
concern is allowed to reach an intensity which would ignore, suppress or destroy other fundamental human rights and values. The potential
tyranny survival as value is
that it is capable, if not treated sanely, of wiping out all other values. Survival can
become an obsession and a disease, provoking a destructive singlemindedness that will stop at
nothing. We come here to the fundamental moral dilemma. If, both biologically and psychologically, the need for survival is basic to man,
and if survival is the precondition for any and all human achievements, and if no other rights make much sense without the premise of a right to
life—then how will it be possible to honor and act upon the need for survival without, in the process, destroying everything in human beings
which makes them worthy of survival. To put it more strongly, if
the price of survival is human degradation, then there is
no moral reason why an effort should be made to ensure that survival. It would be the Pyrrhic victory to end all
Pyrrhic victories.
2NC AT: Cap Good
Innovation
Capitalism destroys innovation
McKay 06 (Iain McKay, Primary Contributor and Editor to An Anarchist FAQ, What are
the myths of capitalist economics?, July 19, 2006, Why is capitalism exploitive?,
http://anarchy.mlcastle.net/secC2.html) IMTIAZ
Usually defenders
of capitalism contrast the joys of "individualism" with the evils of "collectivism" in which
the individual is sub-merged into the group or collective and is made to work for the benefit of the group. Yet when it comes to capitalist industry, they
stress the abilities of the people at the top of the company, the owner, the entrepreneur, and treat as
unpeople those who do the actual work (and ignore the very real subordination of those lower down the hierarchy).
The entrepreneur is considered the driving force of the market process and the organisations and
people they govern are ignored, leading to the impression that the accomplishments of a firm are the
personal triumphs of the capitalists, as though their subordinates are merely tools not unlike the
machines on which they labour.¶ The ironic thing about this argument is that if it were true, then the economy would grind to a halt (we discuss
this more fully in our critique of Engels's diatribe against anarchism "On Authority" in section H.4.4 ). It exposes a distinct contradiction
within capitalism. While the advocates of entrepreneurialism assert that the entrepreneur is the only real producer of wealth in society, the fact is that
the entrepreneurialism of the workforce industry is required to implement the decisions made by the bosses. Without this unacknowledged input, the entrepreneur
would be impotent. Kropotkin recognised this fact when he talked of the workers "who have added to the original invention" little additions and contributions
"without which the most fertile idea would remain fruitless." Nor does the idea itself develop out of nothing as "every invention is a synthesis, the resultant of
innumerable inventions which have preceded it." [Op. Cit., p. 30] Thus Cornelius Castoriadis: "The
capitalist organisation of production is
profoundly contradictory . . . It claims to reduce the worker to a limited and determined set of tasks,
but it is obliged at the same time to rely upon the universal capacities he develops both as a function
of and in opposition to the situation in which he is placed . . . Production can be carried out only insofar as the worker himself
¶
organises his work and goes beyond his theoretical role of pure and simply executant," [Political and Social Writings, vol. 2, p. 181] Moreover, such a hierarchical
organisation cannot help but generate wasted potential. Most innovation is the cumulative effect of lots of incremental process improvements and the people most
qualified to identify opportunities for such improvements are, obviously, those involved in the process. In the hierarchical capitalist firm, those most aware of what
¶
would improve efficiency have the least power to do anything about it .
They also have the least incentive as well as any
productivity increases resulting from their improvements will almost always enrich their bosses and investors, not them. Indeed, any gains may be
translated into layoffs, soaring stock prices, and senior management awarding itself a huge bonus for "cutting costs." What worker in his right mind would do
something to help their worst enemy? As
such, capitalism hinders innovation:¶ "It is nonsensical to seek to organise
people . . . as if they were mere objects . . . In real life, capitalism is obliged to base itself on people's
capacity for self-organisation, on the individual and collective creativity of the producers. Without making use
of these abilities the system would not survive a day. But the whole 'official' organisation of modern society both ignores and seeks to suppress these abilities to the
utmost. The
result is not only an enormous waste due to untapped capacity. The system does more: It
necessarily engenders opposition, a struggle against it by those upon whom it seeks to impose itself . .
. The net result is not only waste but perpetual conflict." [Castoriadis, Op. Cit., p. 93] While workers make the product and make
entrepreneurial decisions every day, in the face of opposition of the company hierarchy, the benefits of those decisions are
monopolised by the few who take all the glory for themselves. The question now becomes, why should capitalists and
¶
managers have a monopoly of power and profits when, in practice, they do not and cannot have a monopoly of entrepreneurialism within a workplace? If the
output of a workplace is the result of the combined mental and physical activity (entrepreneurialism) of all workers, there
is no justification either
for the product or "innovation" (i.e. decision making power) to be monopolised by the few.
Democracy
Capitalism destroys democracy
Flanders and Jarecki 12 (Laura Flanders is a British-American broadcast journalist who presents the
current events show GRITtv, broadcast weekdays on Link and Free Speech TV, Eugene Jarecki is an
American author and a dramatic and documentary filmmaker based in New York, Dec, 9, 2012, How
Capitalism is Destroying Democracy, http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/12/07/how-capitalism-isdestroying-democracy/) IMTIAZ
Sure,
I am very frightened by the impact of modern capitalism on American democracy. I think that
capitalism is destroying democracy in this country because we drank a kool-aid under Reagan of a kind of runaway, not mom and pop
capitalism. We love the idea of entrepreneurs and pioneers who start their little store and make a success of it. Modern capitalism is something else.
This is the idea of free market as promoted by people who want anything but a free market, what they
want to do is monopolize the free market so mom and pop can’t compete and ultimately go out of
business and get replaced by a box store. So that’s the America that I fear because it’s in an America where, you can go into Burger King
and you can have it your way and you can design your little burger the way you want to with pickles or mustard, your choice, but Americans don’t realize by
entering the Burger King to begin with, a Burger King that’s able to query incredible favor with your politicians that you can’t. A Burger King that could pollute your
All of those things that
those major corporations are doing, you’ve given away your actual choice already by letting Citizens
United and other decisions in this country let loose the dogs of capitalism on the American body
politic.
water supply and you couldn’t stop them. A Burger King that engage in shady labor practices and you don’t have the power.
2NC AT: Other
AT: Sustainable
Capitalism unsustainable in Latin America
Frieden 06 (Jeffry Frieden, June 2006, professor in Harvard University's Department of
Government. His teaching and research focus on the politics of international
monetary and financial relations. His most recent book, Global Capitalism:
Its Fall and Rise in the Twentieth Century, (New York: Norton) was published
in 2006, “Will Global Capitalism fall again?”
http://scholar.harvard.edu/files/jfrieden/files/globalcapfallagainwebversion-1.pdf) Malhar
In Europe, in
Latin America, in the United States, and elsewhere, there are¶ clear indications that support for
international economic integration is slipping, and even that it has become unpopular. These sentiments
take different¶ forms in different places – economic reform fatigue in some developing¶ countries, anti-immigration sentiment in many
developed countries, and¶ hostility toward the European Union among its current and potential¶ members. What they have in common is the
belief that, while
global¶ capitalism may have extensive benefits and important beneficiaries, it also¶
creates substantial groups of losers, casualties of the world economy.¶ 9¶ The prevailing approach to dealing with
firms, workers, farmers, and¶ others who are sceptical about globalisation appears to be to rely on persuasion. The idea seems to be that it is
sufficient to convince people that¶ their current difficulties are outweighed by the long-term benefits of international economic integration; or
that there is no alternative to current¶ trends; or that there are overpowering, long-established, intellectual reasons¶ for the welfare
superiority of free trade. These are powerful arguments, and¶ they are correct – in the abstract. But they are irrelevant to the problem at¶
hand, and they will not work. For
the problem is not that there is a miasma of¶ false consciousness in the air,
but that the aggregate benefits of economic¶ integration come bundled with substantial distributional
costs.¶ There are real, concrete, accurately perceived interests at stake. We have¶ powerful theoretical reasons to believe that the free
movement of goods and¶ factors will have a negative impact on some people – for example, that¶
unskilled workers in rich countries will lose if trade is opened to countries¶ rich in unskilled labour.¶ 10¶
And there is plenty of empirical evidence to support¶ these theoretical expectations, both in the
academic literature and in the¶ social reality of today’s world. So the challenge is to address the legitimate¶ concerns
of those who are either losing or not gaining in the contemporary¶ economic environment. Certainly many of the fears expressed
in the political¶ arena are exaggerated, and opportunistic politicians exploit them¶ mercilessly; but
that should not obscure the reality of the underlying socioeconomic trends that motivate these fears.
AT: Transition Wars
No transition wars – capital structures won’t attack their labor
Meszaros 95 (Istvan, Professor at U of Sussex. “Beyond Capital.” Page 725-727) Malhar
Another argument which is often used in favour of permanent accommodation is the threat of extreme authoritarian measures that must be
faced by a socialist revolutionary movement. This argument is backed up by emphasizing both the
immense destructive power at
capital's disposal and the undeniable historical fact that no ruling order ever cedes willingly its
position of command over society, using if need be even the most violent form of repression to retain
its rule. The weakness of this argument is twofold, despite the factual circumstances which would seem to support it. First, it disregards that
the antagonistic confrontation between capital and labour is not a political/military one in which one
of the antagonists could be slaughtered on the battlefield or riveted to chains. Inasmuch as there can be chains
in this confrontation, labour is wearing them already, in that the only type of chains compatible with the
system must be 'flexible' enough to enable the class of labour to produce and be exploited. Nor can one
imagine that the authoritarian might of capital is likely to be used only against a revolutionary socialist movement. The repressive antilabour measures of the last two decades — not to mention many instances of past historical
emergency characterized by the use of violence under the capital system —give a foretaste of worse
things to come in the event of extreme confrontations. But this is not a matter of either/or, with some sort of apriori
guarantee of a 'fair' and benevolent treatment in the event of labour's willing accommodation and submission. The matter hinges on the gravity
of the crisis and on the circumstances under which the antagonistic confrontations unfold. Uncomfortable as this truth may sound to socialists,
one of the heaviest chains which labour has to wear today is that it is tied to capital for its continued
survival, for as long as it does not succeed in making a strategic break in the direction of a transition to
a radically different social metabolic order. But that is even more true of capital, with the qualitative difference that capital
cannot make any break towards the establishment of a different social order. For capital, truly, 'there is no alternative' — and
there can never be — to its exploitative structural dependency on labour. If nothing else, this fact sets well marked limits to capital's ability to
permanently subdue labour by violence, compelling it to use, instead, the earlier mentioned 'flexible chains' against the class of labour. It
can
use violence with success selectively, against limited groups of labour, but not against the socialist
movement organized as a revolutionary mass movement. This is why the development of 'communist mass
consciousness' (to use Marx's expression), in contrast to the vulnerability of narrow sectarian orientation, is so important. The second point
that must be made in this context is equally important. It concerns the innermost determinations of the capital system as a necessarily
expansion-oriented and accumulation-driven social metabolic order. The point is that the
exercise of power through the
repressive machinery of violence is extremely wasteful in the system's own terms of reference; even if
undoubtedly it can serve the purpose of redressing the power relations in capital's favour in a situation of emergency. What must weigh heavily
in the balance is that it is impossible to secure the required expansion and capital-accumulation on a permanent basis through the perpetuation
of economically wasteful emergency, apart from its anything but negligible political dangers. The
idea of' Big Brother'
successfully ruling over labour as a permanent condition is too fantastic even for a work of Orwellian
fiction, let alone for the actuality of capital's mode of social metabolic reproduction. For the latter must
perish if it is unable to secure its own reproduction through the appropriation of the fruits of ever more productive <CONTINUED>
<CONTINUED> labour and the concomitant expanded realization of value, which in its turn is inconceivable without a dynamic process of
'productive consumption'. And neither ever-improving labour productivity, with the necessarily increasing socialization of the labour process as
its precondition, nor the required — ever-expanding — scale of 'productive consumption' is compatible with the idea of a permanent state of
emergency. Moreover, as Chomsky rightly argued many years ago, the surveillance system that must go with a successful enforcement of
permanent authoritatian rule involves the absurdity (and, of course, the corresponding cost) of infinite regress in monitoring not only the
population at large but also the monitoring personnel itself, as well as the monitors of the monitors,290 etc. We must add here that the idea of
capital's permanent rule through the use of violence must also postulate the total unity of global capital against the national labour forces
which happen to be effectively under the control of capital's particular units in the existing (but by no means unified) global order. This vacuous
postulate of capital's global unity and uniformity arbitrarily brushes aside not only the law of uneven development. It also ignores the abundant
historical evidence which shows that the exercise of force on a mass scale — through war — always needed masses of people to be able to
impose violence on their counterparts, motivated as a rule for many centuries by national rivalries. Indeed,
the national articulation
of the global capital system, far from being a historical accident, had a great deal to do with capital's
need to maintain control over the labour force with at least some degree of consensus. Otherwise the intercapitalist rivalries, all the way to the most comprehensive international conflagrations, would be unmanageably risky from the point of view of
total social capital, nullifying the inner logic of the system to fight out to the full the conflict of interests and make the strongest prevail in the
Hobbesian helium omnium contra omnes. For in every situation of major inter-capitalist confrontation the capital system itself would be in
danger of being overthrown by its labour antagonist, in the absence of a sufficiently high degree of consensus — present as a rule to a very high
degree in national conflicts — between capital and labour belonging to the same side. (In fact some radical socialists tried to counter this
consensus, unsuccessfully, with the programme inviting the workers at the outbreak of the First World War 'to turn their weapons against their
national bourgeoisie'.) Thus, to sum up, all
of the arguments in favour of capital's permanent rule through the
imposition of violence on a mass scale suffer from having to define their conditions of realization in a
self-contradictory way. Accordingly, as mentioned in Section 18.2.5, to project the rule of capital, in its direct antagonistic
confrontation with labour, by way of a completely unstable, hence necessarily transient, state of emergency, as the permanent condition of its
future normality, is a mind-boggling notion. To be sure, no one should doubt that the use of violence may postpone for a shorter or longer
period of time the success of labour's positive emancipatory efforts; but it cannot prevent the exhaustion of capital's productive potentialities.
On the contrary, if anything, it
can only accelerate their exhaustion if violence is used on a mass scale, thereby
radically undermining the objective conditions of capital's rule.
Protest
NOTES
If you want to read the protest stuff, just take out the alt card from the cap 1NC, and read them as 2
separate off case positions. You can split it in the block with the 2NC taking cap, and the 1NR taking
protest – use debate key/education never neutral as an impact external to cap – means you can either
go for uniqueness on cap without protest, both with protest as the alt for cap, or protest independently
with debate key stuff.
Why can’t the aff use your protest as a way to be in solidarity with the Zapatistas?
Why is the 1NC a protest?
Protest:
It either has to interrupt the smooth functioning of whatever you’re protesting against
OR
Have to show that we have something at stake – that something is actually being risked
How do you position the ballot in a way so as to interrupt the smooth functioning of the judge’s
decision?
1NC – Protest
The present is filled with riots and protests, but they lack a unifying structure as of yet.
Aligning ourselves with riots that can develop a true political truth of Communism is
the only way to break down the corrupt structures.
Badiou 12 (Alain Badiou, philosophy teacher at the Ecole normale supérieure and the Collége international de philosophie in Paris, French
philosopher at the European Graduate School, The Rebirth of History: Times of Riots and Uprisings, pg. 4-6, Verso publishing, we do not endorse
ableist language, Luke Newell)
1. Under the interchangeable rubrics of ‘modernization’, ‘reform’, ‘democracy’, ‘the West’, ‘the
international community’, ‘human rights’, ‘secularism’, ‘globalization’ and various others, we find
nothing but an historical attempt at an unprecedented regression, intent upon creating a situation in
which the development of globalized capitalism, and the action of its political servants, conforms to
the norms of their birth: a dyed-in-the-wool liberalism of mid-nineteenth-century vintage, the unlimited
power of a financial and imperial oligarchy, and a window-dressing of parliamentary government
composed (as Marx put it) of ‘Capital’s executives’. To that end, everything which the existence of the
organized forms of the workers’ movement, communism and genuine socialism had invented between
1860 and 1980, and imposed on a world scale, thereby putting liberal capitalism on the defensive, must
be ruthlessly destroyed, and the value system of imperialism – the celebrated ‘values’ – recreated. Such
is the sole content of the ‘modernization’ underway. 2. The present moment is in fact that of the first
stirrings of a global popular uprising against this regression. As yet blind, naïve, scattered and lacking a
powerful concept or durable organization, it naturally resembles the first working-class insurrections of
the nineteenth century. I therefore propose to say that we find ourselves in a time of riots wherein a
rebirth of History, as opposed to the pure and simple repetition of the worst, is signaled and takes
shape. Our masters know this better than us: they are secretly trembling and building up their
weaponry, in the form both of their judicial arsenal and the armed taskforces charged today with
planetary order. There is an urgent need to reconstruct or create our own. 3. Lest this moment flounder
in glorious but defeated mass mobilizations, or in the interminable opportunism of ‘representative’
organizations, whether corrupt trade unions or parliamentary parties, the rebirth of History must also
be a rebirth of the Idea. The sole Idea capable of challenging the corrupt, lifeless version of
‘democracy’, which has become the banner of the legionaries of Capital, as well as the racial and
national prophecies of a petty fascism given its opportunity locally by the crisis, is the idea of
Communism, revisited and nourished by what the spirited diversity of these riots, however fragile,
teaches us.
Riots construct political truths through the process of political engagement – our
engagement of a strictly anti-capitalist policy creates the context for a new order
Badiou 12 (Alain Badiou, philosophy teacher at the Ecole normale supérieure and the Collége international de philosophie in Paris, French
philosopher at the European Graduate School, The Rebirth of History: Times of Riots and Uprisings, pg. 87-88, Verso publishing, we do not
endorse ableist language, Luke Newell)
What – abstractly, philosophically – characterizes the revolutionary political Idea is precisely the
conception that there are political truths and that political action is in itself a protracted struggle of the
true against the false. When I speak of political truth, this does not involve a judegment but a process:
a political truth is not ‘I say I am right and the other person is wrong’, or ‘I am right to like that ruler and
detest that opponent’. A truth is something that exists in its active process, which manifests itself, as
truth, in different circumstances marked by this process. Truths are not prior to political processes;
there is no question of confirming or applying them. Truths are reality itself, as a process of production
of political novelties, political sequences, political revolutions, and so forth.
Truths – but of what? Truths of what is actually the collective presentation of humanity as such (the
communal of communism). Or: the truth of the fact that, over and above their vital interests, human
animals are capable of bringing into being justice, equality and universality (the practical presence of
what the Idea can do). It is perfectly apparent that a high proportion of political oppression consists in
the unremitting negation of this capacity. Our liberals perpetuate this negation: when people decide to
say that there are only opinions, it is the opinion which possesses the material, financial, military and
media means of domination that is going to be imposed as consensual, or as the general framework
within which different opinions will exist. … a series of consequences, organized on the condition of an
Idea… The process of a political truth is rational, not non-descript. It applies itself to unfolding in reality
the particular consequences of principles, which are themselves affirmed, or reaffirmed, in historical
riots. Such is the mainspring of new political organizations, which are invariably the real body of a
political truth in motion. By standing firm on the combative rationality of such inscription, they inscribe
in the world the practical consequences of an event, qua consequences of a principle in which the
practical lessons of a riot and the breakthrough of an Idea are combined.
The 1NC is an act of immediate riot against the affirmative – this can disrupt
capitalism’s grasp on debate and the world. This debate also has the ability to create
debate as a place for an historical riot as a lasting cry against the elites.
Badiou 12 (Alain Badiou, philosophy teacher at the Ecole normale supérieure and the Collége international de philosophie in Paris, French
philosopher at the European Graduate School, The Rebirth of History: Times of Riots and Uprisings, pg. 22-26, Verso publishing, we do not
endorse ableist or gendered language, Luke Newell)
An immediate riot is unrest among a section of the population, nearly always in the wake of a violent
episode of state coercion. Even the famous Tunisian riot, which triggered the series of ‘Arab revolutions’
in early 2011, was initially an immediate riot (in response to the suicide of a street vendor prevented
from selling and struck by a policewoman).
Some of the defining characteristics of such a riot possess a general significance, and consequently an
immediate riot is often the initial from of an historical riot.
First of all, the spearhead of an immediate riot, particularly the inevitable clashes with the forces of law
and order, is youth. Some commentators have regarded the role of ‘youth’ in the riots in the Arab world
as a sociological novelty, and have linked it to the use of Facebook or other vacuities of alleged technical
innovation in the postmodern age. But who has ever seen a riot whose front ranks were made up of the
elderly? As was evidence in China in 1966-67 and France in 1968, but also in 1848 and at the time of the
Fronde, during the Taiping Rebellion – and, ultimately, always and everywhere – popular and student
youth from the hard core of riots. Their capacity for assembly, mobility and linguistic and tactical
invention, like their inadequacies in discipline, strategic tenacity and moderation when required, are
constants of mass action. Moreover, drums, fires, inflammatory leaflets, running through the back
streets, circulating words, ringing bells – for centuries these have served their purpose in people
suddenly assembling somewhere, just as sheep-like electronics does today. In the first instance, a riot is
a tumultuous assembly of the young, virtually always in response to a misdemeanor, actual or alleged,
by a despotic state. (But riots show us that in a sense the state is always despotic; that is why
communism organizes its withering away.)
Next, an immediate riot is located in the territory of those who take part in it. The issue of the
localization of riots is, as we shall see, quite fundamental. When a riot is restricted to the site where its
participants live (most often the crumbling districts of cities), it stops there, in its immediate form. It is
only when it constructs – most often in the city centre – a new site, where it endures and is extended,
that it changes into an historical riot. An immediate riot, stagnating in its own social space, is not a
powerful subjective trajectory. It rages on itself; it destroys what it is used to. It lets fly at the meager
symbols of the ‘wealthy’ existence it is in contact with ever day – particularly cars, shops and banks. If it
can, it destroys the sparse symbols of the state, thus demolishing its very weak presence: virtually
abandoned police stations, unglamorous schools, community centres experienced as paternalistic
plasters on the running sores of neglect. All this fuels the hostility of POL-style public opinion towards
the rioters: ‘Look! They’re destroying the few things they’ve got!’ Such opinion does not want to know
that, when something is one of the few ‘benefits’ granted you, it becomes the symbol not of its
particular function, but of the general scarcity, and that the riot detests it for that reason. Hence the
blind destruction and pillaging of the very place the rioters live in, which is a universal characteristic of
immediate riots. For our part, we shall say that all this achieves a weak localization, an inability of the
riot to displace itself.
That is not to say that an immediate riot stops at one particular site. On the contrary, we observe a
phenomenon doubled contagion: an immediate riot spreads not by displacement, but by imitation.
And this imitation occurs in sites that are similar, even largely identical, to the initial focal point. Youth
on a housing estate in Saint-Ouen are going to do the same thing as those on an estate in Aulnay-sousBois. The popular districts of London are all going to be affected by the collective fever. Everyone
remains in situ, but there they do what they have heard it said that others are doing. This process is
indeed an extension of the riot, but once again we shall say that it is a limited extension, characteristic of
an immediate riot of the immediate stage of a riot. It is only in discovering the means for an extension
which cannot be reduced to an imitation that a riot assumes an historical dimension. Basically, it is
when an immediate riot extends to sectors of the population which, by virtue of their status, social
composition, sex or age, are remote from its constitutive core that a genuine historical dimension is
on the agenda. The entry onto the stage of ordinary women is invariably the first sign of such a
generalized extension. An immediate riot, if one stops at its initial dynamic, can only combine weak
localizations (at the site of the rioters) with limited extensions (through imitation).
2NC
Framework
They assume there is no political truth – this mandates the debate to occur for the
ballot, but means no real change occurs – using the process of the 1NC as a political
truth is a pre-requisite to the aff
Badiou 12 (Alain Badiou, philosophy teacher at the Ecole normale supérieure and the Collége
international de philosophie in Paris, French philosopher at the European Graduate School, The Rebirth
of History: Times of Riots and Uprisings, pg. 86-87, Verso publishing, we do not endorse ableist language,
Luke Newell)
I am going to re-punctuate each element of this summary definition. A political truth is… An important
tendency in political philosophy maintains that one characteristic of politics is that it is – and must
remain – foreign to the notion of truth. Decidedly in a majority today, this current asserts that any
articulation of the political process with the notion of truth plunges us into the totalitarian
presumption. What is deduced from this axiom – in fact a liberal or, more precisely ‘left’-liberal one – is
that in politics there is nothing but opinions. In more sophisticated form, it will be said that in politics
there are only judgements and the conditions of these judgements.
It should be noted that those who maintain this would not dream of arguing that in science, art or
even philosophy there is nothing but opinions. It is a thesis peculiar to political philosophy. The
argument goes back to Hannah Arendet, the British liberals, perhaps Montesquieu, or even the Greek
Sophists. It amounts to saying that politics (meaning democratic politics, but for our left liberals other
forms of politics are not really politics), which is about being-together, must construct a peaceful space
where disparate, even contradictory opinions can be expressed, on condition of agreeing (there’s the
rub) ‘rules of the game’ that make it possible to decide which opinion is temporarily going to prevail
without violent conflict.
As we know, this rule has never been able to take any form other than that of counting votes. Our
liberals affirm that, if there is a political truth, it will necessarily involve oppression – elitist at best,
terrorist at worst (but the transition from one to the other, which is the transition from Lenin to Stalin, is
well-nigh obligator for liberals) – of the obscure, confused regime of opinions. This thesis has been
deeply rooted among Western intellectuals for three decades – that is, since the onset of the period of
reaction I have called ‘intervallic’, whose start I date to the late 1970s.
But, several peoples and situations are telling us in a still indistinct language of riot, it may be that this
period is over; that there is a rebirth of History. We must then remember the revolutionary Idea,
inventing its new form by learning what is happening.
What – abstractly, philosophically – characterizes the revolutionary political Idea is precisely the
conception that there are political truths and that political action is in itself a protracted struggle of
the true against the false. When I speak of political truth, this does not involve a judgement but a
process: a political truth is not ‘I say I am right and the other person is wrong’, or ‘I am right to like that
ruler and detest that opponent’. A truth is something that exists in its active process, which manifests
itself, as truth, in different circumstances marked by this process. Truths are not prior to political
processes; there is no question of confirming or applying them. Truths are reality itself, as a process of
production of political novelties, political sequences, political revolutions, and so forth.
AT: Perm
First, the perm is mutually exclusive – as long as they include any part of the alternative they are
objecting to themselves – our argument is a direct protest against the affirmative – not capitalism as a
whole. This makes them directly contradictory, so the perm becomes severance automatically.
Severance because if makes the aff a moving target which kills fairness because the neg can’t pin
them down and will never win.
Second, also means they are stealing the speech act of the 1NC – the alternative itself is an
endorsement not of straight fact, but of our protest – you can’t perm that.
Third, the two ideas cannot occur at the same time – Badiou says political Truth only develops
through the occurrence of riots – if that riot is corrupted by any form of Capitalist oppression, so too
will the ideas that arise out of it.
Fourth, give them no leeway – each long-term endorsement of capitalism interrupts the riot at hand –
debate needs to be constructed as a space for riot – we know that people will still run capitalist affs
next round, but we can restructure the debate space to be a place of protest through the act of
rejecting the 1AC
Fifth – the perm is a reason to vote negative – if they prove the perm is better than the aff, it’s a
reason the aff itself was not sufficient to solve – means the act of protest was specifically key – even if
they wish to participate in the riot, the 1NC was what was key – means you still vote neg
Solvency
To vote negative is to ally with using debate as a site for protest – that creates the
context for an historical riot to change the system
Badiou 12 (Alain Badiou, philosophy teacher at the Ecole normale supérieure and the Collége
international de philosophie in Paris, French philosopher at the European Graduate School, The Rebirth
of History: Times of Riots and Uprisings, pg. 33-35, Verso publishing, we do not endorse ableist language,
Luke Newell)
Learning from the striking novelty of the riots in the Arab countries - especially their endurance, their
determination, their unarmed tenacity, their unforseen independence - we can, I believe, first of all
propose a simple definition of an historical riot: it is the result of the transformation of an immediate
riot, more nihilistic than political, into a pre-political riot. The case of the Arab countries then teaches us
that for this the following are required.
1 . A transition from limited localization (assemblies' attacks and destructive acts on the very site of the
rebels) to the construction of an enduring central site, where the rioters install themselves in an
essentially peaceful fashion, asserting that they will stay put until they receive satisfaction. Therewith
we also pass from the limited and, in a sense, wasted time of the immediate riot, which is an
amorphous, high-risk assault, to the extended time of the historical riot, which instead resembles old
sieges of a town, except that it involves laying siege to the state. In reality, everyone knows that
destruction cannot last, except in 'major wars' : an immediate riot can hold out for between one and five
days at the most. In its monumental site, even when surrounded and harassed by the police, or on the
main avenues it ritually occupies on a set day of the week, with the crowd constantly growing, an
historical riot holds out for weeks or months.
2. For that to happen there must be a transition from extension by imitation to qualitative extension.
This means that all the components of the people are progressively unified on the site thus
constructed: popular and student youth, obviously, but also factory workers, intellectuals of all sorts,
whole families, large numbers of women, employees, civil servants, even some police officers and
soldiers, and so forth. People of different religious faiths mutually protect the others ' prayer times;
people of conflicting origin engage in peaceful discussion as if they had always known one another. And
a multiplicity of voices, absent or virtually absent from the clamour of an immediate riot, asserts itself;
placards describe and demand; banners incite the crowd. Even the reactionary world press will end up
referring to the ' Egyptian people ' in connection with those occupying Tahrir Square. At this point the
threshold of historical riot is crossed: established localization, possible longue duree, intensity of
compact presence, multifaceted crowd counting as the whole people. As Trotsky, who was conversant
with the subject, might have said: 'The masses have mounted the stage of history.'
3 . It was also necessary to make a transition from the nihilistic din of riotous attacks to the invention
of a single slogan that envelops all the disparate voices: 'Mubarak, clear off!' Thus is created the
possibility of a victory, since what is immediately at stake in the riot has been decided. At the
antipodes of destructive desires for revenge, the movement can persist in anticipation of a specific
material satisfaction: the departure of a man whose name - a short while before taboo, but now
publicly condemned to ignominious erasure - is brandished.
Solves cap
Riots create new political truths – these fundamental ideas can spread to other riots
and help a single idea gain influence – by aligning ourselves against the system of
capitalism, we create an Idea that can permeate to result in the ultimate destruction
of capitalism
Education
Education is never neutral – empowering ourselves and debate through revolution
bolsters self-respect of the oppressed, and gives the oppressors their lost humanity
Van Gorder 7 (Andrew Christian van Gorder, D.Phil., Queen’s College, Belfast Associate Professor of Religious Studies, World Religions
Department of Religion, Baylor University, “Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy for the Children of the Oppressors: Educating for Social Justice among the
World’s Privileged,”
https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=gmail&attid=0.3&thid=13fa5d444fbb8797&mt=application/pdf&url=https://mail.google.com/mail/?
ui%3D2%26ik%3D457e572794%26view%3Datt%26th%3D13fa5d444fbb8797%26attid%3D0.3%26disp%3Dsafe%26realattid%3Df_h5hst5kd3%2
6zw&sig=AHIEtbSYv8OwU0MKAO4EH3_jMrOLMxgQ2w, Luke Newell)
Freire is emphatic: “Any pedagogy which begins with the egoistic interests of the oppressors (often
cloaked in the false generosity of paternalism) itself maintains and embodies oppression.” Oppressors,
by definition, cannot initiate liberating education. How does this relate to our task of education for
social justice among the world’s privileged? A Freirean challenge for the privileged is to explain that we
should not be complicitous in the preservation of the status-quo and to call for subjectivist immobility
to be countered by seeing the “social ways” that oppression is promoted. Anesthetizing social welfare
programs, according to Freire are expressions of “class-robbery” because they have become
“instruments of manipulation” that “ultimately serve the ends of conquest” because they “sedate and
distract victims of injustice from” being aware of the “true causes of their problems.” While
paternalistic social programs are presented as “realistic solutions,” they fail inevitably because they are
not systemic and because they, in essence, assign blame to recipients, which leads to the oppressed
are taught to see themselves as social “outsiders,” while, in actuality, they are very much “inside the
social structure which made them ‘beings for others.’”
Both the privileged and the oppressed often turn to religion for “magical explanations” of a God to
whom they fatalistically transfer the responsibility for their oppressed state.” If God is responsible for
their plight, then nothing can be done to change their situation: “The oppressed see their suffering (the
fruit of exploitation), as the will of God – as if God were the creator of this ‘organized disorder.’” Both
religion and politics have been used in the education of the privileged to club dissenters into
acquiescence. A vivid example of this comes in the relation that politics and religion have with the
history of slavery within the United States. Of course, a host of political and religious leaders have also
challenged the privileged to oppose injustice (e.g. Gandhi, Malcolm X, Bishop Romero, and The Dalai
Lama).
Both the privileged and the oppressed must free themselves from false or idealistic notions of the world.
Education can foster rebelliousness against the status-quo and frame such rebellion in moral and
religious terms as an act of courageous love which is “committed to others.” Such oppression will not
be challenged as long as education reduces students to vanquished “receptors” and “passive entities
with their education making them even more passive still.” Asserting the “right to be human” breaks
the power of the oppressor to control others, but it also restores to the privileged a sense of their own
humanity which had been “lost in the exercise of oppression.” Popular religious views sustain injustice
by resisting unsettling social change. For Freire, revolution is not the goal but only a transitory phase
delineating the boundary between injustice and greater justice. Education is a neutral force that can
either sustain injustice or support positive social change. The narrative forms that education takes
among either the privileged or the oppressed will determine whether it becomes a force to challenge
individuals to question (rebel against) injustice or accept its inevitability. Educators among the
privileged must particularly guard against talking about the world as if it were a “motionless, static,
compartmentalized and predictable fact.” For Freireans there is an “eminently pedagogical character of
the revolution” and that is why Freire entitled his book The Pedagogy of the Oppressed rather than The
Pedagogy for the Oppressed; both the oppressed and the privileged are responsible to struggle for their
own liberation.
Education always come from a viewpoint – education absent an understanding of that
viewpoint allows continued oppression and turns the case
Van Gorder 7 (Andrew Christian van Gorder, D.Phil., Queen’s College, Belfast Associate Professor of Religious Studies, World Religions
Department of Religion, Baylor University, “The Pedagogy of the Children of the Oppressors: Educating for Social Justice in the Context of North
American Faith-Based Higher Education,” http://www.calvin.edu/kuyers/files/confs/050922/vanGorder.pdf, Luke Newell)
Freire maintained that all education comes from a specific point of view and is never neutral.26 The
educator is both a politician and an artist who should guard against devolving into a “cold, neutral
technician.”27 In terms of education, the orientating point of the powerful is to be “...against the poor...
(which) is “the essence of oppression”28 expressed in a never-ending “desire for conquest”29 which
expresses itself as “...changing the consciousness of the oppressed and not the situation which
oppresses them.”30 This domination leads the vanquished to embrace an “...oppression-hosting
conscience”31 where the world-view assumptions of the oppressor become “housed within”32 the
victim’s own way of thinking. Education, in both content and delivery,33 become a vicious weapon
whereby the subjugated learn to adapt to the world of their oppressor.34 Conscientizacao is a difficultto-translate Portuguese term that speaks of the way that a person comes to learn of the social,
economic and political contradictions of the world and to address those elements. The oppressed,
because they often feel “...dismissed from life,”35 see education as threatening because it offers the
ideal of living a life of freedom and responsibility while this same prospect seems remote and
unachievable. Even if gained, freedom becomes problematic because it also entails the complete
dismantling of the familiar; the world of the known; even if it is inherently onerous. As people begin to
develop conscientizacao, they progressively shift in their perspective from the naïve to the critical; from
the powerless to the confident and aware.
To combat the blossoming of conscientizacao, the oppressor works to guard the status-quo by keeping
the vanquished from realizing that they are being victimized.36 The oppressed need, in a moment of
insight, to recognize what actually is happening to them and gain an authentic view of the world. Instead
of this epiphany,37 many remain resigned to the lobotomized “security of conformity.”38 At least, with
everything else uncertain, the oppressed have a “guaranteed space”39 in the world. On the other side of
the equation, the oppressor can often be unaware of the “...invasive nature of their actions.”40 They
may even think of themselves as kind and concerned about those they tyrannize. Conversely, the
oppressed may feel a bond or a sense of being “emotionally dependent”41 on those who are actually
stomping them into subjection. Some may even assist in the oppression of others and, in so doing, will
describe themselves as “defenders of freedom”42 against the “demonic action of marginals, rowdies
and enemies of God.”43 This raises their esteem in the eyes of oppressors and results in even greater
dependence.
Despotic education imposes silence for the sake of order.44 Freire observes that those who are beaten
down come to assume that “...only those who have power can define what is correct or incorrect.”45
Many suffer from intellectual and emotional “mutism”46 because the world is overwhelming. Nothing
can be done. Silence and indifference are signs that the content of the Oppressor’s educational agenda
is fundamentally irrelevant to the oppressed.47 Gradually, the oppressed internalize “...the opinion that
the oppressors hold of them”48 and accept that they are incapable and dependent on the expertise of
outsiders (Freire mirthfully names this the role of “the Professor”). Because they are beaten down they
cannot appreciate their own potential. They eventually accede to a key myth of the “...oppressor
ideology: the absolutizing of ignorance” where “...someone ... decrees the ignorance of someone
else.”49 They lose their power to “name the world.” The oppressor mandates that an “...educated
individual is the adapted person, because she or he is a better “fit” for the world....”50 Oppressive
“education,” (which is actually indoctrination), promotes the tranquility of the powerful among those
who do not dare to question their authority to command.51
Revolting is an affirmation of humanity, but education we garner from debate is key
and never neutral – it’s either for a riot against oppression, or complacent to
continued oppression
Van Gorder 7 (Andrew Christian van Gorder, D.Phil., Queen’s College, Belfast Associate Professor of Religious Studies, World Religions
Department of Religion, Baylor University, “The Pedagogy of the Children of the Oppressors: Educating for Social Justice in the Context of North
American Faith-Based Higher Education,” http://www.calvin.edu/kuyers/files/confs/050922/vanGorder.pdf, Luke Newell)
Both the privileged and the oppressed need the liberation that comes from breaking with false, but
sustaining, ideas about the world. For Freire this rebelliousness against the status quo can be seen
from a moral or religious context as an act of love: “Love is an act of courage” and is the expression of
“...commitment to others.”109 Rebellion will not occur as long as the vanquished “...receive the world
as passive entities with their education making them even more passive still.”110 Revolt is the
“assertion of the right to be human.”111 As the “oppressed, fighting to be human, take away the
oppressor’s power to dominate and suppress, they restore to the oppressors the humanity they had
lost in the exercise of oppression.”112 Popular religious views sustain injustice by resisting unsettling
social change. For Freire, revolution is not the goal but only a transitory phase delineating the
boundaries between injustice and greater justice. Education can play a key role in advancing
revolutionary social change because, as Freire believed, “To be human is to be forever unfinished”113
with capacity for growth.
Education is capable of being either a force for change or for static intransigence. Freire described
education as a form of narrative emerging from the realities of social injustice. He warned that
educators should never “...talk about reality as if it were motionless, static, compartmentalized and
predictable.”114 Freire talked about the “eminently pedagogical character of the revolution”115
because liberative education “...drives toward reconciliation.”116 He entitled his book, “The Pedagogy
of the Oppressed,” as opposed to, “...for the oppressed” because of his conviction that the marginalized
should always be the central subject of the struggle for liberation.
Debate Key
Debate can be restructured as a place of protest – creates a consistent method to
challenge oppression in the future as well
Endres and Senda-Cook 11 (Danielle Endres is an Assistant Professor of Communication and Faculty in Environmental
Humanities at the University of Utah and Samantha Senda-Cook is an Assistant Professor in Communication Studies at Creighton University,
“Location Matters: The Rhetoric of Places in Protest,” http://academia.edu/1750644/Location_Matters_The_Rhetoric_of_Place_in_Protest,
Luke Newell)
The rhetorical deployment of place is a common tactic for social movements. Calling on fond memories
of or attachment to particular places, environmental social movements routinely ask their supporters to
take action to ‘‘save’’ special places including Yosemite Valley, Glen Canyon, and the Arctic National
Wildlife Refuge(ANWR). Beyond referencing particular places in their arguments for social change, social
movements have also relied on the rhetoricity of places themselves by holding protest events in
particularly meaningful places or using protest events to create temporary fissures in the dominant
meanings of places. The 1963 Civil Rights Movement’s March on Washington culminated at the Lincoln
Memorial in the Washington Mall in part because of the significance of that place: both its proximity to
the center of Federal Government and Abraham Lincoln’s role in freeing slaves. As Martin Luther King Jr.
delivered his famous ‘‘I Have a Dream’’ speech, the place and the presence of hundreds of thousands of
people congregating in that place also constituted the movement’s goals. The 2003 anti-war (in Iraq)
protesters who took to the streets - indeed, any protest that marches through city streets not only sent a visual message of the strength of the movement through images of city streets brimming
with people but also temporarily reconstructed city streets from places for transportation into places of
protest. These are just a few examples of how place is rhetorically significant to social movement
protest. ‘‘In short,’’ as Tim Cresswell notes, ‘‘the qualities of place that make them good strategic tools
of power simultaneously make them ripe for resistance in highly visible and often outrageous ways.’’
(Re)constructing the meaning of place, even in temporary ways, can be a tactical act of resistance
along with the tactics we traditionally associate with protest, such as speeches, marches, and signs. As
we will demonstrate, place (re)constructions can function rhetorically to challenge dominant meanings
and practices in a place. Place is a performer along with activists in making and unmaking the
possibilities of protest. Although scholars in geography and sociology regularly attend to the implications
of theories of place for social movements and activism, rhetoricians have yet to turn to place as a way to
examine the rhetorical performances of social movement protest. This essay provides a foundation for
such an examination by articulating the rhetorical force of place in protest. We argue that place can
serve as a unique heuristic for rhetorical studies of social movements. Traditionally research on social
movements has been focused on the actions of protesters through their words or use of bodies, our
discussion of place in protest shifts attention to how embodied rhetorics of protest are always situated
in particular places. In other words, studying bodies and words can reveal only part of the rhetorical
tactics of protest. Studying how words and bodies interact in and with place allows us to see social
movement rhetoric from a new perspective. Beyond this specific contribution, our heuristic also
contributes to a general understanding of the rhetoricity of place by specifically attending to how
bodies, words, and places all interact in rhetoric. Further, the concept of place in protest has
implications for understanding how to study the rhetoric of place. We build our argument by pulling
together threads of existing research on place to offer a critical lens - place in protest - with which to ask
questions relevant to a more comprehensive analysis of how place functions along with other rhetorical
performances in social movement discourse. Place in protest allows us to understand how social
movements use both place-based arguments and place-as-rhetoric. Place-based arguments discursively
invoke images or memories of a place to support an argument, such as summoning the melting of the
arctic as a reason to stop global warming, and make salient that dominant place meanings are
sometimes linked to systems of power that discourage protest. In addition to examining such indirect
invocations of place, we are interested in how social movements construct and reconstruct places in
line with their challenges to the status quo (e.g., gay pride celebrations taking over everyday city
streets to temporarily queer them). Place-as-rhetoric is at the core of our contribution to the study of
place in protest and place generally; it assumes that the very place in which a protest occurs is a
rhetorical performance that is part of the message of the movement. We will further refine place-asrhetoric by distinguishing three ways in which places act rhetorically. First, protesters may build on a
pre-existing meaning of a place to help make their point, such as holding a protest event at a state
capital so that protesters can direct their message to this symbol of government. Second, protests can
temporarily reconstruct the meaning (and challenge the dominant meaning) of a particular place, such
as Critical Mass’s take-over of car lanes in downtown city streets to raise awareness about bicycles as a
‘‘legitimate’’ form of transportation. These temporary reconstructions of places create short-term
fissures in the dominant meanings of places in productive ways. Third, repeated reconstructions over
time can result in new place meanings, such as how the 1960s UC Berkeley Free Speech Movement’s
repeated use of the front steps of Sproul Hall (a building that at the time housed campus
administration offices) for their protests eventually resulted in its being known as a place for protest
on campus, even though the building now houses student services. In these three ways, places
themselves - not discourse about places - are rhetorical tactics in movements toward social change.
Capital creates the pre-requisites for exploitation – reappropriation of spaces is key to informing the
oppressed – using debate as a place of empowerment is vital
Tiqqun 1 (France’s premier terrorist organization, written by anonymous scholars, in a revolutionary pamphlet, “Living-and-Wrestling ,”
originally published in Tiqqun 2, Luke Newell)
Fundamentally, our point of departure is not that different from that of the RAF when it states: “The
system has captured the totality of the free time of the human being. To the physical exploitation in
the factory has been added the exploitation of thoughts and feelings, of aspirations and utopias by the
media and mass consumption. […] The system has succeeded, in the metropolis, in plunging the masses
so deeply in their own shit that they have apparently lost the perception of themselves as the
exploited and oppressed; so for them, a car, life insurance, or a lease makes them accept all the crimes
of the system, and excluding the car, vacation, or the bathroom, they can neither be represented nor
hope.” The characteristic feature of Empire is that it has understood its front of colonization as the
totality of existence and the existent. It’s not simply that Capital has enlarged its human base, it’s that
it has also deepened its well of resources. Better, on the basis of the final disintegration of society as
well as its subjects, Empire presently intends to recreate an ethical tissue all on its own; it’s from here
the hipsters, with their neighborhoods, their press, their codes, their food, and their modular ideas are
at once the guinea pigs and the avant-garde. And this is why, from the East Village to Oberkampf by way
of the Prenzlauer Berg, the hipster phenomenon has immediately had a global scope. ¶ It is upon this
total terrain, the ethical terrain of forms-of-life, that the war against Empire is currently being played
out. This war is a war of annihilation. Empire, contrary to the belief of the RB for whom the game of the
kidnapping of Moro was explicitly the recognition of the State as the armed party, is not the enemy.
Empire is only the hostile milieu that opposes our schemes step-by-step. We are engaged in a struggle
in which what is at issue is the recomposition of an ethical tissue. This is embedded in the progressive
gentrification of previously secessionist places, in the uninterrupted extension of chains of dispositifs.
Here, the abstract, classical conception of war, which culminates in the total confrontation, where it
ultimately returns to its essence, is obsolete. War can’t be allowed to be put away as an isolated
moment from our existence, as the decisive confrontation; from now on, it is our existence itself, in all
of its aspects, that is war. That is to say that the first movement of this war is reappropriation.
Reappropriation of means to live-and-struggle. Reappropriation, then, of spaces: squat, occupation or
collectivizing private spaces. Reappropriation of what’s in common: constitution of languages, syntaxes,
means of communication, of an autonomous culture – snatching the transmission of experience from
the hands of the State. Reappropriation of violence: communizing fighting techniques, forming selfdefense forces, arms. Lastly, reappropriation of basic survival: diffusion of medical knowledge-ability,
progressive organization of a network of autonomous resupply.