Neoliberalism K – Wave 1
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NEOLIBERALISM K – WAVE 1 Neoliberalism K – Wave 1 ............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................ 1 Richy D’s Brand Spankin’ New 1NC.......................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 1 Links....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 3 Cuba Link – Embargo................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................. 3 Cuba Link – History/Force ........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................ 4 Cuba FYI – This is the Evil We Are Fighting ..................................................................................................................................................................................................... 5 Mexico Link – Generic ............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 6 Mexico Link – Oil Drilling ......................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 6 Mexico Link – Oil Drilling ......................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 7 Mexico Link – Offshore Oil ...................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 7 Mexico Link – Deregulation vs. National Control ........................................................................................................................................................................................... 8 Mexico – Resistance Solves ..................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 8 Mexico – Neolib Not Inevitable ............................................................................................................................................................................................................................. 9 Impacts .............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................. 10 Impact – Value to Life ............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................ 10 Impact – Value to Life/Environment ................................................................................................................................................................................................................. 10 Impact – Destroys Economy/Democracy ........................................................................................................................................................................................................ 11 Impact – Colonialism ............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 12 Turns Case – Economy ........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 13 Alternative ........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................ 14 Social Movements Resisting Neoliberalism Work ....................................................................................................................................................................................... 14 Block Answers ................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................. 14 AT: “Utilitarianism Good” ....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 14 AT: “They Asked for It” ........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 15 AT: “No Alternative to Neoliberalism” .............................................................................................................................................................................................................. 16 Aff Answers...................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 16 Neoliberalism Doesn’t Exist .................................................................................................................................................................................................................................. 16 A2 Cuba Link .............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................. 17 Neolib Good – VTL .................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................. 20 Neolib k2 Human Rights ....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 21 Neolib k2 LA Stability ............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................. 21 Neolib k2 Environment........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 23 Pragmatic Rhetoric Key .......................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 24 Scenario Evaluations Key ....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 27 Alt Neocon Backlash.......................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 28 Utilitarianism Good .................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................. 28 RICHY D’S BRAND SPANKIN’ NEW 1NC 1. LINK – THE AFFS RHETORIC OF “IMPROVING” LATIN AMERICA WITH ITS POLICY IS JUST A SHADY PROMOTION OF NEOLIBERALISM Paul COONEY 2006 Socio-Economic CenterDepartment of Economics Campus of Guama Federal University of Pará (UFPA)Belém, Pará, Brazil The Decline of Neoliberalism and the Role of Social Movements in Latin America pg 1 http://pendientedemigracion.ucm.es/info/ec/jec10/ponencias/703Cooney.pdf Eventually, the the political elites of Third World came to be major advocates for neoliberal policies, for example in Latin America: Salinas de Gortari, Menem, Collor de Mello, employing a rhetoric referring to modernizing reforms, breaking free of old exhausted, closed state-dominated systems of the past and moving forward through liberalizing reforms for a new and modern economy, more integrated with the modern world. 2. IMPACT – TURNS CASE NEOLIBERALISM DESTROYS LATIN AMERICAN ECONOMIES Paul COONEY 2006 Socio-Economic CenterDepartment of Economics Campus of Guama Federal University of Pará (UFPA)Belém, Pará, Brazil The Decline of Neoliberalism and the Role of Social Movements in Latin America pg 1 http://pendientedemigracion.ucm.es/info/ec/jec10/ponencias/703Cooney.pdf The advocates of such policies, using free trade and free market rhetoric , were able to gain acceptance especially with the support of the media. Using the argument that there is no alternative (TINA)2 was able to convince many populations, of the legitimacy and worthwhile aspect of such a shift and the futility of trying something else. However, after 20 years or more, and various crises, such as in Mexico, Asia, Russia, Brazil and Argentina, the claims and allegations of the neoliberals can be compared with reality, and thereby exposing much of the false rhetoric. During the last two decades or more, the neoliberal model has dominated economic policies in Latin America and in general, has produced lower wages, an increase in unemployment and poverty for the majority of Latin Americans, as well as financial crises and depressions. 3. ALTERNATIVE VOTED DOWN AFF FOR THEIR NEOLIBRIC RHETORIC AND INTENT WE CAN USE THE REJECTION OF THE AFF AS A SOCIAL MOVEMENT AGAINST NEO-LIBRIALISM THAT WILL SPARK FLAM FOR OTHER SOCIAL MOVEMENTS Paul COONEY 2006 Socio-Economic CenterDepartment of Economics Campus of Guama Federal University of Pará (UFPA)Belém, Pará, Brazil The Decline of Neoliberalism and the Role of Social Movements in Latin America pg 26 http://pendientedemigracion.ucm.es/info/ec/jec10/ponencias/703Cooney.pdf As argued above, new despite the specificities of each country, Latin America has arrived at a new historical conjuncture. The governments need to be pressured by social movements in order for them to do the right thing. There needs to be serious pressure, if not a threat to stability, to force them to stick to their claims and plans they claim leading up to their elections. As the possibility of majority of to break from the neoliberal model as breaking from the neoliberal model is clearly in the minds of the the populations of Latin America, the will is there, the problem is translating that into a real change, and it appears that this will require an even greater role for social movements in coming years. LINKS CUBA LINK – EMBARGO LIFTING THE EMBARGO WILL GIVE THE U.S. THE FREEDOM TO PURSUE ITS AGENDA OF CONVERTING CUBA TO A NEOLIBERAL SYSTEM EGAN 07 (Daniel Egan, professor at the Department of Sociology at the University of Massachusetts-Lowell, 03/09/07, “Planning the Transition to Capitalism: The Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba”, http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/08854300601116662#.UdXq4fmThnE) The Commission’s reports are nothing short of a blueprint for¶ neoliberalism in a post-Castro Cuba. The Commission (2004) makes¶ use of a number of discursive devices in making its claims for¶ support for a transition to a “free Cuba,” but on closer examination¶ these are revealed to be specious. First, it offers a specific interpretation¶ of the history of US–Cuba relations that emphasizes US altruism and¶ dedication to high moral principles (italics mine):¶ Improving Cubans’ condition will require dramatic reforms to ensure that¶ democratic values and a civic culture return. (xx)¶ It has been the historical role of the United States to support the Cuban people’s¶ aspirations to hasten the day when they can restore their country to a respected,¶ peaceful, and constructive role in the international community. (2)¶ Because Cuba has not functioned under a stable democratic system within the¶ living memory of most people in the country, we cannot expect democratic¶ values and decision-making processes to be readily understood. (77)¶ Cubans will be able for the first time in decades to enjoy the freedoms that prevail¶ in all of the other countries of the Western Hemisphere. (156)¶ Protection of private individual and corporate property rights, including the¶ rights of intellectual property, will provide the basis for private sector development and Cuba’s return to the rule of law. (161)¶ Settling the issue of expropriated properties ... will be seen by many as a signal¶ that Cuba will be open for normal business once again. (224)¶ Despite the frequent references to a “free” and “democratic” Cuba in¶ CAFC I, similarly frequent references to pre-revolutionary Cuba¶ (those emphasized in the above quotes) imply that the transition will¶ return Cuba to a kind of golden era, ignoring the poverty and¶ oppression that characterized that period. In the period between 1898¶ and 1959, when the United States exercised authority over Cuban¶ political and economic life and either directly occupied the island or¶ supported dictatorships, pre-revolutionary Cuba was “open for¶ business” to the sugar companies and casinos, foreign capitalists¶ were “free” to accumulate capital, and Cuban workers and peasants¶ were “free” to sell their labor power for miserable wages. The Commission’s homage to the “good old days” before Castro reveals that the¶ genuine goal of US policy is the wholesale reintegration of Cuba as a¶ dependent outpost of global capitalism. THE ATTEMPT TO RE-MODEL CUBA INTO A NEOLIBERAL FANTASY EXEMPLIFIES AMERICA’S ATTEMPT TO REDUCE WORLD LIFE INTO HOMOGENOUS, NEOLIBERAL CONSUMPTION – THE RESULT IS DISASTER VASQUEZ 02 (Miguel Vasquez, works at the Department of Anthropology and is the coordinator of the Southwest Studies Program at Northern Arizona University, July 1st 2002, “Cultural Integrity in Non-Traditional Societies: Cuba Encounters the Global Market System”, pg. 6-7) The political odyssey to Florida and subsequent return to Cuba of little Elian Gonzales and his father Juan, despite substantial rewards offered by the Miami exile community for remaining in the US, left North Americans with some very mixed messages as to the true reality of the island homeland to which they chose to return. Why would anyone want to go back to¶ this ‘concentration camp [with] palm trees’? Ignorance and misunderstanding in the US of the significant social, cultural, and scientific achievements¶ of the Cuban revolution, as well as its current plight, exemplify the distorted¶ worldview that US media hegemony has imposed on most Americans.¶ Traveling to and from Cuba from the US, one crosses not just the Gulf of¶ Mexico, but whole paradigms of how the world supposedly functions. For¶ all of its problems, which are persistently propagandized by even the¶ ‘liberal’ media in the US, Cuba has provided a positive alternative vision of¶ development for impoverished millions throughout Latin America and¶ Africa. ‘The fact that one of the poorest nations on earth has been able to¶ create health and education systems comparable in many ways to those of¶ the West,’ Ken Livingstone observed, ‘whilst coping with the 40 year economic blockade is the most dramatic threat to US ideology and economic¶ ruthlessness’ (Livingstone, 1999).¶ The Cuban revolution and its institutions have clashed almost since its¶ inception with North American dominance of Latin America and the transnational corporate agenda. As a consequence of this revolutionary and¶ iconoclastic role, Cubans have long been an ‘endangered people’. For¶ almost half a century, US administrations, Democratic or Republican, have¶ been willing to permit the CIA and the rabidly anti-Castro Cuban-American¶ lobby to direct US–Cuba policy. The current government embargo, in the¶ face of powerful American corporate lobbies eager to gain a foothold, is the¶ most obvious example (Brenner and Kornbluh, 1995). Instead of encouraging internal debate toward viable alternatives, through a more open, civil,¶ and tolerant policy, the realpolitik line on China, the US stance toward¶ Cuba has had the opposite effect, often stifling debate and new ideas.¶ Indeed, fear of the loss of their revolutionary achievements in the face of¶ external American pressure may be a major factor in what some have seen ¶ to be the intransigent response and general confusion in policy on the part¶ of the Cuban government in the last decade (Ritter and Kirk, 1995). ¶ There is, however, another aspect of the North American role in neoliberal hegemony over local economies the world over that bears scrutiny¶ as well—the consumer culture that underlies and grounds this system. It is¶ based on what one iconoclastic economist colleague has called the ‘culture¶ of insatiability’: the individual and insatiable freedom to get more, have¶ more, and to be more (Brown, 2002). This freedom, this insatiability, is at¶ the core of US culture and its value system, as ensconced in the near sacrosanct slogan: ‘Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness’. In postmodern America, with a few reactionary exceptions, most citizens see these¶ as the birthright of every American, without ever questioning their possible¶ limits or long-run implications: ‘Be all you can be!’ Indeed, neo-classical¶ economic theorists, and most Americans, assume that to be human is to be¶ insatiable—that it is natural to pursue more of everything that is deemed¶ ‘good’ in life. The argument here is not a nihilistic or misanthropic dispute¶ with ‘liberty’, ‘happiness’, or the ‘good things in life’, but rather with how¶ the North American-led hegemony of consumerist culture has reformulated¶ these arguably universal goals as part of a system of commodification of¶ existence and the constant and concomitant need for economic growth—at nearly any cost. CUBA LINK – HISTORY/FORCE THE US IS ATTEMPTING TO IMPOSE A NEOLIBERAL AGENDA ON CUBA AND OTHER LATIN AMERICAN COUNTRIES AND WILL TAKE ANY OPPORTUNITY IT CAN TO ENFORCE NEOLIBERALISM MAKWANA 06 (Rajesh Makwana, executive director of Share The World's Resources, (STWR), November 23rd 2006, “Neoliberalism and Economic Globalization”, http://www.stwr.org/globalization/neoliberalism-and-economic-globalization.html) The shortcomings of neoliberal policy are also apparent in the well documented economic disasters suffered by countries in Latin America and South Asia in the 1990s. These countries were left with no choice but to follow the neoliberal model of privatization and deregulation, due to their financial problems and pressure from the IMF. Countries such as Venezuela, Cuba, Argentina and Bolivia have since rejected foreign corporate control and the advice of the IMF and World Bank. Instead they have favoured a redistribution of wealth, the re-nationalization of industry and have prioritized the provision of healthcare and education. They are also sharing resources such as oil and medical expertise throughout the region and with other countries around the world.¶ The dramatic economic and social improvement seen in these countries has not stopped them from being demonized by the US. Cuba is a well known example of this propaganda. Deemed to be a danger to ‘freedom and the American way of life’, Cuba has been subject to intense US political, economic and military pressure in order to tow the neoliberal line. Washington and the mainstream media in the US have recently embarked on a similar propaganda exercise aimed at Venezuela’s president Chavez. This over-reaction by Washington to ‘economic nationalism’ is consistent with their foreign policy objectives which have not changed significantly for the past 150 years. Securing resources and economic dominance has been and continues to be the USA’s main economic objective.¶ According to Maria Páez Victor:¶ “Since 1846 the United States has carried out no fewer than 50 military invasions and destabilizing operations involving 12 different Latin American countries. Yet, none of these countries has ever had the capacity to threaten US security in any significant way. The US intervened because of perceived threats to its economic control and expansion. For this reason it has also supported some of the region’s most vicious dictators such as Batista, Somoza, Trujillo, and Pinochet.” CUBA FYI – THIS IS THE EVIL WE ARE FIGHTING EVIL NEOCONSERVATIVE SAYS THAT LIFTING THE EMBARGO WOULD “SPREAD DEMOCRACY” GRISWOLD 02 (Daniel Griswold, director of the Center for Trade Policy Studies at the Cato Institute, 5/27/02, “No: The Embargo Harms Cubans and Gives Castro an Excuse for the Policy Failures of His Regime”, http://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/no-embargo-harmscubans-gives-castro-excuse-policy-failures-regime” Instead of the embargo, Congress and the administration should take concrete if incremental steps to expand American influence in Cuba. First, the travel ban should be lifted. Yes, more American dollars would end up in the coffers of the Cuban government, but dollars also would go to private Cuban citizens. Philip Peters, a former State Department official in the Reagan administration and an expert on Cuba, argues that American tourists would boost the earnings of Cubans who rent rooms, drive taxis, sell art and operate restaurants in their homes. Those dollars then would find their way to the 300 freely priced farmers’ markets, to carpenters, repairmen, tutors, food venders and other entrepreneurs.¶ Second, restrictions on remittances should be lifted. Cuban-Americans currently can send a maximum of $1,200 a year to friends and relatives in Cuba. Like tourism, expanded remittances would fuel the private sector, encourage Cuba’s modest economic reforms and promote independence from the government.¶ Third, American farmers and medical suppliers should be allowed to sell their products to Cuba with financing arranged by private commercial lenders, not just for cash as current law permits. Most international trade is financed by temporary credit, and private banks, not taxpayers, would bear the risk.¶ Finally, the Helms-Burton law should be allowed to expire in 2003. Like every other aspect of the embargo, it has failed to achieve its stated objectives and has, in fact, undermined U.S. influence in Cuba.¶ In an April 4 speech on the importance of trade-promotion authority, President Bush noted that trade was about more than raising incomes. “Trade creates the habits of freedom,” the president said, and those habits “begin to create the expectations of democracy and demands for better democratic institutions. Societies that are open to commerce across their borders are more open to democracy within their borders. And for those of us who care about values and believe in values — not just American values, but universal values that promote human dignity — trade is a good way to do that.” MEXICO LINK – GENERIC MEXICO IS THE SANDBOX OF NEOLIBERAL EXPERIMENTATION – IT BECOMES THE LOCATION TO TEST OUT FUTURE DEEPWATER HORIZON CATASTROPHES. IF WE PROVE IT FAILS IN MEXICO, THAT MEANS IT WILL BE EXPORTED AND FAIL GLOBALLY MEXICAN SOLIDARITY NETWORK 11 (Autonomous University of Social Movements http://www.mexicosolidarity.org/programs/alternativeeconomy/neoliberalism) 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. Experiments that "work," from the perspective of transnational capital (and all of the above-mentioned experiments "worked") are exported to other countries. This implies a complete restructuring of the economies, politics and cultures around the world, to make them consistent with the neoliberal vision. Nearly everything is on the table for reform: economic policy, public subsidies, social programs, industrial policy, government procurement, intellectual property rights, patents, banking and financial services, agricultural policy, foreign direct investment, energy policy, labor regulations, environmental protection, public education and health care - and the list goes on. Twenty-first century neoliberalism is a project for world domination, and the US and Mexico are at the center of the vortex. MEXICO LINK – OIL DRILLING OIL DRILLING IS NOT SIMPLY A PARTICULAR STRATEGY: IT IS THE ROOT OF THE BROADER NEOLIBERALIZATION OF THE MEXICAN ECONOMY AND ITS DEPENDENCE ON FOREIGN OIL DRILLING. THE AFF CONTINUES THAT TRAJECTORY MORTON ‘3 (Adam David, Department of Politics @ Lancaster U., “Structural Change and Neoliberalism in Mexico: 'Passive Revolution' in the Global Political Economy” Third World Quarterly, Vol. 24, No. 4, pp. 638-639) At almost the same time large oil reserves were also discovered which , by 1982, were estimated at 72 billion barrels, with probable reserves at 90-150 billion and potential reserves at 250 billion, amounting to the sixth largest reserves in the world." Hence the political economy of Mexico became dependent on petroleum-fuelled development under the administration of Jose Lopez Portillo (1976-82) while attempts were made to balance the tensions between competing social classes. However, a coherent course, capable of satisfying the interests of national and internationally linked capital in Mexico, was not set. By the time world oil prices dropped in 1981, leading to reduced oil revenues, accelerating debt obligations and a surge in capital flight, Mexico faced another financial crisis that initially led to the nationalisation of the banks on 1 September 1982. This was a 'last-ditch effort' to recoup revenues for the public sector and reassert some form of state autonomy but it resulted in reinforcing private-sector opposition, capital flight, inflation and balance of payments problems.45 Similar to the earlier crisis, the result of the 1982 debt crisis was a combination of mutually reinforcing factors both within the globalising political economy and the form of state in Mexico. The crisis was precipitated by the world oil glut, a world economic recession, and rising interest rates in the United States , but its root causes were domestic: excessively expansionary monetary and social policies, persistent overvaulation of the peso, over-dependence of the public sector on a single source of revenue (oil exports), a stagnant agriculture sector (at least that part which produced basic foodstuffs for domestic consumption), an inefficient and globally uncompetitive industrial plant, excessive labour force growth ... a capital-intensive development model that made it impossible to create an adequate employment base, endemic corruption in government, and resistance by entrenched economic and political interests to structural reforms."' This resulted in another IMF austerity programme-involving reductions in government subsidies for foodstuffs and basic consumer items, increases in taxes on consumption, and tight wage controls targeted to control inflation-which the Mexican administration implemented by exceeding planned targets. Therefore, the crisis arose as a result of a conjunction of factors that also included the rise of technocrats-underway throughout the 1970s-which led to the ascendancy of the accumulation strategy of neoliberalism.47 Crucial at this time were the institutional career paths of the elite, which began to alter so that ministries associated with banking and finance planning provided the career experience likely to lead to the upper echelons of government. Notably this was the context within which the Ministry of Programming and Budget (sPP) came to rise to institutional predominance as a pivotal camarilla (clique) within the organisation of the state. MEXICO LINK – OIL DRILLING THE PLAN CONTINUES A DE-NATIONALIZATION OF MEXICAN OIL RESOURCES WHICH INCREASES POVERTY AND ENTRENCHES NEOLIBERAL MODELS OF PROFIT-MAKING ZALIK ‘9 (Anna, Faculty of Environmental Studies, York University, Toronto, “Zones of Exclusion: Offshore Extraction, the Contestation of Space and Physical Displacement in the Nigerian Delta and the Mexican Gulf” Antipode Vol. 41 No. 3, pp. 561-562) With offshore development Mexico’s “state monopoly” has come under encroachment from multiple service contracts that allow foreign contractors broad rights over entire marine oil fields. These are described as anticonstitutional and ill-advised by pro-sovereigntist sectors in Mexico (Shields 2003; see also http://www.untcip.net). As a result of these contracts, foreign companies increasingly possess the data and control the profits accruing from extraction in much of the offshore, yet residents continue to center their demands for compensation on stateowned Pemex. Accordingly, in these varied regional settings, oil politics has resulted in markedly different processes of (post) colonial state (de)formation, which shape the form that social mediation takes in the marine zone. While in both cases securing the offshore has involved population displacement, the case interventions discussed below vary greatly with the historical constitution of their extractive regime. As a basis for examining the Warri and “Zone of Exclusion” interventions in more detail, I outline the economic and spatial contours of offshore petroleum development in the Mexican Gulf and the Nigerian Delta. MEXICO LINK – OFFSHORE OIL MOVEMENT TOWARDS OFFSHORE DRILLING ALLOWS AVOIDING RESISTANCE MOVEMENTS AND ENTRENCHES POWER OF THE SECURITY STATE TO POLICE BORDER REGIONS, ALLOW DEREGULATED CAPITAL TO EXPAND ZALIK ‘9 (Anna, Faculty of Environmental Studies, York University, Toronto, “Zones of Exclusion: Offshore Extraction, the Contestation of Space and Physical Displacement in the Nigerian Delta and the Mexican Gulf” Antipode Vol. 41 No. 3, p. 577) In each case, the practical dislocation of residents associated with a “secured” offshore industry takes divergent socio-territorial forms. In the Nigerian context, this involves privatized, locally managed territorial security and resource control “from below”. In the Mexican Gulf, security for offshore oil extraction is provided by that classic symbolic and spatial expression of national sovereignty, the Mexican navy. Yet ironically the presence of an effective navy in Mexico nevertheless buttresses foreign, private control over the Mexican subsoil (ie in oil platforms named for US states and controlled by foreign companies). The re-regulatory process associated with offshoring, then, relies on the federal state policing the privatized offshore. The constitution of the so-called “deregulated” exterior of the offshore is thus necessarily dependent on a more regulated state, in that the creation of an outside presupposes an inside (Cameron and Palan 2004). Collectively, then, the two interventions illustrate how popular, territorial claims on extractive sites prompt the petroleum industry to seek further social and spatial disembedding of production in the offshore, even as these territorial claims partially constitute the “emergent” security apparatus. MEXICO LINK – DEREGULATION VS. NATIONAL CONTROL NATIONAL CONTROL OVER OIL RESOURCES CREATES COMPARATIVELY BETTER WORKING PRACTICES – NEOLIBERAL DEREGULATION AND MULTINATIONAL EXPANSION CREATES OPPRESSIVE CONDITIONS ZALIK ‘9 (Anna, Faculty of Environmental Studies, York University, Toronto, “Zones of Exclusion: Offshore Extraction, the Contestation of Space and Physical Displacement in the Nigerian Delta and the Mexican Gulf” Antipode Vol. 41 No. 3, p. 573) Neoliberal reforms to this sector are mirrored in the privatization of the petroleum offshore. Carmen City has become the base for numerous foreign companies. The wages and conditions of those who work on the platforms versus those in Pemex are stark. Comparatively, they reflect labor relations in the Mexican oil industry prior to the 1938 nationalization, in which wages were largely beyond the control of collective bargaining and/or negotiated by company unions (Santiago 2006). Local workers state that the subcontractors pay considerably less than Pemex and treat staff poorly,26 that they must sign contracts prohibiting attempts to unionize or share information on their wages and that, after frequent layoffs, they are often denied severance pay supposedly guaranteed under contract. The private offshore, then, is “excluded” from many of the labor protections guaranteed to Pemex workers. Social hierarchies on the platforms reflect unresolved tensions between the nationalized and private sector. Pemex workers remain the best treated at sea—a commonly cited example that Pemex staff and guests eat first on the restaurant platform; contract staff must wait until all Pemex staff have eaten. MEXICO – RESISTANCE SOLVES RESISTANCE AGAINST CORPORATIST OIL INDUSTRY IN MEXICO HAS SUCCESSFULLY FOUGHT BACK AGAINST NEOLIBERAL GAINS. OUR ALTERNATIVE IS SOLIDARITY WITH THOSE MOVEMENTS ZALIK ‘6 (Anna, S.V. Ciriacy Wantrup Post Doctoral Fellow @ U.C. California-Berkeley, “Re-Regulating the Mexican Gulf” CLAS Working Papers, pp. 32-33) Apetac manifests not only the persistence of popular mobilizing strategies of the corporatist era, but also the buttressing of these strategies through the support of a liberalized Mexican civil society—including the urban environmental movement. Such collective mobilization seeks the protection of campesino groups from the ecologically harmful practices of both parastatal and private industry, while concurrently promoting Mexican energy sovereignty and consumer protection (as seen in Greenpeace Mexico’s active opposition to proposed Liquefied Natural Gas projects in Baja California, led by Chevron, Shell, and Sempra). Concurrently, their emphasis on local development reflects the stance popularized by the Zapatista movement: the external orientation of the Mexican economy since the signing of NAFTA makes agrarian communities increasingly vulnerable to the vagaries of global finance. In the 2006 elections two different forms of opposition will influence the debate on re-regulation: that portion that grew out of the corporatist state, represented by López Obrador, and the emergent movements that question traditional political representation as a source of social justice, that is la otra campana of the Zapatistas. The actions that popular mobilization in the Gulf has taken to reform industry from below, and the use of the more traditional forms of political representation as reflected in the PRD mobilizations in Tabasco in the 1990s, mark an interesting contrast to Pemex’s recent announcement that it will join the UN Global Compact. Through the Global Compact, the UN formally promotes the voluntary self-regulation of private industry. Critiqued as a form of socioenvironmental greenwashing (Elson 2004), the Global Compact reflects private corporate and bilateral moves to re-regulate from above (Zalik 2004b). Pemex is the first petroleum parastatal to sign onto the Compact; other signatories include Exxon Mobil and Shell. Thus Pemex adopts the language of global corporate citizenship characteristic of the transnational companies upon which its operations increasingly depend. MEXICO – NEOLIB NOT INEVITABLE NEOLIBERALISM IS FAR FROM INEVITABLE IN MEXICO AND HAS BEEN MET BY CONSTANT RESISTANCE – IT’S A QUESTION OF ALTERNATIVE ENGAGEMENT WITH THAT RESISTANCE MORTON ‘3 (Adam David, Department of Politics @ Lancaster U., “Structural Change and Neoliberalism in Mexico: 'Passive Revolution' in the Global Political Economy” Third World Quarterly, Vol. 24, No. 4, pp. 648-649) More generally the above analysis of neoliberalism in Mexico also highlighted how social forces engendered common perspectives on the importance of fiscal discipline and market-orientated reforms between technocratic elites of a common social background. Put differently, attention was drawn to an unfolding process of class struggle brought about by the expansion of capital and the internalisation of class interests between various fractions of classes within state-civil society relations.'25 This involved focusing on how social relations within the form of state in Mexico were actively and passively implicated in transnational structures of the global political economy. The discussion of the PSE and PRONASOL, two coexisting measures both introduced to offset political instability resulting from the neoliberal accumulation strategy and the reconfigured hegemonic project of the PRI, exemplify this process of struggle. A further point that the argument has raised is that the case of Mexico does not signify the straightforward reproduction of a uniform 'model' of neoliberalism. Instead, the dissemination and acceptance of neoliberal values in Mexico has meant an adaptation of social relations to culturally specific conditions . To be sure, this may result in resemblances with similar processes elsewhere in the global political economy but, as the development of policies in Mexico demonstrates, there is a certain peculiarity to local tendencies in response to structural change in world order. The final point that needs to be reaffirmed is that hegemony is always constantly under construction and contestation. The attempt to reconstitute hegemonic accord through the neoliberal restructuring of social relations in Mexico should not be imputed as an historically inevitable act but the outcome of social struggle and protest. Hence the importance of further considering 'antipassive revolution' strategies of resistance to the impending second generation of neoliberal capitalist development in Mexico and the future of those social movements that are probing the social and political foundations of the state. IMPACTS IMPACT – VALUE TO LIFE NEOLIBERALISM EVISCERATES THE VALUE TO LIFE OF INDIVIDUALS SUBJECTED TO IT. ANDREW 09 (Sukys, Paul Andrew, Academic journal article from Forum on Public Policy: A Journal of the Oxford Round Table “Dehumanizing the Humanities: Neoliberalism and the Unethical Dimension of the Market Ethic” http://www.questia.com/library/1G1216682649/dehumanizing-the-humanities-neoliberalism-and-the#articleDetails) Neoliberalism is a philosophical movement that sees market values as permeating all aspects of life, including not only the economic, but also religious, ethical, political, personal, and educational dimensions. The neoliberal sees all reality as a series of market transactions and places a value on all human endeavors, from philosophy to health care, from religion to law, in terms of quantifiable deals that can be assessed objectively. Neoliberalism assumes that the marketplace is the most effective, most efficient, and most useful structure upon which to build all other necessary cultural, political and educational structures within a social construct. Thus, the market is seen as the template for all other activities of significance within a society. IMPACT – VALUE TO LIFE/ENVIRONMENT NEOLIBERALISM DESTROYS CRUCIAL SYSTEMS THAT MAINTAIN VALUE TO LIFE – DESTROYS THE ENVIRONMENT HEYNEN, MCCARTHY, PRUDHAM, AND ROBBINS 07 (Nik Heynen, James McCarthy, Scott Prudham, and Paul Robbins, Neoliberal Environments False promises and unnatural consequences, various Professors and PhD Contributed to the Final book, published in the US by Routledge) The chapters included in this part of Neoliberal Environments do not¶ explicitly grapple with the conceptualization of neoliberalization processes,¶ but they do fruitfully extend our understanding of such processes by¶ exploring their ramifications in the field of environmental governance. Specifically,¶ the chapters by Bakker, Robertson, Hollander and Young and Keil¶ investigate the ways in which neoliberal projects of marketization and¶ commodification have been imposed upon particular aspects of society/¶ nature relations in diverse geographical settings – including the regulation¶ of water production and consumption in England, Wales and Toronto; the¶ regulation of wetland land-use patterns in exurban Chicago; and the regulation¶ of agricultural production in rural Florida. Since Polanyi’s (1957)¶ classic analysis of the ‘‘great transformation’’ associated with the attempt to¶ create ‘‘self-regulating markets’’ in the late nineteenth and early twentieth¶ centuries, critical scholars have recognized that (a) the operation of markets¶ is not self-sustaining, but hinges upon the construction and maintenance of¶ regulatory arrangements; and (b) the commodification of social life is not¶ the natural ‘‘order of things,’’ but can be accomplished only provisionally,¶ through the disciplining impacts of market-oriented institutional structures¶ and rule-regimes. Each of the chapters included in this part reinforces and¶ illustrates these contentions. Nature – whether manifested in the form of¶ water, land or agricultural produce – is not, in itself, a commodity; yet, it¶ may be subjected to a logic of commodification insofar as it is appropriated¶ according to institutionalized principles of exchange, private ownership and¶ profitability. Concomitantly, the contributions in this part reveal the ways in¶ which strategies to subject nature to the logic of the commodity may generate¶ unintended, and deeply dysfunctional, outcomes. For, under neoliberal¶ rule-regimes, water and food may not be distributed equitably even when¶ they are abundant; natural landscapes may be degraded through overuse or¶ inadequate protection; and social needs may be neglected due to the private¶ appropriation of collective natural resources. Contrary to the claims of¶ neoliberal pundits, such ‘‘externalities’’ are not the result of inadequate or¶ insufficient marketization, but are intrinsic to the very workings of capitalist¶ market economies (Polanyi 1957; Gill 1998). As the chapters under discussion¶ here show, the disruptive consequences of such ‘‘illogics’’ are severely¶ exacerbated under neoliberal regulatory arrangements. IMPACT – DESTROYS ECONOMY/DEMOCRACY HISTORY PROVES THAT NEOLIBERALISM WILL INEVITABLY DESTROY ECONOMIC STRUCTURES AND INCREASE CLASS STRATIFICATION HARVEY 07 (David Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism, social theorist of international standing, PhD in Geography from the University of Cambridge, member of the Interim Committee for the emerging International Organization for a Participatory Society.[4]) The first experiment with neoliberal state formation, it is worth¶ recalling, occurred in Chile after Pinochet’s coup on the ‘little¶ September 11th’ of 1973 (almost thirty years to the day before¶ Bremer’s announcement of the regime to be installed in Iraq). The¶ coup, against the democratically elected government of Salvador¶ Allende, was promoted by domestic business elites threatened¶ by Allende’s drive towards socialism. It was backed by US¶ corporations, the CIA, and US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.¶ It violently repressed all the social movements and political¶ organizations of the left and dismantled all forms of popular¶ organization (such as the community health centres in poorer¶ neighbourhoods). The labour market was ‘freed’ from regulatory¶ or institutional restraints (trade union power, for example). But¶ how was the stalled economy to be revived? The policies of import¶ substitution (fostering national industries by subsidies or tariff¶ protections) that had dominated Latin American attempts at economic¶ development had fallen into disrepute, particularly in Chile,¶ where they had never worked that well. With the whole world in¶ economic recession, a new approach was called for.¶ A group of economists known as ‘the Chicago boys’ because of¶ their attachment to the neoliberal theories of Milton Friedman,¶ then teaching at the University of Chicago, was summoned to help¶ reconstruct the Chilean economy. The story of how they were¶ chosen is an interesting one. The US had funded training of Chilean¶ economists at the University of Chicago since the 1950s as part¶ of a Cold War programme to counteract left-wing tendencies in¶ Latin America. Chicago-trained economists came to dominate at¶ the private Catholic University in Santiago. During the early¶ 1970s, business elites organized their opposition to Allende¶ through a group called ‘the Monday Club’ and developed a working¶ relationship with these economists, funding their work¶ through research institutes. After General Gustavo Leigh, Pinochet’s¶ rival for power and a Keynesian, was sidelined in 1975, Pinochet¶ brought these economists into the government, where their¶ first job was to negotiate loans with the International Monetary¶ Fund. Working alongside the IMF, they restructured the economy¶ according to their theories. They reversed the nationalizations and¶ privatized public assets, opened up natural resources (fisheries,¶ timber, etc.) to private and unregulated exploitation (in many cases¶ riding roughshod over the claims of indigenous inhabitants), privatized¶ social security, and facilitated foreign direct investment and¶ freer trade. The right of foreign companies to repatriate profits¶ from their Chilean operations was guaranteed. Export-led growth¶ was favoured over import substitution. The only sector reserved¶ for the state was the key resource of copper (rather like oil in Iraq).¶ This proved crucial to the budgetary viability of the state since¶ copper revenues flowed exclusively into its coffers. The immediate revival of the Chilean economy in terms of growth rates, capital¶ accumulation, and high rates of return on foreign investments was¶ short-lived. It all went sour in the Latin American debt crisis of¶ 1982 . The result was a much more pragmatic and less ideologically¶ driven application of neoliberal policies in the years that followed.¶ All of this, including the pragmatism, provided helpful evidence to¶ support the subsequent turn to neoliberalism in both Britain¶ (under Thatcher) and the US (under Reagan) in the 1980s. Not for¶ the first time, a brutal experiment carried out in the periphery¶ became a model for the formulation of policies in the centre (much¶ as experimentation with the flat tax in Iraq has been proposed¶ under Bremer’s decrees).8 IMPACT – COLONIALISM NEOLIBERALISM PRODUCES HUGE STRUCTURAL INEQUALITIES, RE-ENTRENCHES COLONIALISM DOUZINAS 5/23/13 (Costas Douzinas, Seven Theses on Human Rights: (3) Neoliberal Capitalism & Voluntary Imperialism, Professor of Law and Director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities, Founded the Birkbeck School of Law, Pro-Vice Master at Birkbeck for International Link, awarded a Jean Monnet fellowships, http://criticallegalthinking.com/2013/05/23/seven-theses-on-human-rights-3-neoliberalcapitalism-voluntary-imperialism/) Thesis 3: The post-1989 order combines an economic system that generates huge structural inequalities and oppression with a juridico-political ideology promising dignity and equality. This major instability is contributing to its demise .¶ Why and how did this combination of neoliberal capitalism and humanitarianism emerge? Capitalism has always moralized the eco- nomy and applied a gloss of righteousness to profit-making and unregulated competition precisely because it is so hard to believe. From Adam Smith’s ‘hidden hand’ to the assertion that unrestrained egotism promotes the common good or that beneficial effects ‘trickle down’ if the rich get even bigger tax breaks, capitalism has consistently tried to claim the moral high ground.1¶ Similarly, human rights and their dissemination are not simply the result of the liberal or charitable disposition of the West. The predominantly negative meaning of freedom as the absence of external constraints — a euphemism for keeping state regulation of the economy at a minimum – has dominated the Western conception of human rights and turned them into the perfect companion of neoliberalism. Global moral and civic rules are the necessary companion of the globalization of economic production and consumption, of the completion of world capitalism that follows neoliberal dogmas. Over the last 30 years, we have wit- nessed, without much comment, the creation of global legal rules regulating the world capitalist economy, including rules on investment, trade, aid, and intellectual property. Robert Cooper has called it the voluntary imperialism of the global economy. “It is operated by an international consortium of financial Institutions such as the IMF and the World Bank … These institutions … make demands, which increasingly emphasise good governance. If states wish to benefit, they must open themselves up to the interference of international organisations and foreign states.” Cooper concludes that “what is needed then is a new kind of imperialism, one acceptable to a world of human rights and cosmopolitan values.”2¶ The (implicit) promise to the developing world is that the violent or voluntary adoption of the market-led, neoliberal model of good governance and limited rights will inexorably lead to Western economic standards. This is fraudulent. Historically, the Western ability to turn the protection of formal rights into a limited guarantee of material, economic, and social rights was partly based on huge transfers from the colonies to the metropolis. While universal morality militates in favour of reverse flows, Western policies on development aid and Third World debt indicate that this is not politically feasible. Indeed, the successive crises and re-arrangements of neoliberal capitalism lead to dispossession and displacement of family farming by agribusiness, to forced migration and urbanization. These processes expand the number of people without skills, status, or the basics for existence. They become human debris, the waste-life, the bottom billions. This neo-colonial attitude has now been extended from the periphery to the European core. Greece, Portugal, Ireland, and Spain have been subjected to the rigours of the neoliberal “Washington Consensus” of austerity and destruction of the welfare state, despite its failure in the developing world. More than half the young people of Spain and Greece are permanently unemployed and a whole generation is being destroyed. But this gene-cide, to coin a term, has not generated a human rights campaign.¶ As Immanuel Wallerstein put it, “if all humans have equal rights, and all the peoples have equal rights, then we cannot maintain the kind of inegalitarian system that the capitalist world economy has always been and always will be.”3 When the unbridgeability of the gap between the missionary statements on equality and dignity and the bleak reality of obscene inequality becomes apparent, human rights will lead to new and uncontrollable types of tension and conflict. Spanish soldiers met the advancing Napoleonic armies shouting “Down with freedom!” Today people meet the ‘peacekeepers’ of the new world order with cries of “Down with human rights!”¶ Social and political systems become hegemonic by turning their ideological priorities into universal principles and values. In the new world order, human rights are the perfect candidate for this role. Their core principles, interpreted negatively and economically, promote neoliberal capitalist penetration. Under a different construction, their abstract provisions could subject the inequalities and indignities of late capitalism to withering attack. But this cannot happen as long as they are used by the dominant powers to spread the ‘values’ of an ideology based on the nihilism and insatiability of desire.¶ Despite differences in content, colonialism and the human rights movement form a continuum, episodes in the same drama, which started with the great discoveries of the new world and is now carried out in the streets of Iraq and Afghanistan: bringing civilization to the barbarians. The claim to spread Reason and Christianity gave western empires their sense of superiority and their universalizing impetus. The urge is still there; the ideas have been redefined but the belief in the universality of our world-view remains as strong as that of the colonialists. There is little difference between imposing reason and good governance and proselytizing for Christianity and human rights. They are both part of the cultural package of the West, aggressive and redemptive at the same time. TURNS CASE – ECONOMY NEOLIBERALIZATION MAGNIFIES ECONOMIC CRISIS, DESTROYS REGULATION, AND MAKES FAILURE INEVITABLE HEYNEN, MCCARTHY, PRUDHAM, AND ROBBINS 07 (Nik Heynen, James McCarthy, Scott Prudham, and Paul Robbins, Neoliberal Environments False promises and unnatural consequences, various Professors and PhD Contributed to the Final book, published in the US by Routledge) 1 Neoliberalism is a process. Neoliberalism is not a fixed end-state or condition.¶ Rather, it represents a process of market-driven social and spatial¶ transformation (‘‘neoliberalization’’).¶ 2 Neoliberalism is articulated through contextually specific strategies. Neoliberalism¶ does not exist in a single, ‘‘pure’’ form. Rather, it is always¶ articulated through historically and geographically specific strategies of¶ institutional transformation and ideological rearticulation.¶ 3 Neoliberalism hinges upon the active mobilization of state power. Neoliberalism¶ does not entail simply the ‘‘rolling back’’ of state regulation and¶ the ‘‘rolling forward’’ of the market. Instead, it generates a complex¶ reconstitution of state/economy relations in which state institutions are¶ actively mobilized to promote market-based regulatory arrangements¶ and to extend the process of commodification.¶ 4 Neoliberalization generates path-dependent outcomes. Neoliberalism does¶ not engender identical (economic, political or spatial) outcomes in each¶ context in which it is imposed. Rather, as place-, territory- and scalespecific¶ neoliberal projects collide with inherited regulatory landscapes,¶ contextually specific pathways of institutional reorganization crystallize¶ that reflect the legacies of earlier modes of regulation and forms of contestation.¶ 5 Neoliberalization is intensely contested. Neoliberalization, understood as¶ the attempt to extend the process of commodification through the¶ imposition of market-based regulatory arrangements and sociocultural¶ norms, is aggressively contested. It is opposed by diverse social forces ¶ concerned to preserve non-market or ‘‘socialized’’ forms of coordination¶ that constrain unfettered capital accumulation and impose limits upon¶ the process of commodification.¶ 6 Neoliberalization exacerbates regulatory failure. The imposition of neoliberalism¶ has not established a framework for sustainable development,¶ stable political regulation or social cohesion. Rather, neoliberalization¶ projects are deeply contradictory insofar as they tend to undermine¶ many of the economic, institutional and geographical preconditions for¶ socioeconomic revitalization . Thus, instead of resolving the politicaleconomic¶ crisis tendencies of contemporary capitalism, neoliberalism¶ exacerbates them by engendering various forms of market failure, state¶ failure and governance failure (Jessop 1998).¶ 7 The project of neoliberalism continues to evolve. The failures of neoliberalism¶ have not triggered its abandonment or dissolution as a project of¶ radical institutional transformation. To the contrary, this project has¶ continued to reinvent itself – politically, organizationally, spatially – in¶ close conjunction with its pervasively dysfunctional social consequences. ALTERNATIVE SOCIAL MOVEMENTS RESISTING NEOLIBERALISM WORK HISTORY PROVES SOCIAL MOVEMENTS HAVE HAD SUCCESS RESISTING NEOLIBERAL DOMINATION Paul COONEY 2006 Socio-Economic CenterDepartment of Economics Campus of Guama Federal University of Pará (UFPA)Belém, Pará, Brazil The Decline of Neoliberalism and the Role of Social Movements in Latin America pg 2 http://pendientedemigracion.ucm.es/info/ec/jec10/ponencias/703Cooney.pdf Although neoliberal policies still dominate the world and Latin America, there has been a clear and marked decline of the political acceptance of such polices. This is reflected in the swing to the left in elections of recent years: Chavez in Venezuela, Lula in Brazil, Kirchner in Argentina, Vazquez in Uruguay, and the recent election of Morales in Bolivia; a clear expression of the rejection of the neoliberal model and a willingness to try alternatives. Lastly, the current conundrum is evaluated; in spite of populations in Latin America rejecting the neoliberal model, the elected leaders continue to implement neoliberal policies, thus accommodating local and foreign elites and Washington, as opposed to the electorate that brought them into power. This is producing an increasing disappointment and at times, depolitization, as in the case of Brazil, but also a recognition on the part of the people that maybe a strategy other than just elections every 4-5 years is necessary to fight for their own interests. Such an historical conjuncture suggests the need for the role of social movements to grow even more than they have in recent years, as they, not parties, such as the PT (Partido de Trabalhadores/ Workers Party) in Brazil, are crucial for pressuring ‘alternative’ governments to break with the neoliberal model. In this paper, the case studies of Argentina and Mexico are presented, considering both the impact of neoliberal polices and the response by social movements. In addition, the social movements in other countries of Latin America are considered, such as in Brazil, Ecuador and Bolivia. BLOCK ANSWERS AT: “UTILITARIANISM GOOD” UTILITARIANISM PROMOTES RACISM AND DENIES THE VALUE OF LIFE WHEN USED AS THE MAIN EVALUATION OF ETHICS Manuel VELASQUEZ, Claire ANDRE, Thomas SHANKS, S.J., and Michael J. MEYER 89(Manuel Velasquez Professor of Management at santa clara university leavey school of business, Claire Andre Ethics Associate Director Claire Andre at santa clara university, Center Director Thomas Shanks at santa clara university, Santa Clara University, Assistant Professor Calculating Consequences: The Utilitarian Approach to Ethics 1989 http://www.scu.edu/ethics/practicing/decision/calculating.html) While utilitarianism is currently a very popular ethical theory, there are some difficulties in relying on it as a sole method for moral decisionmaking. First, the utilitarian calculation requires that we assign values to the benefits and harms resulting from our actions and compare them with the benefits and harms that might result from other actions. But it's often difficult, if not impossible, to measure and compare the values of certain benefits and costs. How do we go about assigning a value to life or to art? And how do we go about comparing the value of money with, for example, the value of life, the value of time, or the value of human dignity? Moreover, can we ever be really certain about all of the consequences of our actions? Our ability to measure and to predict the benefits and harms resulting from a course of action or a moral rule is dubious, to say the least.¶ Perhaps the greatest difficulty with utilitarianism is that it fails to take into account considerations of justice. We can imagine instances where a certain course of action would produce great benefits for society, but they would be clearly unjust. During the apartheid regime in South Africa in the last century, South African whites, for example, sometimes claimed that all South Africans—including blacks—were better off under white rule. These whites claimed that in those African nations that have traded a whites-only government for a black or mixed one, social conditions have rapidly deteriorated. Civil wars, economic decline, famine, and unrest, they predicted, will be the result of allowing the black majority of South Africa to run the government. If such a prediction were true—and the end of apartheid has shown that the prediction was false—then the white government of South Africa would have been morally justified by utilitarianism, in spite of its injustice.¶ If our moral decisions are to take into account considerations of justice, then apparently utilitarianism cannot be the sole principle guiding our decisions. It can, however, play a role in these decisions. The principle of utilitarianism invites us to consider the immediate and the less immediate consequences of our actions. Given its insistence on summing the benefits and harms of all people, utilitarianism asks us to look beyond self-interest to consider impartially the interests of all persons affected by our actions. As John Stuart Mill once wrote:¶ The happiness which forms the utilitarian standard of what is right in conduct, is not...(one's) own happiness, but that of all concerned. requires him to be as As between his own happiness and that of others, utilitarianism strictly impartial as a disinterested and benevolent spectator.¶ In an era today that some have characterized as "the age of self-interest," utilitarianism is a powerful reminder that morality calls us to look beyond the self to the good of all. THE ROLL OF THE BALLOT IS TO VOTE ON THE ADVOCACY THAT PROVIDES AND PRESVES THE MOST RIGHT TO THE PEOPLE Manuel VELASQUEZ, Claire ANDRE, Thomas SHANKS, S.J., and Michael J. MEYER 89(Manuel Velasquez Professor of Management at santa clara university leavey school of business, Claire Andre Ethics Associate Director Claire Andre at santa clara university, Center Director Thomas Shanks at santa clara university, Santa Clara University, Assistant Professor,Rightshttp://www.scu.edu/ethics/practicing/decision/rights.html) One of the most important and influential interpretations of moral rights is based on the work of Immanuel Kant, an eighteenth century philosopher. Kant maintained that each of us has a worth or a dignity that must be respected. This dignity makes it wrong for others to abuse us or to use us against our will. Kant expressed this idea in a moral principle: humanity must always be treated as an end, not merely as a means. To treat a person as a mere means is to use a person to advance one's own interest. But to treat a person as an end is to respect that person's dignity by allowing each the freedom to choose for himself or herself. AT: “THEY ASKED FOR IT” THE AFF’S NOTION THAT THE “PEOPLE” OF X COUNTRY WANT THE PLAN SIMPLY APPLIES THE OPINIONS OF THE RULING ELITE TO THE POOR INDIVIDUALS WHO WILL ONLY CONTINUE TO BE OPPRESSED. COONEY 2006 (Paul, Socio-Economic CenterDepartment of Economics Campus of Guama Federal University of Pará (UFPA) Belém, Pará, Brazil The Decline of Neoliberalism and the Role of Social Movements in Latin America pg 1 http://pendientedemigracion.ucm.es/info/ec/jec10/ponencias/703Cooney.pdf) Eventually, the the political elites of Third World came to be major advocates for neoliberal policies , for example in Latin America: Salinas de Gortari, Menem, Collor de Mello, employing a rhetoric referring to modernizing reforms, breaking free of old exhausted, closed state-dominated systems of the past and moving forward through liberalizing reforms for a new and modern economy, more integrated with the modern world. AT: “NO ALTERNATIVE TO NEOLIBERALISM” DEFENDERS OF NEOLIBERALISM WILL ALWAYS LIE ABOUT THE NON-EXISTENCE OF ALTERNATIVE MOVEMENTS IN ORDER TO MAKE IT SEEM INEVITABLE Paul – RESIST THE BLACKMAIL. COONEY 2006 Socio-Economic CenterDepartment of Economics Campus of Guama Federal University of Pará (UFPA)Belém, Pará, Brazil The Decline of Neoliberalism and the Role of Social Movements in Latin America pg 1 http://pendientedemigracion.ucm.es/info/ec/jec10/ponencias/703Cooney.pdf The advocates of such policies, using free trade and free market rhetoric , were able to gain acceptance especially with the support of the media. Using the argument that there is no alternative (TINA)2 was able to convince many populations, of the legitimacy and worthwhile aspect of such a shift and the futility of trying something else. However, after 20 years or more, and various crises, such as in Mexico, Asia, Russia, Brazil and Argentina, the claims and allegations of the neoliberals can be compared with reality, and thereby exposing much of the false rhetoric. During the last two decades or more, the neoliberal model has dominated economic policies in Latin America and in general, has produced lower wages, an increase in unemployment and poverty for the majority of Latin Americans, as well as financial crises and depressions. AFF ANSWERS NEOLIBERALISM DOESN’T EXIST NEOLIBERALISM DOESN’T EXIST, IT ISN’T REAL, THE U.S. ISN’T NEOLIBERALIST, AND THE U.S. WON’T ENFORCE NEOLIBERALISM IN CUBA OR LATIN AMERICA ALTMAN 05 (Daniel Altman was formerly Director of Thought Leadership at Dalberg Global Development Advisors. He was a global economics columnist of the International Herald Tribune. He had been one members of the editorial board of The New York Times, he was also on the staff of The Economist. Outside of journalism, he served as an economic advisor to the British government in 2003 and 2004. He currently teaches economics as an adjunct professor at the New York University Stern School of Business and serves as Chief Economist of Big Think, 07/16/05, “Neoliberalism? It doesn't exist”, http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/15/business/worldbusiness/15iht-wbmarket16.html?_r=0) Not long ago, Patrick Bond, an author and professor at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa, was sitting on an airplane, working on a presentation he was soon to make at Oxford. For one particular slide, he spent several minutes rearranging pictures of American troops' flag-draped caskets aboard a cargo plane and of the World Bank president, Paul Wolfowitz, dressed as an astronaut.¶ Never mind that this was a presentation about water commodification in South Africa - to opponents of "neoliberalism" like Bond, the supposed evils of free markets and expansionist foreign policy are one and the same.¶ With globalization having somewhat rehabilitated its image, opponents of free markets have settled on a new bugbear, neoliberalism. As with globalization, the word's interpretation is rather flexible. But to its enemies, neoliberalism apparently refers to an American-born urge to create unrestrained markets for everything, everywhere, even if it means overthrowing a government.¶ The problem is, the real neoliberals don't seem to exist. The U.S. government does not want open markets everywhere, nor do its main economic competitors. If they did, the poor countries so avidly defended by the anti-neoliberals might be in much better shape. The world's wealthy countries simply aren't serious about free markets across borders, and sometimes they struggle to create them on their own turf.¶ One can forgive poor countries for being fooled, at least initially. When President Bill Clinton signed the African Growth and Opportunity Act, which eliminated tariffs for dozens of African countries' exports, it certainly seemed like the United States was opening its markets wide. The Andean Trade Preference Act and the proposed Central America Free Trade Agreement looked like more steps in that direction. ¶ For its part, the European Union has stuck to a range of special trade deals for its former colonies in Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific while promising free trade agreements to its Mediterranean neighbors. Japan, the laggard, continues to impose heavy tariffs, especially on rice. ¶ But tariffs and quotas are just two weapons in a country's protectionist arsenal.¶ Other barriers, like overly strict sanitary standards and country-of-origin rules, continue to keep poor countries' exports off American and European shelves. Corporate lobbyists also clamp the cuffs on specific products. Just ask a farmer in Mexico why avocados sell for pennies there but for dollars north of the U.S. border. Or ask a British wine merchant why California red wines cost three times as much in London as they do in New York. ¶ In addition, subsidies for Western farmers give them a competitive advantage that has nothing to do with their fundamental ability to produce. At the recent Group of 8 summit meeting in Scotland, the rich countries agreed to end these subsidies, but they wouldn't say when. Even if they did, it might not matter. After the global textile trade agreement expired this year, supposedly ending tariffs and quotas after a 10-year phase-out, the United States and EU sought new restrictions almost instantly.¶ Many markets for services delivered from inside the wealthy countries also remain tightly closed. In Europe and Japan, the government still plays a role in important industries like energy and transport. And even among themselves, the wealthy countries can't agree whether to allow each other to compete in markets for air travel, insurance and other services. When was the last time you took an Air France plane from New York to Chicago?¶ In other words, opponents of free trade under the banner of neoliberalism must be dreaming - they've never seen free trade in real life, and neither has anyone else.¶ What seems to irk campaigners against globalization or a supposed neoliberalism is the idea that rich people are going to get richer at the expense of poor people. Yet this is not what free markets do.¶ When big companies find cheaper labor or raw materials outside their wealthy homes, they may make a profit in the short term. But when their competitors - a feature of free markets - do the same, then the savings are passed on to consumers as lower prices. And it's not as though the poorer people who sold that labor and those raw materials did so unwillingly; though the working conditions and bargaining power of poor people employed by big foreign companies may be subpar, their only alternatives often are subsistence farming or no work at all.¶ Meanwhile, the restriction of markets is responsible for keeping plenty of people poor, be they fruit farmers in Africa or the long-term unemployed in Western Europe. That is why demands for access to wealthy countries' export markets have crept their way into the vocabulary of the antipoverty lobbies. Yet strangely, the parties that claim to represent the poor in rich countries tirelessly defend the cumbersome labor regulations that prevent the young and the marginalized from finding work.¶ In short, the world is much further from free trade then either leftist protesters or glad-handing politicians would have you believe.¶ If the invasion of Iraq by the United States and its allies is, as some anti-neoliberals complain, merely aimed at securing cheap oil, then it fits perfectly with these other jingoist policies. Calling this package of economic and political initiatives neoliberal doesn't make sense, though. It's not new, and it's not liberal. Paleomercantilist, anyone? A2 CUBA LINK THE CUBAN EMBARGO IS AN ENFORCEMENT OF NEOLIBERAL POLICIES BY THE U.S. GOVERNMENT UPON CUBA IN AN ATTEMPT TO RESTRUCTURE THE ECONOMIC SYSTEM IN STOP THE NEOLIBERALIST MARCH CUBA, AND MUST BE REJECTED IN ORDER TO HARRISON 10 (Faye V. Harrison, Professor of Anthropology and African American Studies at the University of Florida-Gainesville, Ph. D from Stanford University, 11/30/10, “Global Apartheid, Foreign Policy, and Human Rights”, http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/10999940290105309) The Cuban Embargo and Racially Sexualized Bodies Although structural adjustment is a specific policy of the IMF working in conjunction with the World Bank, USAID, and other institutions, the term also refers to a general development orientation and policy climate driven by neoliberal assumptions about eco- nomic growth and change. In other words, structural adjustment can also serve as metonym for the restructuring and realignments that define present-day globalization.43 Hence, in the case of Cuba, although the IMF, World Bank, WTO, and USAID do not directly intervene in the Cuban economy, neoliberal policies—the most coercive and¶ punitive being the U.S. embargo—have indeed reshaped the nation during its so-called Special Period since the end of USSR and Eastern bloc economic support, and they have undermined its revolutionary achievements in ensuring rights to employment, education, and health services . This has occurred even though, when the embargo began in the early 1960s, the politico-economic climate in the U.S. and the world was Keynesian¶ rather than neoliberal. Nonetheless, for the past two decades, this punitive policy has been enforced within a politico-economic matrix of neoliberal globalization.¶ In the wake of the disintegration of the USSR and the demise of the Eastern Bloc, the Cuban government undertook an “internal readjustment” and “rationalization,” to sustain its economy and meet basic subsistence needs. These changes allowed for greater economic diversification, a partial process of privatization, foreign investment, and¶ “dollarization.”¶ 44 The effects of these drastic changes—Cuba’s own structural adjust-ment—on everyday life have been considerable. THE CUBAN EMBARGO IS AN EXTENSION OF U.S. COLONIAL POLICIES FROM 1934 AND IS ONE OF THE MOST SYMBOLIC POLICIES OF U.S. IMPERIAL CONTROL IN THE AMERICAS. IT IS ONE OF THE MOST NEOLIBERAL U.S. POLICIES IN EXISTENCE EDMONDS 12 (Kevin Edmonds is a former NACLA research associate and a current PhD student at the University of Toronto, where he is studying the impact of neoliberalism on the St. Lucian banana trade, 11/15/12, “Despite Global Opposition, United States Votes to Continue Cuban Embargo”, https://nacla.org/blog/2012/11/15/despite-global-opposition-united-states-votes-continue-cuban-embargo) While the Platt Amendment was scrapped in 1934 under President Roosevelt's Good Neighbor policy, U.S. companies already dominated the Cuban economy, which owned 60% of rural properties, 90% of Cuban mines and mineral exports, and 80% of the utilities and railroads. The United States also backed business-friendly strongmen which ensured that the neo-colonial status quo would continue. Students of American history would be right to recognize that a similar pattern of foreign economic control sparked their very own revolution in 1776.¶ In many ways, the ongoing Cuban embargo is one of the most symbolic policies of U.S. imperial control in the Americas. That said, the impact is much more than merely symbolic for the Cuban people, as according to Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez, the embargo is “an act of aggression and a permanent danger to the stability of the nation .”¶ While the Cuban embargo was ultimately created to isolate Cuba economically and politically, the routine imposition of harsher conditions has failed to bring down the Castro government. In 1992, President George H. Bush signed the Cuban Democracy Act (also known as the Torricelli Act) into law, which forbids subsidiaries of U.S. companies from trading with Cuba, U.S. nationals from traveling to Cuba and remittances being sent to the country. The Cuban Democracy Act also attempts to limit the amount of interaction the international community has with Cuba by “imposing sanctions on any country that provides assistance to Cuba, including ending U.S. assistance for those countries and by disqualifying them from benefiting from any programme of reduction or forgiveness of debt owed to the USA.” It was widely assumed that after the fall of the Soviet Union it would only be a matter of time before Castro fell as well. THE CUBAN EMBARGO’S SOLE PURPOSE IS AS A TOOL OF NEOLIBERALISM, THE U.S. HAS USED IT TO TRY AND CHANGE CUBAN SOCIETY, WE MUST REJECT THE EMBARGO TO PREVENT CUBA FROM SUCCUMBING TO THE NEOLIBERALIST AGENDA SIMPSON 98 (Victor L. Simpson, reporting for the Associated Press, 01/25/98, “Pope Scolds Capitalism in Cuba”, http://www.apnewsarchive.com/1998/Pope-Scolds-Capitalism-in-Cuba/id-fae4d494260ec4d413756e537702c397) HAVANA (AP) _ This communist island is not exactly on the verge of a free-market explosion, but there was Pope John Paul II, warning against ``capitalist neoliberalism'' and ``blind market forces.'' ¶ The pope _ best-known as a critic of communism, but long wary of unfettered capitalism _ chose his final Mass in Cuba on Sunday to issue one of his harshest attacks yet on Western market economies and their influence worldwide. ¶ President Fidel Castro, who views the pope as sympathetic to the Cuban revolution's socialist agenda, sat in the front row, just 20 yards from the papal altar.¶ Since arriving in Cuba, John Paul has prodded the Cuban government on its human rights record, but has also cautioned Cubans against Western lifestyles and consumer tastes, and issued a series of attacks on the 36-year U.S. economic embargo and on Western aid policies.¶ ``From its centers of power, such neoliberalism often places unbearable burdens upon less-favored countries,'' the pope said to ringing applause. ``Hence, at times, unsustainable economic programs are imposed on nations as a condition for further assistance.''¶ The pope lamented that a small number of countries were growing ``exceedingly rich at the cost of the increasing impoverishment of a great number of other countries.''¶ While Cuba has made a limited opening to private enterprise over the past five years, permitting about 160,000 self-employed workers, Castro has kept a tight leash on all private economic activity.¶ Since the early days of his papacy, John Paul has warned against what he has called ``savage'' capitalism and has lately expressed worry about what globalization means to developing countries.¶ He also has been prodding Western countries to help ease the debts of poor nations.¶ John Paul's attacks on the U.S. embargo have come as no surprise _ he fiercely opposes such methods on the grounds that they punish only the poorest.¶ President Clinton said this past week that Washington would maintain the embargo, and it was up to Castro to open Cuban society before the U.S. will change its stance.¶ Clinton acknowledged that the issue divided the United States from most other countries and said ``only time will tell whether they were right or we were.''¶ In welcoming the pope Wednesday, Castro said the pontiff's calls for an equitable distribution of wealth were ``so similar to what we preach.'' THE EMBARGO IS A PUNISHMENT PLACED UPON CUBA FOR REJECTING THE NEOLIBERALIST SYSTEM, AND WE MUST REMOVE THE EMBARGO TO ALLOW ALTERNATIVE SYSTEMS TO DEVELOP WITHOUT HINDRANCE MOTTAS AND TSAKIRI 11 (Nicolas Mottas is a graduate of Political Science and Diplomatic Studies from the University of Westminster & Diplomatic Academy of London, a MA candidate in Conflict Resolution and Mediation from Tel Aviv University and a freelance article writer, Myrsini Tsakiri is the founder and administrator of the blog "Sierra Maestra", 04/30/11, “U.S. embargo on Cuba: A 50 years-old crime”, http://miami.indymedia.org/news/2011/04/22205.php) This small nation poses not even the smallest threat for the United States, yet the supporters of the embargo continue blaming the Castro administration and its supposed "anti-americanism". However, it was the Fidel Castro-led revolution which ended a long-period of oppression and disastrous misrule in the 1950s. For almost five decades now, despite the various wobbles in the global capitalist system, Cuba experiences political and economic stabilityThe country manages its own national resources without the interference of american companies which were sqeezing Cuba's national wealth during Fulgencio Batista's years. ¶ Despite its inefficiences, the Castro government proved all these years that a nation is capable of being selfefficient even in a capitalist, profit-addicted international economic environment. Even under the blockade, the Cuban administration has shown a remarkabe endurance, both politically and economically. Everybody can understand that the resistance of Havana is quite unpleasant for all those who design and promote the greedy modern neoliberalism. The embargo plays the role of a "continuous punishment"; travel restrictions, ban on subsidiary trade, humanitarian aid blockade, denial of accessing medical supplies and equipment. ¶ According to a 1997 report by the American Association for World Health "the U.S. embargo of Cuba has dramatically hearmed the health and nutrition of large numbers of ordinary Cuban citizens". The same report assumes that "the U.S. embargo has caused a significant rise in suffering-and even deaths-in Cuba" while the 1992 Cuban Democracy Act (U.S. Congress) had contributed significantly to the increase of the number of unmet medical needs patients going without essential drugs. On that we should add the restriction of access over medical equipment and water treatment chemicals. Against these mounting obstacles, the Cuban government successfully managed to maintain high levels of budgetary support to the health care system, thus avoiding an uncpreceded humanitarian disaster for the island. ¶ The current U.S. President moves one step forward and two steps back on the issue. He decides to ease the travel restrictions for Cuban-Americans and, on the same time, extends the blockade for one more year because it is "in the national interests of the United States". However, it was Mr. Obama himself who, in 2004, had called the embargo policy a "failure". "I think it's time for us to end the embargo with Cuba" It's time for us to acknowledge that that particular policy has failed", he had stated during a speech at Southern Illinois University. Quite a hypocrisy for such a popular President. ¶ The Helms-Burton Act of 1996 which strengthens the embargo refers to "a peaceful transition to a representative democracy and market economy in Cuba". It is clear that the Cubans are being punished all these years for not submitting to the actual existing capitalist system -- they "pay the price" for their "audacity" to confront colonialism and capitalism during the Cold War period. The symbolism is apparent: How can a communist state exists just 90 miles south of Florida? ¶ Fifty years since it was enacted, the embargo against Cuba consists a form of modern apartheid and colonization effort in the 21st century. It is in the hands of the international community, along with the support of the progressive American people, to put an end to this crime against the Cuban nation. NEOLIB GOOD – VTL *NEOLIBERAL GOVERNMENTALITY IS A TOOL OF LIBERATION AND IS THE ONLY PRACTICE WHICH CAN ENFORCE CHANGE UPON A SOCIETY THAT IS MORALLY BANKRUPT AND CANNOT FUNCTION HALL ’11 (Stuart Hall, The Neoliberal Revolution, cultural theorist and sociologist, founding figure of The Birmingham School of Cultural Studies, He was President of the British Sociological Association 1995–1997, http://www.mas.org.uk/uploads/100flowers/The%20neoliberal%20revolution%20by%20 Stuart%20Hall.pdf) What, then, are the leading ideas of the neoliberal model? We can only pull at one ¶ thread here. However anachronistic it may seem, neoliberalism is grounded in ¶ the ‘free, possessive individual’, with the state cast as tyrannical and oppressive. ¶ The welfare state, in particular, is the arch enemy of freedom. The state must ¶ never govern society, dictate to free individuals how to dispose of their private ¶ property, regulate a free-market economy or interfere with the God-given right to ¶ make profits and amass personal wealth. State-led ‘social engineering’ must never prevail over corporate and private interests. It must not intervene in the ‘natural’ ¶ mechanisms of the free market, or take as its objective the amelioration of freemarket capitalism’s propensity to create inequality. Harvey’s book offers a useful ¶ guide.1¶ Theodore, Peck and Brenner summarise it thus: ‘Open, competitive and ¶ unregulated markets, liberated from state intervention and the actions of social ¶ collectivities, represent the optimal mechanism to socio-economic development … ¶ This is the response of a revived capitalism to “the crisis of Keynesian welfarism” ¶ in the 70s’.2¶ (Capitalism’s other response, incidentally, was to evade state ¶ intervention by ‘going global’.)¶ According to the neoliberal narrative, the welfare state (propelled by workingclass reaction to the Depression of the 1930s and the popular mobilisation ¶ of World War Two) mistakenly saw its task as intervening in the economy, ¶ redistributing wealth, universalising life-chances, attacking unemployment, ¶ protecting the socially vulnerable, ameliorating the condition of oppressed or ¶ marginalised groups and addressing social injustice. It tried to break the ‘natural’ ¶ (sic) link between social needs and the individual’s capacity to pay. But its dogooding, utopian sentimentality enervated the nation’s moral fibre, and eroded ¶ personal responsibility and the over-riding duty of the poor to work. It imposed ¶ social purposes on an economy rooted in individual greed and self interest. ¶ State intervention must never compromise the right of private capital to ‘grow ¶ the business’, improve share value, pay dividends and reward its agents with ¶ enormous salaries, benefits and bonuses. The function of the liberal state should ¶ be limited to safeguarding the conditions in which profitable competition can be ¶ pursued without engendering Hobbes’s ‘war of all against all’. ¶ Margaret Thatcher, well instructed by Keith Joseph, grasped intuitively Hayek’s argument ¶ that the ‘common good’ either did not exist or could not be calculated: ¶ ‘There is no such thing as society. There is only the individual and his (sic) family’. ¶ She also grasped Milton Friedman’s lesson that ‘only a crisis actual or perceived ¶ - produces real change. When that crisis occurs the actions that are taken depend ¶ on the ideas that are around … our basic function [is] to develop alternatives to ¶ existing policies … until the politically impossible becomes politically inevitable’ .3¶ As the free-market think-tank, the Institute of Economic Affairs, observed during ¶ the rise of Thatcherism, ‘the market is an idea whose time has come’. This could ¶ well be a Coalition vision-statement. NEOLIB K2 HUMAN RIGHTS NEOLIBERALISM IS THE SPECIFIC PROTECTION OF HUMAN RIGHTS, IT KEEPS THE NATION SAFE AND EFFICIENT THORSEN AND LIE ’12 (Dag Einar Thorsen and Amund Lie, Dag Einar Thorsen received his PhD in Political Science from the University of Oslo, Department of Political Science University of Oslo, http://folk.uio.no/daget/What%20is%20Neo-Liberalism%20FINAL.pdf) ¶ Neoliberalism is, as we see it, a loosely demarcated set of political beliefs which ¶ most prominently and prototypically include the conviction that the only legitimate purpose ¶ of the state is to safeguard individual, especially commercial, liberty, as well as strong¶ private property rights (cf. especially Mises 1962; Nozick 1974; Hayek 1979). This ¶ conviction usually issues, in turn, in a belief that the state ought to be minimal or at least ¶ drastically reduced in strength and size, and that any transgression by the state beyond its ¶ sole legitimate purpose is unacceptable (ibid.). These beliefs could apply to the international ¶ level as well, where a system of free markets and free trade ought to be implemented as well; ¶ the only acceptable reason for regulating international trade is to safeguard the same kind of¶ commercial liberty and the same kinds of strong property rights which ought to be realised ¶ on a national level (Norberg 2001; Friedman 2006). ¶ Neoliberalism generally also includes the belief that freely adopted market ¶ mechanisms is the optimal way of organising all exchanges of goods and services (Friedman ¶ 1962; 1980; Norberg 2001). Free markets and free trade will, it is believed, set free the ¶ creative potential and the entrepreneurial spirit which is built into the spontaneous order of 15¶ any human society, and thereby lead to more individual liberty and well-being, and a more ¶ efficient allocation of resources (Hayek 1973; Rothbard [1962/1970] 2004). NEOLIB K2 LA STABILITY PROJECTING NEOLIBERAL POLICIES PERMITS DEMOCRATIC REFORM AND MAKES LATIN AMERICAN REGION STABLE, IT AVOIDS WAR AND CHAOS WEYLAND ‘08 (Kurt Weyland, Neoliberalism and Democracy in Latin America: A Mixed Record, Professor of Latin American Politics¶ Government, fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, DC, in 1999/2000 and at the Kellogg Institute, University of Notre Dame, in 2004/05. From 2001 to 2004, he served as Associate Editor of the Latin American Research Review.) Thus, people’s economic calculations are much more complicated and sophisticated-and more susceptible to persuasion and ¶ leadership-than the literature used to assume (see Stokes 2001b; ¶ Graham and Pettinato 2002; Weyland 2002). As a result, governments ¶ that combated profound crises often managed to muster sufficient political backing to enact bold, painful market reforms under democracy ¶ (Armijo and Faucher 2002). ¶ Democracy therefore survived neoliberalism in many Latin American ¶ countries, such as Argentina, Brazil, and Bolivia, that had unstable civilian regimes when they initiated market reform. Even in Peru, where President Alberto Fujimori governed in an autocratic fashion, these deviations ¶ from democratic norms and principles were not directly caused by or ¶ “required for” the enactment of neoliberalism (McClintock 1994). Instead, ¶ the longstanding postponement of determined adjustment, combined ¶ with large-scale guerrilla insurgencies and terrorism, had discredited the ¶ country’s “political class,” and Fujimori took advantage of this opportunity ¶ to concentrate power and disrespect liberal-democratic safeguards. Thus, ¶ market reform as such did not destroy democracy in Latin America. ¶ How NEOLIBERALISM HAS STRENGTHENED ¶ THE EXTERNAL PROTECTION OF DEMOCRACY ¶ Rather than undermining democracy, neoliberalism actually seems to ¶ have strengthened its survival in a couple of important ways. First, ¶ market reform has enhanced the international protection for democracy ¶ in Latin America. Second, the internal socioeconomic transformations ¶ resulting from profound market reform have helped to forestall domestic challenges to democratic stability. ¶ Structural adjustment and its corollary, the deeper integration of Latin ¶ American countries into the global economy, have made the region more WEYLAND: NEOLIBERALISM AND DEMOCRACY 139 ¶ susceptible to international pressures for maintaining democracy. Since ¶ the end of the Cold War, the United States and other First World countries have put much more emphasis on preserving pluralistic, civilian rule ¶ in the region. As the concern over communism faded away, the promotion of democracy, which often took a back seat during the preceding ¶ decades, became a first-order priority from the early 1990s on. The disappearance of threats to its strategic interests has made U.S. support for ¶ democracy in Latin America much more unconditional. As a result, when ¶ the danger of a military coup or some other interruption of democracy ¶ threatens, the U.S. government most often has sought to prevent it.2 And ¶ when democracy actually is interrupted or overthrown, the U.S. govern- ¶ ment has typically threatened or enacted sanctions. ¶ Neoliberalism has increased the exposure of Latin American coun- ¶ tries to these forms of international pressure. By lowering barriers to ¶ trade, Latin American countries have become more involved in the world ¶ economy. By opening up to foreign investors, they have become much ¶ more dependent on international capital markets. By submitting-how- ¶ ever grudgingly-to greater supervision from the IMF and other interna- ¶ tional financial institutions, they have seen their autonomy in economic ¶ policymaking shrink. Because the U.S. government has considerable ¶ direct and indirect influence over these international economic flows, it ¶ now has greater leverage for protecting democracy in the region. ¶ Thus, when President Fujimori closed the Peruvian congress with ¶ his autogolp of April 5, 1992, the U.S. government protested and inter- ¶ vened. This pressure, which was exerted unilaterally and through the ¶ Organization of American States, quickly made clear to Peru’s autocratic ¶ leader, who had recently initiated neoliberal reform, that he was facing ¶ a stark trade-off. If he wanted to reschedule the country’s external debt ¶ and reestablish good relations with the IMF-relations that his predecessor, Alan Garcia, had destroyed-he needed to accommodate the ¶ U.S. demand for restoring minimal, procedural democracy. If he sought ¶ to attract foreign capital and thus reignite growth in his crisis-plagued ¶ nation, he needed to be in good standing with the advanced industrialized countries, especially the United States. Therefore, Fujimori reluctantly and grudgingly backed away from his effort to install an openly ¶ authoritarian regime and started a process of redemocratization (Bolofia ¶ 1996; De Soto 1996). Thus, by increasing the economic costs of a move ¶ to open dictatorship, neoliberalism helped to restore the basic outlines ¶ of democracy in Peru. ¶ To what extent neoliberalism and its result, the greater integration ¶ of Latin American economies into the world market, have facilitated the ¶ external protection of democracy is evident in the case of Guatemala. ¶ In 1977, President Jimmy Carter told Guatemala’s military dictators that ¶ he would cut off aid unless they began to respect human rights. Because 140 LATIN AMERICAN POLITICS AND SOCIETY 46: 1 ¶ the country was not highly involved in foreign trade at the time, the military government canceled collaboration with the United States and continued to commit egregious atrocities (Martin and Sikkink 1993,331-38). ¶ In the 1980s and early 1990s, however, Guatemala opened its economy ¶ to foreign trade and capital and significantly increased its exports of ¶ agricultural products to the United state. When President Jorge Sero ran in 1993 followed Fujimori’s example and tried to assume dictatorial powers, the Clinton administration threatened to impose sanctions, ¶ and domestic business leaders worried about the resulting disturbance ¶ of trade flows. These threats and concerns contributed to the failure of ¶ Serrano’s self-coup and the restoration of democracy. NEOLIB K2 ENVIRONMENT NEOLIBERALISM CAN BE GREEN SOUTH-EAST ASIA PROVES BARNEY ’12 (Keith Barney, Locating ‘Green Neoliberalism,’ and Other Forms of Environmental Governance in Southeast Asia, Former Researcher CSEAS, www.cseas.kyoto-u.ac.jp/edit/wp-content/uploads/.../NL6625-28.pdf) Neoliberal-informed programs and polices have been applied¶ to numerous environmental sectors in Southeast Asia.¶ New programs of marketization (including the expansion of¶ new global boom crops such as coffee, shrimp, oil palm, rubber¶ and pulpwood), new land titling and decentralization programs,¶ agribusiness concessions, new market-based policy and¶ legal reforms, free trade agreements, certification systems, and¶ community-based resource management initiatives, are consistent¶ with a neoliberalization framework. Neoliberalism has also¶ made inroads into the ‘final frontier,’ of environmental conservation¶ programs, payments for ecosystem services and carbon¶ trading.¶ It is notable however that a few of the key scholarly studies¶ of neoliberal nature have been well grounded in Southeast¶ Asian contexts. A more precise analytic of the real discursive¶ power, as well as the limits of neoliberal nature and environmental¶ governance formations in the region, would seem to be¶ useful. In approaching this issue, we might consider the emergence¶ of sub-national or transboundary spaces of neoliberal¶ environmental governance, as well as various hybrid historical-¶ geographical formations. Another approach might involve¶ distinguishing between ‘shallow’ or ‘deep’ programs of neoliberal¶ governance (e.g. Dressler and Roth, 2012). Alternatively, we might¶ question whether a certain sector, policy framework or spatialterritorial-¶ environmental configuration could be considered¶ as an example of ‘variegated neoliberalism’ in any meaningful¶ sense at all. TURNS IMPACT: NEOLIBERALISM IS A SUCCESSFUL TOOL TO COMBAT ENVIRONMENTAL DECAY MCKENDRY N/A (Corina McKendry, Competing for Green Neoliberalism and the rise of sustainable cities, Department of Politics, University of California, Santa Cruz, ic.ucsc.edu/~rlipsch/EE80S/Competing _for_Green.McKendry.doc) Neoliberalism in four green cities¶ In order to better understand the relationship between green cities, urban entrepreneurialism, ecological modernization, and environmental justice, it is useful to examine “actually existing” urban greening in a number of cities in the United States. Each of the four cities examined below – Chicago, Illinois; Sacramento, California; Oakland, California; and Seattle, Washington – has formally adopted a far-reaching sustainability program and has taken substantive steps towards urban greening. In addition to sharing a commitment to sustainability, the importance of neoliberalism and urban entrepreneurialism in each of their environmental programs is clear . Aside from these important similarities, however, these cases were chosen because they illustrate the different ways that green urban entrepreneurialism is playing out in particular places. Though the short analysis of each city only begins to touch on the myriad variables at play in each locality, together they help to illuminate both the possibilities and limitations of urban environmentalism embedded in discourses and practices of neoliberalism and ecological modernization. ¶ To summarize the analysis to follow, Chicago has been the most explicit and successful city in the country at using urban greening as a form of urban entrepreneurialism, but in its success can be seen important limitations for issues of environmental justice and social equity. Sacramento has unabashedly tried to become notable for its embrace of sustainability and to attract green venture capital. However, its efforts have paled behind the shadow of neighboring Silicon Valley, offering insights into the limits of inter-local competition in a globalized economy. Like Sacramento, Oakland has not been very successful at selling itself as a green city, despite some impressive environmental achievements. Oakland also wrestles more explicitly than other cities under examination with issues of environmental justice and the distribution very successful in its attempts at green urban entrepreneurialism. However, the city’s promotion of transmunicipal cooperation to address climate change offers an important challenge to urban entrepreneurialism’s assumed primacy of inter-local competition.¶ Chicago – The “shining green star”¶ Chicago has arguably been the most successful city in the United States at using urban greening as a form of urban entrepreneurialism. For well over a century Chicago was seen as a quintessential industrial city – dirty, dangerous, noisy, and anything but green. But over the last decade the Windy City, led by Mayor Richard M. Daley, has been transformed into a success story of urban revitalization and “one of the most beautiful cities in America.” In roughly ten years the city has planted several hundred thousand trees, built over 300 gardens and green roofs to reduce summer energy needed to cool buildings, and created over 200 acres of new parks and open spaces. Chicago’s other environmental programs include a Green Permit program that expedites building permits and waives fees if developers use green techniques, the retrofitting of 15 million square feet of municipal buildings for energy efficiency, a model brownfields redevelopment program where abandoned, blighted, or environmentally contaminated land is cleaned up and developed, and a program called Chicago Conservation Corps that trains volunteers to provide resources and expertise for community-based environmental efforts. ¶ Chicago’s self-proclaimed goal of becoming the “greenest city in America” has unabashedly been an economic as well as an environmental policy. This can be seen in the mission statement of the city’s Department of the Environment. The DOE’s mission is “to protect human health and the environment, improve the urban quality of life, and promote economic development.” As an economic policy, Chicago’s urban greening has been quite successful. As it has transformed itself into a green city, Chicago’s conference industry has boomed to over $9 billion a year, tens of thousands of new jobs have been added to the Chicago economy, and the city’s population has grown by 100,000¶ PRAGMATIC RHETORIC KEY PRAGMATIC RHETORICAL DEVICES ARE CRITICAL TO INFLUENCE STATES AND POLICYMAKERS AND CONCEPTUALIZE MATERIAL DANGERS WHILE RESISTING CONSTRUCTIONS OF INEVITABILITY. THE ALTERNATIVE UNDERMINES POLICY-RELEVANT CONCLUSIONS CAPABLE OF CONFRONTING REAL DANGERS. LOTT 2004 (Anthony, Assistant Professor of Political Science @ St. Olaf College. Creating Insecurity. p. 156-161) This project has endeavored to bring together two seemingly contradictory approaches to the study of security. To date, the discipline has yet to provide a comprehensive analysis of the multiple sources of insecurity that confronts states and a means to overcome them. Because the study of security bridges the divide between theory and policy, it is imperative that a concept of security emerge that is both philosophically coherent and policy relevant. The multiple sources of insecurity that influence the behavior of states require analysis if more pacific (and secure) relations are to be had. Both realism and political constructivism offer necessary but incomplete understandings of these sources of insecurity. When realism and political constructivism are treated as more or less complete approaches to the study of security, the conclusions reached and policies offered are potentially harmful to the state and its citizens. Security, like Janus himself, is two-faced. When Romans placed Janus on the faces of their coins, they reminded each other of the need to cautiously look in all directions before acting. Security theorists must learn to do the same before undertaking an analysis of state policy. Both a material and an ideational consideration of the sources of insecurity are required if a state is to succeed in formulating appropriate national security strategies. While realism necessarily demonstrates the potential dangers that could befall a state in anarchy, it cannot be considered a complete rendition of international relations. Realism provides a study of security with a proper understanding of thematerial threats that influence state behavior. Their studies are rich in detail, offering the state an appropriate theoretical lens through which to view threats and assess capabilities. But, realism is unable to account for the ideational sources of insecurity that also threaten the state. If realism is treated as a comprehensive approach to security management, the state can only achieve a sub-optimal level of security. In order for the precepts and principles of realism to be useful to policy makers and security analysts, realism must be conceptualized a valuable rhetorical tool to influence the policy maker. In this way, realists are the 'cautious paranoids' at the security table. Re-conceptualizing realism as a rhetorical device – what Donnelly has termed an 'orienting set of insights' or a 'philosophical orientation' – it emerges as a negative disposition requiring the attention of the policy maker. Its principles become warnings and cautionary tales to be considered in the construction and evaluation of national security policies . Moreover, because these warnings and cautionary tales develop out of a brought theoretical discourse, they are grounded in a sophisticated logical argument. Unlike the state assessment of material threats, realists do not sell or hype their negative vision of material threats. In this work, it has been necessary to place realism within a broader constructivist epistemology in order to understand how it serves to challenge state policy at one end of the international relations spectrum. The governing laws common to previous studies grounded in positivism become strategic constraints within the pages above. As well, 'the need for caution...' no longer becomes `confused with the invariance orinevitability of that which demands caution.'2 Most importantly, realism comes to be seen as part of a larger security critique. Similarly, studies employing political constructivism cannot be considered complete renditions of national security issues. Their emphasis on identity and culture, and their alternative forms of analysis, provide a necessary understanding of ideational threats and an emancipatory moment for changing state securitization. However, these reflexive critiques do not demonstrate an understanding of the role that material threats play in national security matters or the negative consequences of ignoring those material threats. Their alternative analytic focus often rejects the traditional state 'security dilemma' and its corresponding policy needs. The consistent deconstruction of identity performances and cultural givens may provide an opportunity for the emergence of a more democratic ethos, but the state is often marginalized in the process. Such an occurrence does not fulfill the requirements of a security framework that seeks theoretical rigor and policy relevance. It is a necessary (but insufficient) component of a more comprehensive understanding of security. The potentially positive political vision that emerges from political constructivism balances the negative vision provided by realism and suggests an opportunity to overcome culturally constructed threats. These rhetorical approaches become complementary tools in the analysis of security rather than contradictory paradigms. Each approach offers a partial understanding of insecurity. At each instance, the other approach is necessary in order to balance the security analysis being offered. In this way, the discipline of Security Studies is offered a more comprehensive means to understanding this `essentially contested concept.'' Previous approaches, whether realist or constructivist, have placed ontological and epistemological barriers on the concept of security. Seeking to remain relevant to the policy community, realists espousing a materialist ontology and state-centric bias reduced threats to existential dangers accessible to an empiricist epistemology. In response, constructivists challenged realism by deconstructing academic texts and policy statements to uncover hidden discourses and expose traditional efforts as discursively constituted and ultimately malleable. If realism demonstrated the importance of power in the national security calculus, constructivists demonstrated its 'necessary' (re)production by actors involved in multiple speech-acts. If realists argued that a specific (material) condition – tanks, bombs, hostile protests, etc. – was an existential threat, constructivists claimed an a priori establishment of these physical 'things' in security terms. The result for the study of security was compelling. A schism in the field separated those pursuing a traditional (state-centric and policy relevant) approach from those pursuing an investigative critique .' Realists could claim to participate in the 'real world' while constructivists could claim to be intellectually and morally distinguished. But, what has been the cost to the field of Security Studies and the policies of the state? Ultimately, an investigation of the sources of insecurity must attempt to manage the crises of human existence. Security is a necessary component to the construction of the good life. In an international environment largely defined by the presence of states, security policies must be understandable to those states. Policies must be designed that manage the security needs of all the relevant states in the system. This is not a new challenge. It returns the discussion of security to the works of earlier realists. Balancing the negative vision of realism with something positive engaged Carr, Herz, and others. In this way, these scholars could 'insist on keeping 'realist' insights in dialectical tension with higher human aspirations and possibilities.'5 The challenge of this project has been to find a framework wherein this dialectical tension can move the study of security forward. Arnold Wolfers's conclusion that 'the ideal security policy is one that would lead to a distribution of values so satisfactory to all nations that the intention to attack and with it the problem of security would be minimized,' challenges students of security to more completely understand the sources of insecurity. And this means something more than arguing over the concept of security. It means analyzing, critiquing, and challenging power. It means recognizing that security analysts are political agents involved in a political process. When done well, both realism and political constructivism resist the Thrasymachian statements and policy orientations of policy makers. What I have attempted to demonstrate, however, is that when they are viewed as components of a larger project, they provide a much more comprehensive and devastating critique of state action. In today's world, the investigation of security that balances the negative with the positive, the realist with the constructivist, is a possibility. It can be achieved by investigating issues through the lens of the 'cautious paranoid' while simultaneously investigating the same issues through the lens of the political constructivist. Both offer something valuable to a more robust understanding of security and both are required if we are to achieve a more secure future. I applied this theoretical approach, seeking to balance realism arm constructivism, to four pressing security issues that currently animate U.S. security discourse. The discussions concerning unilateral BMD deployment, the drug war in Colombia, globalization and protests from below, and the decision to go to war in Iraq suggest that a more robust analysis of each issue – balancing the concerns of realists and political constructivists – can improve our understanding of the security problem and present a stronger critique of the official state policy. Such findings are important because, as has been discussed above, the state represents the most powerful international actor in the system and maintaining the state as the central focus of security studies commits this approach to a policy relevant critique. As the study of security bridges both theoretical inquiry and state policy considerations, this work has attempted to remain firmly attuned to the world-view of the state. To reiterate, if the concept of security is to resonate, then it must be applicable to the political units capable of producing system-wide effects because of their policies. Because the United States represents the most powerful actor in international relations, it is important to examine how its security policies are created and transformed. As chapters five through eight suggest, the United States has. paradoxically, created insecurity while attempting to manage its security concerns. A balanced approach combining material and ideational issues offers a more rigorous test for policies designed to enhance national security. By combining realist and political constructivist positions on any given issue, analysts and policy makers are required to contemplate the requirements of two very different political visions. Such an undertaking is far from complete. Additional studies might employ a similar approach in order to investigate other issues designated 'security' topics by relevant actors. The official American position towards non-nuclear rogues (Cuba. Libya, Syria, and possibly Venezuela) suggests a need to balance concern for their material capabilities with an understanding of the U.S. construction of these states as antagonistic actors. This requires that the security analyst look both to the material interests and the ideational identities of the United States. In addition, American policy in the Middle East requires a thoroughgoing analysis employing a more comprehensive approach to security. A realist critique of state policy in the Middle East (one which measures the material capabilities of the states in the region and demonstrates how regional balance of power issues influence state behavior) could be complemented by a political constructivist interpretation of U.S. self/other constructs. Such a study could demonstrate how the works of Edward Said, NoamChomsky, and David Campbell,' might be supplemented by a realist discussion of U.S. interests in the region. As the applications to this approach have suggested, an investigation of this matter might bring about a more coherent policy package that offers the United States an opportunity to promote and encourage a more democratic ethos at home and abroad. If this is deemed successful in demonstrating how the United States creates insecurity by not fully understanding its security environment, it might also be used to investigate security considerations for other states in the world. Regional hegemons, as well as minor powers, might benefit from a more comprehensive understanding of their relative power capabilities and their identity performances. A balanced understanding of the sources of insecurity provides a deeper critique of the security problematique that emerges. Such an approach might prove valuable to states in the Middle East. For example, the Israeli need for military defense might be examined in light of the Palestinian need for basic, ontological security. The existential conditions for most Palestinians resemble the conditions present in South African townships during Apartheid' or the conditions of peasant communities in rural Colombia today.' A robust study involving Israel and its neighbors might improve the regional security environment by balancing realist and political constructivist interpretations. It would challenge Israel to recognize how Palestinian ontological security is a prerequisite for Israeli national security. Similarly, it would challenge Palestinians to recognize the security needs of Israel as fundamentally important to their own security environment. In other regions, a study employing this discussion may prove useful as well. The security situation between India and Pakistan continues to deteriorate. Since both sides have refused to engage in a consistent and meaningful political dialogue, deciding instead to propagate a military understanding of their security interests, their separate understandings of the situation remains dangerously incomplete. The framework developed here provides a way for these states to investigate both the material and cultural sources of their shared insecurity. Perhaps Simon Dalby is most accurate, contending that the current debate in the field finds scholars 'contesting an essential concept.' Security is, indeed, an essential concept. Without security, humans are unable to search for, obtain, or even imagine the good life. Dalby summarizes the issue convincingly: security is a crucial term, both in the political lexicon of state policy makers and among academics in the field of international relations. Precisely because of the salience of security, the current debates about reformulating it provide, when read as political discourse in need of analysis rather than as a series of solutions to problems, a very interesting way to come to grips with what is at stake in current debates around world politics and the constitution of the post-Cold War political order." The challenge for scholars is to conceptualize security in such a way that human beings are brought back in. The state, to be sure, is the primary guarantor of security in the world today. This requires recognition of where the theorist sits in relation to the state and what the theorist can do in resisting unsatisfactory claims of state securitization. By recognizing the Janus-like quality of security, scholars can come to understand the need to balance material threats with those constructed through repetitive identity performances. SCENARIO EVALUATIONS KEY AND, OUR SCENARIO EVALUATIONS ARE CRUCIAL FOR RESPONSIBLE POLITICS. PURE CRITIQUE IS INSUFFICIENT – WE NEED TO EVALUATE “AS IF” OUTCOMES LIKE THE PLAN TO REALIZE ETHICAL COUNTER-PRACTICES WILLIAMS ‘5 (Michael, Senior Lecturer in International Politics at the University of Wales. The Realist Tradition and the Limits of International Relations, p. 165-7) Moreover, the links between sceptical realism and prevalent postmodern themes go more deeply than this, particularly as they apply to attempts by post-structural thinking to reopen questions of responsibility and ethics.80 In part, the goals of post-structural approaches can be usefully characterised, to borrow Stephen White's illuminating contrast, as expressions of 'responsibility to otherness' which question and challenge modernist equations of responsibility with a 'responsibility to act'. A responsibility to otherness seeks to reveal and open the constitutive processes and claims of subjects and subjectivities that a foundationalmodernism has effaced in its narrow identification of responsibility with a 'responsibility to act'.81 Deconstruction can from this perspective be seen as a principled stance unwilling to succumb to modernist essentialism which in the name of responsibility assumes and reifies subjects and structures, obscures forms of power and violence which are constitutive of them, and at the same time forecloses a consideration of alternative possibilities and practices. Yet it is my claim that the wilful Realist tradition does not lack an understanding of the contingency of practice or a vision of responsibility to otherness. On the contrary, its strategy of objectification is precisely an attempt to bring together a responsibility to otherness and a responsibility to act within a wilfully liberal vision. The construction of a realm of objectivity and calculation is not just a consequence of a need to act —the framing of an epistemic context for successful calculation. It is a form of responsibility to otherness, an attempt to allow for diversity and irreconcilability precisely by — at least initially — reducing the self and the other to a structure of material calculation in order to allow a structure of mutual intelligibility, mediation, and stability. It is, in short, a strategy of limitation: a wilful attempt to construct a subject and a social world limited — both epistemically and politically — in the name of a politics of toleration: a liberal strategy that John Gray has recently characterised as one of modus vivendi.82 If this is the case, then some of its weight by contrasting itself to a non- or apolitical objectivism the deconstructive move that gains must engage with the more complex contrast to a sceptical Realist tradition that is itself a constructed,ethical practice . This issue becomes even more acute if one considers Iver Neumann's incisive questions concerning postmodern constructions of identity, action, and responsibility.83 As Neumann points out, the insight that identities are inescapably contingent and relationally constructed, and even the claim that identities are inescapably indebted to otherness, do not in themselves provide a foundation for practice, particularly in situations where identities are 'sedimented' and conflictually defined. In these cases, deconstruction alone will not suffice unless it can demonstrate a capacity to counter in practice (and not just in philosophic practice) the essentialist dynamics it confronts.84 Here, a responsibility to act must go beyond deconstruction to consider viable alternatives and counter- practices. To take this critique seriously is not necessarily to be subject yet again to the straightforward 'blackmail of-the Enlightenment' and a narrow 'modernist' vision of responsibility.85 While an unwillingness to move beyond a deconstructive ethic of responsibility to otherness for fear that an essentialist stance is the only (or most likely) alternative expresses a legitimate concern, it should not license a retreat from such questions or their practical demands. Rather, such situations demand also an evaluation of the structures (of identity and institutions) that might viably be mobilised in order to offset the worst implications of violently exclu- sionary identities. It requires, as Neumann nicely puts it, the generationof compelling 'as if' stories around which counter-subjectivities and political practices can coalesce. Wilful Realism, I submit, arises out of anappreciation of these issues, and comprises an attempt to craft precisely such 'stories' within a broader intellectual and sociological analysis of their conditions of production, possibilities of success, and likely consequences. The question is, to what extent are these limits capable of success, and to what extent might they be limits upon their own aspirations toward responsibility? These are crucial questions, but they willnot be addressed by retreating yet again into further reversals of the same old dichotomies. ALT NEOCON BACKLASH THE ALTERNATIVE CAUSES A NEOCONSERVATIVE BACKLASH BURKE ‘7 (Anthony, lecturer @ Adelaide U. School of History and Politics, Beyond Security, Ethics and Violence: War against the Other, pp. 93) Once we attempt to enact an ethics of responsibility that challenges existing political ontologies, especially nationalist ones, a new danger appears: it seems unmooring. By playing out what Connolly calls 'a politics of disturbance through which sedimented identities and moralities are rendered more alert to the deleterious effects of their naturalisation upon difference' and 'a politics of enactment through which new possibilities of being are propelled into established constellations', the new ethics produces uncertainty – political and ontological. 'The politics of disturbance can backfire', he writes, 'inducing that identity panic upon which the politics of fundamentalism feeds'.83 By antagonising conservatives and provoking them to cling to fundamentalist certitudes, the deployment of such an ethics may unwittingly reinforce the very politics it is seeking to transform. The Israeli settler lobby, and the US government's fundamentalist faith in the utility of military violence as a panacea for insecurity and uncertainty, are powerful contemporary examples of this problem . As Michael Barnett suggests, the post-Oslo process exacerbated such problems: the growing divisions within Israeli society exemplified by Yitzhak Rabin's assassination in fact 'grew more severe, in no small measure due to his secular and liberal response'.84 UTILITARIANISM GOOD THE ROUND SHOULD BE EVALUATED THROUGH A UTILITARIAN FRAMEWORK Manuel VELASQUEZ, Claire ANDRE, Thomas SHANKS, S.J., and Michael J. MEYER 89(Manuel Velasquez Professor of Management at santa clara university leavey school of business, Claire Andre Ethics Associate Director Claire Andre at santa clara university, Center Director Thomas Shanks at santa clara university, Santa Clara University, Assistant Professor, Calculating Consequences: The Utilitarian Approach to Ethics 1989 http://www.scu.edu/ethics/practicing/decision/calculating.html) North's method of justifying his acts of deception is a form of moral reasoning that is called "utilitarianism." Stripped down to its essentials, utilitarianism is a moral principle that holds that the morally right course of action in any situation is the one that produces the greatest balance of benefits over harms for everyone affected. So long as a course of action produces maximum benefits for everyone, utilitarianism does not care whether the benefits are produced by lies, manipulation, or coercion.¶ Many of us use this type of moral reasoning frequently in our daily decisions. When asked to explain why we feel we have a moral duty to perform some action, we often point to the good that will come from the action or the harm it will prevent. Business analysts, legislators, and scientists weigh daily the resulting benefits and harms of policies when deciding, for example, whether to invest resources in a certain public project, whether to approve a new drug, or whether to ban a certain pesticide.¶ relatively straightforward method for deciding the ourselves in. Utilitarianism offers a morally right course of action for any particular situation we may find To discover what we ought to do in any situation, we first identify the various courses of action that we could perform. Second, we determine all of the foreseeable benefits and harms that would result from each course of action for everyone affected by the action. And third, we choose the course of action that provides the greatest benefits after the costs have been taken into account .¶ The principle of utilitarianism can be traced to the writings of Jeremy Bentham, who lived in England during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Bentham, a legal reformer, sought an objective basis that would provide a publicly acceptable norm for determining what kinds of laws England should enact. He believed that the most promising way of reaching such an agreement was to choose that policy that would bring about the greatest net benefits to society once the harms had been taken into account . His motto, a familiar one now, was "the greatest good for the greatest number."¶ Over the years, the principle of utilitarianism has been expanded and refined so that today there are many variations of the principle. For example, Bentham defined benefits and harms in terms of pleasure and pain. John Stuart Mill, a great 19th century utilitarian figure, spoke of benefits and harms not in terms of pleasure and pain alone but in terms of the quality or intensity of such pleasure and pain. Today utilitarians often describe benefits and harms in terms of the satisfaction of personal preferences or in purely economic terms of monetary benefits over monetary costs.¶ Utilitarians also differ in their views about the kind of question we ought to ask ourselves when making an ethical decision. Some utilitarians maintain that in making an ethical decision, we must ask ourselves: "What effect will my doing this act in this situation have on the general balance of good over evil?" If lying would produce the best consequences in a particular situation, we ought to lie. Others, known as rule utilitarians, claim that we must choose that act that conforms to the general rule that would have the best consequences. In other words, we must ask ourselves: "What effect would everyone's doing this kind of action have on the general balance of good over evil?" So, for example, the rule "to always tell the truth" in general promotes the good of everyone and therefore should always be followed, even if in a certain situation lying would produce the best consequences. Despite such differences among utilitarians, however, most hold to the general principle that morality must depend on balancing the beneficial and harmful consequences of our conduct. UTILITARIANISM INCREASES MAXIMUM GOOD NAKANO-OKUNO 11 (Mariko Nakano-Okuno, Clinical Assistant Professor at the Ohio State University, USA, and an award-winning philosopher/author in Japan, “Sidgwick and Contemporary Utilitarianism” pg 2, Publication Date: September 2, 2011) First, utilitarianism is a version of consequentialism or teleology in that ¶ it considers consequences or ends of an action to determine the rightness of that act. Second, it holds a kind of maximization principle in that ¶ utilitarianism evaluates an act in accordance with its tendency to bring ¶ about maximum good for all. Third, according to classical utilitarians ¶ such as Bentham, J. S. Mill, and Sidgwick, ‘people’s good’ is construed as ¶ people’s happiness or pleasure (a hedonistic theory of value). On the other ¶ hand, in a contemporary version of utilitarianism such as R. M. Hare’s, it ¶ is explained as people’s desire- or preferencesatisfaction (a preference-based ¶ theory of value). Both classical and contemporary versions of utilitarianism interpret values in empirical terms, and insist that we should take ¶ into moral consideration such values as can be empirically identified by ¶ observation or introspection. This claim has been considered as one of ¶ the strongest points of utilitarianism. (There have been a few exceptions, ¶ as in the case of G. E. Moore’s ideal utilitarianism, which claimed that ¶ the right act is one that will maximize good, and that good cannot be ¶ defined by natural properties such as pleasure or happiness . But I believe ¶ such nonempirical versions of utilitarianism are rather atypical and have ¶ never been supported for a long time.) Fourth and finally, people’s pleasures or preference- satisfaction ‘on the whole’ means, according to many ¶ established utilitarians including Sidgwick, the aggregation of individual ¶ pleasures or preference- satisfaction. This point shows that utilitarianism ¶ takes a kind of individualistic view of public good, which claims that ¶ public good is reducible to the good of individuals. It should be noted ¶ here that many recognized utilitarians, including Sidgwick and Hare, ¶ adopt total utilitarianism that seeks to maximize the sum total of people’s ¶ pleasures or satisfaction, whereas some people (like anti-utilitarian John ¶ Rawls, for example) proposed average utilitarianism as the most credible ¶ form of utilitarianism, in which one seeks to increase the average of ¶ people’s pleasure or satisfaction. UTILITARIANISM MOST EFFECTIVE MAKE ETHICAL DECISION NAKANO-OKUNO 11 (Mariko Nakano-Okuno, Clinical Assistant Professor at the Ohio State University, USA, and an award-winning philosopher/author in Japan, “Sidgwick and Contemporary Utilitarianism” pg 240, Publication Date: September 2, 2011) Utilitarian ethical theory is typically comprised of several unique ¶ factors , such as consequentialism, the maximization principle, hedonism¶ and the policy to express the aggregation of pleasures as its sum total. ¶ We have elucidated how these components are analyzed and sustained ¶ by Sidgwick. According to him, consequentialism is supported through ¶ our critical examination of common-sense morality and our intuitive ¶ comprehension of the fundamental moral Principles of Rational Self Love and Benevolence. That is, we concluded that consequentialism is ¶ the only viable way to systematically make a moral decision, by observing that nonconsequentialist approaches cannot help us to coherently ¶ determine the rightness and wrongness of an act, and by arguing that ¶ we ultimately appeal to various goods that an act will bring about when ¶ we consider what action one ought to take. The maximization principle of the sum total of people’s goods is derived from an analysis of ¶ the concept of ‘good’ and the combination of two intuitive principles, ¶ Self-Love and Benevolence, plus the assumption that ‘the whole’ is to ¶ be construed as the sum total of its parts. The hedonistic interpretation ¶ of ‘the ultimate good’ is proved to be most plausible by first clarifying ¶ the concepts of pleasure and good and then examining all conceivable ¶ candidates for the ultimate good. This hedonistic value theory supports ¶ the idea that ‘the good on the whole’ should be understood as the sum ¶ total of pleasures, and thus the utilitarian principle of maximizing the ¶ sum total of people’s pleasure is derived. Finally, the overall plausibility ¶ of utilitarian theory is confirmed by our well-considered commonsense. By examining all these aspects of Sidgwick’s argument, I have clarified ¶ the exact structure, content and foundations of his utilitarian theory as ¶ much as I can.¶
