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***Links*** ....................................................................................................................................................... 8
Cuba Link – Economic Development ............................................................................................................. 9
Cuba Link – Embargo ................................................................................................................................... 11
Cuba Link – Democracy Promotion ............................................................................................................. 13
Mexico Link .................................................................................................................................................. 14
Mexico Link – Trade/Exports ....................................................................................................................... 15
Mexico Link – Migrant Workers .................................................................................................................. 16
Venezuela Link – Oil .................................................................................................................................... 17
Venezuela Link – Brink ................................................................................................................................ 18
Economic Engagement Link ......................................................................................................................... 19
Free Trade Link............................................................................................................................................. 20
Foreign Investment Link ............................................................................................................................... 22
Aid Link ........................................................................................................................................................ 23
Governance Assistance Link......................................................................................................................... 24
Democracy Link............................................................................................................................................ 26
Humanitarianism Link .................................................................................................................................. 28
Speaking for Others Link .............................................................................................................................. 29
***Impacts*** .................................................................................................................................................. 30
Laundry List Impact ...................................................................................................................................... 31
Great Power Wars Impact ............................................................................................................................. 32
Interventionism Impact ................................................................................................................................. 34
Environmental Collapse/Extinction Impact .................................................................................................. 36
Environment/Economy Impact ..................................................................................................................... 37
Terrorism/Instability Impact ......................................................................................................................... 38
Genocide Impact ........................................................................................................................................... 40
No Value to Life Impact ............................................................................................................................... 41
Democracy/Human Rights Impact ................................................................................................................ 42
Poverty/Inequality Impact ............................................................................................................................. 43
Authoritarianism Impact ............................................................................................................................... 44
***Alternative Extensions*** .......................................................................................................................... 45
Alt Solves – Latin America........................................................................................................................... 46
Alt Solves – Latin America Key ................................................................................................................... 48
Alt Solves – Global Networks ...................................................................................................................... 49
Alt Solves – Trade Specific .......................................................................................................................... 51
Alt Solves – Human Rights Specific ............................................................................................................ 52
***Answers To Affirmative Arguments*** .................................................................................................... 53
A2: Perm ....................................................................................................................................................... 54
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A2: Framework ............................................................................................................................................. 56
A2: Policy Relevance .................................................................................................................................... 57
A2: Cede the Political ................................................................................................................................... 58
A2: Free Trade Is Good ................................................................................................................................ 59
A2: The Affirmative Is Key To Economic Development ............................................................................. 60
A2: Neoliberalism Is Making The World Better .......................................................................................... 61
A2: Neoliberalism Is Inevitable .................................................................................................................... 62
AFF ANSWERS ................................................................................................................................................... 63
Perm Solvency – 2AC ................................................................................................................................... 64
Perm Solvency – Economic Engagement Good ........................................................................................... 66
Neoliberalism Is Inevitable ........................................................................................................................... 67
Neoliberalism Is Inevitable – Economic Logic ............................................................................................ 68
Neoliberalism Solves Poverty ....................................................................................................................... 69
Cede the Political Turn – 2AC ...................................................................................................................... 70
Cede the Political Turn – 1AR ...................................................................................................................... 72
There Is No Alternative ................................................................................................................................ 73
There Is No Alternative – Capitalism ........................................................................................................... 74
Cuba Specific Ans......................................................................................................................................... 75
Venezuela Specific Ans ................................................................................................................................ 76
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Economic engagement is a tool utilized to facilitate economic integration in Latin America – it is
a policy based on a paternalistic conception of development that culminates in the mass
privatization of public goods and social inequality.
Jacobs, assistant professor of political science at West Virginia U, 2004
(Jamie, "Neoliberalism and Neopanamericanism: The View from Latin America," Latin American Politics &
Society 46:4, Project MUSE)
The advance of neoliberalism suffers no shortage of critics, both from its supporters who seek a greater balance in the interests of North and South, and from its opponents who see it as lacking
The spread of neoliberalism is viewed by its strongest critics as part of the continuing expression of
Western power through the mechanisms of globalization, often directly linked to the hegemonic power of the
United States. Gary Prevost and Carlos Oliva Campos have assembled a collection of articles that pushes this debate in a somewhat new direction. This compilation addresses the
any real choice for developing states.
question from a different perspective, focusing not on the neoliberal process as globalization but on neoliberalism as the new guise of panamericanism, which emphasizes a distinctly political
neoliberalism reanimates a system of relations in the hemisphere that
reinforces the most negative aspects of the last century's U.S.-dominated panamericanism. The assembled
authors offer a critical view that places neoliberalism squarely in the realm of U.S. hegemonic
exploitation of interamerican relations. This volume, furthermore, articulates a detailed vision of the potential failures of this approach in terms of culture,
overtone in the discussion. The edited volume argues that
politics, security, and economics for both North and South. Oliva and Prevost present a view from Latin America that differs from that of other works that emphasize globalization as a general
or global process. This volume focuses on the implementation of free market capitalism in the Americas as a continuation of the U.S. history of hegemonic control of the hemisphere. While
Oliva and Prevost and the other authors featured in this volume point to the changes that have altered global relations since the end of the Cold War—among them an altered balance of power,
they all view the U.S. foreign policy of neoliberalism and economic
integration essentially as old wine in new bottles. As such, old enemies (communism) are replaced by new
(drugs and terrorism), but the fear of Northern domination of and intervention in Latin America
remains. Specifically, Oliva and Prevost identify the process through which "economics had taken center stage in interamerican affairs." They [End Page 149] suggest that the
Washington Consensus—diminishing the state's role in the economy, privatizing to reduce public deficits,
and shifting more fully to external markets—was instead a recipe for weakened governments susceptible
to hemispheric domination by the United States (xi). The book is divided into two main sections that emphasize hemispheric and regional issues,
shifting U.S. strategy, and evolving interamerican relations—
respectively. The first section links more effectively to the overall theme of the volume in its chapters on interamerican relations, culture, governance, trade, and security. In the first of these
the prospect of
hemispheric economic integration will be marked by a dominant view privileging U.S. security, conceptualized in
chapters, Oliva traces the evolution of U.S. influence in Latin America and concludes that, like the Monroe Doctrine and Manifest Destiny in the past,
transnational, hemispheric terms, that is both asymmetrical and not truly integrated among all members. In this context, Oliva identifies the free trade area of the Americas (FTAA) as "an
economic project suited to a hemispheric context that is politically favorable to the United States" (20). The chapters in this section are strongest when they focus on the political aspects of
neoliberalism and the possible unintended negative consequences that could arise from the neoliberal program. Carlos Alzugaray Treto draws on the history of political philosophy, traced to
social inequality has the potential to undermine the stable governance that is so crucial a
part of the neoliberal plan. He goes on to point out how this potential for instability could also generate a new period of U.S.
interventionism in Latin America. Treto also analyzes how the "liberal peace" could be undermined by the "right of humanitarian intervention" in the Americas if
Polanyi, identifying ways that
the NATO intervention in Yugoslavia served as a model for U.S. involvement in the hemisphere. Hector Luis Saint-Pierre raises the issue of "democratic neoauthoritarianism," responsible for
"restricting citizenship to the exercise of voting, limiting its voice to electoral polls of public opinion, restraining human rights to consumer's rights, [and] shutting down spaces to the citizens'
participation" (116). While these critiques are leveled from a structuralist viewpoint, they often highlight concerns expressed from other theoretical perspectives and subfields (such as the
political crisis
could damage attempts at integration and the overall success of the neoliberal paradigm in the Americas. In general,
the section on hemispheric issues offers a suspicious view of the U.S. role in promoting integration, arguing that in reality, integration offers a deepening of
historical asymmetries of power, the potential to create new justifications for hegemonic intervention,
and the further weakening of state sovereignty in the South.
literature on citizenship and participation in the context of economic integration). These chapters also emphasize the way inattention to economic, social, and
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This imposed model of economic interaction causes poverty, military interventions, and
environmental degradation – culminates in extinction.
Szentesa, Professor Emeritus at the Corvinus University of Budapest, 2008
(Tamás, “Globalisation and prospects of the world society”, 4/22 http://www.eadi.org/fileadmin/Documents/Events/exco/Glob.___prospects_-_jav..pdf)
It’ s a common place that human society can survive and develop only in a lasting real peace. Without peace countries cannot develop. Although since 1945 there has been no world war, but --
arms race and
numerous local wars took place, --terrorism has spread all over the world, undermining security even in the most developed and powerful countries, --
militarisation have not ended with the collapse of the Soviet bloc, but escalated and continued, extending also to weapons of mass destruction
and misusing enormous resources badly needed for development, --many “invisible wars” are suffered by the poor and oppressed people,
manifested in mass misery, poverty, unemployment, homelessness, starvation and malnutrition, epidemics and poor health
conditions, exploitation and oppression, racial and other discrimination, physical terror, organised injustice, disguised forms of violence, the denial or regular
infringement of the democratic rights of citizens, women, youth, ethnic or religious minorities, etc., and last but not least, in the degradation of human
environment, which means that --the “war against Nature”, i.e. the disturbance of ecological balance, wasteful management of natural resources, and large-scale pollution of our
environment, is still going on, causing also losses and fatal dangers for human life. Behind global terrorism and “invisible wars” we find striking
international and intrasociety inequities and distorted development patterns , which tend to generate
social as well as international tensions, thus paving the way for unrest and “visible” wars. It is a commonplace now that
peace is not merely the absence of war. The prerequisites of a lasting peace between and within societies involve not only - though, of course, necessarily - demilitarisation, but also a
systematic and gradual elimination of the roots of violence, of the causes of “invisible wars”, of the structural and institutional bases of large-scale international and intra-society inequalities,
exploitation and oppression. Peace requires a process of social and national emancipation, a progressive, democratic transformation of societies and the world bringing about equal rights and
opportunities for all people, sovereign participation and mutually advantageous co-operation among nations. It further requires a pluralistic democracy on global level with an appropriate
system of proportional representation of the world society, articulation of diverse interests and their peaceful reconciliation, by non-violent conflict management, and thus also a global
peace is
cannot be safeguarded in one part of the world
governance with a really global institutional system. Under the contemporary conditions of accelerating globalisation and deepening global interdependencies in our world,
indivisible in both time and space. It cannot exist if reduced to a period only after or before war, and
when some others suffer visible or invisible wars. Thus, peace requires, indeed, a new, demilitarised and democratic world order, which can provide
equal opportunities for sustainable development. “Sustainability of development” (both on national and world level) is often interpreted as an issue of environmental protection only and
reduced to the need for preserving the ecological balance and delivering the next generations not a destroyed Nature with overexhausted resources and polluted environment. However,
no
ecological balance can be ensured, unless the deep international development gap and intra-society
inequalities are substantially reduced. Owing to global interdependencies there may exist hardly any “zero-sum-games”, in which one can gain at the expense of
others, but, instead, the “negative-sum-games” tend to predominate, in which everybody must suffer, later or sooner, directly or indirectly, losses. Therefore, the actual question is not about
“sustainability of development” but rather about the “sustainability of human life”, i.e. survival of mankind – because of ecological imbalance and globalised terrorism. When Professor Louk
de la Rive Box was the president of EADI, one day we had an exchange of views on the state and future of development studies. We agreed that development studies are not any more restricted
to the case of underdeveloped countries, as the developed ones (as well as the former “socialist” countries) are also facing development problems, such as those of structural and institutional
(and even system-) transformation, requirements of changes in development patterns, and concerns about natural environment. While all these are true, today I would dare say that besides (or
even instead of) “development studies” we must speak about and make “survival studies”. While the monetary, financial, and debt crises are cyclical, we live in an almost permanent crisis of
The narrow-minded, electionselfish behaviour motivated by thirst for power and wealth, which still characterise the political leadership almost all over the world,
paves the way for the final, last catastrophe. One cannot doubt, of course, that great many positive historical changes have also taken place in the world in
the world society, which is multidimensional in nature, involving not only economic but also socio-psychological, behavioural, cultural and political aspects.
oriented,
the last century. Such as decolonisation, transformation of socio-economic systems, democratisation of political life in some former fascist or authoritarian states, institutionalisation of welfare
policies in several countries, rise of international organisations and new forums for negotiations, conflict management and cooperation, institutionalisation of international assistance
programmes by multilateral agencies, codification of human rights, and rights of sovereignty and democracy also on international level, collapse of the militarised Soviet bloc and systemchange3 in the countries concerned, the end of cold war, etc., to mention only a few. Nevertheless, the crisis of the world society has extended and deepened, approaching to a point of
bifurcation that necessarily puts an end to the present tendencies, either by the final catastrophe or a common solution. Under the circumstances provided by rapidly progressing science and
, human society cannot survive unless such profound intra-society and international
inequalities prevailing today are soon eliminated. Like a single spacecraft, the Earth can no longer afford to have a 'crew' divided into two parts: the
technological revolutions
rich, privileged, wellfed, well-educated, on the one hand, and the poor, deprived, starving, sick and uneducated, on the other. Dangerous 'zero-sum-games' (which mostly prove to be “negativesum-games”) can hardly be played any more by visible or invisible wars in the world society. Because of global interdependencies, the apparent winner becomes also a loser. The real choice
for the world society is between negative- and positive-sum-games: i.e. between, on the one hand, continuation of visible and “invisible wars”, as long as this is possible at all, and, on the
other, transformation of the world order by demilitarisation and democratization. No ideological or terminological camouflage can conceal this real dilemma any more, which is to be faced not
in the distant future, by the next generations, but in the coming years, because of global terrorism soon having nuclear and other mass destructive weapons, and also due to irreversible changes
in natural environment.
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The alternative is reject the affirmative’s imperialist model of development.
Global social movements are possible and effective only if they arise from the global South first.
Wise, Director of Doctoral Program in Migration Studies & Prof of Development Studies;
Universidad Autónoma de Zacatecas, Mexico, 2009
(Raúl Delgado, Forced Migration and US Imperialism: The Dialectic of Migration and Development, Crit
Sociol, 35: 767, ProQuest)
we must endorse, both in
theory and practice, the viability of alternative processes of development and do so on different
levels. We must first redefine the asymmetrical terms that developed countries, aided by principles
that have by now turned into fetishes (e.g. democracy, liberty, and free trade), used for imperialist
domination. This involves an exposé of imperialist practices, which have created oceans of inequality
and condemned vast regions of the world to marginalization, poverty, social exclusion, and
unfettered migration. Foreign investment (FI) has been a fundamental driving force in this regard. A genuine process of social
transformation involving the migrant and non-migrant sectors of society would not only seek to contain the
overwhelming flow of forced migration but also revert the ongoing processes of social degradation that characterize underdevelopment and
even pose a threat to human existence (Bello, 2006; Harvey, 2007). As an alternative to the current phase of imperialist domination, Petras argues in favor of
The promotion of development as social transformation could curtail forced migration. Globalization depicts migration as inevitable;
what he defines as a Worker-Engineer Public Control model (WEPC) based on six main principles: tax revenues versus tax evasions; profit remittances and privileged salaries versus
social investment; high reinvestment ratios versus capital flight; long term invest- ment in research and development versus speculative investment; social welfare versus capitalist
privileges; and fixed capital/mobile labor versus mobile capital/fixed labor (Petras, 2007: 234–5). This model provides an alternative approach that maximizes national and workingclass interests: ‘it has potential drawbacks and internal contradictions, which require con- stant reflection, deliberation, debate and reforms’ (2007: 237). Nonetheless, ‘the model
provides the surest and most direct road to development with democracy, social justice and national independence. The success of the WEPC model, its introduction and sus- tainability,
does not depend merely on its socioeconomic viability but also on appropri- ate and supporting national security and cultural policies and institutions (2007: 237–8). Following the
international
migration is an element of the current imperialist project led by the USA and that the migration
phenomenon has to be examined in this context in order to reveal its root causes and effects. In order to
above considerations, an approach based on a Marxist critique of the World Bank’s views regarding the migration-development nexus, would posit that
approach migration’s cause-and-effect relationships with development and examine specific moments in the dialectic interaction between development and migration, the following
two issues must be addressed:3 Strategic practices. These refer to the confrontation between different projects that espouse diverging class interests, which in turn underlie the structures
There are currently two major projects. The hegemonic one is
promoted by the large MNCs, the governments of developed countries led by US imperialism, and allied elites in underdeveloped
nations, all under the umbrella of international organizations commanded by the US government, like the IMF and the World Bank. The project’s loss of
legitimacy under the aegis of neoliberal globalization means that, nowadays, rather than writing of hegemony we can use
the term ‘domination’. The implementation of this imperialist project is not the result of consensus but rather military force and the financial imposition of
macroeconomic ‘structural reform’ along the lines of the Washington or Post-Washington Consensus. The second alternative project consists of
the sociopolitical actions of a range of social classes and movements as well as collective subjects and
agents, including migrant asso- ciations that endorse a political project designed to transform the
structural dynamics and political and institutional environments which bar the implementation of
alternative development strategies on the global, regional, national and local levels. Structural dynamics. These refer
to the uneven development processes driven by the dynamics of US imperialism on several planes and levels. This includes the
financial, commercial, productive, and labor market spheres, as well as technological innovation (a
strategic form of control) and the use and allotment of natural resources and environ- mental impacts. These factors condition the ways in which developed,
of contemporary capitalism and its inherent development problems.
developed and underdeveloped (including ‘people-importing’ and ‘people exporting’ nations), and underdeveloped, peripheral or postcolonial ountries relate to each other. They also
determine the fields in which interactions between sectors, groups, movements, and social classes take place, within and across national borders. All of this entails different – albeit
interrelated – dynamics at the global, regional, national and local levels.
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***Links***
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Cuba Link – Economic Development
Lifting the embargo paves the way for capitalism to bulldoze over Cuba’s people and
environment – it is the only obstacle to ecological destruction and cultural independence.
Conell, Research Associate at the Council on Hemispheric Affairs, 2009
(Christina, “The U.S. and Cuba: Destined to be Environmental Partners,” June 12, Online:
http://www.coha.org/the-us-and-cuba-an-environmental-duo/)
Many Cuba well-wishers fear if
President Obama lifts the trade embargo, the invasion of raw capitalism could
destroy Cuba’s relatively pristine environment. Although the Cuban government points to its environmental laws and the government
agency which was established to develop a sustainable environmental policy, these measures have done little up to now to affect substantial change. In several distinct
sectors, Cuba
seems to remain unprepared for the lifting of the embargo and the island inevitably could face
a flood of investors from the United States and elsewhere, eager to exploit the beautiful landscapes of the
island, at great cost and risk.¶ After years of relying on government subsidies and protectionism, this
rapid growth could generate irreparable shock waves through the economy. Oliver Houck, a professor at Tulane University
who aided the Cuban government in writing its environmental protection provisions, said “an invasion of U.S. consumerism, a U.S.dominated future, could roll over it (Cuba) like a bulldozer,” when the embargo ends. The wider
Caribbean region has experienced water contamination, mangrove destruction and sewage problems due
to large quantities of tourists and inadequate plumbing. Therefore, U.S. tourism regulations need to be in place in order to protect the
precious ecosystem of the island and prohibit over development. Collaboration between the U.S. and Cuba would be mutually beneficial, as the U.S. could use Cuba as
a laboratory of sustainable development and U.S. tourism would stimulate Cuba’s stagnant economy, if its negative impact could be controlled. Both countries must
agree upon a mutual plan for development.¶ The Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) has conducted research in Cuba since 2000, working with Cuban partners on
scientific investigations and strategies for protecting coastal and marine resources. Operating under a special license from the United States government, EDF experts
are collaborating with Cuban scientists on research projects aimed at ensuring that if Cuba taps offshore oil and gas reserves, it will be done in an environmentally
concious way. The US should establish more partnerships like these as President Obama has the legal authority to institute far-reaching cooperation with Cuba on joint
marine environmental projects. These partnerships should be implemented as the first step in creating an elaborate alliance for environmental protection between the
two countries.¶ If
the embargo is lifted, symbols of meretricious American capitalism are likely to invade the
once relatively isolated island. Opinion columnist Cynthia Tucker has commented on such matters:
“Mickey Mouse is sure to arrive, bringing with him the aptly predicted full frontal assault of American
culture and consumer goods,” suggesting that if Obama lifts the embargo, a functioning system of environmental protection supported by both the U.S.
and the Cuban public must be present for the island to be protected. ¶ It is Cuba’s lack of development that makes the island
attractive to tourists and although tourism boosts the economy, it also could have detrimental effects on
the environment. If the embargo is lifted, strict development restrictions need to be in place in order to
prevent further environmental exploitation. Currently, without a severe shift in enforcement of
environmental laws and the formation of a hard-working U.S.-Cuba partnership, the Caribbean’s most
biodiverse island will continue to be damaged. The key to a new dynamic in the U.S.-Cuba relationship might be to embark on a series of
strategic actions that aim to establish a bilateral relationship for sustainable development and associated activities based on mutual respect and the autonomy of each
country’s sovereignty and traditions.
Economic growth driven by the private sector leads to capitalist domination.
Nichols, National Executive of the Democratic Social Perspective, 2005
(Dick, The Cuban Revolution in the Epoch of Neoliberal Globalisation,
http://readingfromtheleft.com/PDF/CubaNeoLiberalEpoch.pdf)
The stress in the theses comes down on the difficulty of this task, not because we’re being pessimists, but because we
have to have a realistic
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assessment of the abiding constraints to growth, and awareness, too, that socialist development can’t just be
any old growth. Growth principally powered by the private sector and tourism which leaves the
state and cooperative sector lagging behind can only increase pressure for further concessions to the
capitalist market, with all the nefarious effects that can bring.
The embargo is the only obstacle to widespread capitalist exploitation – once lifted, Cuba will be
subjected to intense development.
The Atlantic, 2008
(“Bay of Capitalist Pigs,” April 1, Online: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/04/bay-ofcapitalist-pigs/306693/)
The American embargo on Cuba has spanned 48 years—a lifetime for many Cubans, and nearly all of Fidel Castro’s tenure as
Maximum Leader. Now that Castro, 81 and ailing, has officially retired, the embargo’s end may be near. Some think Fidel’s brother Raúl
(assuming he successfully consolidates power) might free Cuba’s economy and allow private investment. ¶ U.S. business interests have been
eagerly awaiting Castro’s departure—one way or another—for years. Otto Reich, who worked within the Bush administration on post-Castro planning and
other Cuba issues from 2001 to 2004, says that for a time, after the Cold War ended, construction companies were prepositioning materials in Florida warehouses in anticipation of a Cuban counterrevolution. Bulldozers and
cranes waited to cross the Florida Straits and start building condos and shopping centers.¶ Optimists
envision post-embargo Havana as a capitalist paradise, restored to glory by the healing powers of the free market. But an
invasion of developers might have its drawbacks as well—particularly for a city with Havana’s storied
history and distinctive architecture.¶ New residents and tourists will strain resources. Joseph L. Scarpaci, an urban
geographer at Virginia Tech, says Havana already shudders under its population’s demands. It is plagued by
brownouts, even though air-conditioning is still rare. Fresh water is scarce, and human waste flows
untreated into the sea.
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Cuba Link – Embargo
Encouraging more foreign investment in Cuba will only increase poverty and massive social
problems by increased exposure to the neoliberal market.
Reyes, staff writer, 2000
(Hector, Cuba: The Crisis of State Capitalism, International Socialist Review Issue 11, Spring 2000,
http://www.isreview.org/issues/11/cuba_crisis.shtml)
The severe hardship imposed on most of the population by the combined effects of economic crisis and government policies,
and the extensive pursuit of foreign investment, make a mockery of Castro’s 1986 speech in which he
passionately stated that “Cuba will never adopt capitalist methods.”54 In fact, even when the internal market was significantly
curtailed during the phase of USSR tutelage, the time-honored capitalist methods of increased productivity, tight labor discipline and enterprise profitability were
actively pursued by Cuba’s rulers through their eager participation in the international market. Now that the island has been thrust even deeper into that market,
all of the ills that seemed to disappear with the revolution have reemerged with a vengeance:
malnutrition, theft, hoarding, prostitution tied to tourism and a rapidly increasing dependence on
foreign capital, which doesn’t feel it has to disguise its profit motive. The truth is that when the guerrillas took power in 1959, they amounted to no more
than armed reformists. They managed to get rid of a hated despot, but they did not accomplish a revolutionary social transformation. They introduced beneficial
reforms in health and education. But these reforms were no different in character, and significantly less extensive due to the severe economic underdevelopment,
from those instituted by reformist social democratic governments in Sweden, Britain and other countries of Western Europe in the 1950s and 1960s. A socialist
revolution is much more than setting up social programs that can be taken back at the whims of the rulers. It involves not only the working class taking direct
control of state power, in order to redirect production for human need, but also the reorganization of society to gradually rid it of all sorts of ills such as racism
and sexism—what Marx called the muck of ages. The worst aspects of racism were confronted in the early years of the revolution, but it has worsened during the
current crisis. The police regularly stop young Black men on the streets to demand their papers, Blacks are concentrated in the poorest neighborhoods and racist
sayings are spouted as a part of normal conversation. Women have also been affected more severely by the crisis. Often they are the first ones to be laid off or
demoted—which has surely contributed to the increase in prostitution—and sexist images of women in string bikinis have become prominent in the promotion of
tourism.55Although the persecution of gays has lessened during the past decade—there was an open gay festival in La Habana in 199256—some aspects of gay
sexuality remain a criminal offense.57 More importantly, one needs to ask, if socialism is about the liberation of all humanity, why did it take the CCP until
1987—nearly 30 years after the revolution—to remove the law penalizing public homosexual behavior, which had been in effect since 1938 when Batista ruled
the country? The answer again is that the Cuban regime has nothing to do with socialism. A nationalist armed uprising is not a socialist revolution. Castro had to
take up arms in the 1950s because of a heavy, sovereignty-bending fact of contemporary capitalism: U.S. imperialism. In 1898, the U.S. snatched Cuba as booty
of the Spanish-American War. In 1902, due to popular resistance, it was forced to grant Cuba its independence. But it was a sham independence because the U.S.
inserted into the Cuban constitution the Platt Amendment—which guaranteed the U.S. the right to intervene militarily in Cuba at anytime if its “national interests
were threatened.”58 From that point and up to 1959, the U.S. supported every vicious and corrupt dictator in Cuba. Peaceful methods of change were completely
cut off even to liberal reformers. Since the revolution, the U.S. has continuously attempted to undermine the Cuban state. The most recent act of economic
sabotage, the 1995 Helms/Burton law—which penalizes countries and companies that do business in Cuba—confers on the U.S. president the prerogative to
define what constitutes democracy in Cuba. Nothing could be more arrogant and hypocritical given the overt support the U.S. has provided to every kind of
murderous dictator in Latin America, from Nicaragua’s Somoza to Chile’s Pinochet. This is why we celebrate the Cuban Revolution, because it gave U.S.
imperialism a black eye—proving that it could be defeated in its own backyard. But defending
Cuba against American domination is
not the same as identifying with Castro’s regime. Cuba’s crisis is not separate from the severe economic recession that currently
affects nearly 40 percent of the world. In country after country, the political parties traditionally associated with reforms—social democrats and liberals—have
proven unwilling and incapable of effecting significant reforms. On the contrary, they have presided over extensive attacks on their working classes. Cuba’s
population is facing a situation similar, but much sharper, to that of workers in Britain, Germany and the U.S., who are suffering from drastic cuts in the welfare
state. The strategy of the guerrillas-turned-bureaucrats has always been playing the international market—a dead end for the Cuban working class. For in
order for the Cuban economy to compete favorably in that market, continuous increases in
productivity are demanded from its workers—in the form of longer working hours, speedups and lower wages. Even in their own
terms, the bureaucracy’s goals of national development and of overcoming the dependence on sugar have failed wretchedly. There is a different
road. It involves not playing the market, but fighting to end the international capitalist system that
relies on that market. Cuba’s working class needs to fight its struggle on two fronts simultaneously. One is to defend its living standards against the
impositions of its ruling class organized in the CCP. The other is against U.S. imperialism. Cuba’s fate has showed that there cannot be an island of “socialism”
in a capitalist world. Even at its best, the conception of international revolution espoused by some revolutionaries in Cuba—such as Che Guevara—amounted to
no more than a collection of nationalist revolutions that could come together to resist the policies of the advanced countries.59 That was in the 1960s. Such
rhetoric has been abandoned by the Cuban leadership for many years. The
liberation of the Cuban working class will come by
means of a different strategy—through its own self-activity, defending its own interests and joining
the workers of the world in a common fight to end the international system of capitalism, which
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causes misery in Cuba and imperialist siege and wars and destruction everywhere.
Cuba’s economic isolation by the US makes it a crucial site to resist global capitalism – the plan
would destroy that potential.
Backer, Professor of Law and International Affairs at Penn State University, 2008
(Larry Cata, “CUBA AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF ODIOUS DEBT DOCTRINE,” August, Online:
http://lcbackerblog.blogspot.com/2008/08/cuba-and-development-of-odious-debt.html)
Before the collapse of the Soviet Union and its allies that goal had been difficult to achieve because of the steady support of the Soviet Union. This produced a massive
debt held first by the Soviet Union and then by the states that emerged from the collapse of the Soviet Union. (Mesa-Lago 2001). Since the collapse of the Soviet Union,
however, it has been much easier for the United States to cut Cuba off from international capital. Recently, however, the People’s Republic of China has been more
active in cultivating Cuba. But is unclear, however, the extent to which this friendship will serve as an effective counterweight to American plans for Cuba. (Backer
2004, 404–413; China to Discuss Cuba Investments 2004). Whatever
the economic effects of the embargo, an important, if
unintended consequence, has been the incentive it provided for the development of a series of ideas that
have proven influential outside the developed world. While Castro’s effect on the global economy has been negligible, his
importance on the development and exportation of ideas about the shape and nature of the global
economy have been far more significant—not necessarily because he has spoken them but because these ideas tend to be
replicated, expanded and championed by a host of global actors strategically placed throughout the
developed and developing world. The inversion and transformation of odious debt doctrine serves as a
piece in a complex construction of a framework meant to discredit the current global financial order
(Backer 2006) and suggest an alternative. In the case of odious debt, the result would produce irony. It might permit Cuba to avoid both current
and prior debt.
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Cuba Link – Democracy Promotion
Changing the Cuban governmental structure would lead to neoliberal takeover and the
destruction of human rights.
Nichols, National Executive of the Democratic Social Perspective, 2005
(Dick, The Cuban Revolution in the Epoch of Neoliberal Globalisation,
http://readingfromtheleft.com/PDF/CubaNeoLiberalEpoch.pdf)
As the anti-Cuba campaign spreads even to these distant shores we will need to make use of the powerful arguments in support of the Cuban cause, explaining
the simple truth that there’s
more human rights and democracy under Cuba’s single-party system than
under the two-party farce of western money politics. Here it’s always a case of plus ça change, plus la même chose — the more
things change, the more they stay the same — while a multiparty system of the type being pushed for Cuba by the USA
would mean a catastrophic decline in human and democratic rights that capitalist restoration would
bring. ¶ Even on the grounds on which Amnesty International and the US Human Rights Watch operate — that of “universally recognised human rights
conventions” operating irrespective of the intensity of conflict conditions — Cuba’s alleged crimes are puny compared to those of
its main accuser, the super-powerful, super-secure United States. To get an idea, compare the reports on the two countries
in the 2001 Amnesty International annual report: Political prisoners? Tell that to Leonard Peltier and the Puerto Rican patriots who have been in goal for decades.
Death sentences? A few in Cuba last year, but take a look at the new president’s record as the governing ghoul of the Lone Star state. Prison population as a
percentage of total population? No contest, with three million in US goals operating as slave labour.
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Mexico Link
Mexico-US economic engagement is the lynchpin and proving ground of neoliberalism – the
affirmative aides the global success of neoliberal exploitation.
Mexico Solidarity Network, 2012
(“Mexico - A neoliberal experiment,” Online:
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.
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Mexico Link – Trade/Exports
Export-based engagement with Mexico is a cover for poverty and the neoliberal exploitation of
women.
Kelly, writer at Citizen’s Press, 2008
(Lara, “Neoliberalism in Latin America,” Oct 29, http://citizenspress.org/editorials/neoliberalism-in-latinamerica)
Another aspect of neoliberal restructuring policies is the encouragement and creation of export
processing zones (EPZs). Export processing zones are parcels of territory where special laws exist regarding production. These zones are meant to
attract foreign investments. The incentives offered to corporations include the ability to import without tax, minimal corporate income tax, freedom from labour
unions, lessened regulations on the environment and labour, and state subsidized infrastructure (Teeple, 89). Transnational corporations have the ability to invest
in whichever country they please, and EPZs offer an extreme advantage in that the production costs to corporations are minimal in these zones. Wages
are
low, infrastructure costs are born by the state, and employee protections are nil (Teeple 90-91). Hojman argues
that in Mexico EPZs helped to create a new middle class of transnational executives, public servants, politicians, professionals, tradespeople and media personnel
(202). He does not specify if these people are those who have improved their standard of living due to employment opportunities within EPZs. I assume he is
referring to people attracted to the export-processing zones in order to profit from the increased production activities. It is unclear why he makes this argument,
because chances are, these upper-class people have always been upper-class, and the fact that they have moved to an EPZ does not mean anything for the regular
worker in these zones. Contrary to Hojman, Sadasivam has shown that EPZs
profit from women’s cheap labour, and offer jobs
which are repetitive in nature and dead-end. These women are targeted for these jobs because of
their ‘vulnerability, docility and dispensability’ and the jobs do not include any security or safety
requirements from the employer. She uses the example of EPZs in the Dominican Republic where the women must endure
“strict discipline, sexual harassment, low pay, occupational health hazards, excessive and forced
overtime, and arbitrary suspension and dismissal for protesting or organizing” (642-643).
Production for export is devastating for Mexico.
Mexico Solidarity Network, 2012
(“Mexico - A neoliberal experiment,” Online:
http://www.mexicosolidarity.org/programs/alternativeeconomy/neoliberalism)
In contrast, the
production-for-export model, of which maquiladoras are the centerpiece, rely on cheap labor and low
technologies, and the vast majority of production is exported. It is a model the United States itself pointedly avoided in its own process of
industrialization. While there are a number of reasons behind the rapid and successful industrialization of the United States, trade policy has to be considered
among the most important. For the better part of two centuries, US trade policy was characterized by high tariffs and other measures that protected young
industries from international competition. Since the mid 1960s, the US has taken exactly the opposite position with non-industrialized nations in the South.
Rather than encouraging protective trade policies like those that assisted US industry, the new
neoliberal mentality calls for open borders and free flows of goods, services and finance. Neoliberal economists are bothered
tremendously by anything that gets in the way of the pure functioning of open markets - like the annoying needs of real people in their day-to-day lives. If it
weren't for those bothersome people, especially the poor masses with their constant demands for food, housing, education and health care, the neoliberal model
The results of neoliberalism have
been devastating for the poor majorities and working classes in the Mexico and as well as the United
States.¶
could work with scientific precision. That's what the textbooks say! But the real world tells a different story.
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Mexico Link – Migrant Workers
Including Mexican citizens into the United States on the basis of their desire to work proves
cover for exploitation and genocide.
Loyd and Burridge, Department of Geography, Syracuse; Department of Geography, USC, 2007
(Jenna M. Loyd and Andrew Burridge, La Gran Marcha: Anti-Racism and Immigrants Rights in
Southern California, ACME: An International E-Journal for Critical Geographies, 6(1), 1-35)
The immigrants rights movement has brought to the fore the reality that immigration policy works to “restrict [people’s] freedom once they are within
nationalized labour markets” thereby rendering migrants more vulnerable to exploitation (Sharma, 2006, 25). However, the broader point has yet to be made that
all workers’ relative powerlessness is produced at least partly through increasing some workers’ vulnerabilities to exploitation through technologies of social
death (cf. Greenhouse and Leonhardt, 2006). The pervasive pickets proclaiming ‘We Built This Country’ confront how discrimination makes some people’s
work less valuable (Petras, 2006), but the
notion that hard work should be the marker of American citizenship
treads on dangerous ground. First, this labor metaphysic is also shared by business interests, and thus obscures the decisions
made by powerful corporations, backed by the state, that undermine working conditions and organized
labor worldwide. Second, the ‘hard work and thrift’ model of immigrant success obscures the history
of genocide and slavery in the production of the current national racial formation (Banks, 2006). As Mai Ngai
observes, “The myth of ‘immigrant America’ derives its power in large part from the labor that it performs for American exceptionalism” – namely the nation’s
liberal premise of democracy and equal citizenship (2004, 5). Third, Laura Liu argues that the thesis that immigrants and African Americans compete for the
same low waged jobs rests on “claims that immigrants are able to survive the global economic shifts that supposedly explain their presence in the USA in the first
place. But this
survival is often cast as either the ‘bootstrapping’ success of hardworking immigrants
taking jobs from ‘native-born’ workers, or the result of African American urban residents’ failure to
work as hard as immigrants do” (2000, 172).
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Venezuela Link – Oil
A shift away from export to the US is providing resources to fight neoliberal hegemony now –
reverting to an alliance with the US will allow colonialist domination.
Barra, International Development Consultant and Public Policy Analyst; Former Public Policy
Advisor at UNICEF, 2010
(Ximena de la, Sacrificing Neoliberalism to Save Capitalism: Latin America Resists and Offers Answers to
Crises, 2010 36: 635, Crit Sociol)
Nationalization of Non-Renewable Natural Resources:
in countries where the neoliberal ideology prevails there is a
striving to sign FTA agreements and to privatize public goods. These countries’ autonomy to defend natural resources and to
benefit from their yield is severely curtailed. This constitutes an important subject in view of the region’s primary export vocation. ¶ Chile in the time of Salvador
Allende, in 1971, nationalized almost 100 percent of copper production, its main export product, generating such a large amount of resources that the President
referred to copper as Chile’s salary. The Pinochet dictatorship, although intensely neoliberal, understood the revenue generating importance of copper and kept
most of it in the public sector. Moreover, when modifying the constitution in 1980, Chile attached a clause by which 10 percent of copper sales – a colossal sum
– would be allocated to funding the armed forces. Post-dictatorship Concertación governments have not only failed to eliminate that clause, they have denationalized 74 percent of copper mining. Even though holding 35 percent of the world’s copper reserves, Chile was therefore unable to limit excess offers and
keep world copper prices at reasonable levels (Caputo and Galarce forthcoming). Decline in demand now exacerbates this self-inflicted crisis. In contrast with
this mismanagement in Latin America, and as a way of recovering national sovereignty especially in Bolivia, Ecuador and Venezuela, action is gradually being
undertaken to recover public control over natural resources. Tired
of seeing their resources such as oil, gas and metals
depleted to make transnational corporations richer, Bolivia, Ecuador and Venezuela have renegotiated their
contracts, increased royalties and established joint companies with their individual states as main
shareholders and as the only owners of the resources. Unlike the American companies, most
European companies accepted the new conditions seeing that profits would still be plentiful. At the same time, these countries have
increased their growth indicators – until the crisis – which has allowed for unprecedented increases in their public budgets. Larger shares of
resources, so badly needed to fend off the ravages of the crises, are therefore now being kept in the
region. ¶ In the case of Venezuelan oil this has allowed it to firmly position itself on the international scene, including a leadership role within OPEC.
Ecuador, for its part, has legislated dominion over extraordinary crude oil revenue (unexpected except in times of bonanza), increasing control from 50 percent to
99 percent of that extra revenue. Nationalizing
Latin American natural resources to benefit legitimate owners
and to help support other countries in need has enormous emancipatory effects. One of the greatest of these
emancipatory effects is that of providing resources to fund badly needed social transformations. In addition to making
sense financially, this is also a fundamental matter of national and regional sovereignty and dignity. ¶ Conclusion Multiple crises have resulted from conscious
political decisions made by global leaders holding economic and military power. These crises have been imposed on the rest of humankind. The countries better
positioned to withstand these crises are those with regulated economies and fewer links to the US economy. Should the USA lose its hegemony as a consequence
of the crises, others would soon emerge to take its place. There are countries ready to undertake a sub-imperial role in Latin America (Brazil) and in Asia (China)
that have the capabilities to inflict considerable damage on weaker economies should they so wish. There
is growing awareness that
poverty and exclusion levels in Latin America prove that the prolonged hegemonic alliance with the USA
has not been favorable; and that recovering sovereignty and the role of the state has become vital. And for that purpose, a development
model that is totally different from neoliberal capitalism is needed. Latin America has been in the
forefront of resistance to neoliberalism but the crises now pose new challenges such as the need to
confront capitalism and imperialism.
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Venezuela Link – Brink
Chavez’s death has put Venezuela at a crossroads – it can either fully break with capitalism, or
fall back in line as the affirmative desires.
Socialism Today, the official magazine of England and Wales’ Socialist party, April 2013
(“Venezuela after the death of Hugo Chavez, Online: http://www.socialismtoday.org/167/chavez.html)
Following the elections in 2012, divisions were beginning to open up within the Bolivarian movement as increasing layers
of workers were coming into conflict with the regime. National security laws made strikes in the public sector almost illegal . The day before
Chávez died, protests over housing conditions were met by police repression. His death has checked
these developments, temporarily, as the masses have unified again to defeat the right-wing in presidential elections due on 14 April. The
elections are likely to result in a victory for Nicolás Maduro, Chávez’s named successor. At this stage, the various groupings in the
PSUV/Bolivarian movement have rallied together to ensure they win. Maduro, a former bus driver coming from the trade union bureaucracy, is clearly sensitive
to the pressure and demands from the working class. Maduro and the Bolivarian leaders are fighting the election with an almost religious fervour, bestowing near
sainthood on Chávez whose line they will continue. Maduro has even described himself as an "apsotle of Chávez", recognising the demands of the workers but
appealing to them and all groups to be calm for "the sake of the fatherland". On the other side, the class prejudice of the capitalists is demonstrated in their
hysterical outbursts of horror at the idea of a former bus driver becoming president. Yet Maduro is also trying to appease the ruling class. His declarations have
Even before Chávez died, meetings
had been arranged with representatives of US imperialism. The attempts at arriving at a consensus
with capitalism are certain to come into conflict with the aspirations of the working class and masses
after the elections. The worsening economic scenario globally and in Venezuela is certain to result in
new conflicts and struggles. Moreover, Maduro does not have the same authority or loyalty in the
eyes of the masses as Chávez did. It is not excluded that, under mass pressure, Maduro could also be
compelled to adopt more radical policies which encroach on capitalist interests, but this is not
certain. Divisions within the Bolivarian movement will re-emerge with even greater intensity
reflecting different class interests. A new chapter in Venezuela will open following the election. Now
more than ever it is urgent to build independent workers’ organisations to take the revolution
forward with a democratic socialist programme to transform society.
been aimed at trying to moderate the working class, speaking about the "patriotic revolution continuing".
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Economic Engagement Link
Economic engagement serves as a smokescreen to put Latin America under multinational
corporate control.
Palley, Schwartz Economic Growth Fellow, 2009
(Dr. Thomas, “America's exhausted paradigm: Macroeconomic causes of the financial crisis and great
recession,” Online: www.newamerica.net/files/Thomas_Palley_America's_Exhausted_Paradigm.pdf, p. 26-27)
The flawed model of global economic engagement broke with the old model of international trade in
two ways. First, instead of having roughly balanced trade, the United States has run persistent large trade deficits. Second, instead of aiming to
create a global marketplace in which U.S. companies could sell their products, its purpose was to
create a global production zone in which U.S. companies could either produce or obtain inputs from.
In other words, the main purpose of international economic engagement was not to increase U.S. exports, but rather
to substitute cheaper imported inputs for US domestic production and to facilitate American owned
production platforms in developing countries that could export to the United States. As a result, at the
bidding of corporate interests, the United States joined itself at the hip to the global economy,
opening its borders to an inflow of goods and exposing its manufacturing base. This was done without safeguards
to address the problems of exchange rate misalignment and systemic trade deficits, or the mercantilist policies of trading partners. NAFTA The creation of the
new system took off in 1989 with the implementation of the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement that established an integrated production zone between the two
countries. 18 The 1994 implementation of NAFTA was the decisive next step. First, it fused Canada, the United States, and Mexico into a unified North
American production zone. Second, and more importantly, it joined developed and developing economies, thereby establishing the template U.S. corporations
wanted.
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Free Trade Link
Free trade forcibly integrates peripheral populations into the global system of exchange without
regard for the social and political implications – the impact is the perpetuation of massive wealth
inequalities between the North and South.
De Angelis, lecturer in Political Economy at University of East London, 2000
(Massimo, “Trade, the global factory and the struggles for new commons,” Paper presented at the CSE
conference "Global Capital and Global Struggles: Strategies, Alliances, and Alternatives,” July, Online:
http://libcom.org/files/NewComm.pdf)
Let us be clear from the outset. There
is no such as thing as "faire" trade liberalisation. To the billion of people in the
global economy, trade liberalisation is part of the project to impose upon them the discipline of the global
factory. This discipline is the competing game itself. Whether is Pakistan’s textiles that replaces Italian’ textile workers or a British telecommunication firm that
make Thailand's telecom workers redundant, it is the game itself that sucks. Whatever gains some group of workers obtain due to
their competitive advantage, some other group of workers loses out, until they themselves are forced to
take notice of a new competitive force which came to displace them. And if we patently follow the
economists’ advice to wait for the long-term positive effect of trade, we are left to wonder: isn’t it now the
long term of 200 hundreds yeas ago, of 100 years ago, of 50, 40 years ago, of twenty years ago? The
people who died as result of the new enclosures accompanying trade liberalisation in all these years, the people who suffered war as
result of the disintegration of the social fabric brought about by structural adjustment and associated export promotion,
the people of any country of the North has to run in the competing rat race no less, but even more than in the past, just to acquire what is on average necessary to live
with dignity, the
average people struggling to overcome an imposed condition of scarcity when in fact we live
in plenty, can we say these people have benefited of the long term advantage of trade? Nonsense, nobody can
make these sorts of judgements. Without a proper assessment of human, social and environmental costs
of modern trade, one cannot even to start talking about long term or short term advantages of trade.
Without taking into consideration the voice of those without voice the rhetoric of trade benefits is a bias
rhetoric. If there is no way anybody can argue whether trade has brought advantages or disadvantages, the only thing we can say with certainty is that because of
current patterns of trade the context in which our lives and struggles of today are located is different than the context of our lives and struggles of yesterday and, if trade
liberalisation continues, of tomorrow. However, the recomposing factors of various movement in Seattle last November, can be summarised by the slogan “no new
round, WTO turnaround.” With this slogan the movement sets against the boundlessness of capital’s accumulation, but there is more. “No new round”, all movements
agree. "WTO turnaround”, here is the problem, because people start to ask and debate “where to?” The problem for us is to identify, in the context of the large
movement emerged in Seattle and that has set a temporary limit to trade liberalisation, whether it is possible to start to promote a debate towards an independent
position of planetary civil society, one that does not bow to the easy traps of the free trade ideology. To do so, we
must open a debate on the
contradictory nature of trade in this phase of capitalist accumulation, its meaning and implications for a
diverse organisation of human and natural resources of the planet. To gain an independent position of planetary civil society,
we must start to think about proposals of transformation of current society within a conceptual grid that
is independent from the main current dogmas that sustain capital's discourse: competition and,
especially, the meaning of growth. Behind these unqualified concepts, there lies the project of today’s capital’s strategies.
Free trade is merely a cover for neoliberal exploitation and inequality.
Dean, Professor of Political Science at Hobart and William Smith Colleges, 2007
(Jodi Democracy and Other Neo-Liberal Fantasies p 56-57)
In neoliberal ideology, the fantasy of free trade covers over
persistent market failure, structural inequalities, the prominence of monopolies, the privilege of noThird, Zizek explains that fantasy occults an original deadlock.23
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bid contracts, the violence of privatization, and the redistribution of wealth to the "have mores:' Free
trade thus sustains at the level of fantasy what it seeks to avoid at the level of reality-namely, actually free trade
among equal players, that is, equal participants with equal opportunities to establish the rules of the
game, access information, distribution, and financial networks, and so forth . Paradoxically, free trade is
invoked as a mantra in order to close down possibilities for the actualization of free trade and
equality.
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Foreign Investment Link
Foreign investment in Latin America leads to massive neoliberal exploitation of workers.
Wise, Director of Doctoral Program in Migration Studies & Prof of Development Studies;
Universidad Autónoma de Zacatecas, Mexico, 2009
(Raúl Delgado, Forced Migration and US Imperialism: The Dialectic of Migration and Development, Crit
Sociol, 35: 767, ProQuest)
Although Petras does not use the notion of the indirect exportation of labor he has been aware of the implications of this aspect of the process of industrial
restructuring. When discussing the implications of foreign direct investment (FI), he notes that ‘since the 1990s, FI
has increasingly looked
toward outsourcing skilled jobs to low-wage/salary regions’. This, he notes, ‘requires state promotion of
an educated low-paid work force and financing of local business elites to act as recruiters and point
men for the FI’. Overseas relocation (both the reality and the threat of it) is a common policy for lower- ing wages, pensions, health benefits and job
security in the imperial countries. Foreign investors, he notes, benefit from both ends: ‘exploiting skilled and unskilled labor
in assembly plants and manufacturing industries in Latin America while reducing labor costs within the
US’. Thus, the MNCs play one against the other and secure labor-related incentives in both. ‘ The net effect is
to increase profitability by squeezing out greater pro- ductivity per worker at lower costs, expanding market shares and creating lucrative export platforms to sell
back into the home market’ (Petras, 2007: 216).
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Aid Link
US aid programs are continually hijacked by a neoliberal agenda – the plan will only help elites
and corporations.
Dixon, Department of Development Sociology, 2011
(Marion, BRIEFING An Arab spring Cornell University, New York, USA Review of African Political
Economy Vol. 38, No. 128, June 2011, 309–316, Online:
http://cornell.academia.edu/MarionDixon/Papers/824718/An_Arab_Spring)
The role of US aid in promoting a professional class of international development ‘experts’ and a vast military complex over- seas, and in sidelining human
rights and advocacy groups (in the case of Egypt), illustrates that the United States’ relation- ship with democracy promotion in the region is weak and
contradictory, at best. What such critiques fail to show is how the
system of Western-led expertise, with contractors and ‘meet and
greets’/work- shops, reinforces the bifurcated ‘West knows best’ and the ‘underdeveloped Rest’. And of course there
is nothing democratic about that modelled relationship. Further, a close examination of US aid programming in the region reveals the
pervasive character of the neoliberal agenda. Among USAID’s programmes – from economic growth to health to
education to governance – there is a thinly veiled thread of growth-based ‘development’ and Western
corporate-sector profiteering. The health programmes deploy expert-led capacity-building workshops, rather than essential life-saving supplies.
The education programmes focus on primary education and vocational training to create a pool of semi-skilled workers in the region for the ‘global market’.
Economic growth equates with an export-oriented economy, with countries like Egypt exporting water- intensive and non-essential commodities (like
strawberries and green beans), while importing staples (like wheat). These are the so-called prescriptions for countries in the region to become competitive
globally. There
is nothing democratic about these mechanisms prescribed for and adopted in the Global
South supposedly to become a global player. Populations in authoritarian and democratic countries alike have not voted and do not vote
for neoliberal ‘reforms’, which have been imposed (albeit welcomed and wil- fully implemented by the elite, benefiting classes) on governments by international
banks as the only way to restructure debts and build creditworthiness. One may argue that the claim of US-led war and occupation unleashing the Arab Spring is
the flipside of the
argument that promotion of the undemocratic economic order is essential to the region’s
democratic transition. One side involves visible coercion, the other subtle – or perhaps more fitting in
Gramsci’s terms – the twin mutually reinforcing hegemony of coercion and of consent.
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Governance Assistance Link
Trying to promote “equality” by assistance governance reinforces the state as the arbiter of all
social relations and promotes a mechanical method of improving democratic processes that
authorizes violent action to naturalize political forces it cannot integrate.
Zanotti, Fellow European University Institute, 2005
(Laura, “Governmentalizing the Post-Cold War International Regime: The UN Debate on Democratization and
Good Governance,” Alternatives, 30, JSTOR)
Classical liberalism tended to identify democracy with a number of institutional arrangements, most of
them aimed at guaranteeing pluralism and fair procedures for selection of governments. Participation and exercise
of political rights are in this perspective understood as the automatic outcomes of such institutional arrangements. "Good governance" extends institutionalization to a
broader range of applications. In this perspective, effective institutions are the key to "common good" and are expected to bring about peace, political liberties, and
substantive rights. This
framework favors top-down approaches to democratization, where participation is seen
as the outcome of universally valid and standardized techniques of government and institutional
arrangements. "Good governance" constructs both states and the international arena as
governmentalized spaces. As it is testified in the UN debate, good governance doctrines promote institutional
arrangements that foster the reorganization of an array of local practices into administrable varieties; they
promote the collection of capillary and standardized data and the codification of a plurality of rules and regulations aimed at knowing and steering aspects of population
life and promote instruments and techniques in the bands of international organizations to assess, reward, or punish the behaviors of governments with regard to fields
that were previously considered to be within states' sovereign jurisdiction. Reengineering institutions, fostering productivity and improving populations' Ufe (the
common good), developing numerical saviors and standardized representations, and expanding regulations and instruments for monitoring and assessing performance
both within States and at the international level are all modalities of conduct predicated in the "good governance" discourse and implemented by international
organizations in the policies it supports. By
attempting to make the international arena a "calculated space,"
international organizations endeavor to assess the deeds of each government with regard to benchmarks
that are internationally set, to compare its "performance" to others,' to make decisions about
rewards/punishments (such as the inclusion or exclusion from international structures or the allocation of international funds) based upon
"measurable" and "objective" criteria. The international arena— as previously through the "science of police" civil society—is
in this way constituted as a field of knowledge and political intervention. Its elements are expected to act as "good
governments" or democracies. Democracies must foster the well-being of their populations and maximize their health and wealth, and their deeds in this regard are
subject to the scrutiny and correctional initiatives of international organizations. States
became the subject of international scrutiny and
reformation efforts aimed at making them to function as "governments" instead of as uncontrolled
"sovereigns" (in the Foucaultian understanding) and at making them the visible and predictable actors of a normalized
international arena. Governmentality emerges as a multifaceted and universally valid technique of rule, a knowledge/power formation that opens multiple
spaces of visibility at the national and international level. In times of proliferating threats, where total control of variables becomes impossible, international security is
sought through techniques aimed at reducing risk and increasing predictability through the normalization of potentially dangerous actors. Governance doctrines promote
the construction of modern states and endeavor to protect citizens from states' incapacity by extending international regulatory and monitoring functions. In this sense,
governmentalization may contribute to fostering the health, wealth, and security of populations. Furthermore, governance translates the abstract and controversial notion
of democracy into a plurality of technical problems and issue-specific programs of institutional reform. This is an operational virtue that makes this framework
Governance is presented as an
apolitical, technically sound, and universally valid endeavor, and democracy can be delinked from the
political debate and associated with good management procedures. Good governance is a capacious concept that creates
appealing for international organizations, concerned about the political neutrality and soundness of their programs.
consensus around matters that would otherwise remain politically controversial.'^'* It provided the United Nations with a framework and a neutral technical language
for addressing a wide range of issues and operationalizing diverse interventions. However, notwithstanding its apparent anodyne technical neutrality, governance
discourse extensively uses value-loaded metaphors and dichotomies and reinforces oppositional identities. It
aims at creating visibility out of
obscurity, transparency out of opacity, accountability out of corruption, efficiency out of redundancy,
effectiveness out of aimlessness, rights out of abuses, rule of law out of unpredictability. The international arena is
thus divided between the orderly space of the civilized and the unpredictable and obscure borderlands of the uncivilized. Indeed, some of the current themes
of democratization and good governance show many similarities with elaborations of the "civilizing
mission" that, according to Michael Adas, was embedded in the European colonial enterprise.'^s xhis enterprise was
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expected to bring peace and order, overthrow despotism and corruption, bring about fair taxation,
improve populations' income, and foster productivity. For Adas, the underlying assumption was that the Europeans were the best
possible rulers and represented the most advanced civilization. However, while in the nineteenth century the idee coloniale was based upon the idea of technological
superiority, twentiethcentury "good governance" is based upon the superiority of Western forms of government and their adaptability to all societies. Metaphors of
civilization and techniques of government that emerged in the West long before the end of the twentieth century converge in the discourse of governance to bring about
a project of international security based upon the creation of democratic and well-functioning states. The
international arena, which during the Cold War
was divided along the lines of the East and West, is now divided along the lines of the metropolitan, civilized world versus
disorderly borderlands. Democratization in a "good governance" framework becomes the means for
reducing the risk posed by "disorderly" states and the "rogue" actors they are believed to harbor by
making their processes of government more readable and codified and making obscure borderlands
visible and predictable.
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Democracy Link
Trying to help shift a country towards democracy is just a smokescreen for large corporations
and neoliberal exploitation.
Neocosmos, Professor and Director of Global Movements Research at Monash University, in
Johannesburg, 2011
(Michael, Mass mobilisation, ‘democratic transition’ and ‘transitional violence’ in Africa, 2011-03-31, Issue
523, http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/72163)
Yet the appearance of the masses on such a broad scale on the political scene for the first time since independence cannot be assumed to mean that they will
remain there, and not only because coercive military power has yet to be transformed. Given the fact that this process is generally understood as one of
‘democratisation’, it becomes sooner or later systematically accompanied by an invasion of experts
on ‘good governance’, ‘democracy’, ‘empowerment’, ‘civil society’ and ‘transitional justice’ inter alia who all purport to
provide advice to the struggling people on how to consolidate their hard won gains, via a transitional process of reconciliation between erstwhile enemies, into a
functioning democracy.[2] In particular these experts do so because they and their funders are concerned with the plight of victims of violence. But they
rarely see people from the Global South as knowledgeable rational subjects of their own history, but as
sad pathetic victims in need of ‘empowerment’ who thus require the benevolent support of the West upheld since the nineteenth century by
an ideology of ‘trusteeship’.[3] As experts from Western governments, multinational agencies and international NGOs descend from on high
like clouds of locusts, voraciously eating up the new shoots of ‘people power’, it may be important to
rethink some of the assumptions upon which such theories of transition – perhaps most explicitly outlined in the notion
of ‘transitional justice’ – are founded.[4] These are so common and so pervasive in their apparent ethical ‘goodness’ that they rarely elicit criticism.
Fundamental to this thinking is the assumption that democracy – understood as a form of state of course, and not as a popular practice – must be accompanied by
a ‘culture of rights’ which itself is seen as inimical to the deployment of violence. The reason being the belief that democracy implies an acceptance by all
contenders for power of ‘the rules of the game’, that a consensual value system based on the mutual respect for each other’s rights and the rule of law excludes
violence as a way of resolving differences, and that the commitment to such a consensus, built during a period of transition through the judging of past abuses
(gross violations) of human rights through legitimate legal procedures, can lead to (elite) political reconciliation and consequently to (popular) social peace. The
core assumption is that ‘transition’ is to be understood as a process of change from a state of authoritarianism and violence to a state of democracy and peace, the
idea being that violence should decline as a ‘transition to democracy’ and a ‘culture of rights’ is gradually realised. A number of characteristics of this form of
reasoning are evident even at this stage of the argument. It is manifestly a variant of the old historicist notion of change from the ‘traditional’ to the ‘modern’
made famous by the hegemony of modernisation theory in the immediate postcolonial period in Africa in particular. What appears to be ‘the past’, seen as an
undifferentiated whole, is simply defined negatively in relation to an idealised (future) state of affairs. Much as the term ‘traditional’, the predicate ‘authoritarian’
refers here to any form of state – irrespective of its historical location – which deviates from the Western liberal-democratic model, now global in its scope. It
includes most obviously the past ‘communist’ states in Eastern Europe, the old militaristic states in Latin America as well as African post-colonial states whose
secular nationalism diverged from the neoliberal ideal until around the late 1980s when formal universal suffrage was adopted by elites worried at the prospect of
losing their power under democratising pressures from ‘above’ (by the ‘Washington Consensus’) and from ‘below’ (by the popular masses). African states in
particular were seen as having embarked at the time on a ‘transitional’ process of ‘democratisation’ as ‘multi-party elections’, ‘good governance’, ‘civil societies’
and ‘human rights’ were promoted inter alia through the use of ‘political conditionalities’ by the ‘Washington Consensus’ as part of a process of incorporation
into the globalised ‘New World Order’ of neo-liberal capitalism and democracy.[5] When ‘political conditionalities’ proved insufficient, it was (and still is)
always possible to enforce such democracy, human rights and incorporation into the global order through the deployment of military might, more or less justified
by notions of ‘humanitarian’ intervention. This may simply have lengthened the process of ‘transition’ but was never meant to alter its final outcome. In fact the
‘transition’ is apparently a never-ending one as the ideal of the West is rarely attained. The present then is
turned into an ongoing ‘transition’ to an always-receding future, all along guaranteeing careers in the business of ‘good governance’. Moreover, the theoretical
foundation of human rights discourse (HRD), on which this whole reasoning was constructed, is that people are seen only as victims, in particular as victims of
oppressive regimes, and not as collective subjects of their own liberation. As such the
law along with its trustees (governments, transnational
multinational agencies) are understood to be their saviours.[6] The neocolonial
relationship here should be apparent, not because HRD is in itself inherently colonial, but because it is a form of state politics which is
and national NGOs,
applied to neocolonial conditions with all the zeal of a ‘democratizing mission’.[7] It is these conditions which require elucidation and analysis. The construction
of indices as measures of democracy and the training by Western NGOs of experts from Africa in the use of these, much in the same way as indices had been
constructed in the past in order to measure development, evidently shows how politics has been reduced to a technical process, for only a technique can be
quantitatively measured.[8] ¶ Democratisation which ultimately has its roots in the struggles of people from all walks of life for greater control over
their daily lives – hence in the self-constitution of a demos –
is now transformed into a technical process removed from
popular control and placed into the hands of experts such as ‘human rights lawyers’, ‘social
entrepreneurs’, ‘governance professionals’ and ‘gender mainstreamers’ who together staff an
industry whose tentacles hold up the liberal global hydra of the new imperial ‘democratising mission’
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on the continent. Rather than a transition from authoritarianism to democracy, what occurred on the African continent during the 1990s can be more profitably
understood as a process of systematic de-politicisation, a process of political exclusion. If we agree with the philosopher Jacques Rancière that ‘politics begins
exactly when those who “cannot” do something show that in fact they can’[9], then it is not difficult to visualise ‘de-politicisation’ as a process whereby those
same people are being convinced that they really are quite incapable, that they did not do anything significant, new or different after all, despite what they may or
may not have thought, as it would have all happened anyway and that in any case their work is now over. Everyone should return to their allotted place in the
social structure and vacate the field of politics, leaving it to those who know how to follow unquestioningly the rules of the game (of the state): The trustees of
the excluded. In fact if historicist categories are preferred, this process could be described as a never-ending ‘transition’ from the inventive politics of popular
agency to the oppressive technicism of state and imperial power. A core feature of this process in South Africa in particular has been the construction of people
as political victims rather than (and after many had been) political subjects, through an emphasis on legal procedures which evidently only recognise juridical
agency but not political agency.[10] The relative success of this process has in the past relied inter alia on people’s lassitude with violence and demands for
justice which they have so long been denied, on the physical and emotional exhaustion of daily militancy, and on the fetishism of power. The latter promises a
world in which the difficult questions and problems of ‘decision-making’ can and should be left to professionals eminently qualified, and hence paid, to do so.
Yet it is apparent that this
process, as currently constituted, merely gives rise to political exclusion which is
not overcome by the creation of a civil society for the latter’s politics are in harmony with those of the state.[11] The result is that
violence does not necessarily disappear along with the construction of a democratic state. A new
oligarchy is formed (or the old one is reconstituted) precisely as a result of the de-politicisation of the masses and
their political exclusion, so that the authoritarianism against which the people had rebelled in the first place is likely re-created, although now within the context
of a somewhat different mode of rule and different forms of political exclusion. Of course such de-politicisation in practice is simply replicated within, as well as
enabled by thought and subjectivities, as analysis becomes focussed on visualising the world through state categories. Such categories (governance, civil society,
power, democracy, law, reparations, etc) objectify politics by ‘representing’ the social and thereby stress the immutability of given social places, cultures,
identities and hierarchies to such an extent that state thinking becomes constructed as ‘natural’ and the immutability of place as an incontrovertible ‘fact’ evident
to all. The inevitable conclusion is that there can indeed be no alternative to the politics of the state.
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Humanitarianism Link
The affirmative’s call to provide its small acts of aid for Latin America papers over the causes of
poverty and American colonialism.
Lawston and Murillo, Assistant Professor of Women’s Studies at California State University San
Marcos; Prof @ University of San Diego, 2009
(Jodie Michelle Lawston and Ruben R. Murillo, The discursive figuration of U.S. supremacy in narratives
sympathetic to undocumented immigrants, Social Justice, 36.2 (Summer 2009): p38(16))
Such stories engender sympathetic feelings for immigrants, especially for children, in the reader. Faced
with the shocking violence these
children endure, the reader wants to "rescue them" or allow them to remain in the country. The focus on the travails and tribulations of
undocumented children compels the reader to believe that conditions in the country of origin must be so bad that immigrants are willing to risk their lives and
endure tortuous journeys to establish a "better life." In this way, the
narrative naturalizes the United States as inherently
superior to the immigrants' home countries without historicizing the direct involvement of the United
States in creating oppressive social and economic conditions in Central America. ¶ Mexico serves as a
melodramatic villain in Enrique's Journey, just as it does in 30 Days and Under the Same Moon. Readers learn how hostile and discriminatory some Mexicans
are toward immigrants from Central America. This
tends to placate the guilt and anxiety that many liberals feel over U.S.
immigration policy and enforcement. The imperative to engage in charitable acts for the "less fortunate" is also an
important part of the story. One of the book's most compelling chapters describes how residents in a small town in Vera Cruz throw bundles of
food, clothing, and supplies to migrants riding the freight trains. Nazario's description of those generous people contrasts sharply with the hostile discrimination
seen in Chiapas. She writes: Enrique expects the worst. Riding trains through the state of Chiapas has taught him that any upraised hand might hurl a stone. But
here in the states of Oaxaca and Vera Cruz, he discovers that people are friendly. They wave hello and shout to signal if hostile police are lying in wait for them
in an upcoming town (2006: 103). The altruism in Oaxaca and Vera Cruz breathes hope into a formerly bleak situation. Residents here tell Nazario (2006: 105),
"If I have one tortilla, I give half away," "I know God will bring me more," "I don't like to feel that I have eaten and they haven't," and "It feels good to give
something that they need so badly." These passages resonate poignantly with the sense of charity in the U.S. national imagination and they perhaps account for
why Nazario's narrative won the Pulitzer Prize and became a bestseller. Charitable acts by these poor Mexicans move the typical American reader to offer a
"helping hand" to undocumented immigrants and to "rescue" some of these children. But acts
of charity do not make up for a legacy of
conquest, neocolonialism, and U.S. interventionism; instead, like a shell game they distract groups
and individuals from the causes of poverty. Charity Discourse: Raising Historical Amnesia ¶ It could be argued that Under the Same
Moon and Enrique's Journey strive to contest the law-and-order discourses that frame much of the U.S. immigration debate. Public opinion is shaped to perceive
undocumented immigrants as "criminals" who have willfully violated U.S. law by entering "illegally." Dramatized exaggerations of undocumented immigration
heighten the sense of transgression and threat. As Escobar (2008: 62) points out, "images of Mexican migrants 'flooding' the U.S.-Mexico border saturate the
media, constructing a crisis of 'invasion.'" In response, immigration laws such as IRCA and IIRAIRA are passed and border "security," policing, and detention
are increased. Heightened vitriol characterizes public and media discourse, with nonwhite immigrants--especially Latinos--portrayed as "lazy" and "violent"
"drains on society." Sympathetic works such as Enrique's Journey and Under the Same Moon may offer a humanizing alternative to law-and-order discourses,
but they do not historicize or contextualize the U.S. role in creating and maintaining migration. They depict the United States as a more desirable place to live
than the immigrants' countries of origin and assume that the affluence, prosperity, and modern conveniences that underwrite U.S. national identity are irresistibly
enticing. The message communicated is that these immigrants would not be willing to risk rape, assault, robbery, arrest, and detention to reach the United States
if it were not superior to the places from which they were trying to flee. ¶ The
long history of U.S. interventionism in Latin
America created the dramatic disparity between immigrants' home countries and the United States. The
litany includes invasions of Mexico, El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Panama, financial, tactical, and
political support of repressive military regimes and dictatorships, as well as economic exploitation of
Latin America's natural resources and labor force. Robert Kahn (1996) draws our attention to the Central American wars of the
1980s. The Reagan administration supported corrupt, repressive regimes in Nicaragua, El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala because these governments
professed opposition to communism. Prolonged, bloody wars victimized Central Americans, as did repressive governments supported by the United States. By
1989, the violence in Central America had claimed the lives of a quarter of a million people, most of whom were killed by their own governments or by
paramilitary groups trained and supplied by the United States. The U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service and the Department of Justice--under pressure
from Washington--categorically denied the asylum petitions of thousands of war refugees and detained them until they were deported, often to their deaths
(Ibid.).
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Speaking for Others Link
The affirmative’s deployment of narrative/“voices on the ground” destroys the political potential
of the subaltern – facilitating co-option.
Spanos, Masters @ Dartmouth & son of the other Spanos, 2005
(Adam, Strategy and Event: The Politics of Anticolonialism, pg. 161-3)
Nevertheless, Adorno makes an important point to which we should attend: Westerners
who become disgruntled with their own
civilization and with the regime of modernity often glorify an outsider, but one whom they carefully
select for his/her sameness in certain key respects, namely rationality, commitment to the Western empirical mode, and appreciation for some of the
Western canonical writings. In so elevating this non-Westerner to the position of warden of global liberty, these
disgruntled Westerners enable the other to criticize them, thereby tantalizing their own liberal guilt
fetish.223 But this enabling is limited to serving that particular desire and does not constitute an
emancipation. Although a certain agency is passed to the other, the act of passing on the agency constitutes an evincing of agency itself. Thus the
emplacement of the other on the stage from whence they may make their critique constitutes a strategic
deployment of the other to fulfill the needs of the liberalist ideology informing the gesture. The other is
made to ventriloquise that which the liberal Westerner cannot say, and so is reduced to the status of a
subaltern trapped underneath the affect structure of a liberalism that is, finally, unwilling to grant this
other any room to maneuver. The other can only mutter back to the Westerner what he secretly desires to hear. The lesson of this excursion is that we
must be wary of any Western movement that seeks to accommodate outside resistance as the basis of a
program for its own emancipation. The problem is not so much the fact that emancipation is B process of selfactualization and must therefore
emanate from the one who seeks to be emancipated; in my mind, the possibility for self-actualization in our inextricably intertwined social field must involve efforts to
help the other actualize and emancipate him or herself Rather what troubles me about such a scheme are the various ideologies informing Western attitudes toward the
relationships forged between selves, which collectively comprise an attitude that belongs to a long tradition of effacing, silencing, and generally doing violence to the
other. Until the West can make a loving relationship toward the other a common sense position among its people, it cannot hope to engage Third World movements in
anything but a utilitarian and reductive fashion. Thus far, the
belief of Western radicals in Third World movements has been
for all the wrong reasons, and so this belief has served to harden all of the worst tendencies within these
movements, including an anti-liberationist theology, nationalism, and charismatic dictatorships.
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***Impacts***
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Laundry List Impact
Makes social inequality and extinction inevitable.
Wise et al., Director of Doctoral Program in Migration Studies & Prof of Development Studies;
Universidad Autónoma de Zacatecas, Mexico, 2010
(Raúl Delgado Wise, Humberto Márquez Covarrubias, Rubén Puentes, Reframing the debate on migration,
development and human rights: fundamental elements, October, 2010, www.migracionydesarrollo.org)
At the end of the first decade of the 21st century, a
general crisis centered in the United States affected the global capitalist
system on several levels (Márquez, 2009 and 2010). The consequences have been varied: ¶ Financial. The overflowing of financial
capital leads to speculative bubbles that affect the socioeconomic framework and result in global
economic depressions. Speculative bubbles involve the bidding up of market prices of such commodities
as real estate or electronic innovations far beyond their real value, leading inevitable to a subsequent
slump (Foster and Magdof, 2009; Bello, 2006). Overproduction. Overproduction crises emerge when the surplus capital in the global economy is not channeled into
production processes due to a fall in profit margins and a slump in effective demand, the latter mainly a consequence of wage containment across all sectors of the
population (Bello, 2006). Environmental. Environmental
degradation, climate change and a predatory approach to
natural resources contribute to the destruction of the latter, along with a fundamental undermining of the material bases for
production and human reproduction (Fola- dori and Pierri, 2005; Hinkelammert and Mora, 2008). Social. Growing social inequalities, the dismantling of
the welfare state and dwindling means of subsistence accentuate problems such as poverty, unemployment, violence, insecurity and
labor precariousness, increasing the pressure to emigrate (Harvey, 2007; Schierup, Hansen and Castles, 2006). ¶ The crisis raises questions about
the prevailing model of globalization and, in a deeper sense, the systemic global order, which currently undermines our
main sources of wealth—labor and nature—and overexploits them to the extent that civilization itself is at risk. The
responses to the crisis by the governments of developed countries and international agencies promoting globalization have been short-sighted and exclusivist.
Instead of addressing the root causes of the crisis, they have implemented limited strategies that seek to
rescue financial and manufacturing corporations facing bankruptcy. In addition, government policies of labor flexibilization
and fiscal adjustment have affected the living and working conditions of most of the population. These measures are desperate attempts to
prolong the privileges of ruling elites at the risk of imminent and increasingly severe crises. In these conditions,
migrants have been made into scapegoats, leading to repressive anti- immigrant legislation and policies
(Massey and Sánchez, 2006). A significant number of jobs have been lost while the conditions of remaining jobs deteriorate and deportations increase. Migrants’ living
standards have drastically deteriorated but, contrary to expectations, there have been neither massive return flows nor a collapse in remittances, though there is evidence
that migrant worker flows have indeed diminished. ¶
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Great Power Wars Impact
This economic paradigm will inevitably collapse – development will eviscerate the planet’s
resources and end in great power war – the impact is extinction.
Meszaros, 2008
(Istvan, professor emeritus @ University of Sussex, The Challenge and Burden of Historical Time)
we face the urgency of time not least on account of the already planned as well as the ongoing
aggressive war-practices arising from the perilous conditions and contradictions of our time. What makes these
issues particularly grave is that the dangerous actions undertaken by global hegemonic imperialism are neither capable
of being brought to a lasting conclusion, nor is it feasible that they will be abandoned in favor of a more
sustainable and even minimally rational course of development. For notwithstanding the unlimited
arrogance of militarily backed state power, the uncomfortable fact remains that it is very far from being
sufficient for securing a historically sustainable outcome to destroy the central military position of the
arbitrarily decreed enemy "by overwhelming force," in the words of the favorite strategic doctrine, as the Americans are now forced to recognize,
Thus,
even if not to admit, in Iraq. Occupying a country on a permanent basis, and generating the required resources for a profitable occupation as a matter of course, is a prohibitively complicated
matter, not to mention the total absurdity of extending direct imperial domination—with the weapons of mass destruction abundantly possessed by the United States—to major areas of our
the aggressive adventures of global hegemonic imperialism are fully capable of and may indeed
actually succeed in destroying human civilization. But they are absolutely incapable of offering a
sustainable solution to the grave problems of our time. One cannot underline strongly enough how serious it is that even the growing
planet. No doubt,
aggressiveness cannot produce the wishfully anticipated results on a lasting basis, no matter how immense might be the resources invested in it by the dominant imperialist state. And the
problem is further complicated by the fact that the prodigally invested resources are derived to a large extent out of escalating U.S. indebtedness, at the expense of the rest of the world,
no matter how much is wasted, and how aggressive and humanly
destructive the military strategy pursued, even if it assumes genocidal forms, the actual results will fall
far short of the projected imperialist expectations. The structural crisis of the capital system as a whole deepens also in that respect. Nevertheless, for
ironically now including in a prominent place China. But
the time being global hegemonic U.S. imperialism can dominate with relative ease its potential rivals. But can this state of affairs be assumed to endure forever? The inter-state relation of
Inevitably, there are always significant costs
involved in securing one state's dominance over another, which must therefore remain strictly transitory,
not to mention the implications of a single state's postulated domination of the rest of the world in accord
with the arrogant neoconservative vision of the "American Millennium." The relative material
productive power of the potential rivals is a most important factor in this respect, and only a fool could
take for granted the permanence of an existing proportionality among the major countries, at the
unalterable advantage of a much smaller country, like the United States, vis-à-vis China, for instance. It is no secret that in the most
forces was never permanent in the past and could never become permanent in the capitalist future.
aggressive circles in Washington a great deal of effort is constantly invested in advocating a "proper way to deal with the Chinese threat" to U.S. supremacy in the future, including the
anticipated use of large-scale military destruction. Whatever may be the success of such design in the near future by the old and not so old "China lobby," the problem itself is certainly not
going to disappear. For China's economic power is bound to become far greater than that of the United States within a relatively short space of time. Already today, if China decided to
withdraw its almost astronomical magnitude of financial assets from the United States, that would cause a massive economic earthquake not only in the United States but also throughout the
entire world. This problem, with all of its political and potentially even military corollaries, must be faced soon in a rational and sustainable way, if we want to avoid the destructive impact of
the strategies favored by the China lobby and by its unrelenting broader Washington allies. Moreover, as regards a somewhat more distant future, also the growing—and potentially also very
great—developmental promise of India must be reconsidered in accord with its true significance. It is not enough to notice China and India for the transparently self-serving purpose of the
The existing relation of forces in our
global order is totally untenable in the long-run. Nor is it possible to attribute the slightest degree of rationality to the U.S. military plans to deploy a new
Western capitalist countries which already blame them on account of the worsening ecological conditions of our planet.
anti-missile system in Poland, with the transparent pretence that the placement of such weaponry next door to Russia is a "defensive shield" for the United States "against al-Qaida." Russian
protests voiced against that plan made it amply clear that they do not take the offered justification seriously for a moment. Could anybody consider this kind of U.S. military measure, set in
The now discernible and aggressively pursued
strategies of global hegemonic imperialism can only make matters worse, because imperialism, as the
anachronistic sworn enemy of historical time, cannot function without imposing on its ruthlessly
controlled dependencies the most iniquitous forms of domination. By contrast, only the genuine advocacy of
responsibly facing up to the grave problems of capital's deepening structural crisis in the spirit of
substantive equality (feasible only in a socialist order)—which could make the paradoxically "small country" of the United States the uncontested equal of the big countries of
place with the full complicity of Poland,63 as anything other than recklessly playing with fire?
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is an absolute requirement for the future. For only the generally adopted spirit of substantive equality can offer a historically sustainable
India and China—
solution to the now prevailing and potentially most destructive inter-state relation of forces.
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Interventionism Impact
The affirmative’s ideological commitment to economic integration and connectedness becomes a
drum beat that demands co-operation – when the inevitable backlash to neoliberal reforms boils
over again, military intervention will become a necessity.
Roberts, Secor and Sparke, 2003
(Susan, Anna and Matthew, profs in Dept of Geography @ U of Kentucky & Washington, “Neoliberal
Geopolitics,” Online)
Armed with their simple master narrative about the inexorable force of economic globalization, neoliberals
famously hold that the global extension of free-market reforms will ultimately bring worldwide peace and
prosperity. Like Modernity and Development before it, Globalization is thus narrated as the force that will lift the whole world out of poverty as more and more
communities are integrated into the capitalist global economy. In the most idealist accounts, such as those of New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman (1999:xviii),
the process of marketized liberalization is represented as an almost natural phenomenon which, “like the dawn,”
we can appreciate or ignore, but not presume to stop. Observers and critics of neoliberalism as an emergent system of global hegemony, however, insist on noting the
many ways in which states
actively foster the conditions for global integration, directly or through international organizations such as
the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Trade Organization (Gill 1995). Under what we are identifying as neoliberal
geopolitics, there appears to have been a new development in these patterns of state-managed liberalization. The economic
axioms of structural adjustment, fiscal austerity, and free trade have now, it seems, been augmented by the
direct use of military force. At one level, this conjunction of capitalism and war-making is neither new nor surprising (cf Harvey 1985). Obviously,
many wars—including most 19thand 20th-century imperial wars—have been fought over fundamentally economic concerns. Likewise, one only has to read the
reflections of one of America’s “great” generals, Major General Smedley Butler, to get a powerful and resonant sense of the long history of economically inspired
American militarism. “I served in all commissioned ranks from Second Lieutenant to Major General,” Butler wrote in his retirement, [a]nd during that period, I spent
most of that time being a high-class muscle-man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers. In short I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I suspected I
was part of a racket at the time. Now I am sure of it. I helped make Honduras “right” for American fruit companies in 1903. I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico,
safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of
half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house
of Brown Brothers in 1909–1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped to see to it that Standard Oil went
its way unmolested. (quoted in Ali 2002:260). If it was engaged in a kind of gangster capitalist interventionism at the previous fin-de-siècle, today’s American warmaking has been undertaken in a much more open, systematic, globally ambitious, and quasicorporate economic style. Al Capone’s approach, has, as it were, given way
to the new world order of Jack Welch. To be sure, the Iraq war was, in some respects, a traditional national, imperial war aimed at the monopolization of resources. It
was, after all, partly a war about securing American control over Iraqi oil. Russia’s Lukoil and France’s TotalFinaElf will thereby lose out vis-à-vis Chevron and Exxon;
more importantly, the US will now be able to function as what Christian Parenti (2003) calls an “energy gendarme” over key oil supplies to East Asia and Europe.
Other, still more narrowly national circuits of American capitalism benefited from the war—including, for example, Kellogg Brown and Root, a subsidiary of Vice
President Dick Cheney’s Halliburton that, having helped the Pentagon orchestrate the destruction of Iraqi infrastructure, is now receiving generous contracts to rebuild
Iraqi infrastructure using proceeds from Iraq’s “liberated” oil sales. But these classically imperial aspects of the hostilities are not our main focus here. Instead, our
central concern is with how a
neoliberal world vision has served to obscure these more traditional geopolitics
beneath Panglossian talk of global integration and (what are thereby constructed as) its delinquent others. In the neoliberal
approach, the geopolitics of interimperial rivalry, the Monroe doctrine, and the ideas about hemispheric control
that defined Butler’s era are eclipsed by a new global vision of almost infinite openness and interdependency. In
contrast also to the Cold War era, danger is no longer imagined as something that should be contained at a disconnected
distance. Now, by way of a complete counterpoint, danger is itself being defined as disconnection from the global system. In turn,
the neoliberal geopolitical response, it seems, is to insist on enforcing reconnection—or, as Friedman (2003:A27) put it
in an upbeat postwar column, “aggressive engagement.” It would be wrong, of course, to suggest that even this vision is brand new. Much like the
broken neoliberal record of “globalization is inexorable,” the vision can be interpreted as yet another
cover for the century-old package of liberal development nostrums that critics (eg Smith 2003) and apologists (eg Bacevich 2002)
alike argue lie at the defining heart of “American Empire.” But what distinguishes this moment of neoliberal
geopolitics is that the notion of enforced reconnection is today mediated through a whole repertoire of
neoliberal ideas and practices, ranging from commitments to market-based solutions and public-private partnerships
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to concerns with networking and flexibility to mental maps of the planet predicated on a one-world vision of
interdependency. Thomas Barnett merely represents one particularly audacious and influential embodiment of this trend.
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Environmental Collapse/Extinction Impact
Failure to shift from neoliberal economic arrangements causes extinction.
Darder, Chair in Ethics and Moral Leadership @ Loyola Marymount, 2010
(Antonia, “Preface” in Critical Pedagogy, Ecoliteracy, & Planetary Crisis: The Ecopedagogy Movement by
Richard Kahn, pgs. x-xiii)
It is fitting to begin my words about Richard Kahn’s Critical Pedagogy, Ecoliteracy, and Planetary Crisis: The Ecopedagogy Movement with a poem. The direct and succinct message of The
Great Mother Wails cuts through our theorizing and opens us up to the very heart of the book’s message—to ignite a fire that speaks to
the ecological crisis at hand; a crisis
orchestrated by the inhumane greed and economic brutality of the wealthy. Nevertheless, as is clearly apparent, none of us is
absolved from complicity with the devastating destruction of the earth. As members of the global community, we are all implicated in this destruction by the very manner in which we define
Everywhere we look there are glaring signs of political systems and social structures that
propel us toward unsustainability and extinction. In this historical moment, the planet faces some of the most horrendous forms of “[hu]man-made”
devastation ever known to humankind. Cataclysmic “natural disasters” in the last decade have sung the environmental hymns of planetary imbalance and reckless environmental disregard. A
striking feature of this ecological crisis, both locally and globally, is the overwhelming concentration of
wealth held by the ruling elite and their agents of capital. This environmental malaise is characterized by
the staggering loss of livelihood among working people everywhere; gross inequalities in educational opportunities; an
absence of health care for millions; an unprecedented number of people living behind bars; and trillions
spent on fabricated wars fundamentally tied to the control and domination of the planet’s resources. The
ourselves, each other, and all living beings with whom we reside on the earth.
Western ethos of mastery and supremacy over nature has accompanied, to our detriment, the unrelenting expansion of capitalism and its unparalleled domination over all aspects of human life.
This hegemonic worldview has been unmercifully imparted through a host of public policies and practices that conveniently gloss over gross inequalities as commonsensical necessities for
the liberal democratic rhetoric of “we are all created equal” hardly begins to touch
the international pervasiveness of racism, patriarchy, technocracy, and economic piracy by the West, all
which have fostered the erosion of civil rights and the unprecedented ecological exploitation of societies,
creating conditions that now threaten our peril, if we do not reverse directions. Cataclysmic disasters, such
as Hurricane Katrina, are unfortunate testimonies to the danger of ignoring the warnings of the natural world, especially
when coupled with egregious governmental neglect of impoverished people. Equally disturbing, is the manner in which ecological
democracy to bloom. As a consequence,
crisis is vulgarly exploited by unscrupulous and ruthless capitalists who see no problem with turning a profit off the backs of ailing and mourning oppressed populations of every species—
whether they be victims of weather disasters, catastrophic illnesses, industrial pollution, or inhumane practices of incarceration. Ultimately, these constitute ecological calamities that speak to
the inhumanity and tyranny of material profiteering, at the expense of precious life. The arrogance and exploitation of neoliberal values of consumption dishonor the contemporary suffering of
Neoliberalism denies or simply mocks (“Drill baby drill!”) the interrelationship and delicate
balance that exists between all living beings, including the body earth. In its stead, values of individualism, competition, privatization, and the “free market”
poor and marginalized populations around the globe.
systematically debase the ancient ecological knowledge of indigenous populations, who have, implicitly or explicitly, rejected the fabricated ethos of “progress and democracy” propagated by
the West. In its consuming frenzy to gobble up the natural resources of the planet for its own hyperbolic quest for material domination, the exploitative nature of capitalism and its burgeoning
technocracy has dangerously deepened the structures of social exclusion, through the destruction of the very biodiversity that has been key to our global survival for millennia. Kahn insists that
this devastation of all species and the planet must be fully recognized and soberly critiqued. But he does not stop there. Alongside, he rightly argues for political principles of engagement for
the construction of a critical ecopedagogy and ecoliteracy that is founded on economic redistribution, cultural and linguistic democracy, indigenous sovereignty, universal human rights, and a
fundamental respect for all life. As such, Kahn seeks to bring us all back to a formidable relationship with the earth, one that is unquestionably rooted in an integral order of knowledge, imbued
with physical, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual wisdom. Within the context of such an ecologically grounded epistemology, Kahn uncompromisingly argues that our organic relationship
with the earth is also intimately tied to our struggles for cultural self-determination, environmental sustainability, social and material justice, and global peace. Through a carefully framed
analysis of past disasters and current ecological crisis, Kahn issues an urgent call for a critical ecopedagogy that makes central explicit articulations of the ways in which societies construct
ideological, political, and cultural systems, based on social structures and practices that can serve to promote ecological sustainability
and biodiversity or, conversely, lead us down a disastrous path of unsustainability and extinction . In making his
case, Kahn provides a grounded examination of the manner in which consuming capitalism manifests its repressive force throughout the globe, disrupting the very ecological order of
knowledge essential to the planet’s sustainability. He offers an understanding of critical ecopedagogy and ecoliteracy that inherently critiques the history of Western civilization and the
anthropomorphic assumptions that sustain patriarchy and the subjugation of all subordinated living beings—assumptions that continue to inform traditional education discourses around the
world. Kahn incisively demonstrates how a theory of multiple technoliteracies can be used to effectively critique the ecological corruption and destruction behind mainstream uses of
sustainability rhetoric of mainstream
environmentalism actually camouflages wretched neoliberal policies and practices that left unchecked hasten the
annihilation of the globe’s ecosystem. True to its promise, the book cautions that any anti-hegemonic resistance movement that claims social justice, universal
technology and the media in the interest of the neoliberal marketplace. As such, his work points to the manner in which the
human rights, or global peace must contend forthrightly with the deteriorating ecological crisis at hand, as well as consider possible strategies and relationships that rupture the status quo and
transform environmental conditions that threaten disaster. A failure to integrate ecological sustainability at the core of our political and pedagogical struggles for liberation, Kahn argues, is to
blindly and misguidedly adhere to an anthropocentric worldview in which emancipatory dreams are deemed solely about human interests, without attention either to the health of the planet or
to the well-being of all species with whom we walk the earth.
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Environment/Economy Impact
This neoliberal spread makes environmental and economic collapse inevitable.
Wise et al., Director of Doctoral Program in Migration Studies & Prof of Development Studies;
Universidad Autónoma de Zacatecas, Mexico, 2010
(Raúl Delgado Wise, Humberto Márquez Covarrubias, Rubén Puentes, Reframing the debate on migration,
development and human rights: fundamental elements, October, 2010, www.migracionydesarrollo.org)
The internationalization of capital. The
expansion strategy of the global economy in- volves a profound economic
restructuring based on the establishment of subcontracting chains dominated by large multinational
corporations, which have a global reach. This form of expansion seeks to economically reinsert peripheral countries that are rich in natural
resources and ensure an abundant and cheap workforce. The new export platforms, in fact, operate as enclaves, that is production, commercial and services zones
dominated by multinational corporations and often exempted from national taxation and regulation of working and environmental conditions. These types of plants currently employ between 55 million (Robinson, 2008) and 66 million Southern workers (Singa Boyenge, 2006) and the strategy is widely implemented by large
manufacturing, financial, agricultural, commercial, and service-sector multinationals (Robinson, 2008). ¶ Financialization. Financial
capital generates
speculative strategies that foster the chan- neling of investment funds, sovereign funds, pension funds and
social savings toward new financial instruments that offer short-term high profit margins but can entail
re- current crises and massive fraud. These speculative strategies obstruct and affect the functioning of the
so-called real economy (Foster and Magdof, 2009; Bello, 2006). ¶ Environmental degradation. Biodiversity, natural resources, and
communal and national wealth are privatized for the benefit of large corporations that favor profits while ignoring
social and environmental costs. This leads to increased environmental degradation, pollution, famine,
and disease, as well as climate changes (global warming and increasingly frequent extreme climatic events) that threaten the
symbiotic relationship between humans and the environment (Foladori and Pierri, 2005). ¶ The restructuring of innovation systems.
Advances in IT, telecommunications, biotech- nology, new materials and nanotechnology cater to the needs of large corporations looking for increased profits.
Scientific and technological research have been restructured under mechanisms such as outsourcing and offshore-outsourcing, which allow corporations to employ
southern scientists, transfer risk and responsibility, and capi- talize on resultant benefits by amassing patents. This
has lead to unprecedented mercantilism in scientific research, short-term perspectives and a lack of social concern (Freeman, 2005b, Lester and
Piore, 2004). ¶
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Terrorism/Instability Impact
This model of development closes off avenues of self-determination, forcing suppressed
antagonisms to use radical tactics to negate the universalization of American norms – this is the
root cause of terrorism and threats to global stability
Baudrillard, 2004
(Jean, “This is the Fourth World War,” An Interview with Der Spiegel, IJBS 1:1, Online:
http://www.ubishops.ca/baudrillardstudies/spiegel.htm)
With its totalizing claim, the system created the conditions for this horrible retaliation. The immanent mania of
globalization generates madness, just as an unstable society produces delinquents and psychopaths. In truth, these are only symptoms of the sickness.
Terrorism is everywhere, like a virus. It doesn’t require Afghanistan as its home base. Spiegel: You suggest that globalization and
resistance to it is like the course of an illness, even to the point of self-destruction. Is this not what is particularly scandalous about your analysis-that it completely
leaves morality out? Baudrillard: In my own way, I am very much a moralist. There is a morality of analysis, a duty of honesty. That is to say, it is immoral to close
one’s eyes to the truth, to find excuses, in order to cover up that which is difficult to bear. We must see the thing beyond the opposition of good and bad. I seek a
confrontation with the event as it is without equivocation. Whoever is unable to do that, is led to a moral falsification of history. Spiegel: But if the terrorist act takes
place as a form of compulsion or fate, as you claim, is it not then at the same time exculpated? There is no longer a morally responsible subject. Baudrillard: It is clear
to me that the conceptual nature of my analysis is doubled-edged. Words can be turned against me. However, I do not praise murderous attacks - that would be idiotic.
Terrorism is not a contemporary form of revolution against oppression and capitalism. No ideology, no struggle for an objective, not even Islamic fundamentalism, can
explain it. Spiegel: But why should globalization turn against itself, why should it run amok, when, after all, it promises freedom, well-being and happiness for all?
Baudrillard: That is the utopian view, the advertisement more or less. Yet there is altogether no positive system. In general all
the positive historical
utopias are extremely murderous, as fascism and communism have shown. Spiegel: Surely you cannot compare
globalization with the bloodiest systems of the 20th century. Baudrillard: It is based, as colonialism was earlier, on immense
violence. It creates more victims than beneficiaries, even when the majority of the Western world profits
from it. Naturally the United States, in principle, could liberate every country just as it has liberated Afghanistan. But what kind of peculiar liberation would that be?
Those so fortunate would know how to defend themselves even with terror if necessary. Spiegel: Do you hold globalization to be a form of colonialism, disguised as the
widening of Western civilization? Baudrillard: It is pitched as the endpoint of the Enlightenment, the solution to all contradictions. In reality, it transforms
everything into a negotiable, quantifiable exchange value. This process is extremely violent, for it cashes
out in the idea of unity as the ideal state, in which everything that is unique, every singularity, including other cultures and
finally every non-monetary value would be incorporated. See, on this point, I am the humanist and moralist. Spiegel: But don’t universal
values such as freedom, democracy, and human rights also establish themselves through globalization? Baudrillard: One must differentiate radically between the global
and the universal. The universal values, as the Enlightenment defined them, constitute a transcendental ideal. They confront the subject with its own freedom, which is a
permanent task and responsibility, not simply a right. This is completely absent in the global, which is an operational system of total trade and exchange. Spiegel:
Rather than liberating humanity, globalization only in turns reifies it? Baudrillard: It pretends to liberate people, only to deregulate them. The elimination of all rules,
more precisely, the reduction of all rules to laws of the market is the opposite of freedom-namely, its illusion. Such out-dated and aristocratic values such as dignity,
honesty, challenge and sacrifice no longer count for anything. Spiegel: Doesn’t the unrestricted recognition of human rights build a decisive bulwark against this
alienating process? Baudrillard: I think that human
rights have already been integrated into the process of globalization and therefore function as an alibi. They
advertising. Spiegel: Therefore mystification? Baudrillard: Is it not a paradox that the West
uses as a weapon against dissenters the following motto: Either you share our values or…? A democracy asserted with threats and
blackmail only sabotages itself. It no longer represents the autonomous decision for freedom, but rather
becomes a global imperative. This is, in effect, a perversion of Kant’s categorical imperative, which implies freely chosen consent to its command.
Spiegel: So the end of history, the absolute sway of democracy, would be a new form of world dictatorship? Baudrillard: Yes, and it is completely
inconceivable that there would be no violent counter-reaction against it. Terrorism emerges when no
other form of resistance seems possible. The system takes as objectively terrorist whatever is set against it. The values of the West
are ambivalent, at a definite point in time they could have a positive effect and accelerate progress, at another, however, they drive
themselves to such extremes that they falsify themselves and ultimately turn against their own purpose.
belong to a juridical and moral superstructure; in short, they are
Spiegel: If the antagonism between globalization and terrorism in reality is irresolvable, then what purpose could the War Against Terrorism still have? Baudrillard: US
President Bush aspires to return to trusted ground by rediscovering the balance between friend and foe. The Americans are prosecuting this war as if they were
defending themselves against a wolf pack. But this doesn’t work against viruses that have already been in us for a long time. There
is no longer a front,
no demarcation line, the enemy sits in the heart of the culture that fights it. That is, if you like, the fourth world
war: no longer between peoples, states, systems and ideologies, but, rather, of the human species against
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itself. Spiegel: Then in your opinion this war cannot be won? Baudrillard: No one can say how it will all turn out. What hangs in the balance is the
survival of humanity, it is not about the victory of one side. Terrorism has no political project, it has no finality;
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Genocide Impact
The development paradigm that exports Western values subjects peripheral peoples to violence
and genocide.
Mignolo, Professor of Cultural Anthropology @ Duke U, 2000
(Walter, Local Histories/Global Designs, 115-117)
Modernity
is, for many (for Jurgen Habermas or Charles Taylor, for example), in essentially or exclusively European phenomenon. In these lectures, I
will argue that modernity is, in fact, a European phenomenon, but one constituted in dialectical relation
with a non-European alterity that is its ultimate content. Modernity appears when Europe affirms itself
as the "center" of a World history that it inaugurates; the "periphery" that surrounds this center is
consequently part of its self-definition. The occlusion of this periphery (and of the role of Spain and Portugal in the formation of the modern
world system from the late fifteenth to the mid-seventeenth centuries) leads the major contemporary thinkers of the "center" into a
Eurocentric fallacy in their understanding of modernity. If their understanding of the genealogy of modernity is thus partial and provincial, their attempts at a
critique or defense of it are likewise unilateral and, in part, false. (Dussel [19931 1995, 65) The construction of the idea of modernity linked to European
expansion, as forged by European intellectuals, was powerful enough to last almost five hundred years.
Postcolonial discourses and theories began effectively to question that hegemony, a challenge that was
unthinkable (and perhaps unexpected) by those who constructed and presupposed the idea of modernity
as a historical period and implicitly as the locus of enunciation—a locus of enunciation that in the name
of rationality, science, and philosophy as serted its own privilege over other forms of rationality or over
what, from the perspective of modern reason, was nonrational. I would submit, conse quently, that postcolonial literature and postcolonial theories are
enrique Dussel, an Argentinian philosopher associated with the philosophy of liberation, has been articulating a strong countermodern argument. I quote from the beginning of his Frankfurt lectures:
constructing a new concept of reason as differential loci of enunciation. What does "differential" mean? Differential here first means a displacement of the concept and practice of the notions of knowledge, science, theory,
and understanding articulated during the modern period.® Thus, Dussel's region alization of modernity could be compared with Homi Bhabha's, both speak ing from different colonial legacies (Spanish and English
respectively): "Driven by the subaltern history of the margins of modernity—rather than by the failures of logocentrism—I have tried, in some small measure, In revise the known, to rename the postmodern from the position
of the postcolo nial" (Bhabha 1994, 175; emphasis added). I find a noteworthy coincidence between Dussel and Bhabha, albeit with some significant differences in accent. The coincidence lies in the very iui portant fact that
the task of postcolonial reasoning (i.e., theorizing) is not only linked to the immediate political needs of decolonization (in Asia, Al rica, and the Caribbean) but also to the rereading of the paradigm of modi i n reason. This
task is performed by Dussel and Bhabha in different, although complementary ways. After a detailed analysis of Kant's and Hegel's construction of the idea of I nlightenment in European history, Dussel summarizes the
Modern (European) civilization understands itself as the most developed, the
superior, civilization; (2) This sense of superiority obliges it, in the form of a categorical imperative, as it
were, to "develop" (civilize, uplift, educate) the more primitive, barbarous, underdeveloped civilizations;
(3) The path of such development should be that followed by Europe in its own development out of antiquity and the Middle Ages; (4) Where the barbarians or the primitive
opposes the civilizing process, the praxis of modernity must, in the last instance, have recourse to the violence
necessary to remove the obstacles to modernization; (5) This violence, which produces in many different
ways, victims, takes on an almost ritualistic character: the civilizing hero invests his victims (the
colonized, the slave, the woman, the ecological destruction of the earth, etc.) with the character of being
participants in a process of redemptive sacrifice; (6) from the point of view of modernity, the barbarian
or primitive is in a state of guilt (for, among other things, opposing the civilizing process). This allows modernity to present itself not
only as innocent but also as a force that will emancipate or redeem its victims from their guilt; (7) Given
this "civilizing" and redemptive character of modernity, the suffering and sacrifices (the costs) of
modernization imposed on "immature" peoples, slaves, races, the "weaker" sex, el cetera, are inevitable
and necessary. (Dussel 119931 1995, 75) the myth of modernity is laid out by Dussel to confront alternative interpietations. While Horkheimer and Adorno, as well as postmodernist think• is such as
elements that i onstitute the myth of modernity: (1)
Lyotard, Rorty, or Vattimo, all propose a critique of reason (a v iolent, coercive, and genocidal reason), Dussel proposes a critique of the enlightenment's irrational moments as sacrificial myth not by negating reason but by
asserting the reason of the other—thai is, by identifying postcolonial reason as differential locus of enunciation. The intersection between tbi idea of a self-centered modernity grounded in its own appropriation of grecoRoman (classical) legacies and an emerging idea of modernity from the margins (or countermodernity) makes clear that history does not begin in Greece, and that different historical beginnings are, at the same time, anchored
to diverse loci of enunciation. This simple axiom is, 1 submit, a bind.internal one for and of postsubaltern reason. Finally, Bhabha's project in lename the postmodern from the position of the postcolonial also finds lis niche in
postsubaltern reason as a differential locus of enunciation.
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No Value to Life Impact
The imposed value system of development paradigms reduces all life to commodity for exchange
– the facilitates mass violence and exclusion.
Shiva, 2003
(Vandana, physicist, ecologist, activist, editor, and author of many books, ZNet Daily Commentaries,
Globalisation and Its Fallout, April 2, Online: http://www.zmag.org/sustainers/content/2003-04/02shiva.cfm)
the market fundamentalism of globalization itself. This fundamentalism redefines life as commodity, society as
economy, and the market as the means and end of the human enterprise. The market is being made the
organizing principle for the provisioning of food, water, health, education and other basic needs, it is
being made the organizing principle for governance, it is being made the measure of our humanity. Our
being human is no longer predicated on the fundamental human rights enshrined in all constitutions and in the U.N. declaration of human rights. It is now conditional
on our ability to "buy" our needs on the global marketplace in which the conditions of life -- food, water, health,
knowledge have become the ultimate commodities controlled by a handful of corporations. In the market fundamentalism of
globalization, everything is a commodity, everything is for sale. Nothing is sacred, there are no fundamental
rights of citizens and no fundamental duties of governments. The market fundamentalism of
globalization and the economic exclusion inherent to it is giving rise to, and being reinforced and
supported by politics of exclusion emerging in the form of political parties based on "religious
fundamentalism"/xenophobia/ethnic cleansing and reinforcement of patriarchies and castism. The
culture of commodification has increased violence against women, whether it is in the form of rising
domestic violence, increasing cases of rape, an epidemic of female foeticide, and increased trafficking in
women.
The first is
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Democracy/Human Rights Impact
The promotion of civil society and human rights are an extension of the civilizing mission of the
West which reduces subjects to passivity, undermining true democratic movements.
Neocosmos, Prof of Sociology @ University of South Africa, 2010
(Michael, “Analyzing Political Subjectivities: Naming the Post-Developmental State in Africa Today,” Journal
of Asian and African Studies 45, pg. 534)
The state consensus is today being constructed around human rights discourse.
Human rights have now replaced development as the hegemonic political
discourse in Africa. While the latter still retained some element of political agency and choice (e.g. 'self-reliance'), the former no longer does in any real sense, as it is
constituted by a discourse of victimhood of people and trusteeship of power. Active citizenship has been replaced by
passivity, agency by victimhood.' Agency from within human rights discourse consists in petitioning the state not in prescribing to it; hence its usual
shift from the political to the juridical, away from political practice towards legal claims on entitlements (Neocosmos, 2006). In fact it can be asserted without too much
fear of contradiction, that the
implicit neo-liberal 'social contract' involves a trade-off between the promise of the
provision of state-guaranteed (i.e. institutionalized) human rights on the one hand for the abandonment
of any real form of political agency and choice on the other. A refusal of this contract today leads to a contestation of the neo-liberal
consensus itself. This is in fact what AbM are doing as they constantly redefine, in their practice citizenship, democracy and nation. Today there is no state social
project, only 'good governance' in formal subservience to the West (law/rights). The politics of the new state regime are governed by the 'right to rights'. Some have the
right to exercise their rights (e.g. the middle classes, the formally employed), others (foreigners, the poor, shack-dwellers) do not. For example, the local state
systematically violates human rights, often with impunity, when dealing with shack-dwellers and the poor more generally in Durban, South Africa (Pithouse, 2008).
Given the absence in public discourse of any name (or given the vacuity of existing names) which may suggest vision/movement/change to something better (e.g.
development, revolution, transformation, freedom, equality), the
only thing which remains is formal democracy and human
rights subsumed under 'good governance'. There is nothing else provided to thought, not even a glimmer of a better future. Hence the
'democratizing mission' (Wamba-dia-Wamba, 2007) of the West (following upon its earlier 'enslaving', 'civilizing' and 'development' missions in
chronological order), as the core ideological feature of the new imperialism is crucial for these politics. Interestingly, in
the same way as development was reduced to technique in the developmental state form, so is democracy today reduced to technique under the regime of the postdevelopmental state (multi-partyism, elections, constitution, etc.). In no case is the idea to construct a political community and to root a state within it. Rather the
idea is simply to import techniques from abroad and impose them on the population with the help of
sections of the elite.* Some of the institutions thus created may be very progressive, but given their lack of roots within
popular culture and their unaccountability to popular needs, their functions remain unfulfilled. It bears repeating that
democracy can only be constructed from the bottom up and not imposed from above. In the latter case it
becomes overwhelmingly a neo-colonial project. Not surprisingly then, liberal democracy today is an
'imperial democracy' and has thus lost much of the progressive content it once had. There is nothing else on offer in dominant discourse; democracy
understood as technique is supposedly good in and of itself. This can be seen, inter alia, in the case of the invasion of Iraq (and Afghanistan) by the USA and its allies
(it is also dominant in the UN) and in the idea of a war for democracy against evil crime, terror. Of course evil/crime is what rights, law and good governance are meant
to oppose. Evil, crime, terror in this sense is used to refer to any politics which opposes neo-liberal politics, irrespective of its content. If you do not support liberal
democracy you are very likely to be labelled a terrorist by those in power.9 Liberal
democracy is said to be the only defence against such evil crime. It is
in fact a state politics which is founded on passivity and on fear of the other, and which leads directly to a sense of
impotence vis-a-vis power (Neocosmos, 2006). Democracy is then the only slogan on offer. Of course the regular imposition of this form of
'democracy' systematically undermines and destroys any attempts by the poor and oppressed to establish
genuine democratic norms and politics which are truly in their interests (e.g. Englund, 2006; Hallward, 2007; Wamba-diaWamba, 2007). The above comments apply mutatis mutandis to the discourse of civil society and human rights which are part and parcel of this new imperial
democracy (Chatterjee, 2004).
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Poverty/Inequality Impact
Neoliberalism causes massive poverty and inequality in Latin America.
Kelly, writer at Citizen’s Press, 2008
(Lara, Neoliberalism in Latin America, Oct 29, http://citizenspress.org/editorials/neoliberalism-in-latin-america)
The consequences of neoliberalist policies are far reaching for any nation, but particularly hurtful for the majority of
Latin American residents. Income inequality has increased in most nations that have implemented the reforms (Bray, 68). Job
losses and subsequent higher unemployment rates resulted due to the sale of state run enterprises
and the scaling back of the public service (Kurtz, 269). Because of the removal of subsidies on necessary items such as fuel, food,
and social services their prices have increased (Crisp & Kelly, 542). When Fujimori, the former president of Peru came to power in 1990,
he immediately undertook neoliberal reforms. Immediately following there was an increase in the price of gasoline by 3000%, telephone and water prices
increased by 1300%, and electricity prices increased by 5300% (Hays-Mitchell, 72).
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Authoritarianism Impact
Neoliberalism will destroy human rights and democracy in Latin America and cannot be morally
allowed.
Kelly, writer at Citizen’s Press, 2008
(Lara, Neoliberalism in Latin America, Oct 29, http://citizenspress.org/editorials/neoliberalism-in-latin-america)
Liberal democracy
is being hijacked by neoliberalism in Latin America. This new neoliberal order is a
form of authoritarianism to which it is increasingly difficult to mount opposition. The interference of international lending institutions in a
sovereign nation’s budgetary policy-making nullifies an essential process inherent in healthy liberal democracies. Innocent workers, peasants,
women, men, and children all pay for the actions of international lending institutions who often loaned money to undemocratic regimes.
The re-configuration of Latin American society in order to repay already rich nations is a global
injustice. Human rights to sustenance, culture, political process, labour standards, and selfdetermination must come before the property rights of greedy corporations.
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***Alternative Extensions***
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Alt Solves – Latin America
Latin America is developing alternatives to neoliberalism now – failure of that struggles risks
extinction
Barra, International Development Consultant and Public Policy Analyst; Former Public Policy
Advisor at UNICEF, 2010
(Ximena de la, Sacrificing Neoliberalism to Save Capitalism: Latin America Resists and Offers Answers to
Crises, 2010 36: 635, Crit Sociol)
In this sense, crises are an opportunity to increase popular awareness that a better world is possible and that it is worth fighting for.
A genuine
hemispheric alliance will allow the development of a post-neoliberal and post-capitalist future in which an
expanded universal citizenship will flourish. The opposite is also valid. A genuine hemispheric alliance and the survival of the
human species depend upon the development of that post-capitalist future. ¶ Walden Bello warns that the world seems to be
debating whether to refloat capitalism by way of a globalized social democracy or to opt for fundamentalist, nationalist, protectionist populism. The fact that discredited
neoliberalism gets rapidly abandoned in order to embrace formerly vilified Keynesianism (though now in a globalized, deformed and meaner version) means that the
real crisis feared by the powerful is the crisis of capitalism, not of neoliberalism, and that they will find new ways to rescue the system (Bello 2009). The struggle for
emancipation therefore demands actions against capitalism in any of its forms as well as against imperialism. The
struggle requires a socialist
perspective going way beyond the mere regulation of the current system. As Wallerstein reminds us, what is important is that
we be prepared for when we start emerging from the crises. The key issue, he says, is to understand that reconstruction can lead us into a better world, but it can also
take us into a worse one (Wallerstein 2009). ¶ Only a socialist perspective will enable the organization of an economy at the service of common needs. It should be a
democratic and participative socialism developed from the base, totally different from the failed experiences of bureaucratic state-socialism during the 20th century. It
should be a type of socialism that will place collective selfmanagement at the center of efforts to build an egalitarian society for people in their emancipation process.
Marx warned that capitalism will not fall by itself. Socialism will also not fall from the sky (Lebowitz 2006). Social
struggle and the search for
viable alternatives are what are vitally needed, precisely what Latin America is offering now. Current
weaknesses at global centers of power, and structural contradictions embedded in capitalism especially
regarding the environment and peoples’ development, are increasingly fostering alliances among social
movements, peoples and nations to fight for an alternative post-capitalist, multicultural system in
harmony with nature. In Latin America the struggle for a better future has already started and the
alternative is gathering steam. We call it ‘socialism for the 21st century’ and we are inventing it and will perfect it as we progress in order to ‘live
well’. We also offer our experience to global movements seeking ‘another world’ so that we can converge together and fight our political battles better equipped. We
find ourselves, as Marta Harnecker expresses it, in the process of changing the correlation of forces in order to make possible in the future what now seems impossible
(Harnecker 1999).
Real alternatives to neoliberalism are being developed in Latin America.
Barahona, California State University Dominguez Hills, 2011
(Diana, The Capitalist Globalization of Latin America, Latin America and Global Capitalism: A Critical
Globalization Perspective. By William I Robinson,
http://crs.sagepub.com/content/early/2011/06/16/0896920511402702.full.pdf+html)
Out of the ravages of global capitalism forces of resistance have emerged, in the form of 21st century
socialism, the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA), indigenous peoples’ organizing and immigrants’ rights movements.
Robinson’s look at the Venezuelan revolution – the ruling class crisis brought on by neoliberalism and the popular response that propelled Hugo Chavez to
power – covers a lot of ground. It may be that it gives too little credit to Chavez for unleashing popular mobilization and for challenging the bourgeois state head
on, which was on his own initiative and not, as many claim, a response to popular pressure. Chavez is also leading efforts to integrate countries in the region
into a counter-hegemonic economic and political bloc. At the same time, his creation
with Cuba and Bolivia of the ALBA is an
attempt to form a supportive alliance of those countries that wish to transcend capitalism and build
socialism. In the case of Bolivia and Ecuador, Robinson has pointed out the essential role of popular movements in bringing these governments to power
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and the importance of their remaining supportive but autonomous of the government. ¶ Another result of popular rejection of neoliberalism is the election of socalled ‘pink-tide’ governments. These govern within the limits of capitalist globalization, in spite of being elected on anti-neoliberal platforms. Robinson has
showed how the pink tide governments work on behalf of transnational capital in demobilizing popular movements, reducing pressure for change and absorbing
organizations and leaders. He has argued that these governments succumbed to pressure after taking power: ‘The Brazilian and Uruguayan experiences show
that, even when revolutionary groups take state power – absent the countervailing force from popular classes below to oblige those groups to respond to their
interests from the heights of the state – the structural power of global capital can impose itself on direct state power and impose its project of global capitalism’
(p. 346). But the so-called revolutionary groups in question were neutralized well before they took power, their leadership won over by the globalizing elites. As
Robinson has explained, the problem with hegemony is that it has to be created and re-created; thus, the TCCs’ conversion of opponents on the left to the
‘inevitability’ of globalization is an effective hegemonic strategy. ¶ Latin America and Global Capitalism covers a broad array of topics, integrating theory with
historical facts to explain the sweeping changes the region is undergoing. Like C. Wright Mills, Robinson tries to be objective without being detached. He wrote,
‘The
system still conquers space, nature, and human beings. It is dehumanizing, genocidal, suicidal, and
maniacal’ (p. 42). He has also pointed out, along with Tariq Ali and Minqi Li, that Latin America is one of the few places of hope
for overcoming the system.
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Alt Solves – Latin America Key
Latin America is at the center of the dismantling neo-liberal system- alternative is key.
Escobar, Professor of Anthropology at UNC, 2010
(Arturo, Alternative modernizations, post-liberalism, or post-development?, Cultural Studies
Vol. 24, Issue. 1)
Latin America is the only region in the world where some counter-hegemonic processes of
importance might be taking place at the level of the State at present. Some argue that these processes might lead to a re-invention of
socialism; for others, what is at stake is the dismantling of the neo-liberal policies of the past three decades –
the end the ‘the long neo-liberal night,’ as the period is known in progressive circles in the region – or the formation of a South American (and anti-American)
bloc. Others point at the potential for un nuevo comienzo (a
new beginning) which might bring about a reinvention of
democracy and development or, more radically still, the end of the predominance of liberal society of
the past 200 years founded on private property and representative democracy. Socialismo del siglo XXI, plurinationality, interculturality, direct and substantive democracy, revolucion ciudadana, endogenous development centered on the buen vivir of the people, territorial
and cultural autonomy, and decolonial projects towards post-liberal societies are some of the concepts that seek to name the ongoing transformations. The
Peruvian sociologist Aníbal Quijano perhaps put it best: ‘It
is a time of luchas (struggles) and of options. Latin America was
the original space of the emergence of modern/colonial capitalism; it marked its founding moment. Today it is, at last,
the very center of world resistance against this pattern of power and of the production of alternatives
to it’ (2008, p. 3).
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Alt Solves – Global Networks
Massive networks of oppressed people are coalescing throughout the world now – what they lack
is a clear vision to counter neoliberal development.
Wise, Director of Doctoral Program in Migration Studies & Prof of Development Studies;
Universidad Autónoma de Zacatecas, Mexico, 2009
(Raúl Delgado, Forced Migration and US Imperialism: The Dialectic of Migration and Development, Crit
Sociol, 35: 767, ProQuest)
The profound need for change in the structural dynamics and strategic practices at work in the current schemes of regional integration and neoliberal
development have given way to two types of social agents, which can be separated into two groups: those ‘from above’
and those ‘from below’. The current economic project has clearly been implemented ‘from above’ by the agents of US imperialism in tandem with
national
Mexican allies. They work within a political coalition that seeks to maintain the privileges of neoliberal integration and push them to its very limits. In short, this
is an actual class project that promotes economic asymmetries, social inequalities and phenomena such as poverty, unemployment, labor precarization and
migration. In contrast, those
‘below’ – particularly in Mexico – are mostly unhappy and disenchanted, although they
sometimes engage in open acts of opposition, resistance, and rebellion. It is true that there is currently no
collective agent that can articulate a project that counters the one being implemented by neoliberal elites. However, we should
point out that a number of dispersed social alternative movements have willingly, even optimistically,
sprung up. The Mexican agricultural sector, one of the quarters that has been hardest hit by the implementation of NAFTA and is
suffering in the productive, commercial, population and environmental areas, has given rise to movements like El Barzón (The ‘Plow’),
El Campo No Aguanta Más (The Countryside Can’t Take Anymore; see Bartra, 2003) and the campaign Sin Maíz no hay País (No Corn,
no Country). Other denouncers of the neoliberal system include the Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional (Zapatista Army of National Liberation, EZLN)
and its Otra Campaña (Other Campaign), as well as some sectors of the social and electoral left who have converged into the Coalición por el Bien de Todos
(Coalition for the Good of All) and the Convención Nacional Democrática (National Democratic Convention). There are also other more or less important
national sociopolitical movements, but what is worth noticing is that the
widespread popular discontent (which could even extend to the
majority of Mexicans) is not expressed in an organized manner and has not produced yet an alternative
development project. On a binational level, the actions of opposition forces have been even more scattered. Initially, the Red Mexicana de Acción
frente al Libre Comercio (Mexican Action Network in Opposition of Free Trade) communicated with likeminded organizations in the USA and Canada that
opposed the signing of NAFTA, but since then its actions (which involve agreements between unions and social organizations on both sides of the border) have
been few and far between (Brooks and Fox, 2004). The idea that migrants are agents of development has been promoted for over a decade. This proposal, which
is in no way sustainable when applied to large-scale social processes, suggests that migrants should be held responsible for promoting development in their
countries of origin. And yet, as Fox (2005) has pointed out, migrant society has produced social actors who operate on three levels: integration into US society
(e.g. unions, the media, and religious organizations); networki ng and promoti on of devel opment i n pl aces of ori gi n (i . e. nati ve organizations), and
binational relationships that combine the previous two (i.e. pan-ethnic organizations). For example, Mexican migrant organizations fund public works and social
projects in their communities of origin with the aid of the program Tres por Uno. And during the spring of 2006 USA-residing immigrants participated in
massive marches in favor of their working, political, social, and civil rights. As for the latter, Petras (2006) points out that ‘between March 25 and May 1, 2006
close to five million migrant workers and their supporters marched through nearly 100 cities of the
US’. This, he notes, is the biggest and most sustained workers’ demonstration in the history of the
USA. In its 50-year history, the US trade union confederation, the AFL-CIO, has never been capable of mobilizing even a fraction of the workers convoked by
the migrant workers movement. The rise and growth of the movement is rooted in the historical experience of the
migrant workers (overwhelmingly from Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean), the exploitative and racist experience
they confront today in the USA and the future in which they face imprisonment, expulsion and dispossession. Generally speaking, migrants
and their organizations affect the political, social, economic, and cultural aspects of sending and receiving countries to varying degrees. However, it would be a
theoretical mistake to present migrants themselves as a collective agent of transformation. If we intend to portray them as agents of development, then we had
better examine the strategic projects and structural dynamics present on the differ- ent planes and levels, as well as the interests that prompt participation ‘from
above’ and ‘from below’. This will allow us to understand the role played by migrants. Stating
that they cannot be considered agents
of development does not entail a pessimistic message advocating immobility. Quite the opposite: this
can help us disentangle possible forms of articulation between migrant organizations and social
sectors that seek a new type of development agenda, one that can be applied on the global, regional,
national, and local levels. Only then will we be able to discuss the configuration of an agent of social
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trans- formation that includes migrant participation. In any case, as Petras (2006) has pointed out, ‘[t]he emergence of
the mass migrant workers’ movement opens a new chapter in the working class struggle both in
North America, and Central America’. First and foremost it represents the first major upsurge of independent working class struggle in the
USA after over 50 years of decline, stagna- tion and retreat by the established trade union confederation.
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Alt Solves – Trade Specific
Reject the affirmative’s conceptualization of free trade – by placing limits on what can be
commodified, intellectuals can found a new form of trade based on need and equity rather than
competitiveness and exploitation.
De Angelis, lecturer in Political Economy at University of East London, 2000
(Massimo, “Trade, the global factory and the struggles for new commons,” Paper presented at the CSE
conference "Global Capital and Global Struggles: Strategies, Alliances, and Alternatives,” July, Online:
http://libcom.org/files/NewComm.pdf)
. The degree in which we can¶ limit and escape capitalist form of trade
depends entirely on the degree in which we build¶ human interchange away from the market on a
planetary scale. But just as capital needs¶ the enclosure of commons to create the market upon which it prospers, an alternative¶ needs the
constitution of new commons. The latter provides the material basis upon¶ which human exchange can
occur, free from capital's discipline, enforced scarcity and the¶ stupid obsession with growth for growth's
sake. The central tenet of a radical strategy¶ should be the constitutions of spheres of socio-economic
interactions that go beyond¶ market-exchange and, therefore, money as capital. I see the struggles for the
definition of¶ new commons at local and global level as the main pillar of a real alternative. ¶ The range of
alternatives provided by new commons need of course to be debated,¶ discussed, practised and lived, and I of
course do not want to provide a blue print. But the¶ conceptual horizons we gain in envisaging alternatives when we abandon
the given¶ accepted wisdom of the market are immense. Thinking in terms of new commons makes¶ the slogan that everybody shared in Seattle
("No new round, WTO turnaround!") to¶ acquire new meaning.¶ In the first place, by setting a limit to what can be turned into a commodity,
and indeed to¶ push back the sphere of what can be a commodity, new commons set limits to the market ¶
and capitalist accumulation. But the latter is inherently boundless, it must relies on¶ continuous expansion, and on the colonisation of a wider range of aspects of life.
The¶ only limits it recognises are what the agents and institutions of capital are made to ¶ recognise by our struggles. To be able to set a limit to capital is like
to announce its death.¶ However, second, new commons cannot be seen in this instrumental sense, as a tool to¶ smash capital. In fact, I believe, the strength of thinking in
But this form of human exchange cannot rely on the market
terms of new commons is¶ exactly the opposite.
¶ certainly important but subordinated to what we do want to build in the
context of given¶ power relations.¶ Thus, the second part of the slogan "WTO turnaround" must be filled with a positive and¶ constitutive content of our own making, which disengages with
the global-social factory¶ and its world-view. The latter is one that by seeing scarcity everywhere it enforces it ¶ through enclosure and growth. But scarcity is a construct, conceptual and
practical. The¶ economist states that human wants are infinite, and means are limited, although ¶ improvable. Capital takes the economist's word in two senses: by creating scarcity, that is¶ by
enclosing spaces of individual and communal reliance, thus creating helpless people ¶ with wants. And by offering a solution to scarcity, that is by growing using the market or ¶ the plan as a
vehicle for this growth, thus giving the impression that the gap between¶ wants and means to satisfy them is being bridged. But in so doing, it creates yet new ¶ wants.¶ New commons break
with this logic. To put it with Esteva:¶ The basic logic of human interactions inside the new commons prevents scarcity ¶ from appearing in them. People do not assume unlimited ends, since
their ends are¶ no more than the other side of their means, their direct expression. If their means ¶ are limited, as they are, their ends cannot be unlimited. Within the new commons, ¶ needs are
defined with verbs that describe activities embodying wants, skills and ¶ interactions with others and with the environment. Needs are not separated into ¶ different `spheres' of reality: lacks or
expectations on one side, and satisfiers on¶ the other, reunited through the market or plan. (Esteva 1992: 21) ¶ Part of the definition of new commons, is the redefinition of needs by ordinary
The redefinition of needs as
a collective¶ process, is perhaps one of the most important political actions we can engage in, because¶ in
redefining needs we also redefine means and forms of social interactions. By¶ strengthening forms of
social interaction outside the market, we transcend helplessness¶ and reinvent autonomy and community.
Trade, in the context of new commons, would¶ not be the instrument used to enforce a competitive
struggle between fictional¶ communities (companies, nations, etc.) but a practice of mutual enrichment
between¶ autonomous communities.
men and¶ women, a redefinition which must take place outside the pervasive conceptual grid ¶ provided by the naturalisation of the market.
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Alt Solves – Human Rights Specific
Human rights are a corrupt project that position the subaltern as helpless victims while depoliticizing the roots of their oppression – instead, we should facilitate a move towards human
dignity, which can only be achieved through self-determination and withdrawal of imperial
meddling.
Mignolo, Professor of Cultural Anthropology @ Duke U, 2006
(Walter, “Citizenship, Knowledge, and the Limits of Humanity,” American Literary History 18:2, Project
MUSE)
Changing the law and public policies won't be of much help in this process. What is needed is that those
who change the law and public policy change themselves. [End Page 312] The problem is how that may take place if we
would like to avoid the missionary zeal for conversion; the liberal and neoliberal belief in the triumphal march of Western
civilization and of market democracy; and the moral imperatives and forced behavior imposed by socialism. As I do not believe in a
new abstract universal that will be good for the entire world, the question is how people can change their belief that the world today is like it is and that it will be only
The
changes I am thinking about are radical transformations in the naturalized assumptions of the world
order. The naturalized assumptions I am thinking about are imperial–colonial, and they have shaped the world in which we live in the past five hundred years when
Christianity and capitalism came together and created the conditions for the self-fashioned narrative of "modernity." Hence, the transformations I am
thinking about require an epistemic decolonial shift. Not a "new," a "post," or a "neo," which are all changes within the same modern colonial
epistemology, but a decolonial (and not either a "deconstruction"), which means a delinking from the rules of the game (e.g., the
through the "honest" projects of Christians, liberals, and Marxist-socialists that the world could be better for all, and citizenship will be a benediction for all.
decolonization of the mind, in Ngugi Wa Th'iongo's vocabulary) in which deconstruction itself and all the "posts-" for sure are caught. Delinking doesn't mean to be
"outside" of either modernity or Christian, Liberal, Capitalist, and Marxist hegemony but to disengage from the naturalized assumptions that make of these four
macronarratives "une pensee unique," to use Ignacio Ramonet's expression.2 The
decolonial shift begins by unveiling the imperial
presuppositions that maintain a universal idea of humanity and of human being that serves as a model
and point of arrival and by constantly underscoring the fact that oppressed and racialized subjects do not
care and are not fighting for "human rights" (based on an imperial idea of humanity) but to regain the
"human dignity" (based on a decolonial idea of humanity) that has and continues to be taken away from
them by the imperial rhetoric of modernity (e.g., white, Eurocentered, heterosexual, and Christian/secular). The conditions for citizenship are
still tied to a racialized hierarchy of human beings that depends on universal categories of thought created and enacted from the identitarian perspectives of European
Christianity and by white males. In the Afro-Caribbean intellectual tradition—from C. L. R. James to Frantz Fanon, Sylvia Wynter, and Lewis Gordon—the very
concepts of the human and humanity are constantly under fire.3 Would indeed a black person agree with the idea that what "we" all have in common is our "humanity"
and that we are "all equal" in being "different"? I would suspect that the formula would rather be of the type advanced by the [End Page 313] Zapatistas: "[B]ecause we
are all equal we have the right to be different."4 The universal idea of humanity, believe me, is not the same from the perspective of black history, Indian memories, or
the memories of the population of Central Asia. The humanities, as a branch of knowledge in the history of the
university since the European Renaissance,
have always been complicitous with imperial–colonial designs celebrating a universal idea of the human
model. The moment has arrived to put the humanities at the service of decolonial projects in their ethical,
political, and epistemic dimensions; to recast the reinscription of human dignity as a decolonial project in
the hands of the damnes rather than given to them through managerial designs of NGOs and Human
Rights Watch that seldom if ever are led by actors whose human dignity is at stake. Decolonial projects
imply downsizing human rights to its real dimension: an ethical imperative internal to imperial abuses
but not really a project that empowers racialized subjects and helps them to regain the human dignity
that racism and imperial projects (from the right, the left, and the center) took away from them.
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***Answers To Affirmative Arguments***
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A2: Perm
Perm’s inclusion guarantee’s that inequalities are whitewashed and Western interests always win
out.
Martell, University of Sussex, Brighton, UK, 2009
(Luke, Global Inequality, Human Rights and Power: A Critique of Ulrich Beck’s Cosmopolitanism, Critical
Sociology 35(2) 253–272, SAGE)
Where Beck does try to put into action his cosmopolitan postcolonialism it runs into trouble (e.g. Beck and Sznaider, 2006). He advocates a ‘both/and’
perspective taking over from an ‘either/or’ perspective. This is good for bringing in previously excluded inputs to views that have stressed Westernization
without understanding a mixture of influences including from non-Western sources (e.g. Abu-Lughod, 1989). However a
‘both/and’ view runs
the risk of replacing Westernization perspectives with one in which power and inequality is glossed
over by an attempt to resurrect understandings of the inputs of non- Western societies. When
different global societies meet there are often some that have greater economic, political and
ideological power. To highlight this fact is not to endorse it. And it is not to say there are not real sources of opposition
and alternatives to Westernization both academically and politically (in the latter case from Iran to Venezuela for
example). But positing a ‘both/and’ mix appears to give an equality to a mix of perspectives when there
are great inequalities and power differences in that mix. In trying to give more of a role to inputs from beyond the West it runs
the risk of playing down the Western power that such inputs are subjected to. Beck’s own use of a ‘both/and’ hybridizing postcolonialism (2000b: 89) underestimates these power relations and inequalities. In a discussion of deregulation and flexibi- lization which promote an informal economy, diluted trade union
representation and weak states Beck suggests these are non-Western standards being adopted by Western societies. But the direction of power is the other way
around. These are structures and effects of neoliberalism being exported by Western-dominated governments and institu- tions to other Western and non-Western
societies with the deleterious effects that Beck rightly suggests. Western
power is underestimated here when neoliberalism is
seen as an effect of the importation of poor regulation from the non-West to West rather than an
expression of the corporate and state power of Western interests. So the novelty and uniqueness of Beck’s
cosmopolitanism for establishing a postcolo- nial perspective is justified by an understatement of the extent to which postcolonialism is already in existence and
an overstatement of the role of cosmopolitanism in having a new role in establishing this itself. At the same time, his more hybrid postcolonial view, rather than
restoring a greater emphasis on poorer countries’ contribution to globaliza- tion, may underestimate the power they are subjected to. Beck’s
postcolonialism fits into a more general pattern in his work, of underestimating previous cosmopolitanism in social science, overestimating
the novelty of his cosmopolitan vision, and leading down a road which rather than overcoming power and inequality
seems as much to play down how significant it is.
Implementation DA – Perm brings the South perspective in as a partner in implementing their
policy, not a genuine partner in development which guts the alt.
Castles and Wise, Universidad Autónoma de Zacatecas; International Migration Institute @
Oxford, 2007
(Raúl Delgado, Stephen, Principles and measures to obtain more coherent and collaborative policy making on
migration and development, International Network of Migration and Development,
http://meme.phpwebhosting.com/~migr-acion/rimd/e-lista_documentos_miembros.php)
Attempts to achieve coherent approaches and coordination on migration and development will not
succeed if ¶ the terms of debate are imposed in advance and without discussion by all concerned. So far
the debate on migration and development has been one-sided: it has been overwhelmingly driven by northern governments and by international agencies.
Southern states and civil society organizations have been brought in, but usually as partners for
implementation, rather than as equals in setting principles and priorities. Northern governments, supranational bodies
and international agencies have varying interests and perspectives on migration and development, and they hold frequent meetings on migration control and
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management. Southern states also have varying approaches, but have had little communication between themselves. They have had marginal roles in global fora,
while migrant associations have usually had none at all. Without wanting to reproduce the debate on the migration and development nexus dealt with in Session
6, this paper will aim to suggest principles and measures to obtain more coherent and collaborative policy making by starting out from a comprehensive approach
on the migration and development nexus, whereby the perspectives of the South are fully integrated. It is essential to achieve a comprehensive approach, based
on participation of migrants and their associations, as well as governments, social partners and communities of sending, transit and receiving countries. A
comprehensive approach means recognising differences in needs, values and interests, and finding ways of cooperating to achieve workable compromises. It
is
crucial to reorient the terms of the debate. A deeper and broader understanding of the migrationdevelopment nexus is required in which perspectives from the South are fully incorporated. This
implies, among other things: • Understanding the ideological character of the discourse of globalization and
the contradictions of global economic integration, especially the growing asymmetries among countries, increasing social
inequalities, and precarious employment conditions of workers in labour markets now re-constituted at the transnational level. • Focusing on
emergent actors and agents from civil society, which operates at different levels: local, national, and transnational.
• Constructing new information systems which transcend the dominant focus on migrant-receiving
country concerns (especially security and social cohesion); and which reflect the complexity and multidimensional character of the migrationdevelopment nexus.
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A2: Framework
The alt has to come first – the Northern agenda for policy debate guarantees failure.
Wise, Director of Doctoral Program in Migration Studies Professor of Development Studies
Universidad Autónoma de Zacatecas, Mexico, 2007
(Raúl Delgado, GLOBAL FORUM ON MIGRATION AND DEVELOPMENT CIVIL SOCIETY DAY,
Migration and Development Setting the Scene, http://meme.phpwebhosting.com/~migracion/rimd/elista_documentos_miembros.php)
Moreover, South-South
dialogue is as important as the North-North dialogue that has been taking place for years – it is a precondition
for a genuine global dialogue. The debate on migration and development has been dominated by the
vision of the North, which tends to reduce the key issues to security, control of migratory flows,
integration into the receiving society, and remittances (understood as the main driver of development). The vision of the South
has been largely absent in this debate. This has led to a distortion of the very idea of development. It has also led to
fragmented views and interpretations, which hinder understanding of the real significance and challenges of contemporary human mobility as a force for change.
Northern-dominated research and policy debates on migration provide an inadequate basis for
understanding the real scope and potential of the major changes taking place, and for designing and
implementing new policy approaches.
Rejecting the Aff’s research model makes alternative to neoliberal development possible.
Wise et al., Director of Doctoral Program in Migration Studies & Prof of Development Studies;
Universidad Autónoma de Zacatecas, Mexico, 2010
(Raúl Delgado Wise, Humberto Márquez Covarrubias, Rubén Puentes, Reframing the debate on migration,
development and human rights: fundamental elements, October, 2010, www.migracionydesarrollo.org)
The promotion of alternative development as social transformation can prevent forced migration. Ideologically speaking, neoliberal
globalization
posits itself as inevitable. It is therefore crucial that we theoretically and practically endorse the
feasibility of alter- native development strategies. Rejecting the assymetrical power relationships
between sending and receiving countries is of paramount importance. This will allow us to identify
and counter practices that have plunged vast regions of the world into quagmires of inequality,
marginalization, poverty, social exclusion and forced migration. A project of genuine social transformation
must focus on the root causes of forced migration and fight them by creating decent, secure, and
well-paid employment opportunities. This will make migration an option rather than a necessity.
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A2: Policy Relevance
Regimes of policy relevance reduce academic inquiry into a process of making imperialism more
efficient – critical theory is infinitely more valuable as an intellectual endeavor.
Jones 2009
(Lee, “International Relations Scholarship and the Tyranny of Policy Relevance,” Journal of Critical
Globalization Studies Iss 1, Online: Google it)
These scholars’
commitment to the continued ‘benign’ dominance of US values, capital and power
overrides any superficial dissimilarities occasioned by their personal ‘conservative’ or ‘liberal’
predilections. It is this that qualifies them to act as advisers to the modern-day ‘prince’; genuinely critical voices are
unlikely to ever hear the call to serve. The idea of, say, Noam Chomsky as Assistant Secretary of State is simply absurd. At stake here is the fundamental
distinction between ‘problem-solving’ and ‘critical’ theory, which Robert Cox introduced in a famous article in 1981. Cox argued
that theory, despite being presented as a neutral analytical tool, was ‘always for someone and for some
purpose’. Problem-solving theories ultimately endorsed the prevailing system by generating suggestions
as to how the system could be run more smoothly. Critical theories, by contrast, seek to explain why the
system exists in the first place and what could be done to transform it. What unifies Nye, Ikenberry Huntington, Brzezinski
and Kissinger (along with the majority of IR scholars) is their problem-solving approach. Naturally, policy-makers want academics to be
problemsolvers, since policies seek precisely to – well, solve problems. But this does not necessarily mean that this should be the function of the academy.
Indeed, the tyranny of ‘policy relevance’ achieves its most destructive form when it becomes so dominant
that it imperils the space the academy is supposed to provide to allow scholars to think about the
foundations of prevailing orders in a critical, even hostile, fashion. Taking clear inspiration from Marx, Cox produced
pathbreaking work showing how different social orders, corresponding to different modes of production, generated different world orders, and looked for contradictions
within the existing orders to see how the world might be changing.1 Marxist theories of world order are unlikely to be seen as very ‘policy relevant’ by capitalist elites
(despite the fact that, where Marxist theory is good, it is not only ‘critical’ but also potentially ‘problem-solving’, a possibility that Cox overlooked). Does this mean
that such inquiry should be replaced by government-funded policy wonkery? Absolutely not, especially when we consider the horrors that entails. At one recent
conference, for instance, a Kings College London team which had won a gargantuan sum of money from the government to study civil contingency plans in the event of
terrorist attacks presented their ‘research outputs’. They suggested a raft of measures to securitise everyday life, including developing clearly sign-posted escape routes
from London to enable citizens to flee the capital. There are always plenty of academics who are willing to turn their hand to repressive, official agendas. There are
some who produce fine problem-solving work who ought to disseminate their ideas much more widely, beyond the narrow confines of academia. There are far fewer
who are genuinely critical. The political economy of research funding combines with the tyranny of ‘policy relevance’ to entrench a hierarchy topped by tame
academics. ‘Policy relevance’, then, is a double-edged sword. No one would wish to describe their work as ‘irrelevant’, so the
key question, as always,
is ‘relevant to whom?’ Relevance to one’s research community, students, and so on, ought to be more
than enough justification for academic freedom, provided that scholars shoulder their responsibilities to teach and to communicate their
subjects to society at large, and thus repay something to the society that supports them. But beyond that, we also need to fully respect work that
will never be ‘policy-relevant’, because it refuses to swallow fashionable concerns or toe the line on
government agendas. Truly critical voices are worth more to the progress of human civilisation than ten
thousand Deputy Undersecretaries of State for Security Assistance, Science, and Technology.
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A2: Cede the Political
The political sphere is dominated by corporate imperialist interests – the only effective strategy is
to break away from policy reformism and retake the public sphere through intellectual rejection
of imperialism.
Boggs, 2009
(Carl, expert on ceding the political according to most 2ACs, “A Way Forward?,” August 21, Online:
http://www.zcommunications.org/a-way-forward-by-carl-boggs)
I'm delighted and flattered to be part of the exchanges about efficacious ways to move forward so that we can emerge somehow from the insanity. I wish I could be
more optimistic about fundamental change. I have a nice lengthy essay to share with people but decided to junk it because of some second thoughts about it. Seems like
I've been involved in quite a smorgasbord of left activities since the sixties: new-left activism, SDS, anarchism, Trotskyism, NAM-style democratic socialism, the
socialist-feminist breakoff from NAM (Solidarity), the Greens, and a host of specific movements (anti-war, environmental, etc.). A lot of community work too. In the
midst of all this I've done plenty of writing, a good deal of it within the neo-Marxist, critical Marxist, or post-Marxist discourses. At
this juncture, after
more than 40 years struggling within and around the American left, I feel that answers about political
strategy are more difficult to find. In my thinking it's difficult to locate anything resembling certitude - one
of the reasons I decided to junk the original essay I wrote. Having made this point, I still believe any serious movement for social
transformation in this society ought to address most if not all of the following: 1. An anti-imperialist
politics. This means coming to grips with the barbarism of U.S. foreign and military policy, the
permanent war economy, and the national security state - all factors in destroying the world and subverting democracy here. For me
this perspective ought to be central. 2. An ecological model of development - and politics. This means a comprehensive rethinking of
corporate-based growth with its predatory view of nature, its sickening use of resources, its fetishism of growth, its fast-food economy including MacDonaldization of
the workforce, its horrific reliance on animal-based agriculture (responsible for more than 35 percent of global warming and the most egregious use of natural resources,
including water). A strong dose of animal-rights consciousness would not hurt either. 3. A
mode of change organically tied to diverse
social movements: feminist, ecological, anti-war, gay/lesbian, animal rights, etc. There should be an ecumenical openness
to the large variety of grassroots struggles. 4. Embrace of a process of democratization that enters into all spheres of
public life, beyond government, beyond the economy. 5. Social priorities involving a large-scale shift of
resources from the military, intelligence, and prison/law enforcement complexes, toward the obvious
range of public needs, goods, services, and programs. This used to be called a "conversion" process. 6. An agenda revolving
around the dismantling of corporate power, a violent, destructive, predatory, corrupt form of domination
that currently seems to colonize just about every realm of government, the economy, and society.
Further: other dimensions of change will depend upon how far we can go in an anti-corporate direction.
The failure of even the most modest efforts to "reform" health care indicate, once again, just how difficult this task will be. 7. Fundamental change
requires a center of gravity outside the party duopoly: both Republican and Democratic parties are so
basically corrupt and worthless as tools of change that we should be finished with discussions about how
best to push the Democrats "leftward", once and for all. These "debates", in my opinion, are a total
waste of time. 8. From the above it might be concluded that my view of the best political "strategy" would be something
along the lines of what emerged with the European Greens in the 1980s, only more radicalized. So here, I guess,
I've fallen into the tendency of identifying a perspective about how best to move forward. I don't feel especially certain or optimistic about this - much less dogmatic.
(Those days are gone!) Since Leninism won't work in the U.S., and social democracy has its own severe limits, this might be a useful point of departure. My feeling is
that, given
the woeful state of American society today and the great threat to the planet posed by the ruling
elite, many of us would be at least provisionally content with something like Swedish social democracy at
its best. From here, that sounds utopian. But what seems axiomatic from what I've outlined above is
something more akin to a revolutionary departure from our militarized state capitalism that seems
headed toward fascism. Do I feel optimistic about this possibility? Of course not. But as a personal matter
I plan to continue working hard to change the world as if there is every reason in the world to be hopeful
and optimistic.
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A2: Free Trade Is Good
Reliance on the free market empirically devastates lesser developed countries and risk
environmental destruction.
Magdoff, Plant and Soil Scientist, 2004
(Fred Magdoff, Plant and soil scientist, Monthly Review, 55:9, February 2004,
http://www.monthlyreview.org/0204magdoff.htm)
Following the standard prescription—opening
up countries of the periphery to the free flow of goods, services, and capital
as well as decreasing government support programs that help the living conditions of the poor—can be devastating.
There are numerous recent examples of how such policies have hurt the poor. Taking the advice of the World Bank
and various aid organizations, the government of Malawi reduced assistance to agriculture and at the same time let its currency
float. This led to a devaluation of their currency and a five-fold increase in the cost of imported
fertilizer—putting this essential ingredient of agriculture out of the reach of most farmers (New York
Times, July 13, 2003). The use of fertilizers is one of the keys to enhanced agricultural production on the ancient and nutrient depleted soils of Africa. Even
market-oriented “solutions” recommended
by experts have led to widespread and more persistent hunger, even when the climate is favorable. In Ghana, the
though aid agencies have helped some farmers obtain modest amounts of fertilizer, the
government, “pressured by its Western creditors to keep its fiscal house in order, doesn’t supply fertilizer subsidies, crop-price supports, or any other equivalent
of cheap financing...” (Wall Street Journal December 3, 2002). With the relatively high prices of fertilizers, which need to be imported, a lack of subsidies means
that farmers use little or no fertilizer, thus food
production and opportunities for earning extra income are well below
easily attainable levels.¶ The effects of the transition to “free markets,” “free trade,” and decreased government support for food
production have been even more damaging to Ethiopia. The government, heeding aid organizations that
advised a “free market” approach with decreased government “interference,” decided that after they had stimulated agricultural
production they needed to reduce the state’s assistance for agriculture. Better seeds and easier access to fertilizers were made
available to farmers and production increased. As prices received by farmers fell dramatically in response to a glut on the market, there were few storage
facilities to allow farmers to store grains and wait for prices to rise. Funds were not available for those wishing to build grain storage structures. Farmers
responded in a completely logical way to record low prices in 2001. They reduced the amount of land they planted the following year. This
decrease in
planted area, together with unfavorable weather in 2002, created conditions for widespread hunger and even starvation in
2003.¶ Following the Philippine government’s embrace of neoliberal policies —with the alignment of tariffs and laws to
accommodate requirements of the World Trade Organization (WTO)—the situation of farmers and agriculture in the Philippines took a
sharp turn for the worse. Imports of rice and corn surged, as many had anticipated, creating widespread misery among farmers. It was expected
that farmers would switch to more lucrative crops for export. However, Philippine agriculture was weak, not only in
comparison to the highly subsidized U.S. farms, but also relative to the agriculture of China, Taiwan,
Thailand, and Vietnam. Philippine farmers had been encouraged to produce vegetables, poultry, and beef for profitable export, but they
could not compete internationally, so that even their domestic markets have been swamped by imports.¶ Laura Carlsen, an
analyst with the Americas Program of the Interhemispheric Resource Center (IRC), in a June 2003 speech before
the Committee on Industry, External Trade, Research, and Energy of the European Parliament, explained what has happened in Mexico, one of the early
participants in the rush to liberalize trade relations:¶ In sum, two decades of agricultural trade liberalization in Mexico have
led to: an increase in rural poverty, malnutrition, out-migration, and instability; increased
workloads, particularly for women; increased consumer prices; increased profits and market control
by transnational traders and processors at the cost of smallholder farmers; lost national revenues
that could have been applied to development programs; and severe risks to the environment and
biodiversity. (www.americaspolicy .org/commentary/2003/0306eu_body.html)
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A2: The Affirmative Is Key To Economic Development
Only the alt solves sustainable development.
Wise et al., Director of Doctoral Program in Migration Studies & Prof of Development Studies;
Universidad Autónoma de Zacatecas, Mexico, 2010
(Raúl Delgado Wise, Humberto Márquez Covarrubias, Rubén Puentes, Reframing the debate on migration,
development and human rights: fundamental elements, October, 2010, www.migracionydesarrollo.org)
For these reasons, we must begin by defining, however generally, our intended type of development. Theories
that reduce development to
economic growth or per capita income are not only inappropriate but also reductionist and prone to
mystification. Those that conceive it as a linear and ahistorical process where all nations are meant to achieve an “ideal” development phase after going
through several more or less defined “stages” are equally unsustainable. We do not in- tend to establish a single paradigm of development or an exclusively
normative definition based on unattainable utopias. Below are a series of precepts that shape an alternative notion of development and where this process is
conceived as one of social transformation. These precepts aim to counter-act the unequal development dynamics fostered by neoliberal globalization: An ethics
of development. Turning our backs on the blind appetite for profit that characterizes contemporary capitalism and has led to the overexploitation of labor and
natural resources without considering potential consequences, we must advance towards a humane, equitable and sustainable type of development that allows for
the fulfillment of social, individual and human potentialities. Human development. Rejecting super-exploitation of labor and the increasing human rights
infringements that affect the majority of the global population, we
must construct an essentially humane type of development
that favors the common good and social sustainability over a minority’s lust for profit. This requires a
fundamental emphasis on the upholding of human rights as a key element in the process of social transformation. Equitable development. Development
and underdevelopment are not separate processes, but rather two sides of a single phenomenon that has
gained considerable momentum under neoliberal globalization: unequal development. Given the increase in intranational, international and regional
asymmetries and the expansion and deepening of social inequalities, processes of social transformation capable of counteracting these trends are much needed.
One of the great challenges of our times is to achieve equality or, as stated by the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, it is “Time
for Equality: closing gaps, opening trails” (ECLAC, 2010). This requires,
among other things, creative ways of countering
the unequal exchange and surplus transfer- ence mechanisms that characterize contemporary
capitalism. Limits and effective regulations must be imposed on both the overt and covert monopolization of production, consumption and service
provision. The gaps fostered by the structural heterogeneity that characterizes peripheral economies
must be closed and the building of endogenous development foundations across national economies,
encapsulating innovation, production and consumption, must be encouraged. Finally, we must reject current
patterns of unequal wealth distribution and promote modes of social redistribution that revitalize the weakened—and, in some cases, vanquished—welfare state.
Sustainable development.
Far from degrading the environment, development must be based on a balanced
symbiotic interaction between society and nature, one that guarantees the fulfillment of social needs and the progressive
improvement in the quality of life of current and future generations. To achieve this, development must be sustainable across
all spheres (economic, environmental, social, cultural and scientific).
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A2: Neoliberalism Is Making The World Better
Poverty is massively increasing – neoliberal growth is unsustainable.
Li, Prof of political economy at the Department of Political Science of York University, 2004
(Minqi,After Neoliberalism: Empire, Social Democracy, or Socialism?,
http://monthlyreview.org/2004/01/01/after-neoliberalism-empire-social-democracy-or-socialism)
According to United Nations’ Human Development Report, the world’s richest 1 percent receive as much income as the poorest 57 percent. The
income gap
between the richest 20 percent and the poorest 20 percent in the world rose from 30:1 in 1960, to 60:1 in 1990, and to 74:1 in 1999, and is
projected to reach 100:1 in 2015. In 1999–2000, 2.8 billion people lived on less than $2 a day, 840 million were
undernourished, 2.4 billion did not have access to any form of improved sanitation services, and one in every six children in the world of primary school age
were not in school. About 50 percent of the global nonagricultural labor force is estimated to be either unemployed or underemployed.1 ¶ In many countries,
working people have suffered an absolute decline in living standards. In the United States, the real
weekly earnings of production and nonsupervisory workers (in 1992 dollars) fell from $315 in 1973 to $264 in 1989. After a decade of
economic expansion, it reached $271 in 1999, which remained lower than the average real wage in 1962. In Latin America, a continent that has suffered from neoliberal
restructuring since the 1970s, about 200 million people, or 46 percent of the population, live in poverty. Between
1980 and the early 1990s (1991–
1994), real wages fell by 14 percent in Argentina, 21 percent in Uruguay, 53 percent in Venezuela, 68 percent in Ecuador, and 73 percent in Bolivia.2 The
advocates of neoliberalism promised that the neoliberal “reforms” or “structural adjustments” would usher in an era of unprecedented economic growth, technological
progress, rising living standards, and material prosperity. In fact, the
world economy has slowed towards stagnation in the
neoliberal era. The average annual growth rate of world GDP declined from 4.9 percent between 1950 and 1973, to 3.0 percent between 1973 and 1992, and to
2.7 percent between 1990 and 2001. Between 1980 and 1998, half of all the “developing countries” (including the so-called “transition
economies”) suffered from falling real per capita GDP.3 The global economy has been kept afloat by the debtfinanced U.S. economy. Between 1995 and 2002, the U.S. economy accounted for 96 percent of the cumulative growth in world GDP.4 The U.S.
expansion has been financed by reducing domestic savings, raising the private sector debts to historically unprecedented levels, and running large and ever-rising
current account deficits. The process is unsustainable. The enormous imbalances have to be corrected one way or the other. If the United States cannot
continue to generate ever-rising current account deficits and none of the other large economies are capable of functioning effectively as the autonomous driving force,
the neoliberal global economy will be under powerful downward pressures and exposed to the threat of
increasingly frequent and violent financial crises.¶
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A2: Neoliberalism Is Inevitable
Neoliberalism is not inevitable.
Wise, Director of Doctoral Program in Migration Studies & Prof of Development Studies;
Universidad Autónoma de Zacatecas, Mexico, 2009
(Raúl Delgado, Forced Migration and US Imperialism: The Dialectic of Migration and Development, Crit
Sociol, 35: 767, ProQuest)
The theoretical framework outlined in this article for understanding the dialectic relationship between development and migration has four critical components. A
Critical Approach to Neoliberal Globalization Contrary
to the discourse regarding its inevitability (on this see Petras and Veltmeyer,
2000), we posit that the current phase of imperialist domination is historical and can and should be transformed.
In this regard, it is fundamental to notice that ‘[t]he principal factor generating international migration is not globalization but imperialism, which pillages nations and
creates conditions for the exploitation of labor in the imperial center’ (Petras, 2007: 51–2). A Critical Reconstitution of the Field of Development Studies The favoring
of a singular mode of analysis based on the belief that free markets work as powerful regulatory mechanisms, efficiently assigning resources and providing patterns of
economic convergence among countries and their populations, has clearly resulted in failure. New
theoretical and practical alternatives are
needed, and we propose a reevalua- tion of development as a process of social transformation through a multidimensional, multi-spatial, and properly contextualized approach, ‘using the concept of imperialism as an alternative explanatory
framework of international capitalist expansion and the growing inequalities’ (Petras and Veltmeyer, 2000). This integral approach requires the
con- sideration of the strategic and structural aspects of the dynamic of uneven contemporary capitalism development, which should be examined at the global, regional,
national, and local levels. For this purpose it is crucial to understand, inter alia, a) the central role played by foreign investment in the process of neoliberal restructuring
of peripheral economies, and b) the new modalities of surplus transfer characterizing contemporary capitalism. ¶ The Construction of an Agent of Change The
globalization project led by the USA has ceased to be consensual: it has only bene- fited capitalist elites and excluded and
damaged an overwhelming number of people throughout the world. Economic, political, social, cultural and environmental changes are all needed but a
transformation of this magnitude is not viable unless diverse move- ments, classes, and agents can
establish common goals. The construction of an agent of change requires not only an alternative theory of
development but also collective action and horizontal collaboration: the sharing of experiences, the conciliation
of interests and visions, and the construction of alliances inside the framework of South-South and South-North
relations. A Reassessment of Migration and Development Studies The current explosion of forced migration is part of the intricate machinery of contemporary
capitalism as an expression of the dominant imperialist project. In order to under- stand this process we need to redefine the
boundaries of studies that address migration and development: expand our field of research and invert
the terms of the unidirectional orthodox vision of the migration-development nexus in order to situate the
complex issues of uneven development and imperialist domination at the center of an alternative
dialectical framework. This entails a new way of understanding the migration phenomenon.¶
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AFF ANSWERS
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Perm Solvency – 2AC
Combining the criticism with traditional economics is effective --- the alt cedes economics and
makes it destructive.
Thompson, Jr, Vice Dean and Robert E. Paradise Professor of Natural Resources Law, Stanford
Law School, 2003
(Barton H., SYMPOSIUM: SYNERGY OR CONFLICT: THE ROLES OR ETHICS, ECONOMICS, AND
SCIENCE IN ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY DECISIONS: PANEL: What Good Is Economics?, U.C. Davis
Law Review November, 2003 37 U.C. Davis L. Rev. 175)
One cannot study environmental law today without encountering economic analyses. Economics is everywhere in legislative hearings and debates, regulatory documents, judicial opinions, legal casebooks, and academic
articles. People interested in working in the environmental field or understanding environmental policy, therefore, need to be fluent in
economics. Otherwise, they risk missing or misunderstanding much of the debate.¶ Yet many people active or
interested in the environmental field question the value and even the legitimacy of using economics to
decide environmental questions. To them, environmental protection is not about maximizing the economic
value of the environment to humans. Rather, it is about honoring rights to a healthy and sustainable environment,
maximizing the spiritual potential of humanity, or preserving the integrity of the entire biotic
community. n1 From this perspective, any suggestion to decide environmental goals based on an exacting
economic balancing of the costs and benefits of proposed measures seems simply wrong-headed. Those who believe in a strong code of
environmental ethics, a group I will label "environmental moralists," frequently see the prevalence of economic analysis in current environmental policy debates as an
error to be remedied.¶ My
goal in this Article is to convince environmental moralists that economics may provide
far more value than they assume - that economics may be more friend than foe. Economics may even provide
environmental moralists with a tool for promoting broader environmental ethics within society, as I discuss in
Part IV of this Article. Economic enthusiasts and ethical pragmatists should find this Article valuable for its cataloguing of the ways in which economics can
be used in the pursuit of environmental goals. My target audience, however, is the environmental
moralist who is skeptical of, or downright averse to, using economics to address environmental issues.¶ Economics can play a
variety of roles in environmental policy. Some uses of economics may conflict with the ethical precepts of environmental moralists and perhaps even threaten their
strategic goals. [*177] In other contexts, however, economics
may provide the environmental moralist with a valuable
strategic or practical tool. Environmental moralists who reject all forms of economic analysis because
some uses of economics conflict with their ethical beliefs risk undermining their goals of improving and
protecting the environment and changing our relationship with the environment. Far from being inherently inconsistent
with environmental ethics, economics may actually be essential to accomplishing ethical ends. ¶ Economics can be used in
at least four partially overlapping ways. First, it can be used as a normative tool to determine the appropriate type and level
of environmental protection. This is the realm of cost-benefit analysis, where the economic benefits of
various environmental proposals in the form of avoided health injuries, increased recreational opportunities, species value, and the like are
balanced against the economic costs of lost jobs, new equipment, and reduced consumer choices. Much of
the criticism of economic analysis in the environmental context has focused on this normative use of
economics. To the environmental moralist, cost-benefit analysis errs at the outset by focusing on the Heaven-rejected
"lore of nicely-calculated less or more" n2 rather than the ethical importance of a healthy and sustainable environment.¶ Beyond the
question of whether cost-benefit analysis uses the correct criteria, critics also object to how the
government makes cost-benefit comparisons. Critics, for example, have challenged the methods used to
measure the benefits of environmental programs, the decision to measure benefits based on individuals'
current preferences, the comparison of benefits and costs that environmental moralists find economically
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"incommensurable," and the decision to discount future benefits (such as lives saved many decades from
now due to current environmental protection measures). n3¶ Economics, however, can be used for purposes
other than normative evaluations of potential environmental measures. A second use to which economics
is frequently put, for example, is as a diagnostic tool to determine why society is not achieving the desired
type and level of environmental protection (regardless of how the desired types and levels of protection are determined). Garrett
Hardin's famous discussion of the [*178] "tragedy of the commons" is a good example of this diagnostic
use of economics: when a common resource is free, users enjoy all of the benefits of use but share the
losses and thus tend to overutilize the resource. n4 Used as a diagnostic tool, economics can help point to the reasons
for, and thus the most effective solutions to, a wide variety of environmental problems.¶ Third,
environmental advocates can use economics as a strategic political tool to help overcome opposition to
environmental measures and increase the chances of successful adoption. Economic concerns often
generate opposition to environmental measures, and opponents frequently cite economic concerns as a
rationale for not enacting the measures. Although proponents might view many of these economic
concerns as normatively irrelevant or misconceived, the concerns are ¶ nonetheless a political reality.
Economic analysis can sometimes disprove the basis for these concerns and thus hopefully eliminate them
as a source of political opposition. Studies of a particular measure, for example, may demonstrate that the measure will not reduce employment as
unions fear. In other cases, environmental proponents can use economic analysis to find means of minimizing economic impacts on key political stakeholders while still
achieving environmental goals.¶ Finally,
economics can be used as a design tool to evaluate and devise approaches or
techniques for achieving various environmental goals. Economics lies behind the market concepts that
have been much in vogue over the last several decades - pollution taxes, tradable pollution permits, water markets, individual tradable
quotas (ITQs) for fisheries, mitigation banks for wetlands and species habitat. Economic theory suggests that such measures can protect the environment in a more
effective and less costly manner than purely directive measures. n5 Beyond the identification and creation of market-based approaches,
economic analysis
can help determine the effect of various other regulatory alternatives on technological innovation,
compliance, and other relevant measures, and thus guide policymakers. Most interestingly, psychological research suggests
that, while some forms of economic incentives may undermine altruistic behavior, other forms of economic rewards may actually sustain and
encourage ethical action.¶
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Perm Solvency – Economic Engagement Good
Economic engagement that develops local resources and capacities is a necessary pre-requisite to
combatting capitalist exploitation.
DeMartino, Professor of international economics at the University of Denver, No date
(George DeMartino is a Professor of international economics at the Josef Korbel School of International Studies
of the University of Denver and holds a PhD in economics from the University of Massachusetts. Accessed
5/19/13, “Ethical Economic Engagement in a World Beyond Control,” Under Review Rethinking Marxism, p.67)
Notably, the book (and other Gibson-Graham work of the past decade) turned a careful eye to the question of how to cultivate an economic subject that could
open up to the possibilities associated with economic difference. Gibson-Graham explored abstractly in their theoretical work and concretely in their community
work the stubborn resistance to imaging and welcoming opportunities to live differently. Even
those harboring anger and resentment
toward a capitalist system that exploited and then discarded them—for instance, workers rendered unemployed by capital
flight—often refused to engage the idea of creating alternative enterprises under worker control (GibsonGraham 2003). Instead, they aspired to return to employment in the capitalist sector that, they felt, had abused them. What is it about the human psyche, GibsonGraham asked, that so often prevents actors from recognizing, imagining and welcoming opportunities to live differently? What bodily processes interrupt the
capacity to grab hold of the chance to break free from practices that are recognized as oppressive? And how in practice do we overcome the fear, resignation,
anger and resentment that block the exploration of alternative economic identities? In A Postcapitalist Politics, “An Ethics of the Local” (2003) and other work
Gibson-Graham explore the power of language and theory, but also interpersonal encounter and collaboration, in confronting and overcoming these obstacles.
What they would later come to call “hybrid research collectives” came to serve as the chief practical vehicle for pursuing projects of economic emancipation. The
collective joins university and community-based researchers with other community members in joint projects to inventory already existing alternative economic
practices and indigenous resources and capacities, and to imagine and pursue economic practices and build economic institutions that defy traditional conceptions
of just what economic forms are and are not achievable and sustainable. A
central goal is to proliferate economic forms—to
generate a vibrant economic ecosystem populated by all sorts of economic species—rather than to
pursue a pre-defined set of models of economic engagement. Implicit in the project is the need to
inquire into economic alternatives without judgment; to silence the reflexive skepticism that haunts the academic mind so as to
allow for the “frothy spawn” (Gibson-Graham 1996) of new and as-of-yet unimagined progeny. Of equal importance is the task of
promoting safe spaces within which economic agents who are marginalized and emptied of aspiration
regenerate themselves as vibrant economic subjects who recognize the potency of their agency in
making the world anew.
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Neoliberalism Is Inevitable
Neolib is inevitable and movements are getting smothered out of existence—no alternative
economic system.
Jones, Masters at Oxford, named one of the Daily Telegraph's 'Top 100 Most Influential People
on the Left' for 2011, author of "Chavs: The Demonization of the Working Class", 2011
(Owen, The Independent, UK, "Owen Jones: Protest without politics will change nothing", 2011,
www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/owen-jones-protest-without-politics-will-change-nothing2373612.html)
My first experience of police kettling was aged 16. It was May Day 2001, and the anti-globalisation movement was at its peak. The turn-of-the-century anti-capitalist
movement feels largely forgotten today, but it was a big deal at the time. To a left-wing teenager growing up in an age of unchallenged neo-liberal triumphalism, just to
have "anti-capitalism" flash up in the headlines was thrilling. Thousands of apparently unstoppable protesters chased the world's rulers from IMF to World Bank
summits – from Seattle to Prague to Genoa – and the authorities were rattled.¶ Today,
as protesters in nearly a thousand cities across
the world follow the example set by the Occupy Wall Street protests, it's worth pondering what happened to the
anti-globalisation movement. Its activists did not lack passion or determination. But they did lack a
coherent alternative to the neo-liberal project. With no clear political direction, the movement was easily
swept away by the jingoism and turmoil that followed 9/11, just two months after Genoa.¶ Don't get me wrong: the Occupy movement
is a glimmer of sanity amid today's economic madness. By descending on the West's financial epicentres, it reminds us of how a crisis caused by the banks (a sentence
that needs to be repeated until it becomes a cliché) has been cynically transformed into a crisis of public spending. The founding statement of Occupy London puts it
succinctly: "We refuse to pay for the banks' crisis." The Occupiers direct their fire at the top 1 per cent, and rightly so – as US billionaire Warren Buffett confessed:
"There's class warfare, all right, but it's my class, the rich class, that's making war, and we're winning." ¶ The Occupy movement has provoked fury from senior US
Republicans such as Presidential contender Herman Cain who – predictably – labelled it "anti-American". They're right to be worried: those camping outside banks
threaten to refocus attention on the real villains, and to act as a catalyst for wider dissent. But
a coherent alternative to the tottering global
economic order remains, it seems, as distant as ever. Neo-liberalism crashes around, half-dead, with noone to administer the killer blow.¶ There's always a presumption that a crisis of capitalism is good news for the left. Yet in the Great Depression,
fascism consumed much of Europe. The economic crisis of the 1970s did lead to a resurgence of radicalism on both left and right. But, spearheaded by Thatcherism and
Reaganism, the New Right definitively crushed its opposition in the 1980s.This
time round, there doesn't even seem to be an
alternative for the right to defeat . That's not the fault of the protesters. In truth, the left has never recovered from being
virtually smothered out of existence. It was the victim of a perfect storm: the rise of the New Right; neoliberal globalisation; and the repeated defeats suffered by the trade union movement.¶ But, above all, it was the aftermath
of the collapse of Communism that did for the left. As US neo-conservative Midge Decter triumphantly put it: "It's time to
say: We've won. Goodbye." From the British Labour Party to the African National Congress, left-wing movements across the world hurtled to the right
in an almost synchronised fashion. It was as though the left wing of the global political spectrum had been sliced off.
That's why, although we live in an age of revolt, there remains no left to give it direction and purpose.¶
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Neoliberalism Is Inevitable – Economic Logic
Rules of the market are inevitable --- incorporating them into political calculations is key to
successful reforms.
Assheuer, Jacques Derrida Professor of Humanities, UC Irvine, Founder and President,
International College of Philosophy and Director of Studies, School of Advanced Study in the
Social Sciences, 2000
(Thomas, Paris 2000 “Intellectual Courage: An Interview” Culture Machine, Vol 2)
Q: In your book The Other Heading you
conceive Europe as a political project. Can one continue to do so after the long and tough
discussions about the European currency, the Euro? Or should one not say that Europe is on the way to becoming an enterprise which is
defined by monetary criteria, a kind of enterprise that co-ordinates the trade of merchandise?¶ JD: This is an effect to whose risks I have
alluded (economism, monetarism, 'performative' adaptation so as to be competitive in a global market, often after
brief and supposedly scientific analyses). It seems to me that one must indeed oppose to it a resolutely political project. That
is the stake of many of the tensions between the different European governments, and within each of
them, but also among the social forces that dominate Europe. I should add some qualifications, since you wish to talk about
'intellectuals': the necessary resistance to economism or monetarism need not take the form of demonising
incantations, of magical protestations based on incompetence, against an entity called the 'Euro' or evil,
manipulative bankers. Even if one need not believe just anyone or anything about this topic, one should not ignore the
constraints of the laws of the market; they exist, they are complex, they require analyses which even
the institutional 'experts' themselves have not completed. Perhaps one must oppose another political logic,
but also another socio-economic logic (informed, demonstrative), to the current dogmas of 'liberalism'. Perhaps the
Euro is not in itself an evil. There could be another social and economic framework for the 'transition
to the Euro'. Each nation state of Europe has its own calculations and its own historical responsibilities in this respect.
Those of Germany and France are particularly grave, as you know. Finally, even if my sympathies, as you well know, go towards a political resistance (of a certain
political Europe) to a Europe which would be a mere administrator of its economy, the concept of the political which saturates that discourse does not satisfy me
completely yet. It transfers upon Europe, and the boundaries of Europe, a tradition of the political, of the nation state, that begs many questions, and I have reserves
about it. There again, one would require a long discussion; I refer to my publications.
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Neoliberalism Solves Poverty
Neoliberalism has lifted hundreds of millions out of poverty.
Pipe, staff writer at The South Australia Globalist, 2011
(Nicholas, The South Australia Globalist, "The Global Financial Crisis", 2011,
www.perspectivist.com/business/the-global-financial-crisis)
When assisted by the other neo-liberal views of globalisation and foreign investment, this economic
growth leads to other social benefits; it “trickles down” to marginalised populations, while open borders ensure the most efficient
distributions of goods worldwide. As a result, closing the gap between affluent and marginalised populations is encouraged.
Ergas summarises the effects of this phenomenon as: “(liberalism) works, while the interventionist prescription doesn’t. Ask
the hundreds of millions of Chinese, Indians and Vietnamese whom liberalisation has lifted out of
poverty.Ӧ The benefits of neo-liberalism are clear, and it is fallacious to overlook them when judging the
system itself in the wake of the GFC. Yet there is something else that any critic of neo-liberalism must consider –
the fact that, like it or not, neo-liberalism is here to stay. As Chris Brown notes, the system has become
hegemonic and so deeply entrenched in society that its ideals are now part of how things really are.
You only have to look at the US Government’s need to bail out and protect several corporations at the height of
the GFC to see how deep rooted the neo-liberalism system is, and how its influence lives on.
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Cede the Political Turn – 2AC
The Perm is key economics is inevitable --- it’s only a question of using it for progressive ends --they let economics get coopted to crush the alt.
Thompson,Jr, Vice Dean and Robert E. Paradise Professor of Natural Resources Law, Stanford
Law School, 2003
(Barton H., SYMPOSIUM: SYNERGY OR CONFLICT: THE ROLES OR ETHICS, ECONOMICS, AND
SCIENCE IN ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY DECISIONS: PANEL: What Good Is Economics?, U.C. Davis
Law Review November, 2003 37 U.C. Davis L. Rev. 175)
Even environmental moralists who reject any economic tempering of ethical obligations may find
normative economic arguments useful for supplementing their ethical entreaties. Although
environmental moralists might believe that non-economic criteria should be used in judging the merits of
environmental goals, many politicians, voters, bureaucrats, and courts are far more attuned to wealthmaximization arguments. Indeed, Professor Christopher Stone's contribution to this symposium suggests that arguments based on
non-economic precepts of environmental ethics have played only a marginal role in legislative
debates and judicial decisions over the past several decades. n9 If this is correct, environmentalists have a strong
strategic reason to look for arguments that resonate more robustly with key decisionmakers. Even if
environmental ethics currently play a stronger role than Stone suggests, environmentalists might wish to broaden their base of support by [*181] making
economic arguments in favor of their goals.¶ In some cases, economic arguments are clearly supplemental to and thus separable from arguments based on
environmental ethics. The famous battle between the Tennessee Valley Authority and proponents of the endangered snail darter over completion of the Tellico
Dam is an example. Environmentalists opposed the dam because it risked causing the extinction of the snail darter, threatened to eradicate the last free-flowing
stretch of the Little Tennessee River, and required the flooding of a beautiful valley. But environmentalists were not hesitant to argue that the dam also made no
economic sense, costing more in federal funds than it was ever likely to produce in benefits. Indeed, while the environmental arguments led to a Supreme Court
decision enjoining further construction of the dam under the Endangered Species Act, n10 the economic
arguments almost won the day
politically when Congress balked at stopping construction on the almost-completed dam to save the
economically "worthless" snail darter. The cabinet-level Endangered Species Committee, which
Congress created to decide the fate of the dam, voted unanimously not to exempt the dam from the
Endangered Species Act because it concluded that the dam was economically not worth completing.
n11 Unfortunately, neither the environmental nor the economic arguments were capable of overcoming
political support for the dam, which Congress ultimately exempted from the Act. n12¶ Environmental
opposition to the federal reclamation program, which constructed hundreds of dams in the western
United States during the 20th century in an effort to expand irrigation, provides another example of
the effective use of normative economic arguments. Environmentalists have long opposed many reclamation projects because of
their environmental impact, including the dewatering of major rivers, the extinction or decline of a significant number of fish species, and the loss of wetlands.
n13 In addition to cataloguing this [*182] damage, however, environmentalists
also have argued that Congress should rein
in the reclamation program because it has paid out billions of dollars in unnecessary and
economically inefficient subsidies to western farmers. In a major 1985 report, the Natural Resources Defense Council calculated
that federal taxpayers were providing almost $ 300 million per year in water subsidies to California's Central Valley farmers even though the farmers were
growing "surplus" crops that the government was paying other farmers not to grow. n14 Largely
as a result of these economic
arguments, Congress has reduced the subsidies, encouraged conservation in federal reclamation projects, and not authorized any
major new irrigation projects since the 1970s, saving federal dollars while preserving the environment. n15 ¶ An environmental mantra of
recent decades has been that reforms that are good for the environment can often also be good for
the economy. As the federal reclamation program illustrates, economically unjustified governmental
subsidies have been and often remain a major source of environmental harm. The list of such subsidies extends
beyond reclamation subsidies to include fishing subsidies (which have encouraged over-capitalization and over-fishing), agricultural price supports and subsidies
(which have fostered the destruction of environmentally important habitat), below-cost timber sales (promoting over-harvesting), and various forms of subsidies
for urban sprawl. n16¶ Tax reform can also be potentially both economically and environmentally beneficial. n17 Many traditional taxes lead to economic
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inefficiencies. By taxing the products of labor, for example, the income tax discourages work. Taxes on environmental "bads," such as pollution or resource
extraction, however, can raise revenue while discouraging environmentally harmful behavior. Shifts in tax bases, from economic [*183] "goods" to
environmental "bads," can potentially lead to increased economic output and efficiency while reducing environmental harm, although the existence and size of
this "double dividend" is the subject of current economic debate. n18 ¶ Finally, emphasizing that pollution (which is merely the unwanted byproduct of industrial
processes) and high levels of resource consumption are both examples of waste, some environmentalists, academics, and even business interests have argued that
improved environmental performance frequently leads to better economic performance. Businesses, therefore, may be open to voluntary pollution prevention
programs that can improve their environmental performance and reduce costs. In some situations, mandatory regulation may also spur improvements that
simultaneously benefit the environment and bottom lines. n19¶ Such supplemental arguments for environmentally beneficial measures should be neither
environmental goals often are
economically beneficial. More importantly, environmental moralists do not risk undermining or controverting their arguments for particular
measures by also pointing out the economic benefits. Environmental and economic arguments can be kept separate but
used in a way that allows them to be mutually reinforcing.¶ Somewhat more troubling to the environmental moralist might be
surprising nor troubling. Given that environmentalism frequently emphasizes the husbanding of resources,
efforts to prove that elements of the environment, which the environmental moralist believes worthy of protection in their own right, also should be protected for
their significant economic value. Efforts
to bolster the Endangered Species Act (ESA) with economic arguments
provide an example. Although species preservation may be an obvious goal to ¶ environmental
moralists, many people find it hard to understand why snail darters, Delhi-sands flower-loving flies,
and ¶ fringe-toed lizards should thwart other societal goals. To bolster support, some proponents of the ESA
have looked for potential economic value in [*184] protected species. Inspired by the endangered rosy periwinkle which provided a cure
for lymphocytic leukemia and Hodgkin's disease, for example, some environmentalists have argued that society should preserve endangered species for their
potential genetic value in medicine, farming, or industry. n20¶ Recent environmental interest in the concept of "ecosystem services" or "natural services" is
another example of placing an economic value on what many environmental moralists would consider sacred. n21 Seeking another argument in favor of general
preservation efforts, many environmentalists have begun to emphasize that healthy ecosystems provide a variety of economically valuable services, including
climate stabilization, air and water purification, flood control, crop pollination, soil fertility, and the detoxification and decomposition of wastes. n22 One
controversial 1997 study valued these ecosystem services at $ 33 trillion (with a confidence interval of $ 16 to $ 54 trillion), almost two times the annual global
gross national product. n23¶ For
the environmental moralist, the most disturbing example of the merging of
environmental and economic arguments may be the effort to calculate the existence and bequest
values of species and other environmental amenities. To demonstrate the high value of species and other environmental amenities,
economists survey cross-samples of the public to determine how much they would pay to ensure the continued existence of the species or other amenities now
and for future generations. The studies often yield exceptionally high numbers. Surveys, for example, have suggested that the average United States household
would be willing to pay from $ 5-$ 10 to protect some lesser known fish such as the striped shiner to almost $ 100 for more infamous and charismatic species
such as the northern spotted owl. n24¶ [*185] Should
environmental moralists give in to the temptation to try to place
price tags on some elements of the environment? The potential advantage, as noted already, is that the
economic arguments will convince decisionmakers who do not share the moralist's ethical values to
support the moralist's goals because of their economic utility. Pricing the environment, however, is risky in ways that
additive economic arguments, such as the economic advantage of eliminating environmentally destructive subsidies, are not.
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Cede the Political Turn – 1AR
Economics inevitable --- using it for progressive means is key.
Thompson, Jr, Vice Dean and Robert E. Paradise Professor of Natural Resources Law, Stanford
Law School, 2003
(Barton H., SYMPOSIUM: SYNERGY OR CONFLICT: THE ROLES OR ETHICS, ECONOMICS, AND
SCIENCE IN ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY DECISIONS: PANEL: What Good Is Economics?, U.C. Davis
Law Review November, 2003 37 U.C. Davis L. Rev. 175)
Environmental moralists are naturally skeptical of economics. Economics appears to speak of human
wants, individual preferences, and self-interested behavior, while most variants of environmental ethics
emphasize the importance of the entire biotic community, the relevance of societal values, and the need to look beyond one's
immediate interests. Used as a normative tool, economics can clash with environmental ethics . Used in other contexts,
economic analysis accepts a world that the environmental moralist rejects.¶ Environmental moralists may wish for a different
world. Yet economics remains an undeniable and powerful force. The environmental moralist who
wishes to accomplish immediate change must confront economic truths and learn to utilize economic
analysis in support of the environment. As discussed, economics can supply supplemental arguments for
protecting and improving the environment, provide insight into why even environmentally enlightened
individuals often harm the environment, help defuse opposition to valuable environmental measures, and
furnish new and more effective tools for accomplishing environmental goals. In many of these contexts,
environmental moralists can make use of economics without undermining ethical precepts or education.¶
Recent studies raise the additional and intriguing possibility that environmental moralists might be able to
use economic tools to help develop new environmental mores, encourage environmental altruism, or
both. Social scientists still know little about how governmental policies affect societal norms and the
willingness of individuals to behave altruistically. At least some economic incentive systems, however, may encourage
environmental altruism. If so, environmental moralists might find economics not only a tool for immediate
environmental change but for longer-term shifts in the way in which society regards and treats the
environment.
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There Is No Alternative
No alt --- it’s utopian nonsense that causes ecological and social catastrophe.
Barnhizer, Prof of Law, Cleveland State U, 2006
(David, ‘Waking from Sustainability's "Impossible Dream”,’ Geo Int’l Envtl L Rev, pg. l/n)
Grand utopian visions, and even smaller utopias based on an ideal of pastoral communities harmoniously
husbanding local resources, simply are not reflective of the reality faced by the vast majority of people.
E.F. Schumacher's argument that "small is beautiful" may appear to be an elegant solution for how
we can all live comfortable and rewarding lives within enriching community bonds, but it is not going to
happen. n56¶ "Small is beautiful" has become an impossible dream for all but a few communities. The
process of impossibility is driven by population growth, the breakdown of local communities through
migration, the infusion of multicultural diversity, and a materialistic ethos that has altered our sense
of what constitutes [*619] quality of life. The most obvious driving forces include increasing urban
densities and coastal development requiring massive infrastructures and supportive supply systems, overall
population levels, and the distortions of population distribution and age demographics. To these can be
added quality of life demands caused by people in economically impoverished countries who can see
how material life is led in richer countries and the spread of interdependent economic systems that
allow global production and distribution systems to penetrate what had been largely closed economic
and cultural systems. These conditions are not reversible.¶ My concern here is related to the speed at
which societies are approaching various kinds of large-scale dislocations, injustices, strife, and even
disaster. I do not want to resort to doomsday prophecies or set a clear date on which critical resources will
be irreversibly depleted, such as was done in the Club of Rome's Limits to Growth report in 1972. n57 In
addition to being destructive and careless, humans are also adaptive and resilient. Placing hard and fast
deadlines on when chaos occurs and the worst effects are generated is unwise and chancy at best. n58
But if it is unwise or at least extremely difficult to make accurate and detailed predictions involving
"doom and gloom" scenarios, it is equally unwise and foolhardy to ignore that the equivalent of
ecological and social tectonic plates with massive disruptive potential are shifting underneath the
surface of our national and global systems. Failing to prepare for the most likely consequences reaches
the level of gross irresponsibility.¶ We face a combination of ecological, social, and economic crises.
These crises involve the ability to fund potentially conflicting obligations for the provision of social
benefits, health care, education, pensions, and poverty alleviation. They also include the need for
massive expenditures to "fix" what we have already broken. n59 Part of the challenge is that in the United
States and Europe we have made fiscal promises that we cannot keep. We also have vast economic needs
for [*620] continuing wealth generation as a precondition for achieving social equity on national and
global levels. Figuring out how to reduce some of those obligations, eliminate others, and rebuild the core
and vitality of our system must become a part of any honest social discourse. Even Pollyanna would be
overwhelmed by the choices we face. There will be significant pain and sacrifice in any action we take.
But failing to take prompt and effective action will produce even more catastrophic consequences.
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There Is No Alternative – Capitalism
No alternative to capitalism --- even socialists agree.
Wright ,Vilas Distinguished Professor of Sociology at the University of Wisconsin, 2007
(Erik Olin, “Guidelines for Envisioning Real Utopias”, Soundings, April,
www.ssc.wisc.edu/~wright/Published%20writing/Guidelines-soundings.pdf)
To be a radical critic of existing institutions and social structures is to identify harms that are generated by existing arrangements, to formulate alternatives which
mitigate those harms, and to propose transformative strategies for realizing those alternatives. There was a time when many intellectuals on the Left were quite
confident in their understanding of each of these: theories of class and political economy provided a framework for identifying what was wrong with capitalism;
various contending conceptions of socialism provided models for alternatives; and theories of class struggle and socialist politics (whether reformist or
revolutionary) provided the basis for a transformative strategy. Today there
is much less certainty among people who still
identify strongly with Left values of radical egalitarianism and deep democracy. While Left
intellectuals remain critical of capitalism, many acknowledge – if reluctantly – the necessity of markets and
the continuing technological dynamism of capitalism. Socialism remains a marker for an alternative to capitalism, but its
close association with statist projects of economic planning no longer has much credibility, and no
fully convincing alternative comprehensive model has become broadly accepted. And while class
struggles certainly remain a central source of conflict in the world today, there is no longer confidence in their
potential to provide the anchoring agency for transforming and transcending capitalism.
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Cuba Specific Ans
Cuban globalization is inevitable and can occur without altering its economic system.
Shreve, J.D candidate at the Indiana University Maurer School of Law, 2012
(Heather Shreve is the Executive Articles Editor for the Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies, and a J.D
candidate at the Indiana University Maurer School of Law. Accessed 5/16/2013, “Harmonization, But Not
Homogenization: The Case for Cuban Autonomy in Globalizing Economic Reforms,” p. 386-387. [JZ])
Ultimately, all of the forces found in these theories make it difficult for a state like Cuba to resist change, as predicted by Larry Catá Backer. Moreover,
globalization itself accounts for all of these changes—it is both the transformative trigger and the answer to Cuba’s motivation to reform. From a case study of
Cuba, a historically resistant country, the overwhelmingly unavoidable nature of globalization becomes obvious; in
the words of Fidel Castro,
globalization is an “inevitable phenomenon.” However, the mere fact that globalization is inescapable for
Cuba does not mean that Cuba must change its ideological basis or goals in order to globalize; Castro
conditioned his declaration by saying that globalization was not inevitable if it was an imposition of
neoliberal globalization. Today, under the leadership of Raúl Castro, it is clear that, contrary to Backer’s 2004 prediction, a fundamental
change of ideology is not a requisite for Cuban reform. Instead, Cuba changes its economy within the
context and the understanding of its own Marxist-Leninist goals, rather than mirroring the Chinese
or the neoliberal forms of globalization. The very fact that Cuba is reluctant to globalize or is not globalizing for altruistic, market-based
reasons does not negate the significance of its reforms. Indeed, the importance of the reforms is that Cuba, as a state, decides to implement changes, albeit in a
new model, to remain in power and to engage the global economy. Moreover,
in the context of globalization, the fact that
these changes are not accompanied with fundamental changes to the Cuban Marxist-Leninist
framework is an even stronger argument that global harmonization does not require ideological
homogenization, linear changes, or a simplistic one world model. Globalization is infinitely flexible,
complex, and diverse. Globalization in today’s world no longer requires homogenization; Cuba does
not need to either adopt a neoliberal or Maoist version of economics to globalize. Instead, it can
remain Marxist-Leninist while entering into the global economy. Just as neoliberal policies are not the only concept of
globalization, as seen in China, so too Chinese Maoism is not the only alternative form of globalization. The fundamental differences between China and Cuba
are vast—for example, the focus of the Cuban reform differs from that of the Chinese, the decision by Cuban officials to shun Chinese “market socialism” in
favor of limited Communist reforms, and the histories and cultures of the two countries differ.
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Venezuela Specific Ans
The critique’s demand for total rebellion is stuck in the past – Venezuela’s socialism is so
successful because it engages with capitalism.
Harris, Professor at DeVry University, 2007
(Jerry Harris is a professor at the DeVry University of Chicago and holds a Masters of Education in History,
Globalization, and Political Economy. “Bolivia and Venezuela: the democratic dialectic in new revolutionary
movements,” in Race & Class, 49:1 July 2007, p. 18-19)
The temporary coup, followed by a hard-fought two-month strike in the oil industry, radicalised Chavez and his movement.
This process was similar to the radicalising of Cuban leader Fidel Castro as a result of the USsponsored Bay of Pigs invasion. Revolutionary paths are always defined in part by the opposition, the
two opposing sides linked in a process of action and reaction. It was only after this failed invasion that Castro declared a
socialist direction for Cuba, as Chavez did after three attempts to oust him from office. His intent was made clear at the World Social Forum in Brazil, where
Chavez stated: ‘We must reclaim socialism as a thesis, a project and a path, but a new type of socialism, a humanist one that puts humans, not machines or the
state, ahead of everything.’ But
the process in Venezuela is significantly different from the Cuban experience.
Most capitalists have not fled the country but continue to operate their corporations and make
profits, and Venezuela is firmly linked to the transnational economy rather than niched into some
socialist bloc. In fact, Chavez signed a new contract with Chevron-Texaco in the middle of the oil
strike provoked by his pro-US opposition. There have been no nationalisations; nor is socialism mentioned in the new Constitution. As
Latin American scholar Steve Ellner explains, the approach envisions an extended process of revolutionary change
which is without precedent in history and which some claim may take several decades to complete.
The end result will be a complete replacement of old structures created by the Chavista government
and movement . . . replacing the current capitalist system with a mixed economy or association of
medium-sized cooperatives. Clearly this strategy is Gramscian and does not follow the
insurrectionary approaches advocated by Lenin and Che Guevara. Ellner adds that the Chavistas
are committed to a ‘peaceful democratic revolution [and] have ruled out the suppression of the
existing institutions controlled by their adversaries in economic, political and state spheres and
instead opted for parallelism’. However, a war of position is a far from static process. In fact, the
opposition has plunged the country into repeated crises, initiating confrontations that it continues to
lose. In response, participation and mobilisation have been key to the continuing battle for change,
with an expansion of programmes and goals after every major confrontation. This is the dialectic in
Gramsci’s concept of position and manoeuvre, one state of affairs leading to another in a process of
advance. In consolidating the transformational process, radical forces in state positions have united
with social movements to help build counter-hegemonic space throughout civil society. This is where
the PT and ANC failed, causing severe political contradictions to develop between the state and
organised social sectors. But in Venezuela, the link between the state and social movements has, for
now, a revolutionary character and expanded potential that is lacking in countries where autonomist
power remains isolated from the government.
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